The Books That Brought Me Here

Up in the higher echelons of the blogosphere, many of the big-name bloggers are posting lists of the top ten books that influenced them. The idea was triggered by Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution, and was taken up by some of my blogging favourites like Matthew Yglesias and Ta-Nehisi Coates. They've all listed some very smart books, the vast majority of which I haven't read and many of which I hadn't even heard of before now.

My own list is nowhere near as sophisticated. I agree with Red Dave that "most influential" refers to the list of books that had the greatest effect on my life, which does not necessarily coincide with books that were written by ancient and modern luminaries. The latter would belong on a generic list of "greatest" or "most important" books I've ever read.

So here, in chronological order of when I first read them, are the books that I believe contributed the most to who I am today (Am I really writing this down and publishing it?):

The Qur'an. This one is obvious. Central to my upbringing and essential to my faith, I can't even remember when I first started reading it (although I didn't actually read it cover to cover until my teens).

Spacetrail Guide by the London Planetarium. When I was ten years old, my family visited the London Planetarium in England. I can't remember the planetarium itself, but I remember the 32-page booklet they gave out there. By the end of that summer, I knew all the basic facts about every planet in our solar system (size, distance from the Sun, period of its orbit, average temperature, etc.) and had memorized the blurbs on Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, among others. It may well be that my love of space and science started before that year, but that booklet marks my earliest memory of being in awe of the universe.

ملف المستقبل (The Future File) by Nabil Farouk. As a kid studying at a British school in Kuwait, I was inspired to keep reading and writing in Arabic because of this sci-fi series. These short stories fired up my scientific imagination, and introduced me to my favourite childhood heroes: Noor, Salwa, Ramzy, and Mahmoud. Whether chasing a time-travelling villain through the ages, leading a resistance movement against alien invaders, travelling to alternate dimensions, or befriending the last surviving android from Atlantis, Noor and his team exemplified nobility, honesty, courage, and intelligence.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I met Anne when I was 13, and was thrilled to find a literary character who saw the world as I did. Montgomery's classic book is why I admired the beauty of the East Coast before ever setting foot in Canada. At my age at the time, it was also fascinating to read a book that was not about Christianity per se, but in which the characters' faith came up naturally in their day-to-day lives. That was definitely when I began to understand how different faiths actually have much in common.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I'm a nuclear scientist/engineer, and I still understand this book only marginally better today than when I first read it in high school, which was the point when my choice of becoming a scientist/engineer was pretty much sealed.

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. In this novel, which I was assigned in high school, each major philosopher from Western history is discussed in a different chapter. This is the book that made me really start to read philosophy, and also indirectly helped fuel my life-long love of history.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read this book in the first semester of undergrad, and then, over the course of about a year or so, read the vast majority of Rand's fiction and non-fiction works. The forceful logic of Atlas Shrugged challenged me to check pretty much all of my premises, and Rand's critique of society remains very instructive both for what she got right and what she got very wrong.

حياة محمد (The Life of Muhammad) by Muhammad Hussein Heikal. Anyone who went to school in a Muslim country can summarize the life of the prophet of Islam. But of everything that I've read about Muhammad, it was this particular biography that brought home the idea that he can only be fully understood as a very real person whose life existed in a very real set of social and historical circumstances.

Western Muslims and the Future of Islam by Tariq Ramadan. This book, like the rest of Ramadan's writings and speeches, is less about his specific issue-by-issue opinions and more about understanding how literalism and intellectual rigidity weaken faith rather than strengthening it. Of Ramadan's many writings, I've listed Western Muslims simply because it was the first that I read.

That's only nine books, I know, and while I thought of adding one more to complete ten, I couldn't think of any others that influenced me as strongly as the ones above. But, for the record, my list of runners-up would include Matilda by Roald Dahl, My Teacher is an Alien (and the rest of that four-book series) by Bruce Coville, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Orientalism by Edward Said, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.

Feel free to list any of your most influential books in comments.