My Favourite Books: the ones that changed me, moved me, and stayed with me – Part 1

The books I mention here aren’t listed by order of memory, preference, or even alphabetically. They’re simply written down as they came to mind.

The books we never forget are not those that impress us for their plot or content alone, but for the moment in which we read them. Because books are not just printed words, they’re open windows, both on the world and on ourselves.

When I think of the books I remember effortlessly, I realise each one marks a different chapter of my life, like friends who’ve walked beside me through different seasons, in unexpected ways. Sometimes it feels almost serendipitous, as if the right book appeared just when I needed it most.

1 Children’s Bible by Borislav Arapović

The first book I vividly remember reading is Children’s Bible by Borislav Arapović. I can’t say exactly how old I was - maybe six - but I remember everything else with photographic clarity: the corner sofa with its slightly rough velvet fabric, the light coming through the window, the quiet of the house.

I was alone, and those pages filled with bright, colourful images felt like an entire world. The stories fascinated me - the Garden of Eden, Joseph sold by his brothers (his coat of many colours is still the one I picture every time I reread that passage), and Daniel in the lions’ den, a scene I simply couldn’t imagine without feeling both fear and wonder. Maybe that’s when I first discovered that books can create images more real than reality itself, and that when imagination is born early, it stays with you forever.

The book of my childhood - Children’s Bible by Borislav Arapović - was lost among the countless moves of life. Years ago, I tried to buy it again but found it was out of print. Yet this year, something urged me to try once more. I found it, of all places, in Romania, and I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Having finally taken out a mortgage and bought my own home, it felt like I was closing a symbolic circle: finding the first book I ever loved, just as I was building a new nest of my own.

Photo of Joseph’s coat in Borislav Arapović’s Children’s Bible, mentioned in this post.

2 Pride and Prejudice (and, really, everything by Jane Austen)

Jane Austen always manages to surprise me - with her irony, her delicacy, and her quiet strength. Every rereading feels like coming home. In a way, she was one of the very first feminists, long before the word even existed. She wrote about intelligent, courageous, independent women in a world that left no space for them - and she did so with grace, humour, and an honesty that still takes my breath away.

She has inspired films, books, series, endless reinterpretations. Recently, I discovered Unmarriageable, a modern version of Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan - and, of course, I couldn’t stop there. I’ve read and watched everything I could find inspired by her. Even You’ve Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, my favourite film, made me fall in love all over again when I realised it was based on Pride and Prejudice. That’s when I understood how deeply Jane Austen’s influence runs, even where we don’t expect it.

Of all her novels, though, Pride and Prejudice still speaks to my heart the most. I see myself in Elizabeth Bennet - in that fragile balance between pride and feeling. It’s a story that keeps you suspended between pain and pleasure until the very end, making you suffer and hope alongside Elizabeth and Darcy. It’s perfectly paced - every obstacle, every moment of doubt and longing - surrounded by a delicate web of ambition, convention, and social climbing.

I wouldn’t say everything about the Georgian era is charming, but if we still find it so fascinating today, it’s because of her. Austen made that world come alive - witty, vibrant, breathing - and every time I return to her pages, I feel I’m coming home to a world that no longer exists but still speaks to us as if it did.

3 The Twilight Saga

I can’t help mentioning The Twilight Saga - yes, the one everyone loves to criticise. But like all great sagas, the first book remains unforgettable. It’s a memory of adolescence, a pure emotion that no amount of criticism can erase.

Coming from an unhappy childhood and living through those turbulent teenage years when you feel misunderstood, rejected, unique, and somehow omnipotent, I still remember a very specific moment: I was about thirteen, alone in my room at night, reading by the dim light of a bedside lamp. I can still picture the buttons on the chair I was sitting on. And above all, I remember the overwhelming emotion of those pages. That’s what unforgettable books do - they etch sensations into memory.

The physical and spiritual pull between Bella and Edward struck me like lightning - then came fear, tension, impossibility. But the moment that marked me the most was when Edward leaves Bella (New Moon): that emptiness, that void, that inner cold that reached the very tips of my fingers. Because it was a cold I could feel.

It was the book of my teenage years, and I think I’d still love it today. It’s not just about vampires or impossible love - it’s about absolute emotions, loss, and rebirth. In its own way, Twilight reshaped modern fantasy, bringing the vampire myth back to life and turning it into a symbol of desire, loneliness, and hope.

4 The Dune Saga by Frank Herbert

The Dune saga by Frank Herbert entered my life almost by chance. I was in Cardiff, finishing my last semester at university. During a conversation with my flatmate (who was also my landlord), he recommended it to me with such contagious enthusiasm that I immediately added it to my Goodreads list, thinking, “I’ll read it someday.”

That “someday” became reality at the start of this year - and I couldn’t stop. As usual, the first book was the one that captured me the most. I fell in love with Arrakis - its living, merciless desert, the way people learn to survive by adapting to the rhythm of the sand and the scarcity of water. It’s a universe that overwhelms you and makes you feel tiny, yet part of something immense.

I’ll admit that towards the end my enthusiasm faded a little, but I finished the saga with a sense of fulfilment - like a long, difficult journey that leaves a deep mark nonetheless.

5 Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Among all the essays I’ve read, Factfulness opened my eyes to the world like few others. I read it during the pandemic, at a time when I was trying to make sense of everything happening around us.

It explains, clearly and calmly, how paradoxically we’ve become more misinformed than ever - despite living in the information age. We’re surrounded by data, graphs, and percentages, yet at the mercy of those who twist them to fit their narratives.

Rosling shows how numbers can either enlighten or mislead, depending on who’s telling the story. He invites us to look at the world with greater calm, reminding us that not everything that seems catastrophic truly is. We live in an age where anything that hasn’t happened for two hundred years is called an “unprecedented event”, forgetting that Earth has its own rhythms, cycles, and sense of time. Two hundred years mean nothing to her - it’s we who’ve lost perspective.

Maybe that’s why Factfulness came at the right moment for me - when I needed to reframe both the world and myself.

6 The Sign and the Seal by Graham Hancock

After finishing Fingerprints of the Gods in 2023 - a book that quite literally blew my mind with its fascinating theories about lost civilisations - I was left with an endless curiosity. Hancock’s vision of forgotten, possibly more advanced ancient cultures made me look at history with new eyes. I’m not sure whether everything he suggests is true, but his books have that rare power to ignite questions, to make you want to understand more, to dig deeper.

At the end of Fingerprints, I immediately added all his other works to my to-read list - the first being The Sign and the Seal. I wanted to continue that journey through history, mystery, and myth that Hancock knows how to tell so well.

I borrowed it from the library… but never found the time to read it. Too much work, too many distractions. So I returned it in July. Only later did I realise I’d left a fifty-euro note between its pages - just before leaving for Egypt. So, on 5 August, I booked it again, half-hoping my fifty euros would still be there.

When I finally opened it, there they were - exactly where I’d left them. I laughed to myself for three reasons:

1. Who would borrow that book nowadays?

2. Clearly, the librarians hadn’t even flipped through it.

3. And perhaps, God really was looking out for me.

A few days later, I left for Egypt and decided to take it with me. I read it over six days, finishing it right in front of the pyramids of Giza. A perfect ending, almost as if written by destiny: a book about the search for the divine and the mysterious, completed in the place that, more than any other, seems to guard the secrets of human origins.

7 The Kybalion

Another book I remember precisely where and how I read it: I was in Cardiff, lying in bed with my dog beside me, in the midst of a deep spiritual and meditative journey. The Kybalion was the perfect companion for those days. Its pages seemed to speak directly to my silence - to those moments when I was learning to simply observe my thoughts without judging them, and most of all, without judging myself.

Every day I gave myself at least twenty minutes to sit still, breathe, and let my mind settle. Those readings and pauses taught me more than many words ever could: that true knowledge begins when you stop trying to control everything and simply start to listen.

8 The Apocryphal Gospels

As a teenager, I was rather unconventional - and that hasn’t changed much. It was never enough for me to know just one version of the truth; I wanted to explore the margins, the forbidden, what had been left out.

I’ve always questioned the Vatican for some of its… let’s say, debatable choices. I wouldn’t call myself a conspiracy theorist, but some facts are undeniable - for instance, that the Bible has been revised and translated countless times throughout history. There are over fifty different versions of the Bible in Italian alone, and more than a hundred in English, each with nuances that subtly alter the meaning of certain passages.

From that awareness came my fascination with the Apocryphal Gospels - those “unofficial” texts that show a different face of the sacred, sometimes more human, sometimes more mystical. The Book of Enoch struck me deeply, with its vast, almost cosmic vision of heaven, angels, and demons. And then there’s the Gospel of Thomas, offering an entirely new perspective on Jesus - his childhood, his words, his inner teaching.

Reading them felt like opening a window onto a parallel truth, where faith and knowledge meet in a fragile yet profoundly inspiring balance.

9 If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi - which I first read in high school - is unforgettable for very different reasons. Not for pleasure or nostalgia, but for the responsibility of memory it leaves within you. Because sometimes reading means exactly that: remembering, so as not to repeat.

The history of the Holocaust has always haunted me - not in a morbid way, but with that uneasy, helpless fascination with which we look at something terrible, much like drivers slowing down to stare at an accident. Part of you can’t look away, and another part feels ashamed for looking.

I’ve read many books about the Shoah, but none like Levi’s. His voice is clear, measured, and yet capable of holding both horror and dignity within the same line. Beyond the story of deportation, If This Is a Man reflects on what it means to be human - victim and executioner, courage and fear, light and inhumanity. It’s a book that forces you to look inward, and once you’ve read it, you can’t return to who you were before. Beyond the Holocaust itself, it’s a profound meditation on humanity in all its forms.

10 he Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is the first title that comes to mind - one of those masterpieces that simply aren’t written anymore. A perfect weave of revenge, love, and redemption, crafted with a patience and precision that seem to belong to another age.

Just think: Dumas wrote it all by hand, without Google, without even the kind of education system we take for granted today. I often imagine him, page after page, relying solely on his mind and imagination. No search engines, no keyboard shortcuts, no “Command + F” to find a line of inspiration. Just ink, paper, and sheer determination.

Perhaps that’s why those novels have a different soul. You can feel, between the lines, the life of someone who wrote out of inner necessity - not for the market. Today, surrounded by tools that do everything for us, it’s almost impossible to imagine the concentration, discipline, and devotion it took to build something so monumental.

Photo of Gérard Depardieu as Edmond Dantès in the 1998 adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo - the most faithful and complete version of Dumas’ masterpiece.

11 The Richest Man in Babylon, a small book, yet a timeless treasure of wisdom.

I remember exactly where I was when I finished it - at the passage describing the couple who applied Arkad’s principles and saw results almost immediately. Those pages struck me so deeply that I started applying the lessons before I’d even finished reading.

I didn’t stop there; I passed it straight to my partner - not exactly a voracious reader - and he read it too, and was equally convinced.It’s a simple yet illuminating book that teaches how to restore clarity and discipline to your finances.

Its principle is easy to remember:

10 % to save,

20 % to invest,

70 % to live.

A seemingly basic formula, yet one that truly changes how you see money - and, ultimately, how you value time and patience.

There’s something in this book that faintly reminded me of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: that same quiet faith in the journey, in perseverance, and in humanity’s ability to transform what we have into what we dream. Two very different books, yet both whisper the same truth: the greatest wealth is learning to believe in your own path.

And perhaps, in the end, we don’t really choose our favourite books - they find us when we’re ready to read them.

Ah, such memories.To be continued - because certain loves, like books, never truly end, and my list certainly doesn’t.