In her latest column, Maureen Dowd writes about a man who gave his wife 26 books--a title for every letter--that would help her understand who he is as a person. That made me wonder what books I would choose to include in such an alphabetical, self-revealing list. I'll give it a shot here:

A--American Primitive by Mary Oliver and Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
B--Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban and Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
C--Cruddy by Lynda Barry
D--The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds
E--Earth House Hold by Gary Snyder and Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta
F--The Funny Thing by Wanda Ga'ag
G--The Golden Book Library (a collection of children's book anthologies) and The Girl with the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
H--The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
I--In the Language of Love by Diane Schoemperlen
J--Just Only John by Jack Kent
K--Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
L--Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
M--My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
N--A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
0--The Oblivion Ha-Ha by James Tate
P--Poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge
Q--The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum
R--Reality Sandwiches by Allen Ginsberg
S--Sonnets to Orpheus by Ranier Maria Rilke and Sula by Toni Morrison
T--Tracks by Louise Erdrich
U--Unless by Carol Shields
V--Voice Lessons by Nancy Mairs
W--Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin and Walden by Henry David Thoreau
X--Generation X by Douglas Coupland (a bit of a cheat, but I couldn't think of any titles that started with X)
Y--Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
Z--The Zoom Book (I don't know if this is the title for sure, but it was the book from the PBS Show Zoom in the 70s. I spent hours pouring through it.)

This isn't an exhaustive list of the books that are meaningful to me by any stretch, and some on here are more meaningful than others, but all of them have had an impact. It was fun to make the list--if any of you are up to the challenge, I'd love to see your own lists!