A very quick attempt-to-defog-brain break, prompted by Mer: This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

The list:

1. Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers)
2. What Happened to Heather Hopkowitz? (Charlotte Herman)
3. All on a May Morning (Nancy Willard)
4. Things Invisible to See (Nancy Willard)
5. The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
6. We Dickinsons (Aileen Fisher and Olive Rabe)
7. FAKE (manga series, Sanami Matoh)
8. Suspended in Language (Jim Ottaviani et al.)
9. A Rose in Winter (Kathleen E. Woodiwiss)
10. Devil's Bride (Stephanie Laurens)
11. Born in Fire (Nora Roberts)
12. The Warlock in Spite of Himself (Christopher Stasheff)
13. Dandelion Wine (Ray Bradbury)
14. "The Hound of Heaven" (poem by Francis Thompson)
15. The Anatomy of Letters (Charles Pearce)

Glosses vite:
1. First read in high school. First copy in fact read to tatters. Wrote at least two term papers related to it during college.
2. YA book about a girl who discovers Orthodox Judaism. First read in high school. Purchased my own copy ten years later at a Jewish book fair in Michigan.
3. Picture book first read in elementary school. Enchanted enough by the lyrics to copy them out into my diary. Tracked it down via abebooks or something similar twenty years later.
4. First read this when I was around 25. Have purchased at least two copies for other people. Opens with a terrific passage about God and baseball. Set in Ann Arbor.
5. First read as a comic book in sixth grade "Language Arts" class. Responsible for countless hours of utterly pointless research in the decades since, as well as attendance at at least one Chicago horse race.
6. First read in middle school, in the Learning Resources section of the local university library. Tracked it down again earlier this decade. Responsible for my love of the word "heliotrope."
7. Graphic novel series featuring a pair of NYC cops, one bi, one closeted. First read it last year. It's got massive flaws from the get-go (author frequently cited even by her fans as a classic example of Did Not Do the Research); I adore it anyway.
8. Graphic novel about Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd. Sparked ongoing interest in history of atomic physics, which in turn has prompted at least two poems about Heisenberg, one which has been published, and the other forthcoming from the SFPA.
9. First read abridged version in a copy of Good Housekeeping archived in the Eastern Kentucky University library basement, around my junior year of high school. The library had the much smuttier complete version in its stacks, and I later purchased my own copy in Chicago once I became comfortable wandering around the Loop on my own. A hurt-comfort classic, and great gown descriptions too.
10. First volume of a recent historical Regency series. Feisty heroines, arroganty competent heroes, smoking hot sex, even hotter battles of will. Damn, I meant to include Jo Beverly's Devilish on this list as well. First volume acquired as a comp while I was a buyer for Borders.
11. Contemporary romance. This one stands out for me because the hero is a workaholic administrative genius who likes the finer things in life...
12. Dated and flawed, but the great moments and its sheer good humor do outweigh the sheer clunkery of Stasheff's worst instances of dialogue fail. (And it's not as if this description is any better, oy.)
13. A birthday gift from my friend Socrates. Turns out I'd read at least one story in Reader's Digest some years before. The rest - oh, it was and is both a marvel and a comfort.
14. Long, crazy-ass poem of Christian penitence with which I have little in common theologically or experientially, but damn if it doesn't stick in your head and beg to be read aloud over and over. Eugene O'Neill loved reciting it after he'd had a few too many.
15. My desert island calligraphy manual.

Time to go home and letter some certificates!