Favourite Books
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Childhood
Just old favourites: the books that shape you and take on some kind of mythical/nostalgic significance for you.
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Adolescence
These aren't so much books about adolescence, or I Capture the Castle would certainly find a place in here. Instead, here are the books I read when I was about fourteen years old. Some of them I thought were vitally important and daring, whereas I'm sure I'd find them simple and didactic now. I think you have to be fourteen or fifteen to feel their full impact.
I had a conversation with Nicholas Tucker once, when he came to speak at a publishing seminar on crossover literature. He talked about adults reading children's books, and what it was they were seeking from that experience perhaps (nostalgia and meaning). We chatted a bit about the kind of adult books that teenagers read, and I feel that they are often typically of a sort-- apocalyptic, highly symbolic and heavily stylised.
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Adulthood
I guess that these are the books that have simply stopped me dead in my tracks as an adult, made me almost stop breathing. Some of these I should have read earlier, I'm sure, but it didn't matter to me at the time I did finally get around to them.
From leaving school to the present day.