I could go through the list of books I've read for fun in the last 20+ years, but that ignores the first half of my life. Also, I would probably disqualify anything I've read in the last, say, 5 years, because they haven't had time to "stay" with me. Still, it might not be a bad place to start.
[15 minutes later]
Turns out it's a bad place to start, because there are lots of books I haven't thought of in a while, but as soon as I see them while skimming the list, I have fond memories of them. Have they really "stayed with me" if I haven't thought of them in 8 years? Instead, let's start at the beginning, with books that have literally stayed with me since the 70's:
Bedtime Stories. Illustrated by Tibor Gergely, this isn't the Great Big Book of Bedtime Stories, but a smaller collection with just "The Gingerbread Boy", "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", and "the Four Musicians". I love the illustrations in this. Also, it wasn't until I looked up his Wikipedia page just now that I discovered Gergely illustrated Scuffy the Tugboat. I also liked that and a number of other Little Golden Books. Scuffy probably deserves a place on the list.
Mickey and the Magic Cloak. This is part of the "Disney's Wonderful World of Reading" series; there were others that had better stories, but this one stays with me because when my mom read this to us, she would read "cloak" as a two syllable word, long "o", short "a", which would simultaneously delight us and drive us nuts. Honorable mentions: Donald Duck and the Magic Stick and the Mystery of the Missing Peanuts.
Green Eggs and Ham. There are a number of Dr. Seuss books I could choose from, but the simplified Orwellian dystopia presented by Green Eggs and Ham in which the unnamed protagonist comes to love Big Brother (Sam) is the one that stays with me. Honorable mention: Fox in Socks.
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. I had a single book that contained the Tales of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jeremy Fisher, and Squirrel Nutkin. Beatrix Potter can come across as a little didactic, but she has a wicked sense of humor. Nutkin was my favorite of these stories for reasons I don't recall.
Meet Theodore Roosevelt. We had a whole series of "Step-Up Books" that covered history ("Meet Washington/Franklin/MLK") and nature ("mammals/birds/insects do amazing things"). The "Meet ..." books did a wonderful job of humanizing historical figures by introducing them as children and telling their histories in a simple, personalized way that includes details you don't get in history class at school. They also do a great job of connecting events to geography (with a map on the inside cover) and other events (Teddy was 7 years old when Lincoln was shot, and saw the coffin pulled through the streets of NYC during its tour of the North) so that you learn early to see history as more than a series of disconnected dates and events. Honorable mention: Meet the North American Indians, because I'm part Penobscot.
Something Queer is Going On. If only because I still want to see a LGBTQIA musical version.
My Birthday Book About Me. This is a "personalized" book where you fill out a form and it comes back with your name and your friends in it! It's pretty formulaic, but was nevertheless fun to know what gemstone, flower, and zodiac sign correspond to your birthday. The best part about my birthday book is that my brother's and my birthdays were mixed up when the forms were sent in, so all my personalized stuff is wrong. Fortunately, the illustrations are all the same in every book, so it's easy to make corrections.
Richard Scarry's Great Big Schoolhouse. I taught myself how to write in cursive from this book. So even the characters in his books act completely insane, I'll always remember this one fondly.
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