"A fairy tale your grandmother read ..."

One of the bookclub books I read recently was Umberto Eco's The Mysterious flame of Queen Loana in which the main character loses his memory and retreats to an attic in his old home to sift through his childhood books, comics (hence the odd title) and newspapers that gradually help him to remember his life. This got me thinking about which books had influenced me - and I meant to follow through but never have. Up till now. This Christmas dinner I thought we could all "remember" a book that made an impression on us at some stage of our childhood (and any definition of childhood will do). Bring the actual book - or just the memories.
Also, reading the thriller, The Leopard by Jo Nesbo, a passage in the book struck me:

"You can't just disregard your own feelings ... You, like everyone else, are trying to leapfrog the fact that we are governed by notions of what's right and wrong. Your intellect may not have all the arguments for these notions, but nonetheless they are rooted deep, deep inside you. Right and wrong. Perhaps it's things you were told by your parents when you were a child, a fairy tale with a moral your grandmother read, or something unfair you experienced at school and you spent time thinking through. The sum of all these half forgotten things ... Anchored deep within is in fact a pretty apposite expression. Because it tells you that you may not be able to see that anchor in the depths, but you damn well can't move from the spot, that's what you float around and that's where your home is."

So get remembering!