Sublime Euphoric Agony

Books seep under my skin and mingle with my blood as I read them. They stay with me for days after I return them to the shelf or the library, coloring my speech and influencing my pen. I dream about the beautiful and difficult passages. The very best books, the ones that press me down to black despondency and then, at the nadir, release breathless me to catharsis, blend into my psyche until I no longer know what came from me and what came from Steinbeck.
Below are some of the books which so affected me:

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhupma Lahiri
Hey, Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
There's a Boy in Here: Emerging from the Bonds of Autism by Judy and Sean Barron
"pity this busy monster,manunkind," by e. e. cummings
Red Passport by Katherine Shonk
"The Lover Desparing to Attain unto his Lady's Grace Relinquisheth the Pursuit" by Thomas Wyatt