The Mental Multivitamin Challenge.

Which is, to name "Ten books above all others that have shaped or even defined you."

Holy, moly. Okay.

1. Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?



This was one of my first books ever, and I had (omg!!) the unabridged version. My dad gave it to me when I was only five-years-old. I was totally fascinated by the sheer diversity of careers to be had. In fact, I think that I wanted to be everything in the book - particularly a dog riding a motorbike, or a mama goat with earrings that look like bakery whisks.

2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

Some kids with British accents go into a closet and wind up in a snowstorm eating Turkish Delight? This story so tripped me out, that by age 10 I actually believed that I could walk into my closet and be in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back riding tauntauns in snowstorms and sporting a white jedi costume. Scarred me, I tell you.

3. Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.

La Mai, as a child, is still trippily living in "let's create new stuff out of this dull old closet wall" land. I believed that I used Tolkien-inspired things, however, to create doors on the wall. Like feathers and twigs. Not a purple crayon.

4. Forever, by Judy Blume. Erm, did I actually read this stuff? Man. I recall actually memorizing *that* scene in the book, too.

5. Jephte's Daughter, Naomi Ragen. This story allowed me to be okay with my divorce from A's father. Yes, the separation and divorce was *that* dramatic. You have no idea.

6. Paolo Coehlo's The Alchemist. Because it illuminates the fact I had been too busy in life trying to carry oil on that dastardly spoon.

7. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and somebody else. Because who knew that La Mai would actually wind up knowing all the people in the book?

8. Wonder Woman, The Complete History. A classic.

9. William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I hated this book so much when I first read it (at university, not because of Oprah, thank you). Because there was so much truth in it.

10. Anything W.B. Yeats. My thesis paper in English was based on Yeats and the Nietzschean thread in his works. My thesis got an A+. Stuff like that (the grade that I received) keeps me upward-looking, even years after I received the grade, years after my divorce, and sometimes milliseconds after crappy stuff happens in my life. To Yeats!