Only ten books? A quandary: the fewer I can have the more I will expose my prejudices and uncertainties by choosing. ‘We are our choices', as Jean Paul Sartre1 said, probably not thinking of books. I'll throw in another of his lines. ‘All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books'. I would not adopt that sentiment wholeheartedly; I've learned as much from relationships and work as I have from books, but it is true that one can detect one's good and bad selves reflected in books with a clarity no other medium can provide. I am a lifelong greedy reader of anything that comes to hand. I'll read the back of a train ticket if there's nothing else available. But which books influenced me? It is well over 40 years since I chose psychiatry as a career. I can only single out books, mostly novels, which have had an impact on the way I understand other people and their lives, broadened my horizons about the often unfathomable motives and goals of patients and their families, and on the way we practise and organise our services.