The stories of my life: part 2

Ah, now. Where was I?That's right, we were TREKKING the literary landscapes of the past! We were BLOWING FRESH AIR into the foggy corners of memory! We were throwing clichés to the wind in our search for the stories that made us.Thank you, friends, for your lovely replies. We are unified in our love of certain story classics and your posts reminded of the clanging omissions in my list. Narnia: how could I forget you? The Secret Garden: I love you still.But now to my later teenage years. Cast yourself back to your own 'Dead Poets Society' years ... Feel the raging hormones, listen to the certainty of your thoughts. Everything is meaningful. This was when I realised that stories were SAYING SOMETHING. That behind the characters and the stories lay a message or a cry — when I saw that all the raw emotion of being human could be contained in a single character, with a quest and a foe and a terrible choice to make ...Secondary school: the 'Dead Poets Society' yearsOh, inspiring times! Did we ever feel this much again? The texts we studied in school are so vivid for me, from Oedipus Rex to The Collector; to John Donne and the metaphysical poets, whose 'CARPE DIEM' cry seemed just for us. It's hard to choose, but here are the stories that cut a swathe through a tortured teenage heart:

• Tess of the Durbervilles: this Thomas Hardy classic showed me a world that was cruel and unjust, and opened my eyes to a uniquely female sort of suffering. Tess's illegitimate baby, named Sorrow, dies of fever, unbaptised and wretched, when she is denied help by her drunken tyrant father. Gulp.
• Romeo and Juliet; Hamlet: Shakespeare is THE KING — of character, of conflict, of perfect dilemmas. The most excellent Tom Stoppard script for Shakespeare in Love was a worthy regal portrait. To learn about just how many phrases of Shakespeare's we still use, check out Horrible Histories Shakespeare Song:

• TS Eliot 'Love song of J Alfred Prufrock':  the more I look at this poem, the more I become convinced that you can learn everything you need to know about poetry from it. Just reading it through again brings a welling tear. Who can ever forget these lines?

Let us go then, you and I, /When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table

The snobbish twentiesGosh, I'm worn out after that teenage emotional extravaganza. Let's gallop along to my 'literary snob' phase: my SOPHISTICATED twenties. In no particular order, a simple list of the best of the best from this period, when I was oh-so-clever and cultured:

• Michael Ondaatje Coming through Slaughter
• Margaret Atwood The Robber Bride
• Tony Morrison Beloved
• Raymond Carver Short Cuts
• Tim Winton Cloud Street
• Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda

• Christos Tsiolkas Loaded

• E Annie Proulx The Shipping News
• Hanif Kurieshi Buddha of Suburbia

The mummy miasma: my hormonal thirtiesHello, birdbrain. Now to when I was pregnant, breastfeeding and raising babies: I COULDN'T READ! Well, I could read pulp and fantasy. But look whom I discovered (lucky me):

• Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials trilogy
• Lindsay Davis: Silver Pigs and others in this excellent Roman era detective series
• Robert Harris: author of borderline popular/ speculative-historical/clever books that tear along at a cracking speed (try Pompeii and Fatherlands).

The mellow (hah!) late thirtiesWe're nearly at the end of this list. Sigh. Fear not! I'm composing the 'Before I'm dead' list. And the 'Never have, never will' list (Proust, perhaps?). But back to this one ... So many LOVELY BOOKS, but if I had to choose my two favourites from my reading list of the last five years ...

• Ted Hughes Birthday Letters: his poems about Sylvia Plath, written to (or for?) her. Unforgettable: love, tragedy, insight, frailty.
• Wolf Hall: Hilary Mantell deserved the Booker for this — I think it has amazing 'point of view' writing and wonderful detail. It wedges opens the door of one of history's dusty rooms. You'll curse every minute of carrying it around (it's a hefty tome) but luckily you'll get through it fast. Then you can actually use it to, er, wedge open a door.

Tell me more, dear reader, about the books that CHANGED YOUR LIFE. Tell me: what are the stories that held your teenaged heart captive? What are your literary landmarks? And what are the books you give to every friend with the words 'You HAVE to read this'?