he he, funny thread. There's a lot of people here who are either joking or very easily influenced. To Kill a mockingbird? A clockwork Orange? I mean they're good books and I enjoyed them myself but they're hardly life changing.
Anyway, someone has already posted the title of the book that had the biggest impact on me.
American Psycho.
I threw that book away when I finished it. Very well written but jesus! That guy was crazy! I was generally, horrified by the ideas in that book.
But it's not life changing. Life changing books completely impact your whole political perception surely?
Waterlog by Roger Deakin.
I swam outdoors a bit before that, but it really inspired me to get into it a lot (to the point that I'm going down the river in my speedos tomorrow morning!).
Emil and the Detectives - first proper novel I can remember reading
Slaughterhouse 5 - made me realise how futile war is, always
The Lorax - puts capitalism and "progress" neatly in perspective
The Lord of the Rings - just for the immense imagination, incredible
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - big influence on my generally satirical outlook on life
To Kill a Mockingbird - as a child growing up in a white middle class environment this did me so much good and helped me understanding predudice, including my own.
Life changing books completely impact your whole political perception surely?
Not just political, but general outlook on life and the paths you choose.
if one book has influenced me the most its probably the hobbit
had it read to us in lower school
ive never stopped reading ever since really
The Highway Code - Gave me freedom...from buses, trains and parents
The Old man and the Sea - Made me realise that some writing can be beautiful
Lonely Planet Japan gude book - Changed my life, made me change my country in the long term, though oddly not to japan
Rowing It Alone by Debra Veal changed the way I view life.
The Favoured Circle: The Social Foundations of Architectural Distinction, by Garry Stevens. Mostly because it introduced me, in a fairly understandable way, to the work of Pierre Bourdieu.
Books that influenced me:
To Kill A Mockingbird - is there a better book on the subject?
Encyclopdia of science
Mountaincraft and leadership
Eats shoots and leaves
The mythical man month
The Munros
The New Testament
Pretty much everything by Kurt Vonnegut
Lila
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I don't think I could honestly call any book "life changing" but loads of books have changed the way I think.
Hitchhiker's Guide, for so many clever ideas - like the planet where they keep voting for lizards, because if they didn't the wrong lizard might get in.
Snow Crash, for making me think that religion could be a meme or virus.
The Selfish Gene
Augustus Carp, just for being exquisitely, deliciously nasty - and very quotable.
Bicycle Design by Mike Burrows
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman - just mind boggling in so many ways
A very difficult question to answer. I have never been inspired to ride a camel to Mozambique after reading a book, for example. An easy choice would be the Roald Dahl staples that are read by most children and managed to instil in me a huge hunger for fiction. As an adult, John Steinbeck is the writer who's characters seem to align closely with my own beliefs.
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Read it from cover to cover, many times over, in my childhood. Gave me a love of the coastline which I continue to harbour 🙄 decades later. My wife can't understand why I just have to visit places like The Lizard, Easdale, The Severn Estuary, Portland Bill, The Bell Rock, The Old Man of Hoy or Luskentyre. There's even a huge picture of Durdle Door on our bedroom wall that I bought after a visit. Just love our coastline, lots still to visit too!
Russel Hoban's [i]The Mouse and his Child[/i], mostly because it was the first book I read which gave me a sense of infinity - an inkling that everything might be slightly larger than my childish mind could comprehend.
This feat was accomplished with the description of a dog food can. The label on the can portrays a dog, looking at a can of food. On the can on the label is a picture of a dog looking at a can of food. On the can in the label is a picture of a dog looking at a can of food, smaller and smaller, but still visible. Ad nausem; almost literally - the concept gave me nightmares for years, but good nightmares!
And later, [i]Ridley Walker[/i] by the same author gave me the shivers for very different reasons. Just read it, please.
+1 Kimbers exactly how I felt and I'm going to read it again now.
Stranger In A Strange land by Robert Heinlein. I read it when I was about 14 & it was revolutionary.
I am only an egg.
I can think of a few books that have deeply moved me but cannot recall one that has been [i]life-changing[/i] although OS maps, whilst not books, have certainly played a big part in my life.
Having said that, there is one possibly...
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8)
Captain Scott's Journal of the Terra Nova Antarctic expedition.
Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
Both make me feel very humble...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig, I don't necessarily understand all of his musings but it's the one book i'd save if my house burned down.
Exactly the same here.
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Another vote for that. Read it first when I was 18 and instantly re-read it, to try and get my head around it. I've read it countless times since. I still don't think I'll ever grasp the full meaning. But it changes the way you view things for ever. In a really positive way!
Actually... I'm due another read. Its been a few years
Love Shook My senses, a book of poems that just helped and sorted out loads of stuff in my head. More though was Harry Potter. I know it's not great art or whatever, but this was mine youknow? I qued for the books, I lived them, watched all the films with the same people, got the whole series and they are a part of my heart
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig, I don't necessarily understand all of his musings
Vote 3.
I've read it three times making it the only book I've read more than once. I don't have a copy of it anymore as I passed it on to a friend who passed it on again, it's one of those sort of books.
Perhaps you wouldn't be surpised by mine...
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The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey.
First saw it mentioned in a GT ad in MBA in 93. Reading it for the 4th or 5th time now.
One day the white sand beach of Lake Pedder will be free again.
Not a book, but the NME. Reading the NME from the age of 16 formed my brain into a well-rounded shape. (Not literally of course.) It was much much more than just a music rag back then.
Andrew Collins, Steven Wells, Danny Baker, Charles Shaar Murray were the writers (that I can remember off the top of my head).
Nearest books have come are Elmore Leonard's The Switch & Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club because they made me purchase & read all the authors' books.
this
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Mr Woppit - Member
Perhaps you wouldn't be surpised by mine...
I am surprised actually. You needed the book to change your beliefs?
samuri +1 -- I agree theres a lot of good books listed but in terms of ones that have really changed my view on something.
into the wild - Jon Krakauer
really made me think about the way humans live their lives, about what we think is valuable, about homeless people, a rare book that made me change my view on a human topic.
I am surprised actually. You needed the book to change your beliefs?
Nice try. Serviceable rod, wrong bait.
French Revolutions by Tim Moore. The very reason I ever got on a bike of any kind.
On Extended Wings - Diane Ackerman.
She's a poet, and I can't stand poetry, sorry about that. But this is her account of learning to fly light aircraft. The only book I have re-read many times. Especially when I've been feeling as though the world is against you.
The biography of Marcel Duchamp when I was 17....
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - I was 13, and it taught me how the history we see is often the opposite of truth.
Classics in total synthesis by KC Nicolaou changed my life in a literal sense.
On the fiction side there's no one thing really - read a few that completely redefined what I had though possible in writing, but nothing that I'd call life-changing in a big way. Although a combination of many books and subtle insights is life-changing in aggregate I guess.
Das Kapital - Karl Marx
1984 - George Orwell
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
The Nuclear Survival Handbook - Barry Popkess
Camus - The Outsider
Life has no meaning so why not just be content? Being pissy just makes you miserable.
I dunno if any book has [i]changed[/i] my life, as such.
A few have influenced me though:
Rosemary Sutcliff [i]The Eagle of the Ninth[/i] - perhaps my favourite 'childhood' book. Probably responsible for me eventually becoming an archaeologist.
William Wordsworth [i]The Two-Part Prelude[/i] - ok, it's not a book. I spent most of my childhood running around the woods with my dog, and this pretty much described how I felt.
Henry Thoreau [i]Walden[/i] - pretty dry in places, but a tonic all the same. He would have loved mountain biking - had Repack happened a [i]bit[/i] earlier, [i]The Maine Woods[/i] could have been written about lush singletrack...
Cormac McCarthy [i]Suttree[/i] - an immensely consoling read about living at rock-bottom. It always cheers me up.
+1 Russell Hoban [i]Riddley Walker[/i] - knocked me for six... [i]"Stil I wunt have no other track."[/i]
The way books have evolved from story telling and relating information by example and vocally into writing down words is inspiring in itself and that so many people are still inspired to regularly read books is really quite refreshing. In these days of electronic communication and perceived lack of time, long may people pick up books and assimilate them.
The whole 'Roger the Red' series of books.
I learnt to read with them. My life would've taken a very different path if that had never happened.
Susan Boyle - Exploited, moI? My life lessons made simple.
Katie Price - The Trilogy Part IV
Mario Balotelii - All for One
Plus
As a kid: Maurice Herzog (Annapurna), Gaston Rebuffat (100 finest climbs), Chris Bonnington (I chose to climb onwards),Timothy Gallway (The inner game of....)
As a student: Keynes (General Theory), Friedman (Free to choose), Nozick (Anarchy, State and Utopia), Marx (Das Kapital), Hayek (Road to Serfdom) - for making me think about Economics - Shefferin (Rational Expectations) for making me realise that lots of it is bllx originally in the 1980s and Keen (Debunking Economics) more recently!
Later: Naht Han - are there more similarities than differences in the world's religions? Sandal (Justice) and Tyler (Secret Race) the whole sport is dirty?
Tony Buzan - Mind Maps, this helped me through my degree years and finally I figured out that I see stuff in pictures rather than typo.. A revelation to me that.
Tony Robbins - Unlimited Power, this came along in my early career and helped formulate a few tools I needed to take me forward. Some say his books and philosophies are just rehashes of techniques already available, well I didn’t know they were available at the time and this helped me now end, still does. I have seen him twice on tour seminars and he certainly commands an audience.
Bandler & Grindler – NLP, this followed on from Unlimited Power, well it was the 90’s and we were all doing it. Now all the techniques have been dissolved into normal working life, but at the time the techniques and philosophies were ground breaking. Show me a successful business man that hasn’t read either of these two.
Homers' Odyssey.
Carl Sagan: The Demon-haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark
Far more subtle than dawkins god delusion, but the same effect (for me :).
edit : also John Diamond: C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too
I've never re-read Zen or the Grapes of Wrath because I don't believe they could ever have the same effect second time around. I was 18 or 19 when I read them and nearly 30 years later I feel I don't want to risk disappointment. Having read a lot more of Steinbeck since I know it's a ridiculous thought but it's there anyway.
I think people might be conflating two things here: favourite books are not generally the life changers - The Hobbit is one of my favourite books and I've read it many times since I was 13 or so
Still have it as a 'comfort book' for when times are depressing or I'm stressed
But did it or has it changed me? No - not sure how it can. Same with Gormenghast - a descriptive tour de force and a wonderful creative narrative means for many its one of the best books they have ever read....but how does it change your life?
"Bandler & Grindler – NLP, this followed on from Unlimited Power, well it was the 90’s and we were all doing it. Now all the techniques have been dissolved into normal working life, but at the time the techniques and philosophies were ground breaking. Show me a successful business man that hasn’t read either of these two."
You are kidding right? NLP is hilarious at best and a nasty piece of work at worst
I think I'll nominate The Starship and the Canoe as a book that fundementally changed my perception of life - you can read it at any age but its good if you do it early!
