Books that changed you...
 

so, tell me, what books out there really push your buzzer...?

i don´t necessarily mean your favourite books (because theres this whole other thread...), but i want to know which books, fiction or otherwise, really made you think?

did Kerouac make you wanna get up and go?

did F. Scott Fitzgerald make you wanna be suave?

did Easton Ellis make you sick? or mad?

is Tom Wolfe a prophet? or is he a wanker?

does Chomsky really piss you off?
or does he make you think about the way the world might really work?
(obviously i´m not referring to his linguistics work here)

anyway, which ones out there really touched your nerve so vividly, that they made a change??

this has to do with my favorite books tho bcos they just affect me THAT much.. which make it that much more awesome

power of now by eckhart tolle

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by robert m pirsig

cunt: a declaration of independence

are you there god? it's me margaret. by judy blume. a really awesome pre-adolescence book every girl should pick up. can't forget "we must, we must, we must increase our bust" :P

I, too, am affected by one of my favorite books. I think one of the reasons that it is my favorite is because of how it affected me. The two books that affected me the most would have to be:
Dalton Trumbo's, Johnny Got His Gun. It reaffirmed my belief that war is a bad thing.
Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle. Everytime I think of this book, I'm overjoyed that I'm a vegetarian.

Kurt Vonnegut made me completely rethink literature, and quite a few other things. Then my school librarian asked me if my parents approved. So I read 'em all.

Robert Anton Wilson - all of his stuff had a profound impact on me at a young age. His Illuminatus Trilogy is still my fave.

Also - special mention for Hunter S. Thompson's early work...

What a great thread!

The book that changed my life is, without doubt, Joseph Heller's Catch 22.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut is also strangely compelling. So it goes... :)

The Prehistory of the Mind by Steven Mithen opened my eyes to the evolution of human consciousness whilst An Anatomy of Thought by Ian Glynn was wonderfully illuminating on how the brain really works.

Great books.

Though Catch 22 is definitely head and shoulders above the rest for its effect upon my (then) young mind...

Mr Mephisto

I'd probably have to go with A Wrinkle In Time and A Wind In The Door. I read them as a kid and loved them. They are probably what put me down the fantasty/sci-fi path, and had a lot to do with my interest in science.

what you leave out a Swiftly Tilting Planet?!?!??!?!

I too got that bug from reading Madeline L'engle series... I'm thinking that Harry Potter will do the same for this generation.

Don't laugh now.... one of the books that changed my life was Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil.... I know its completely fiction but the way she talks about heaven and "hell" completely changed my outlook on the afterlife.

Also A Clockwork Orange changed the way I thought about evil and violence, espcially since I read it at such a young age... I guess thats why I studied criminology in college....

George Orwell's 1984 is the only book that has ever given me nightmares.

The entire Divine Comedy by Dante....

The entire time i was reading inferno i kinda slipped into a mild depression, friends kinda got concerned..

I read Ender's Game in high school and that was just an awesome book. Years later, I got the chance to read it again and it was just as good, if not better. I just started Speaker for the Dead today and it's sweet as hell.

The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway, it's a little bleak, but I identified with the Old Man's tenacity and how he fought the fish to the death.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand made me think a lot, even though it went on for way too long and I ended up disagreeing with most of her philosophy.

I agree with the Atlas Shrugged choice, but I agreed with the philosophy and thought only the beginning was a little long.

Also:
Hitchhikers Guide Series - Douglas Adams
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
Parliament of Whores - PJ O'rourke
Life 101 - John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

Anyway, these were all important influences.

Thanks for listening.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Sometimes you start a book and you identify with it so much (or it resonantes with something in you) that you can just rip through it. Atlas Shrugged was like that for me - I finished it in something like 6 days!

Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence - Robert Pirsig

I had always been aware of these two books but never read them. One day I just picked them both up at the bookstore (not realizing that there was a connection!) and read them. This was during a difficult time in my life and somehow they helped me find the balance that I was seeking.

When I was in Junior High, I picked up this book called Plains of Passage, which turned out to have a lot of sex in it. Well, at first I was kinda disgusted by it, but then you could probably imagine someone holding open a book as he masturbates furiously, trying to keep a steady read on the words. I don't think I've been the same ever since.

I read both this and Fountainhead just out of high school after a friend kept saying how good they were. Some good points were made without a doubt... other's I didn't agree with like yourself. Then again that goes with saying with any philosophy.

A book that changed me? I would have to say the Hobbit only because I read it when I was 10 and it opened another world for me. Barker's Imajica, Card's Ender's & Pastwatch books, as well as Douglas Adams works soon followed.

Book that scared the shit out of me? Amityville Horror. Swear to God after reading that everytime I looked outside my window at night I saw Jodie's Red eyes.

Oh I know this is going to sound silly.. Nicholas Spark's The Notebook. I was bored one day and saw my GF was reading it so I figured what the hell.. I was crying like a baby at the end only book that's ever done that to me.

I would definitely have to say Lonesome Dove, though I too, read the Plains of Passage and the other books in the series like Clan of the Cave Bear in Middle school, and it had a similar effect on me! Ayla was hot!

Stranger in a strange land totally changed my life, and i mean that. not the little changed you life thing that lots of people say, when something important happened. but my life was literally changed after i read that book.

wow I just realized... not a single Old Testament/New Testament, Koran, Qaballah, Torah...

I need to double Zargix, No book ever changed me quite like stranger in a strange land. It made me stop to question where all those gut feelings were coming from, and what the point of it all was.

Definitely "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Masterpiece.

-Lasereth

Naked Lunch and Tropic od Cancer both introduced me to a whole new world. Not really my liking anynore, but I was down at the time and they really fed that side of me.

The Dispossessed by Atwood. This book inspired my first tatto,
Anything by Ray Bradbury, he had a huge and profound affect on me as a child.

Easton Ellis definately made me want to have a lie down after i finished it. Around the same time i also read this book called COWS by Stokoe (i think), it was some serious mental vommit.
The books that made the most differance when i was young, was anything that let me escape from the noises upstairs. I lived down in a basement, and my family were a bunch of hyenia screaming sociopaths.

girl by blake nelson.

i have my own real life todd sparrow ;)

Dante - The Divine Comedy
John Steinbeck - East of Eden
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

On the Road. Ulyssess. Finnegan's Wake.

I'd have to go with Ender's Game. It made me feel not quite as alone in the universe. Dragon's Milk, when I was a very little girl, opened me up to fantasy, and the Reculse series made me rethink the balance of everything around me.

Catch 22 without a doubt - inspired many a thought.
Of course 1984 - I read it once every while and compare to our present day.
Vonnegut, especially Slaughterhouse and Cat's Cradle.
Huxley's Doors of Perception changed my views on drugs.
Also, I've been influenced by some of Nietzsche's stuff.

In the past, Bennjamin Hoff - The Tao of Pooh. Most recently, Ken Wilber - Integral Psychology

I haven't thought too much about books that have changed me, but I felt like commenting on and agreeing with the comments regarding Ayn Rand above. There are some good points in her philosophy, but I ended up disagreeing with a lot of it. It helped me put some of my thoughts I already had into words, kind of like Machiavelli's The Prince also did. Basically just some things you know from instinct translated into language.

catcher in the rye...

Demian by Herman Heese definately changed me. My views of the world swung about 180 degrees after I finished it.

Also, The Bahgivad Gita (I know I just spelled that wrong). It made me want to really lead a virtuous life.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind made me think differently about things.

Catcher in the Rye and then compared to Less Than Zero(the book was so much more than the movie). I read both of these books in 9th grade , and they both-together changed me.

never read [or saw, for that matter] less than zero--I'll have to check it out...

Lipstick Traces: A secret history of the 20th century by Griel Marcus...

A look at the history of anti-art from the Dadaists up to and through Punk... changed the way I think about art and culture.

There are a lot of books that changed me, but the ones with the most lasting influence were (in no particular order):

1984 by George Orwell
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Watchmen by Alan Moore
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
and
Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

They are all purposeful, powerful books, and most of them I found so difficult to put down that I read them in one sitting. (Yes, before you ask, I am and always have been a freakishly fast reader.)

Fahrenheit 451 changed the way I thought about personal expression and censorship.