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Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney
and funnily enough, another vote for "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector", if only because it gives you a hint of how much better our lives could be.
My dad was a great Steinbeck fan, and I've read a lot of the books. The one that made a great impact on me when I was a child was a short story "The Red Pony"
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
It's about a sheperd boy who sells his flock to go travelling. it's really clever and all about things like omens and fulfilling your destiny. translated into 60 languages, sold 30 million copies worldwide and read by the likes of bill clinton and madonna. best book i've ever read. That and A Clockwork Orange.
[url= http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=4256105 ]a fiver from waterstones[/url]
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
Richard's Bicycle Book
Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Slaughterhouse 5
What's Bred In The Bone
I Claudius
The Catcher In The Rye
The grapes of Wrath.
Some great books mentioned by others that I haven't listed here but these are the ones that I guess I read at just the right time. I read The Grapes of Wrath over 20 years ago but I still remember getting to the last page on the number 73 bus and managing to control an almost irresistible urge to read it aloud to the rest of the bus. It was an extraordinary experience that I've never had before or since. I've always said to myself that if it happens again I won't resist. Is it just me or is the connection you feel with another person over the shared appreciation of a book of a different magnitude to any other art form or shared interest.
RichPenny - Member
Which is the Vonnegut book with the artist doing a massive mural in it, is that Slaughterhouse 5? Got that here, guess I could re-read it and find out
yep that's bluebeard, when I tried to get hold of it I was told it was out of print, I picked up a second hand copy off amazon.
also another vote here for On the Road and also The Dharma Bums by J K
oh and Enid Blyton.
Love Vonnegut, just ordered Bluebeard for 2.20 from Amazon.
Book that changed my life? Probably A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick, made me realise that getting wrecked, a lot, was not good for the soul.