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Books that changed your life?

Gastric ReFlux said:
Oh come on, no votes for Dianetics yet?
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I remember they showed a lot of commericals for the book in the mid eighties. I thought it was book on volcanoes.
 
Gestahl said:
Godel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.
...
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This is, without a doubt, the greatest non-fiction book ever written, but has it really changed your life? I guess it changed mine, but only to the extent that my life is richer for having read a really good book.

_Illusions_ by Richard Bach probably shaped much of the philosophy of my teenage years. I think Ian would like it.

And, to be completely unoriginal, I'd have to include LOTR in the list as well, for the many of the same reasons Bluegill enumerated.
 
Another book that really affected my life, even though I never read it was Satanic Verses. When some islamic leader said they would kill anyone who bought a copy my mother immediately went out and bought one. She struggled through 40 pages then quit. Even though she didn't really read it, she doesn't feel she wasted her money. Her attitude was "nobody tells me I can't do something, even if I don't want to do it anyway!" This attitude stuck with me, perhaps it's childish, but I still think that way today.
 
Dragonrock said:
Another book that really affected my life, even though I never read it was Satanic Verses. When some islamic leader said they would kill anyone who bought a copy my mother immediately went out and bought one. She struggled through 40 pages then quit. Even though she didn't really read it, she doesn't feel she wasted her money. Her attitude was "nobody tells me I can't do something, even if I don't want to do it anyway!" This attitude stuck with me, perhaps it's childish, but I still think that way today.
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It's actually not a bad book, in the Pynchon style. As in all cases, it didn't deserve any of the criticism. The "mahound" episodes are all based on stories within Islam and are all presented as hallucinations of someone losing his mind.

However, how could I have forgotten La Celestina? The first book to make me look at my moral sense in an entirely different way.
 
phildonnia said:
_Illusions_ by Richard Bach probably shaped much of the philosophy of my teenage years. I think Ian would like it.
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That's the one about the itinerant pilot/philosopher/"Messiah of Fort Wayne", right? I remember that one. The analogy of the river critters I still have in my old quote file. He certainly is a lot better than most other "new Age" authors at making his philosophies accessable.

I remember being 12 and thinking "Seagull" was really, really deep :D
 
By Elain N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person. I felt "normal" for the first time in my life after reading it.
 
A few of my favorites

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo had a tremendous effect on me in my college days. I felt such empathy for the protagonist and cried liberally through the entire book.

I also had this big tome (blue colored and almost 1500 pages), a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and essays (not containing any Sherlock Holmes stories). It was a tremendous read and absolutely held sway over me for a number of days.
 
Sagan's Demon Haunted World. When he started talking about how the U.S. is falling behind in math and science partly because kids just don't find it interesting, I stopped and thought to myself about how I'm not particularly talented or good at math, but I was able to the advanced math courses in high school well because my teachers made it interesting. At that point I decided to stop pissing about and work towards becoming a math teacher and hoping I could find a way to pass it on.

Through The Looking Glass had a similar effect on me like a previous poster had mentioned about wardrobes. I was the miserable little akward kid in school. Everytime I encountered a mirror, I would wish really, really hard before reaching out to find that glass was still there and firm. The woos would claim that my knowing that it was just fantasy affected that and if I had only let it go, I could be one the other side. Now that I'm older, I've learned that one nearly needs to move to Los Angeles.

All jokings aside, The Annotated Alice is incredibly interesting. It covers things such as Dodgson's chaste pedophilia and looking-glass milk.

ETA: I just found a really weird review on there by someone who apparently thought he was reviewing an Alice tarot deck...
 
LostAngeles said:
Through The Looking Glass had a similar effect on me like a previous poster had mentioned about wardrobes. I was the miserable little akward kid in school. Everytime I encountered a mirror, I would wish really, really hard before reaching out to find that glass was still there and firm.
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My grandmother had a floor-length mirror hanging on her furnace door that I used to do this with.

LostAngeles said:
All jokings aside, The Annotated Alice is incredibly interesting. It covers things such as Dodgson's chaste pedophilia and looking-glass milk.
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I love my copy, and it was a big hit with my daughter when she got old enough to read on her own- Alice being a favourite bedtime story of hers.

LostAngeles said:
ETA: I just found a really weird review on there by someone who apparently thought he was reviewing an Alice tarot deck...
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I have that tarot deck the reviewer speaks of. :)
 
TillEulenspiegel said:
Well I got news for ya LostAngeles............there ain't no dragon in the garage.
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...

:p

It's a pink unicorn, isn't it?

ETA: I just relooked over my original post and saw that I wrote "...one nearly needs..."

*sigh*

"...one merely needs..."

When I die, and my body is donated to science and they crack my cranium, there's going to be a slice of pie where Broca's area should be. Likely lemon merangue, just to spite me.
 
The bible (old and new testament): because once you read what it REALLY SAYS, as opposed to what the preacher-of-the-month says it says, you find it is far more horrible, wonderful, powerful, and intelligent than you imagined.

War and Peace. Greatest novel ever written, I believe.

Crime and Punishment.

Don Quixote.

Can't say it really changed my life, but I loved it a lot: Dickens, esp. David Copperfield.

And for the other end... two books who were a complete waste of time... Moby Dick and Finnegans Wake.
 
Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnet. At a time when I was being very busy at life and rather losing myself, it reminded me how much I love language, history and a cracking good story. It definitely changed my trajectory.

I don't know what Larry Niven I first read, but he made me a science-fiction snob. Didn't stop me reading masses of it, of course, but I didn't finish that much. I used to pour scorn on Star Trek. Yes, OK, I watched it, but only so I could pour scorn, alright? Anyway, Larry Niven taught me a lot of science. While telling some cracking good stories.

Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance showed me what imagination could do. Frank Herbert made me think outside the envelope by pointing out envelopes.
 
Skeptic said:


War and Peace. Greatest novel ever written, I believe.
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Really? I thought W & P was rather like an aussie soap opera that (like neighbours say) just went on and on and on. The characterisation was shallow, the historical inevitability/inexorability was too much like some hack author trying to be profound.

Plus, I spotted the twist at the end where Napoleon loses quite early on.

On the other hand, it was BIG!
 
"The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris, Franz Kafka's "The Trial" and "The Tin Drum" by Gunther Grass had the greatest impact.

I could mention many others, but I found these to be particularly affective.
 
asthmatic camel said:
"The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris, ...
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Yes, I forgot The Naked Ape. Me too.

Also, The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. It's not his greatest book, but it was my first foray into adult literature. Funny thing was, I was attracted by the semi-nude women in the cover art.
 
The Catcher in the Rye
A Confederacy of Dunces
Animal Farm
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
really, almost any Vonnegut, Hemingway, or Hunter S Thompson will do

Funny, I'd have to go through my collection to find some others..... guess they weren't that life-altering.
 
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