If My Life Were a Bookshelf: 72 Books that Make Me ME

If my life were a bookshelf—which books would it hold?

The idea for this post is one that’s been drifting around in my brain for a couple of years. Somehow it fascinated me. If you could condense the whole history of your life down into a well-filled bookcase, which titles would be essential to tell your story?

Which are the books that make you—YOU?

Today I’d like to share with you 72 books that have shaped the person I am today. They don’t fit on a single shelf—in fact, they don’t even fit on a couple of shelves. The books that make me ME are enough to fill a good-sized bookcase.

Let’s start at the bottom of that bookcase and work our way, shelf by shelf, up to the top.

The Picture Book Shelf

Believe it or not, this is the longest shelf in the collection, and I’m still just barely scratching the surface. I grew up with such an amazing picture book collection. They were definitely curated. (The Cat in the Hat disappeared for several years after I enthusiastically tried standing on top of a beach ball.) The result was that we had the cream of the crop in terms of timeless, high-quality picture books.

Here are some highlights from the picture book shelf. (You can click on each title to browse Goodreads reviews.)

1. Little Ernie Loves Rubber Duckie
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
3. Franklin the Turtle
4. Norman’s Snowball
5. And You Can Be the Cat
6. Elliot Moose
7. Brambly Hedge
8. Dogger
9. Something From Nothing
10. Bread and Jam for Frances
11. Value Tales

The Early Reader Shelf

I don’t remember much about the learning-to-read process. What I do remember is the days when the learning-to-read books were a comfortable (or even a challenging!) fit. Technically referred to within the industry as chapter books (I know—novels should be chapter books too, shouldn’t they?) here’s a peek at the books that filled the next shelf of my life:

12. Frog and Toad
13. Magic School Bus
14. Thornton Burgess
15. Magic Tree House
16. Sarah Plain and Tall

The Children’s Classics Shelf

Aw! We’re getting into the feel-good category here! What homeschooled kid didn’t grow up with a fat shelf of second-hand children’s classics? These are the books where the individual battered copy matters to me—and it’s a shelf that will always have a soft spot in my heart.

17. Winnie-the-Pooh
18. Little Lord Fauntleroy
19. A Little Princess
20. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
21. Eight Cousins
22. Five Little Peppers
23. Misty of Chincoteague

The Little House Shelf

All of the books on this list have contributed to the person I am today. There are just certain shelves that have contributed—a bit more definitively? I was a pioneer-crazy elementary student. The Little House series, in all it’s innovative Harper-Collins spinoffs, was more that a set of books I loved. It was a set of books that, between grade one and grade six, defined me. Which is the reason I’ve listed each of these sub-series separately on a shelf all to themselves:

24. My First Little House Books
25. Little House Chapter Books
26. The Laura Years (Original Little House Series)
27. The Martha Years
28. The Charlotte Years
29. The Caroline Years

The Conservative Publishers Shelf

And then we reach a place where the literary road divided—or at least appeared to divide for the time being. The next two shelves were filled simultaneously as I grew into double digits. The first shelf held books from contemporary Christian publishers who were striving to be an alternative voice in an increasingly secularized world:

30. Coon Tree Summer
31. Ice Slide Winter
32. The House with Two Grandmothers
33. The Moody Family Series
34. Grandmother’s Hope Chest
35. A Light Kindled

The Vintage Reprints Shelf

And the second shelf represented publishers who were turning to the Christian writers of the past to supply a product that embraced a high level of literary value (particularly on the vocabulary/language front) that was apparently being lost in the modern writing world.

36. A Puzzling Pair
37. Jill’s Red Bag
38. The Children of Cloverly
39. The Bishop’s Shadow
40. A Charge to Keep
41. The Lost Clue

The Adventure Novels Shelf

And then entered a new genre into my world. Probably you have to be thirteen, with a voracious appetite for historical authors and a naïve inexperience of the world of action writing, to truly appreciate what it is to fall in love with Victorian adventure novels. I was—and I did—and the following are the highlights from the years in which I consumed them like they were candy.

(To be strictly honest here, the first title on the list came a little before the main body of the adventure craze, but it fits with the rest of the genre, and it’s unquestionably one of the books that makes me ME.)

42. The Children of the New Forest
43. The Cat of Bubastes
44. Beric the Briton
45. The Young Carthaginian
46. Treasure of the Incas
47. Cue for Treason

The Cream of the Classics Shelf

A lot of homeschooled children grow up with YA/adult classics on their bookshelf from the time they’re in primary school. Although I do remember having Anne of Green Gables read aloud to me once as a younger child, none of these books became a significant part of my life until I was a teenager. The year I was sixteen, the door opened on a new world—the bookshelf that holds some of the most universally-acclaimed novels the English language possesses:

48. Anne of Green Gables
49. Little Women
50. Pride and Prejudice
51. Emma
52. A Christmas Carol

The Obscure Victorian Novelists Shelf

I spent the second half of my teens in a very lonely battle with chronic illness. The brightest spot from those years is the dappled sunlight that falls from my list of very obscure, very loveable Victorian authors who became radically more accessible with my introduction to the world of e-readers. They represent a list that far fewer people are familiar with, but it would be difficult to underestimate the impact they had on the woman I am today:

53. The Daisy Chain
54. The Heir of Redcliffe
55. Pillars of the House
56. The Fairy Bower
57. A Maiden of Our Own Day
58. Lily Gordon
59. The Bessie Books

The Historical Non-Fic Shelf

On the wake of the Victorian novelists came the shelf of the historical non-fiction writers. By this time, it would be fair to say that Victoriana had become my biggest hobby. I simply couldn’t get my hands on enough details about the minutia of Victorian life. I have always struggled to put my finger on exactly why it’s an era that fascinates me so deeply. Sometimes our passions, like our talents, don’t have an explanation beyond the fact that God wants us to have them for the work He wants us to do. Writing authentic historical novels has been one of those things, for me. And my fascination with the details of the period filled up a shelf all on its own:

60. Emily Post’s Etiquette
61. A Manuel of Home-Making
62. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management
63. The Home Book for Young Ladies
64. Orthodoxy
65. A. A. Milne’s Essay Collections

The Contemporary Authors Shelf

And finally, we come to the shelf of recent years—the authors who are writing today, and whose books I am discovering, enjoying, and being impacted by as an adult. Some of the authors on this shelf are writers I am privileged to count as personal friends. Others I have known only through the pages of their books. But all have had an impact on me in the stage of life I am currently in. Their books fill up the top shelf of my bookcase—the top shelf, at least, for now.

66. Quiet Valor Series
67. Chronic Warrior Chronicles
68. The Accidental Cases of Emily Abbott
69. Yours is the Night
70. Whose Waves These Are
71. Wherever He Leads
72. The Lazy Genius Way

If My Life Were a Bookshelf—That’s How it Would Look

11 shelves—72 books that define the person I’ve been, and the person I still am today.

Of course, there are many more. Some of them books I’ve read over and over again. Some of them books I only opened once. In fact, I might be hard pressed to argue that there’s been a single book I’ve read in the whole of my life that didn’t influence who I am in some way or other.

But these 72 books are ones that played a definitive role in shaping me as a writer, as a person, and as a child of God.

I’d love to hear your thought on any of them in the comments section below. If your life were a bookshelf, which of these titles would be on it, too? And if your life were a bookshelf, what books would be there that are unique to you?

If you enjoyed this trip down the bookshelf of memory lane, you might also enjoy:

• ← FREE Today—A Blue Coat
• FREE Today: The Meaning of Resurrection →