I want to know... your literary crushes.

I've finally found the time and the temperament to write this post. A couple of weeks back, I read an article on Slate.com called "My First Literary Crush". Essentially, two dozen writers and 'great thinkers' (tongue-in-cheek, surely?!) answered the question "What's the most influential book you read in college?". And I gave thanks - it wasn't universally pretentious! Just kidding. I've read and relished many pretentious books.

So, I'm going to pose a similar challenge to all of you.

Tell me about a book that influenced you; preferably (but not necessarily) in your college years. I'm setting your 18th birthday as an arbitrary cut-off. I don't want to hear about books that stunned you as a child or teenager - regardless of how good they might be. I want to know about a book that blew your mature, adult mind the first time you read it. We all have at least one. So leave a comment! Tell me the book, a little about it, and give a little story if you want about what it meant to you. Maybe it was the first time you read your favourite author - who really did become your literary crush!

I'll start the ball rolling.

I could pick any of half a dozen books, but I'm going to go with Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It was the end of my second year in college, and my brain had been numbed by interminable tracts of philosophy. Sure, some of them had blown my mind - and changed my world-view - but none of them had truly excited me.

Reading On the Road wasn't just a breath of fresh air; it was a giddy sugar-rush of euphoria. The jazzy rhythms of the prose and the sheer thrill of the story stirred my soul. It inspired me to travel, to broaden my then-narrow horizons, to drink up every experience I came across. OK, I was moving in that direction anyway, but this novel lit the afterburners. It set in my mind the desire to explore the US - not to relive the book, but to live my own adventure, to know myself and the world through travel, not via books (!) and TV or the vicarious experiences of others.

A couple of months later, I stayed on alone after a weekend with friends in Paris. Nothing major: I only stayed a few extra days (surviving on wired money), but it was the first time I'd been alone in a foreign land. The independence, the self-reliance, the freedom was dazzling and terrifying. Ever since those days, I've lusted after that freedom. So, in the summer just gone, I finally went on my own little adventure across America. And there, immersed in the deliriously epic milieu that is America, I finally grasped 'the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being'.

But this post isn't about me - it's about you and your books. Comment away! Especially those of you who've never commented before! :)