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Books that changed your life

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L

lilraylewis

Member
What books have changed the way you live and think about your life?
For me,

Walden by Henry David Throreau

Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
 
C

Cubsfan23

Banned
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J

JackFrost2012

Banned
lilraylewis said:
What books have changed the way you live and think about your life?
For me,

Walden by Henry David Throreau

Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Click to expand...

Welcome to the 21st century!

EDIT: those are all good books, you just sound like a time traveller. :)
 
L

lilraylewis

Member
Yeah, when I made the list I might come off as a little too caught up in the past. But it's not like I don't read books written in the 20th century. I just have not read one that affected me more than these three.
 
H

HooDoo

Member
Requiem for a Dream - Hubert Selby Jr.
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk (since i've read it i'm not blowing on my food to cool it off anymore)
 
M

Musashi Wins!

FLAWLESS VICTOLY!
I'm not saying that these are the most important books, or that they have the same impact upon me now, but for their particular times in life they made the most impact on me:

The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily - Dino Buzzati
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
The Portable Nietzsche Reader
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Magus - John Fowles
The Rosy Crucifixion - Henry Miller
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion - David Hume
Total Freedom - J. Krishnamurti
The Truth About Everything - Matthew Stewart

And about a thousand others. I used to be a book dealer and I think I can associate any period of time with an abundance of titles, but these are the broad generic strokes that stuck the most.
 
T

Triumph

Banned
Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson
Reality Is What You Can Get Away With by Robert Anton Wilson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols
The Good Fight by Ralph Nader
 
B

brooklyngooner

Member
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. It didn't change my life in a philosophical sense, rather it led me to major in postmodern lit, write endless papers on it and semiotics and study the lives and writings of William of Occam and Thomas Aquinas.
 
H

HooDoo

Member
quadriplegicjon said:
i cant seem to remember what this refers to..

spoiler tag explain?
Click to expand...


Nothing important actually, Carl Streator just says he could kill anyone not behaving properly around a table and that was including blowing on food. Each time I see someone doing it reminds me of the book.
 
M

Manabanana

Member
Most of Chuck Palahniuk's books and 1984 have been working towards making me a complete nihilist. I now understand that there's nothing I can do to change much of anything, so nothing really matters. Just enjoy it and try not to fuck things up for anyone else along the way.
 
D

Dilbert

Member
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger

1984, George Orwell

Tao Te Ching, Lao Tsu

How To Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff

Death Of A Salesman, Arthur Miller

The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
 
R

radios shipping overview

Member
1984 - George Orwell: gave me a ton of insight on the current state of privacy issues and civil liberties

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair: helped crystallize my views on corporate responsibility and gov't regulation

Umberto Eco's novels (Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino, The Island of the Day Before): these were the first material I've read that really made history seem real and alive to me, and they created a thirst for knowledge of what life was like all throughout history

Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches - the author's name escapes me and DNS issues are keeping me from Google: provided a secular, scientific perspective on why traditions, customs and religions work the way they do, and shaped the way I think about such things
 
K

Kola

Member
Puh, what a task. Don't know with which ones to start.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - The Sorrows of Young Werther
German Romanticism at it's best. This is the core of each and every love story that followed.
Click

George Orwell - 1984
Orwell was a prophet. If you look at our society you will notice that we are moving in this direction.

Hermann Hesse - Siddartha
Hermann Hesse - Der Steppenwolf
Both books had a heavy impact on my life, as they show you that there are people who are like you and that they have a view of the world which is just like yours. It's funny, but a western writer had to introduce me into Buddhism...
A remarkable life altering novel
Steppenwolf

Frank Herbert - Dune (and the 5 following books)
Just like Orwell, Herbert extrapolates our world from a certain point in history. This time of course much farther in the future. There's so much wisdom in his books. He, once again, proves that Science Fiction is more than just entertainment.

James Joyce - Ulysses
Just read it. And when you have finished it, read it once more when you are older.

Franz Kafka - The metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung)
Perhaps the best book I have ever read. It offers so much insight into human behaviour and this with only about 70 pages. I've read the English and German edition, and I have to admit, that the English translation is quite good. It's a must, just give it a try. Perhaps this book will introduce you into other Kafka works, which are also quite amazing. Especially "The Process", "In the Penal Colony" or "The Verdict".

Which writer can claim that there is a whole new way of storytelling named after him? Kafkaesque!
The Metamorphosis

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
The classic tale of First World War combat. Or better of the misery which a war brings upon the poor soldier who just has to fight for his country, if he wants or not. Banned in Nazi Germany. If you expect action this is the wrong book for you. It deals mostly with conversations between and feelings of people during the war and how useless it is. President Bush has never read it.
Remarque

Kurt Tucholsky - Castle Gripsholm
Ok ok, this book hasn't changed my life at all, but it's such a lovely useless love story which is just good for the soul from time to time. It also criticises society in general but focuses on the love story. sniff
Tucholsky

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wildes one and only novel. Definitely a must-read. Would you sell your soul for everlasting beauty?

Leo Tolstoi - War and Peace
Had to read in the translation as I can't read Russian. Nevertheless it's an astonishing book. If you like this style in general you might also check out Dostojevski or Gogol. The problem with Russian writers is, that the books are almost too long!
Tolstoi

Immanuel Kant - Critc of Pure Reason
The philosophy classic. Heavy stuff!! If you're studying philosophy or law and have never heard of Kant, you are supposedly a moron. Kant was so obsessed in his studies, it is said he died a virgin. =)
Kant

Sigh, there're still so many important books in my life, but I'm getting lazy here. There's stuff from Stanislaw Lem (Solaris, Transfer).

Tolkien changed my youth with his fantastic books (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings) .

Schopenhauer!

Hermann Melvilles Moby Dick, Montserrat, Dürrenmatt, Eddings, Neil Gaiman, Friedrich Schiller, Sienkiewicz' Quo Vadis, Timothy Leary's LSD trips...umm...books, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Stackpoles Fantasy stuff, James Clavell's books about Asia, especially Shogun and Noble House Hongkong, or, to end this list Eiji Yoshikawas Musashi...oh and then there is still......
 
M

mrkapawutzis

Member
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. After reading that book I realized how pathetic my life was cause I could actually relate to some of the characters in the stories.
 
I

Iceman

Member
my life? The way I see the world and behave as a result of it?

Just the Bible.

But in terms of books that have left a deep impact on me, even though it may have never manifested itself in my behavior:

1) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2) (this one short book that was completely composed of a pen pal correspondence between a child and an old man... really fuzzy memory here but it was an award winner and has been an influence in the way I approach writing anything)
3) The Enola Gay (non-fiction: first hand accounts of the story behind Hiroshima from both an American as well as a Japanese perspective in alternating chapters. AWESOME.)
4) Jurassic Park (Crichton's commentary within)
5) Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis).. heck, most things written by C.S. Lewis
 
N

nitewulf

Member
many novels/short stories from various different genres changed my life in myriads of ways, it's hard to pick, but i'll list some of them here:

The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The short, happy life of Francis Macomber - Earnest Hemingway
Jailbird/Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
The Maltese Falcon/The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Dashielle Hammett
Farewell My Lovely/Nevada Gas/Spanish Blood - Raymond Chandler
Demian - Hermann Hesse
The Gods Themselves/The Foundation Trilogy/The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The first three vampire novels - Anne Rice
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin, the novel that influenced 1984, he wasnt as good a writer as Orwell, but reading this before 1984 made this more infleuntial to me.
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy, I read this when I was 11 neither in English nor Russian. Destroyed me.
Various short stories - Anton Chekhov
The Judgement - Kafka.
Various short stories - O. Henry


two edits:
1) Winesburg, OH is a fantastic book.
2) I completely missed the russian authors i admire so much.
 
T

The Shadow

Member
1984 - I read this back in HS and again just recently. It doesn't have nearly the impact it once had on me but it did affect the way I think about authority and corruption of man given absolute power. It also instilled an implicit fear that we're heading into that direction, though it won't be via war and socialism but by corporate mergers and conglomeration.

Great Expectations - It's a book I never ever talk about but it's probably one that I tend to think back to most often when I'm reflecting on something. If 1984 gave me the cynical view of authority and government, Great Expectations gave me the hope that anyone can be accomplished when given an opportunity. Also, that women are freaking evil.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I'd have to say the bible is the only one that really changed my way of thinking and the way I live. Not in the obvious sense that I choose to pattern my life after it's principles, but the principles it has taught me have expanded and changed my view of everything so much. Primarily in the condition and nature of the heart and how that relates to the dynamics of relationhips and love.

Aside from that, I'd been realizing a lot in life and trying to form it into something somewhat tangible that I could express to others. The book Blue Like Jazz summed up these thoughts and feelings quite well, giving me a nice base of how to clearly communicate the thoughts to others as well as a great book to recommend. Which is kind of funny to say, since the author often speaks vaguely.

Immanuel Kant - Critc of Pure Reason
The philosophy classic. Heavy stuff!! If you're studying philosophy or law and have never heard of Kant, you are supposedly a moron. Kant was so obsessed in his studies, it is said he died a virgin. =)
Click to expand...
I may have to check that out. The description a revewer there gave (regarding the minds eye, reality beyond the senses and whatnot) sounded like some ideas I have been tossing around for awhile.

Overall I'm not a big reader, I find many stories to be too contrived and other books are most often pushing an agenda in very blunt form. I'm a philosopher at heart but likewise an artist wrapped up in romanticism, I don't like it when people try to sell me a simplified concept and that's what most books are. Not to mention I still have yet to find a good comfortable position for extended book reading.
 
C

captainbiotch

Banned
Philosophy, Who Needs It? by Ayn Rand -- The best stuff on logic I have ever read.

How I Found Freedom In an Unfree World by Harry Browne -- cocky and funny. a fresh self confident view of the world. Nearly all of his ideas are applicable to reality.

The 16 Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill. This guy knew personally, and dedicated his life to studying, many of the major industry and political titans of the early 20th century. He addresses the problems of fear in people's lives, and teaches the ways of self confidence, self programming, and logical thought. There is some antiquated science and thought by today's standards, but mostly gold.

All three have many reoccuring themes of self confidence, self analyzing, and self programming. All about being all you can be, and none of the bullshit about what you owe society, just what you owe yourself. Treat others how you want to be treated, make goals, think about the consequences of your actions, and take action, and you will be the successful person you want to be. These books definately changed my life.
 
J

Jim Bowie

Member
Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel. Restarted my love of reading.

Chuck Palahniuk - Choke. First experience into more gritty books. Instant love.

Michael Moore - Downsize This!. I know, I know, lots of Moore hate, OMG he's a fattie rite d00dz, but Moore helped get me to start exploring politics. Without his books, I probably wouldn't give a crap about politics and laws (or at least got into it much later).. and ignorance is certainly not bliss.
 
C

Cubsfan23

Banned
NintendosBooger said:
The Fear book. Is it really effective and detailed? Or does it only offer an oversimplistic approach (e.g., "Just do it.")? If you recommend it, I'll buy it today.
Click to expand...

It will only work if you have a long-term approach
 
ManaByte

ManaByte

Gold Member
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
All of the Lost Tales

Professor Tolkien wrote the first of the Lost Tales in the trenches in WWI, which went on to form the world The Lord of the Rings would be set in. He wanted to create a mythic pre-history for the British Isles as most of the major British myths (such as Arthur) were foreign in origin. He created the history and languages for the peoples of his mythology and wanted that to be the base of a British mythology that people would be inspired by and create their own music, poems, and work from. That didn't happen in his lifetime, but the amount of "inspired by Middle-Earth" stuff you can find in bookstores is showing that his hopes didn't die off.

As someone who is studying History and Anthropology and specializing in Archeology, what Professor Tolkien set out to do with his life's work is very impressive. I mean he set out to create thousands of years of history for a civilization set in a mythological pre-historic Europe set something like 6,000 years before recorded history.
 
W

White Man

Member
It would be arduous and difficult to name every book that's had a measurable impact on the person I'vve become today, but whether a factor of when I read them or of their own lierary quality, these are the books that immediately spring to mind:

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce - Originally in late 1999. My first Joyce, and probably one of the books that sent me down the art-damaged life path I follow today. I learned from this book not to take myself so seriously, and that our mistakes aren't merely little accients that we need to train ourselves to never do again; they're the building blocks of our own internal narratives, as epic as any of the Greek masterworks.

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner - Originally read summer 2000. AKA 'The Book that tore me away from Diablo 2.' I chose to read this after a discussion with my fiction writing teacher concerning which American novel was the most difficult to read. He tossed this one into the conversation and I thought he was just be rather flippant towards the question ny offering up this answer, which I believed was the sort of trite answer a high school teacher would offer up. I read the book after this conversation, and I didn't think Faulkner had it in him, especailly since I'd had some experience with his short stories.
What did I learn from this? Appreciating the common beaty in the collasng structures around us? Something like that. The book's structure certainly changed the way I read. And every time I think about the book, I can't help but think of that Tolstoy quote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I love the Compson family, even if they would've been Bush voters today.

The Trial, by Franz Kafka - Easily as relevant to today's world as 1984. People often say some phrase about Kafka giving birth to the 20th century. Well, if the works published during his life time were naked baby pictures of the 20th century, then this posthumously published incomplete novel is the criminal record of that same baby's difficult teenage years. Kafka's parable paints a dismal but dreamy picutre of a paranoid world driven by fear, self-consumption, paranoia, and doubt. This book serves as a fine supplement to The Brothers Karamazov. Spoeaking of which. . .

The Brothers Karamazov - The finest book ever produced by a Russian writer. Maybe the most important book since the Bible. A passionate, difficult (for several reasons), psychological novel that maps out our emotions and the things that drive us, and follows the path to the black X on the then completed map of the human condition. Twice as good as Crime and Punishment, twice as punishing to read. Almost deserves the descriptor 'labyrinthine.' And that bring me to. . .

The Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges - The blind bibliophile at the center of every library. Borges has been alluded to in quite a few novels that have been written only by standing on his shoulders, such as House of Leaves, The Name of the Rose, and Foucault's Pendulum. Borges never wrote a novel; he firmly believed that anything worth saying could be said in under 20 pages. I can't say whether or not he was being truthful, but his brief sketches usually make your brain spin more cycles than a story a hundred times as long. Everybody owes it to themselves to read The Aleph, Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius, The Garden of Forking Paths, and at least a few others.

That's it for now. I could think of a hundred more (A'Rebours/Against Nature, anyone?) but I really don't feel like typing anymore right now.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Will people consider me a serial killer if I say Catcher in the Rye?

I dunno, there are lots of books that have been influential on me, but I don't think any have changed my life. Catcher in the Rye had a pretty big impact.

But if it's favorite books, it'd be Dune, or A Scanner Darkly, or 2001, or Demolished Man.
 
S

Shogmaster

Member
The Bible by far.

After being force fed it for half a dozen years, I knew I couldn't possibly stay a Christian and feel right about myself. :lol
 
T

Tarazet

Member
It wasn't books that had an influence on me as much as music scores..

Johann Sebastian Bach - 48 Preludes and Fugues (Well-Tempered Klavier I & II)
Ludwig van Beethoven - 32 Piano Sonatas (2 volumes, cloth-bound, Henle Urtext)
Johannes Brahms - Three sonatas, various short pieces
Frederic Chopin - Ballades, Scherzi, Preludes, Etudes, Polonaises, Mazurkas, Waltzes, Nocturnes, etc...
Claude Debussy - Clair de Lune, Two Arabesques, Reverie
W.A. Mozart - 19 sonatas and 3 fantasies
Robert Schumann - Scenes from Childhood, Fantasiestucke

And that's just the start of it..
 
D

Dilbert

Member
Reading Kant in the original is ARDUOUS. I'd recommend reading secondary source material about Kant, and then dipping into the primary source once you're familiar with the concepts. His writing style almost makes Sartre's look like an advertising jingle.

I added Machiavelli's The Prince to my list, by the way...it totally slipped my mind before.
 
G

GG-Duo

Member
-jinx-, I'm curious why you put Franny and Zooey on that list..?

Personally ... I would say that Franny and Zooey was one of the gateways that led me to re-think about prayer and humility in the Christian faith. but i'm sure i'm alone on this, since the character kind of did the opposite.
 
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