Someone once said that books furnish a room. They also change our lives. We go to books for consolation and companionship, to be transported, moved and entertained, sometimes even to be terrified. The books furnishing our rooms tell the story of our lives and also help us to make sense of them.

This is not a work of reference; it doesn't prescribe a canon or tell you how to read. Instead 1000 Books to change your life celebrates the transforming power of literature. More than 50 leading novelists, writers and critics draw the arc of a life lived in books, from birth to death. With Kate Clanchy on motherhood, AM Smith on reading as a child, and Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Coe and Toby Litt on the volumes that changed their lives, this book is a reminder of the difference that books make.