Your Three Most Influential Books

[Whateverist]

Those aee books I ate up when I was 10...16, so very important years. I never had a great interest in reading fiction when I was young, and it still plays only a minor role in my reading

I can relate.  I've always preferred nonfiction but every now and again I read a novel and love it.  I felt that way about Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.  I'm not sure whether I am just feeling less acquisitive toward facts or have simply become a pleasure junky.  

Then there are novels which I loved reading which cross over toward being influential.  Loads of SciFi have this quality for me.  In fact, I'm moving Cats Cradle by Vonnegut to my honorable mention list.  But Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein and so many others make you think.

In my own 10 .. 16 age bracket I was immersed in every thing to do with animals.  I think I exhausted my local library.  That interest has since transferred itself to the plant kingdom.  In the world of horticulture I go by serialplantfetishist which pretty much says it all. 

My most recent influential non-fiction book was:
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo
by Sean B. Carroll