Thanks for contributing!

Hit upon your blog by accident when surfing NLP, and was instantly trapped. Reading has been my lifelong obsession – owning books an automatic adjunct – leading to a lifestyle that has encompassed homebuying to accommodate an increasing library of (currently in excess of 10,000) volumes and – ultimately – writing and publishing my own books where I felt a subject poorly or inadequately treated. Enough, already! My list (not in chronological order):

1. A Course in Miracles. This was my spiritual awakening and led to my involvement in Attitudinal Healing, via -

2. Love is Letting Go of Fear. by Jerry Jampolsky.

3. Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart. I would have to rate this as my most enduring sci-fi read, despite my love of Bester, Simak, Heinlein, Asimov, et al.

4. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell which stimulated my political awareness.

5, 6, 7 and 8. To provide the earliest stimulus to my love of literature and the written word are the classics: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; Fenimore Cooper’s Deerslayer, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and A.A.Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

9. Cyril Joad’s Guide to Philosophy stimulated the brain cells and my critical faculty and remains a fond memory, despite the subsequent greater inffluences of other, less eccentric, philosophers.

10. J.B.Priestley’s The Good Companions which I could read over and over without tiring.

11. Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of English Verse which first introduced me to the world of riches in poetry.

12. I leave to last what I began with – NLP. I suppose it was Bandler and Grinder’s Frogs Into Princes that first brought it to my attention. The reason, however, why it had the greatest influence on me was because it encouraged me to write my own NLP book: An ABC of NLP to fill a perceived gap in that subject’s literature. I’m pleased to say it is still selling 16 years on and led to my writing several more books.

Thank you for encouraging that flight of memory. I’ve neglected to mention so many other worthwhile reads and influences. But . . . you set the constraints.

Good luck.