WILLIAM BLAKE, the Bible, Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradling, Robert Graves's The White Goddess, Kafka's Metamorphosis and a poem from Big Issues magazine which concluded: "Me I'm perfect, who the `fuck are you?' These works of literature all inspired entrants to the Hodges Figgis/E&L competition, which asked students to nominate a book or author of particular importance in their lives.

Reading the entries was, at times, a little like peering into a diary. For some readers, a particular book had exerted an influence so singular that it had changed their lives forever. Robert Bolt's book of The Mission inspired one reader to join the Redemptorists in the hope that one day he can be a missionary like Rodrigo Mendoza. Another, by contrast, was so affected by Brian Keenan's An Evil Cradling that he ceased studying for the priesthood to take up a career in writing.

Many of those who entered where older students, some studying Open University or VTOS courses and others who had returned to full-time education after long careers or after raising children. Here, the influence of books seemed to have been particularly profound. Hubert Butler's collection of essays Escape from the Anthill led the second-prize winner, Margaret O'Brien, towards a desire to widen further her intellectual boundaries: she is now studying arts in the Open University. ("There are so many writers yet to be introduced so that I feel that no matter how much I read I will only be scratching the surface.")

The winner of the third prize, Aoife Toomey, a student in TCD, nominated a poem called Offspring by Naomi Long which had followed by her scientist parents and to take a course in European studies, secure in the knowledge that they would applaud her achievements in any area.

There were some predictable inclusions. Enough people chose Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less travelled by/And that has made all the difference.") to justify a road-widening programme on the "one less travelled". Equally, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World appears to have exerted an extraordinary influence; Bertrand Russell must be turning in his grave.

There were also some unusual choices. One student was influenced by Jim Garrisson's On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrisson's tale of how he hunted the suspected assassins of John F Kennedy. ("I hoped one day to become state barrister for Ireland and eventually do my own investigations into the assassination of world's most famous loved presidents.")

Two correspondents plumped for works by Arthur Conan Doyle: one for The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and the other for the Holmes stories in general. Well done to the correspondent who sent off a letter to Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street and got a letter back from a nice lady named Sue Brown, "Secretary to Sherlock Holmes", at the branch of the Abbey National Building Society which now occupies that address.

One student of the NCIR appears to have been so influenced by The Communist Manifesto that the good burghers of Ranelagh may wake up any morning now with the revolution raging on Sandford Road.

A number of contributions erred slightly on the side of academia. My thanks to the correspondent who footnoted his dissertation on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose with a short paragraph explaining that semiotics is "a branch of philosophical inquiry, one which Umberto Eco is regarded as being an expert of".

In the end, the choice was a difficult one and a panel of experts from The Irish Times and Hodges Figgis mused long and hard. Actually, "experts" is not entirely accurate: those who read the entries did so as lovers of books who knew that it takes a great deal of dedication and the zeal of the truly converted to attempt to explain in 400 words how a mass of paper, ink, imagination and, sometimes, genius can change the world. It was a pleasure and a privilege to read all the entries.

The winning entry from Eithne O'Connell of TCD was probably the most colourful of all and was certainly more light-hearted than most. It displayed an affection for Enid Blyton's Famous Five which survived the witty deconstruction of the books and the writer's slightly dubious love affair with Julian: "Enid, you set me on the path of womanhood with the virile Julian as my guide - manly, decisive and a wearer of exquisite tank tops."

The three winning entries will now form part of a window display in the Hodges Figgis bookshop, Dawson Street Dublin