When I go someone’s house for the first time, I make a beeline for their bookshelf. You can tell a lot about a person by what they read and I firmly believe that books are at least partly responsible for shaping our worldview, particularly those we read as kids. While most of us have a story about a book that profoundly changed us, I think even the pulpiest airport novel we pick up to pass the time leaves an impression, however subtle. And we fall in love with stories for different reasons: they challenge us, comfort us and remind us of what was happening in our lives while we were reading them. They offer escape and teach compassion. They shape and build our understanding of language, inform and reflect our personal aesthetic and taste, and a million other things besides.

I turned thirty last month, and I’ve been using the milestone to have a bit of a think about what I value, how I got where I am and where I want to go next. Books play a big part in that, so today I thought I share the thirty books that have most influenced me in my first thirty years. Some have indeed shaped the course of my life in very real ways, while others have had a more subtle effect: teaching me about language and how stories work, influencing the kinds of stories I like to tell, introducing me to genres I love, keeping me company as a kid when I was scared and couldn’t sleep, or been the reason I couldn’t sleep. They contain some of my favourite characters and take me to the places I most want to go. They’re the books that I’ve read again and again and keep coming back to, the stories that most feel like friends.

Looking at them all laid out, I’m keenly aware that it’s a fairly conservative list. In fact, it kinda screams: ‘Snobby lit. grad with a weakness for crime’. I’m a preppy anglophile at heart, and that’s probably not going to change, but I am keen to diversify. If you have recommendations, hit me up.

I’ve listed titles roughly in the order I remember first reading them. I haven’t included blurbs, but if you’re keen to know more about any of the titles, I’ve provided links to their Goodreads pages. For those who are new to Lectito or don’t know me very well, consider it an introduction of sorts. Firm friends, humour my self-indulgence, and if you have recommendations for what I should read over the next thirty years, please do leave a comment. As a quid pro quo, I’d also love to know what titles you’d include on your list and what role(s) you see books playing in your life.

	Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner See on Goodreads.
	Little Women by Louisa May Alcott See on Goodreads.
	Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie See on Goodreads.
	The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis See on Goodreads.
	The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett See on Goodreads.
	Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton See on Goodreads.
	Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl See on Goodreads.
	Anne of Green Gables  by L. M. Mongomery See on Goodreads.
	Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden See on Goodreads.
	The Shining By Stephen King See on Goodreads.
	Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling See on Goodreads.
	Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (a.k.a. The Golden Compass) See on Goodreads.
	To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee See on Goodreads.
	Red Dragon by Thomas Harris See on Goodreads.
	Collected Poems by T. S. Eliot See on Goodreads.
	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey See on Goodreads.
	Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell See on Goodreads.
	The Tempest by William Shakespeare See on Goodreads.
	Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey See on Goodreads.
	Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov See on Goodreads.
	The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith See on Goodreads.
	The Secret History by Donna Tartt See on Goodreads.
	The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde See on Goodreads.
	The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald See on Goodreads.
	Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë See on Goodreads.
	Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier See on Goodreads.
	Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh See on Goodreads.
	The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer See on Goodreads.
	The Summer Book by Tove Jansson See on Goodreads.
	The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford See on Goodreads.

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