I noticed on Twitter this morning somebody asking that question, which is similar to other questions asked on The Books That Made Me (The book that changed my life, The book that had the greatest influence on my writing), for people to provide instances of:
[T]he single most important work of fiction you’ve ever read.... Just the one that’s affected your life the most profoundly.
And honestly, how many people could say that There Could Be Only One? - okay, there is a character in a Gail Godwin novel (I think it's A Mother and Two Daughters) who ups and leaves her husband because of one sentence in Laurence Durrell's Justine, but I imagine that's a fairly rare case.
I depose that the single most important work of fiction I've ever read was a primary school introductory reader in a graded scheme about a boring couple of kids called Janet and John, because it opened the doors of reading to me.
Thinking about works of history, a book that completely blew me away when I first read it was Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium, but I'm not sure it's greatly influenced my own course as a historian - I do not work on the middle ages or apocalyptic cults and I don't think my praxis or my style owe much to Cohn's.
I'm very dubious about this Name The One Thing. Okay, I have difficulty with even the Top Five/Ten/Twenty...
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Further to the books as gifts, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who feels the idea of The One True Book To Give is alien: except, apparently, for first books for children, an area where I am honestly unable to pronounce.
I suspect my views on the subject may have somewhat changed since the advent of the internet and ever more so since ebooks, since previously, even in somewhat homogenised chain booksellers*, one might come across something that was unusual and unlikely to be found just anywhere, and in the days when there were more idiosyncratic indies, even more the case. So one might find gems to pass along.
*I cite in evidence the, I think it was Charing Cross Road branch of Waterstones, where I discovered a copy of Joanna Russ's Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts: anyway, not the local indie, not Sisterwrite, not Silvermoon, not Compendium.
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