My earliest reading memory Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes terrified me as a child. It's the macabre story of how a young girl, Karen, is condemned to dance for ever... to make the dancing stop.
My favourite book growing up Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre it's a wonderful love story... I think I was especially drawn to the subtext that wit, warmth and courage can be more attractive than beauty.
The book that changed me as a teenager I know it's unlikely but Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes... Visiting Paris with my best friend and her mother to see the exact spot where the author first saw and instantly fell in love with Yvonne de Quievrecourt...
Until I read Robert Macfarlane's magisterial Underland... Macfarlane also has a wonderful way of putting things into geological perspective: 100,000 years ago, rivers ran across the Sahara; in around 5bn years, the Earth will fall dark when the sun exhausts its fuel.
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