Apparently this sort of thing had been going around the web since April 2003, when the BBC’s Big Read began the search for Britain’s best-loved novel, and asked Britons to nominate their favorite books.

The truth is that at different times in my life I’d have different books on the list.

If you’d asked me when I was in my teens and 20’s The Catcher in the Rye would have been in the top five. Also most of my books are currently still packed in boxes from my last move and if I went through them I could easily add another hundred titles. How about The Illuminatus! trilogy, or Hitchhiker’s Guide books? They easily could have been on my list.

I did an interview years ago for Science Fiction Review where I listed a whole bunch of other authors I love who influenced me.

Then there’s the books I mentioned in my Facebook profile.

Honestly, I can’t remember half of what I’ve read over the course of a lifetime so how can I remember what my favorites are?

But here’s the list I put together. I didn’t follow the BBC protocol and included both fiction and nonfiction.

First of all, my own books (11 books):
FICTION:
Alongside Night
The Rainbow Cadenza
Escape from Heaven
Nasty, Brutish, and Short Stories
Profile in Silver and Other Screenwritings
NONFICTION/OMNIBUS:
I Met God (audiobook)
Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns
The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana
Self Control Not Gun Control
Book Publishing in the 21st Century
The Frame of the Century

C.S. Lewis (17 Books):
FICTION:
The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters

NONFICTION:
The Abolition of Man
Miracles
Mere Christianity
The Problem of Pain
The Weight of Glory
An Experiment in Criticism

Ayn Rand (8 books)
FICTION:
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
Anthem
NONFICTION:
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
The Virtue of Selfishness
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
The Romantic Manifesto
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Robert A. Heinlein (26 books)
FICTION:
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Job: A Comedy of Justice
Have Space Suit — Will Travel
Citizen of the Galaxy
Glory Road
The Past Through Tomorrow
Farnham’s Freehold
Between Planets
The Puppet Masters
The Door Into Summer
Double Star
Starman Jones
Red Planet
Starship Troopers
Tunnel in the Sky
Beyond This Horizon
Friday
Time Enough For Love
Podkayne of Mars
The Rolling Stones
The Star Beast
Farmer in the Sky
NONFICTION/OMNIBUS:
Expanded Universe
Tramp Royale
Grumbles from the Grave

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World

George Orwell (2 books)
Nineteen-eighty-four
Animal Farm

Brad Linaweaver (5 books)
Moon of Ice
The Land Beyond Summer
ClownFace
Anarquia (with J. Kent Hastings)
Free Space (co-editor with Ed Kramer)

L. Neil Smith
The Probability Broach

Victor Koman (3 books)
The Jehovah Contract
Solomon’s Knife
Kings of the High Frontier

Colin Wilson (3 books)
FICTION:
The Philosopher’s Stone
NONFICTION:
The Outsider
A Criminal History of Mankind

Franz Kafka
The Trial

Mark Twain (3 books)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Huckleberry Finn
Letters from the Earth

Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol

H.G. Wells (2 books)
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds

Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange

Viktor Frankl
Man’s Search for Meaning

Carl Jung
Man and His Symbols

Dale Carnegie
How to Win Friends and Influence People

S.I. Hawakaya
Language in Thought and Action

Ludwig von Mises
Human Action

F.A. Hayek
The Road to Serfdom

Murray Rothbard (2 books)
Power and Market
For a New Liberty

Samuel Edward Konkin III (2 books)
The New Libertarian Manifesto
An Agorist Primer

Harry Browne
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Ken Grimwood
Replay

Arthur Hailey
Airport

Robert LeFevre
The Philosophy of Ownership