Lordy, that's a tough one. Having retired from the university, books were my stock in trade, and there were many hundreds of them. Sure, some stood out a lot, but there were just hordes of them. Plus a bunch of them that had nothing to do at all with univesity life,
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance among them.
But life after the university has been a different story, with adjustments all over the place. One thing I've done is to learn a bunch about the southwest, especially Native American country and culture. And the two books that did more than any other in this regard are the following:
Fran Kosik,
Native Roads. A really excellent guide for the Airstreamer wandering about the four corners area.
Marc Simmons,
New Mexico: An Interpretive History. An extremely well-written and interesting history of the state, commissioned for the bicentennial of the nation.
Lynn