The odd combination of moods, desires, and satisfactions that makes you the willing prisoner of a language and world you can't bear to give up. A list of such books will be as mysterious in the end as the personality of the reader. Mine are:

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
• Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
• Skippy by Percy Crosby
• Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

and, yes, War and Peace.