A number of books remain on my shelves because I found something compelling in them. In no particular order:

Annie Dillard - Teaching a Stone to Talk
Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster - Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys
Norton Juster - The Dot and the Line
C. S. Lewis - Perelandra
C. S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces
William Styron -- Sophie's Choice
T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
John Fowles -- The Ebony Tower, The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Gardiner -- Grendel
James Clavell -- Shogun
Norman Maclean -- A River Runs Through It
James Michener -- The Drifters
Susan Scott - Fierce Conversations
Martin Gardiner - All his collections of Scientific American Mathematical Games columns
Jorge Luis Borges - All his short story collections
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Robert Heinlein - practically anything he wrote

No book helped me through a particular crisis, but all of these books have had a lasting influence on the way I think and write. Only three are non-fiction. Hmmm.