Awesome Literature

This list in chronological order of my first experience with each work. The colors of the title are just colors that have come to reflect those works in my mind for reasons I do not always understand (but probably just because of their covers).

1. The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady by Gerald Morris. This book literally caused puberty in me and is the direct cause for the first moment I realized I was in love with a girl. And even today I think this series has the most believable, human characters in all of literature.
2. The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander. Part of the Prydain Chronicles (The Black Cauldron Series), this book is the first time I ever felt the awful sting of betrayal, and realized the true power of human relationships.
3. "The Wind" by Ray Bradbury. Really all of Ray Bradbury showed me a new world of the possibility of language, but this story in particular has stayed most with me as causing the kind of awe Edmund Burke talked about that is so wrapped up in terror.
4. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Not literature, but still words that opened up an entire new paradigm of how the world works. This book left an impression that continues to shape my worldview today.
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The astoundingly accurate reflection of my world that was written over 70 years before it happened.
6. "The Year of Silence" by Kevin Brockmeier. A familiar idea taken to surreal extremes turned in on itself to bring about a simplistic message in an unforgettable way. The first time form mattered to me in literature.
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. The struggle of a genius I could appreciate against immorality I perhaps shouldn't have tolerated ending in "The beauty! The beauty!" that spoke to me in a way no other book ever has.
8. "A Small Part" by Stephen Dunn. My late adolescence explained to me in a poem by a man I've never met.
9. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (play seen at British National Theatre). A play I literally stood through that turned me to hug another dude next to me in tears at the end. "Does that mean that I can do anything, Siobhan? Does that mean that I can do anything? The two look at each other for awhile. Lights black."
10. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin. Currently reading this for my American Lit 1960-Present class. Proof that there's still plot premises out there beyond anything I've ever even imagined, blended with philosophy I must have been secretly yearning for based on how strongly I've reacted to it.