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[Moo Cakes]

Ooh, Catch-22 was a good one too!

[Ghostwriter]

Allow me to be, like, the 8th person in this thread to mention the His Dark Materials trilogy.

I'm reading Catch-22 right now, and I'm really enjoying it.

[Tearon]

Well, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk kinda made me re-evaluate my life (it made me decide to be a writer) and I recently picked up a collection of stories by Amy Hempel which are just too good not to be life changing.

[One_Foxy_Mother]

Green eggs and ham
that book is deep.

[E. Spaceman]

The most life-changing book of my life is one I have not finished reading.
I am now reading "The Magus" by John Fowles, and enjoying it inmensely. This is actually the second time I attempt to read it. The first was over a year and a half ago and I didn't get too far. I stopped at the first page of chapter 3 (only about 4/5 pages in)  when Urfe describes his life so far, it seemed such a soul-crushingly accurate description of my life (minus my father being alive) that I knew I had to change, especially as the description of boredom and selfishness takes place after he graduated from university, and I was only 15 at the time.

[quietnow]

everything by bret easton-ellis.
everything by francesca lia block.
and the stranger, by camus.

[Ghostwriter]

I finished Catch-22, and yeah...

Super awesome-awesome.

[Spike]

Brave New World-Aldous Huxley. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how this book has affected me but I know it has.

Existentialism and human emotions-Sartre.  This is the book/ piece of writing that first introduced me to the concept of existentialism.  Since then I've wanted to find his other works.  I've adopted quite a few of his ideas and tried to incorporate them into my own life.

[IntermittentEvil]

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.  It took me a very long time to finish, but when I finally got through it, it turned a lot of ideas I'd had on their heads, and basically just refocused my thoughts on what I'd suspected was the root of it in the first place.  But it's the first book to really do that, to actually show the consequences of these things which seem to have become a part of our modern-day society, and literature, for that matter.

A lot of Kafka's short stories also affected me, but it's hard for me to say how now.  Honestly, every book I read does this, but these are ones that were particularly strong.

Forgot: Ishmael.  I read this in high school and it blew my mind.  It is perhaps my "pre" and "post" marker in reading.  And I could mention Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, but its main effect was confusing me as to how it affected me...

[ramenXnoodles]

Fight Club was kind of lifechanging in a way.
I don't know in what kind of way though. It just kind of made me feel like not everything was material possessions.
Oh, and it made me want to start a fight club.

[brandie]

Forgot: Ishmael.  I read this in high school and it blew my mind.  It is perhaps my "pre" and "post" marker in reading.

Glad to see someone else mention this.  I had posted it several posts ago.  Great book, isnt it?

[onewheelwizzard]

I just reread Catch-22 yesterday.  It was more brilliant than I remembered.  It's probably the book I'd put at the top of any "best book" list I created.

As for my life, though, Tom Robbins changed it the most.  "Skinny Legs and All" was an affirmation of so many amazing things I wasn't sure I believed in.  "Jitterbug Perfume" reinforced and connected these beliefs.  I could go on.

Read Tom Robbins books.  Seriously.

[theBrightside]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This spare, tense, mythical voice. Isn't for the faint of heart. By the same author (but slightly less fantastic), Child of God and Suttree.

[Lise]

I can't think of any particular book that changed my life, but several did shape the way I think and of course, my biases.

Several were about people's potential to be cruel to their own kind, etc.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
What do YOU Care what Other People Think? by Richard Feynman
Girl with a Pearl Earring/The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
1984 by George Orwell

Just to name a few... they're mostly fiction novels of little consequence, and easy to read. And probably would interest females rather than males.

PS: I have a copy of On the Road that I haven't read yet... but due to the recommendation, I will start soon.

[mrhemisphere]

Tuesdays with Morrie.

It almost made me cry. Which is hard to do, but the effects lasted for a couple of weeks, which is more to say than anything else.

I sadly, reverted back to my usual state.

[Misereatur]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

I heard so much about it, and after I read it it was just 'meh'. I was really disappointed.

[GuitarJunkie]

The one I have to say would be "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky more than anything else. Much more than anything else I've read.

On the Road along with "Dharma Bums both influenced me pretty deeply and also influenced my choice of avatar.

[Default.mp3]

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque. It has basically been the most illuminating account about the capacities and limits of the human psyche. Heart-wrenching ending.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. Just wow. This book showed me how the difference between reality and what happens in your mind is minimal, and far too easily blurred.

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, by Michio Kaku. A science popularizer about modern physics, such as string theory, chaos theory, M theory, etc. (shut up already, if you like books, your a nerd; what books it is matters not). It basically gave me a whole new outlook on life, and the implications of our actions.

Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton. Malcolm's speech about how Earth and life would never actually be destroyed, just Humanity, through our actions, profoundly changed my perceptions about just why humans were on Earth (hey, I was in fifth grade, this was radical stuff).

[Garcin]

If I really wanted to wrestle with the limits of the human psyche, I'd read Ann Coulter.  All Quiet on the Western Front was a life-changing book for me too though.  I think it was one of the first times I had no idea who to root for in the book, so I ended up just reading it and marvelling at the characters and their impossible situtations.

[Alchemist]

These are some of the most profound literary catalysts of change in recent memory:

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I could go on, but my point is probably made.  Every book I read changes something about me, be it a monumental change that causes me to radically rethink my view of the world or a minute change that subtly alters the tint of my lens.  Good or bad, profound or inane, long or short, they all affect me somehow.

[Johnny C]

Haunted didn't really radically affect me. But it is an interesting book, I'll grant you that.

[Dr. Feelbad]

The Shining, by Stephen King. I didn't think a book could be scary until I read this.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

In The Face of My Enemy by Joseph H. Delaney


its not a popular book and hes not a famous author. It is a sci-fi novel. but its also more than that. i read it when i was very young and it affected me very much and i never forgot about it. and then, about a month ago, i found a first edition (circa 1984) with absolutely no damage done to it for four dollars on amazon.com. this book is out of print and i doubt a large number were ever printed to begin with so finding one like that on accident made my day. i just started reading it again and already i feel better about my job, my friends, and my life in general.

i would recomend this book to just about anyone. however, let it be known that its not a truly "great" book; its short sci-fi, its cheesey, but i love it.

[bujiatang]

it is difficult to say that a book changed me, most of them add something but dont really revise the way I go about my business or do math.  

Books that enlightened the way I was going about things would be like Saussure's Course in General Linguistics.  It was actually a very silly book that changed how I thought of good and evil: Good Omens.

[cakeandsoda!!]

Jonathan Safran Foer's two books, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Some people say his writing style is unique in a pretentious sort of way, but if it is, I really don't mind, because his pretentiousness makes for some really beautiful phrases and imagery!

And it takes a seriously strong person to not cry at least once in 'Extremely Loud...'! It starts off sort of awkward and jerky, but there's a sense of everything building up, and it really all comes together at the climax and afterwards there's just an emotional downpour and complete sadness, ohh I cried and cried.

  The book that really, really! changed me, is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. It actually got me into James Dean movies, because I read that he loved the book and treated it like his Bible, hee!

[sunniegreen]

Last Chance To See - Douglas Adams

I hardly ever hear anyone mention it, but it is a depressing and hilarious book about his tour with a naturalist to see as many different endangered animals that they could manage.  It raised my hippie-ness a few notches and made me love Douglas all the more.

Xanth Series - Piers Anthony

My dad gave me Ogre, Ogre when I was in the third grade and it showed me that "Grown up" books were far superior to what my teachers had in their classrooms.  It was because of this that I went on to read Tolkien and Frank Herbert with such enthusiasm.  I love fansasy that takes the time to be clever and to create its own world.

The Nancy Drew Series - Carolyn Keene

In fifth grade my friend and I had exhausted pretty much everything that our small school library had to offer, and so we decided to see who could read all the Nancy Drew books first.  The Library had a huuuuge collection, leaving an entire wall in various shades of old yellow books.  We read most, and I quit first.  It taught me that yes, books really can be that infuriatingly the same and totally ignore anything that might have happened in a previous book.  Nancy's ever-changing hair colour, the brand new car at each introduction, the boyfriend who was always in school while she rarely even mentioned her own?

The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allen Poe

This is the book that I fell off the Nancy Drew wagon for.  It introduced me to an abiding love of Poe.  Our library had this and The Fall of the House of Usher in a dark corner.  Odd illustrated versions.  We loved them.

[chupones]

Coming Through Slaugher - Michael Ondaatje
This Sweet Sickness - Patricia Highsmith
Dubliners - James Joyce
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff

[messynessie]

hitchhkers guide to the galaxy- doug adams (of course!)
east of eden-steinbeck (love that book!)
the 5 people you meet in heaven-mitch ablom (really moved me, i've read it a million times)
the curious incident of the dog in the night time
the lovely bones- ann sebold i think! (i cried reading this one)
i have always liked shakespeare too macbeth is my favourite
how to walk in high heels (my bible!)

[Lise]

I'm not joking- this book changed my life (at least, improved my relationship):

"Why Men Lie, And Women Cry". It does a lot of explaining with scientific backup of why men and women seem to have the same recurring problems and how to fix them . It's a great self-help book, and a better alternative (IMO) to "Men are from Venus, Women are from Mars." It's quite humorous, and a lot of it I've found out, DOES apply to my life. The only chapters I haven't read are over mother-in-laws and retirement, as I'm not at the proper age yet.

And if you guys don't know about the "secret point system" women use, pick up the book and read on it . This book pretty much explains why in the movie "Click" Adam Sandler was such a workaholic and his wife was left dissatisfied.

ANYWAY. I also bought a book on philosophy, Sophie's World, and it presents philosophy in such an entertaining light that it doesn't feel like you're taking a correspondence course/being quizzed on. I've learned a lot, and it really makes you question your roots and how the universe came to be, etc etc.

[onewheelwizzard]

On the subject of books that help people with their relationships, "The Mastery of Love" by Don Miguel Ruiz is a huge one.  I haven't personally read it (I've read a different book by him and it was brilliant, "The Voice of Knowledge"), but there are a few people in this world who I trust more than anyone on the subject of love between people and how to express/feel/be OK with it, and they all swear by this book.  So I heavily recommend it by proxy, because I know it's what they'd be talking about on this thread.

And I have no doubt that when I read it I'll only be louder about it.  Go get a Miguel Ruiz book soon, I'd say ... it'll help.

[messynessie]

ANYWAY. I also bought a book on philosophy, Sophie's World, and it presents philosophy in such an entertaining light that it doesn't feel like you're taking a correspondence course/being quizzed on. I've learned a lot, and it really makes you question your roots and how the universe came to be, etc etc.

omg i love jostein gaarders books! sophies world is my favourite! the chrismas mystery is really good too.

[Lise]

YAYYYYY glad to see that I'm not a sob story (buying self-help books) and that other people enjoy reading up on philosophy as well . I loved that reference in the beginning of "burying in the rabbit's fur"- that describes people who are too engrossed in their lives that they don't ask questions about life after death, etc. They're too deep and comfortable in the rabbit's (the universe) fur.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check the christmas mystery out as well . The same goes to that Ruiz book. My problem isn't really dealing with love, it's how to work out relationship kinks after the initial dating stage is over with. You know, the first two months are always "perfect" because both people are very aware of how they act around/treat each other, and thus potential for disagreements are eliminated. That gets different after one year...

Ok, no more babbling from me .

[onewheelwizzard]

One aspect of Ruiz's various points is that there's really no distinction between the early and the late stages of a relationship when it comes to "love."  He doesn't really define "love" as being something that you build up and eventually feel towards someone in particular through a burgeoning relationship with them ... it's not a step you reach after a process.  He defines it as a way of life.  This is why it has seemed like such a revolutionary book to people I know (and why the book of his that I did read was revolutionary to me) ... the way he universalizes "love" and makes it a part of everyday life without detracting from its power as an emotion or a feeling really makes you think differently about how you behave both within and without the confines of a relationship.  One of the nice things about Ruiz's writing, and one of the main reasons why I'm talking about his books in the "books that changed your life" thread, is that his points really can apply to everything in life.

OK, no more raving from me.

[StupidityKills]

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - everyone I know who's read this says it changes their life, and it's true.

It didn't change mine Honestly I thought it was pretty bad. The characters were inconsistent and the plot as a whole seemed rather contrived, ESPECIALLY the ending, my specific criticisms of which I will not go into lest I "spoil" it for other people.

Thank you!
I wouldn't say it was bad but it was so hyped up to me by the time I read it that I was a bit like, oh thats it?  I think its basically just a good book for hipsters to quote and say they love for the sake of it.

For me:
Arabian Nights - Firstly because it takes a lifetime to read, and also because its just such a wealth of interesting and inventive stories.

Unlikely by Jeffrey Brown, which is a graphic novel, but shush. It so alarmingly honest and unashamed, even through some pretty graphic and embarassing details of a relationship breakup.

I Lucifer by Glen Duncan, dunno about life changing, but an all time favourite. So much so I'm on my third copy because I keep lending it and giving it to people.

[Lise]

Stupiditykills, I completely agree with you on "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." It took me two attempts and a year of random reading to finish that book. I just wasn't that engaged in it. Sure, it had a touch of melancholy, but it didn't affect me as much as say, "Flowers for Algernon."

And here's a few books from a list of that "all hipsters should read, or at least pretend that they've read": (from Hipster Handbook)

1) Anything by Dennis Cooper
2) J. D. Salinger (personally I disliked the Catcher in the Rye)
3) Jacqueline Susann- Valley of the Dolls
4) Ernest Hemingway- A Moveable Feast
5) Albert Camus- The Stranger (This I liked).

[Dr Love Fuzz]

A Millon Little Pieces by James Frey

I don't care what anyone says; 100% true, 50% true, whatever, this is one of the greatest stories ever told.


I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

Once again, say what you will, this book is fucking hilarious.


and finally....

English As Second Fucking Language changed my life because now I can be expert swearter...er.

[zombietrudy]

lost boy lost girl is definately my favourite book. It was the first and only book so far that when I finished it, I was just left speechless and in shock.
Also really good books:
False Memory. Green Angel. Go Ask Alice. Choke. Hideaway. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Fight Club. 'Salem's Lot. Floating Dragon. Servants of Twilight. Dragon Tears.

Kids who read succeed! -thumbs up-

[KharBevNor]

Thinking on things more, Illuminatus! has changed a lot more than how I see literature. It's more changed how I actually percieve reality, as well as probably being the final kick that pushed me towards serious anarchism as a political philosophy. It's also basically helped me make more sense of some of the stranger Philip K Dick books, which also, I suppose, have shaped me a great deal. And, I'll probably nominate 'Bill The Galactic Hero' by Harry Harrison as well.

And though they're not books, I think I'll say Pinters No Mans Land and A Midsummer Nights Dream and Macbeth. Also, if I'm going to talk about plays, I might as well talk about poetry. There's only two poems I can really think of: Kubla Khan by Coleridge and Alone by Poe.

[no one special]

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This book just... broke my mind.  I read it in 12th grade - I'd been reading ravenously since I was 3, but this was the one book that changed the way I looked at literature forever.  I honestly didn't know how to explain it - I didn't know you could do what he did with words.  The novel has a fecundity, a fertility about it that no author has ever matched, a quality that I can neither describe nor explain.

[Scytale]

The three books I can think of are

- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, I read this in my year 12 English class and I don't know how to describe it, after reading the final chapter I remember putting the book down in stunned disbelief and walking around my street trying to clear my head as the last words of the book just kept echoing through my head "Alex has like Groweth up".  It made me question everything I thought I believed in, fate, free-will, christianity, justice, morales everything. It really shook me up like nothing else I've ever experienced.
 
- The Sickness Unto Death by Soren Kierkegaard, I guess after reading Clockwork Orange, I was pretty confused with the world for a while and I threw myself pretty heavily into philosophy, I became pretty obsessed with existentialism and was chewing my way through everything I came accross, Camus, Satre all that stuff. Somewhere down that path I stumbled upon this work. Very powerful and well written, this I guess was the final straw that convinced me to stop going to church.

-Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, this is easily the most well written and thought provoking book I have ever read. In parts of it seems as if Zarathustra is addressing me directly, I remember reaching part 2 and the chapter "Of Self Overcomming" I read the line: "And this secret spake Life herself unto me. "Behold," said she, "I am that which must ever surpass itself". And it just like that a light clicked on in my brain, everything fell into place, The will to power, Eternal re-occurance, love of fate, it all just made sense. After a few years of questioning everything around me Nietszche made it all make sense, put everything into it place with just one sentence. Amazing.

And none of it would have happened if my English teacher hadn't assigned Anthony Burgess....

[Will]

I signed up for these forums (after lurking for a few days) just because of this thread!

I know that it's kind of a cliched book to mention, but Slaughterhouse-5 really did change my life, in a couple of ways... The whole theory of the Tralfamadour-ians (?) chosing to only focus on the good parts of their lives inspired me to at least TRY not to always be focusing on how shitty everything can seem all the time.  I also found myself saying "so it goes" a lot more ever since I read that book.

I also just read Vonnegut's latest "Man Without A Country" and now I think I've become a lot more cynical...

[Meimei]

I've got to say the Narnia series.  Finding out down the track that they where christian propaganda was the focal catalyst for my hatred and distrust of organized religion, that led onto discovering humanism, from which I spun off several core philosophies.

Also Richard Dawkins "The selfish gene", followed by Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" changed the way I see the world and myself quite a lot.

[gargoylekitty]

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks.  Now I know to be prepared to move to a secure location at any time.

YES! I love that book. Keep a copy in my car, along with The Communist Manifesto and The Science of Vampires, to skim when I arrive early to classes and feel like being anti-social. Heh.

Also...
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon- my goddess... Never did it take me so long to read a book as this one did, three tries before settling into it. It's just so... You get into it then the story changes and the people and ... it made me feel as though I never truly knew how to read until I'd read this.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon- Wow. WTF was that. Heh.

Belladonna by Karen Moline-  reading that book in middle school probably gave me some of the issues I have today.

[elcapitan]

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon- Wow. WTF was that. Heh.

A hell of a lot shorter than Gravity's Rainbow, is what it was. Still good though.

[Valrus]

Two more I wanted to mention. (Edit: This post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, sorry.)

The first is sort of a counterpart to my mention of Atlas Shrugged earlier in this thread. Faith of the Fallen, by Terry Goodkind, is the 6th book in a fantasy series whose first book, Wizard's First Rule, I greatly enjoyed in middle school. I had continued reading the series, getting diminishing returns on each one, and when I read Faith of the Fallen, I realized that the series either had become or just always was pure shit; it just hadn't been apparent to me until then.

FotF had exceedingly poor characterization of characters I had come to know and love; it turned the main character into a pseudo-Objectivist, John Galt-speech-blathering asshole who was obviously intended to be flawless and used all manner of shoddy plot contrivances to make him seem to. So its first major influence on me was making me realize that people with their heads up Ayn Rand's ass tend to be fucking obnoxious.

Also, after years and years of reading and enjoying sci-fi/fantasy novels that I enjoyed at the time and which were probably vital to my development as a reader but which would probably make me cringe now, I think FotF marks the point where I realized that I had somehow developed some sort of taste in fiction, and that Mercedes Lackey and Xanth books were, quite irrevocably, just not going to do it for me anymore.

That said, the second book I wanted to mention is Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. A more intimidating book I had never seen: between the blurbs on the cover talking about how postmodern or whatever it was and its length (>1000 pages, of which over 200 are footnotes), I thought I was just buying it because it looked intriguing and I'd never actually be able to finish it.

Fortunately I was very, very wrong, and IJ is now one of my favorite books: I sort of started to understand its groove around 200 pages in and for the rest of it I was hooked. DFW is an incredible writer: he's flashily erudite and loves the big words, but he's also flippant and vernacular. Stylistically, there is no one else like him, and IJ was probably the first book to make me really understand what it means for a writer to have a style.

It also changed my life simply by changing my idea of what a novel could be; I doubt there will ever be another like it, but it's pushed me to try other modern and kind of wacky writers to try to find something that can approach its magnificence.

[thewayofzen]

I honestly have to say that The Way of the Peaceful Warrior was a pretty special read for me.
At a time when i pretty much figured it was time to call it quits on life in general that book showed up at just the right time.
That was six months ago and in all honesty I've been a different person ever since.  Sure the book isnt entirely to blame..
there was some hard work on my part and all but in its own little way.. it was a kick in the ass to get better.
Thanks dan millman for such a great experience.

[Lewis Rice]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Kingdom of Fear have had the biggest impact on me, they have changed me alot.
Also The Dark Tower has had a HUGE impact on me as well. But please, for your own good, if you get to the last book, take Stephen King's warning and stop when he tells you to. I now hate him and don't classify the final book in the series. Fucking swine.

[Raquelita]

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. Just wow. This book showed me how the difference between reality and what happens in your mind is minimal, and far too easily blurred.

Most definitely.  Skill aside, it's truly a moving book.

I've read my fair share of books and there are a lot of great ones out there, but I have to say that the one book that completly changed the way I see the world, that has had a tremendous permanent impact is Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.  It's a sort of distopia story that dissects human nature to its core, sews it back up, and then roasts it until you're ready to chow and digest.  Quite frankly, it scares the shit out of me.  I can say with true honesty that no other book has had such an effect on me.

[feel good lost]

Three words.

Crime and Punishment.

[SaskiWhiteflower]

The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski

Great