Well, Roger Lancelyn Green's Mystery at Mycene and The Luck of Troy which inspired my love of Greek history and myth in general and Odysseus (my Ur hero) in particular, Ivan Southall's Simon Black series which (perhaps unfortunately) instilled a love of snappy backchat and fast action that persists to this day, Monica Edwards's Romney Marsh books because I want to have adventures like those kids and own a white Anglo-Arab like Tamzin and the Telzey Amberdon stories of James H. Schmitz because, hell, I wanted to be a high function telepath beating on the bad guys.

Yeah, I'm shallow.

Then, of course, there was The Selfish Gene which instilled a love of evolutionary biology and great non-fiction writing.