What books have made an impact in your life?

onethreefive · 23-01-2014 10:09PM

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephan Chbosky.

This book has honestly changed my life! I have read it five times in a couple of months it is amazing.

I would definitely recommend it.

Rabelais · 23-01-2014 10:14PM

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a really great book as well.

gugleguy · 23-01-2014 10:23PM

Both 'The road less travelled' and 'Further along the road less travelled' by M Scott Peck.

IvaBigWun · 23-01-2014 10:39PM

JumpShivers wrote: »

Harry Potter.

That book series is my life.

Would it be fair to say that J. K. Rowling is this generation's Roald Dahl?

Sir Arthur Daley · 23-01-2014 10:49PM

"Tractor Ted" made a huge impact on my life, truly inspirational book.

rawn · 23-01-2014 10:59PM

"Yes Man" by Danny Wallace. Seriously changed my life. It's quite funny to read as well, but there's some deep stuff in there. Kind of like "The Dice Man", except not all dark and twisty.

'I, Danny Wallace, being of sound mind and body, do hereby write this manifesto for my life. I swear I will be more open to opportunity. I swear I will live my life taking every available chance. I will say Yes to every favour, request, suggestion and invitation. I WILL SWEAR TO SAY YES WHERE ONCE I WOULD SAY NO.'

Danny Wallace had been staying in. Far too much. Having been dumped by his girlfriend, he really wasn't doing the young, free and single thing very well. Instead he was avoiding people. Texting them instead of calling them. Calling them instead of meeting them. That is until one fateful date when a mystery man on a late-night bus told him to 'say yes more'. These three simple words changed Danny's life forever. Yes Man is the story of what happened when Danny decided to say YES to everything, in order to make his life more interesting. And boy, did it get more interesting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yes-Man-Danny-Wallace/dp/0091896746

There was a movie based on it starring Jim Carrey but it just didn't have the same wow factor for me.

Also, "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton. It was the first book I read, as a teenager, where the characters actually felt real to me. Also the first (but not last) book that ever made me cry, read it over and over again over the years. Francis Ford Coppola made a movie based on it that was actually pretty dead on but again, book always trumps movie.

humbert · 23-01-2014 11:02PM

The Grapes of Wrath. I'd be a unsympathetic capitalist by nature but that book really made me think.

The Black Swan by Taleb. Great book on logic and thinking against the backdrop of the recent financial troubles.

Really liked The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Don't go for her attempts to make that ideology into a doctrine but found the book quite inspirational.

Oh and I'll include Crime and Punishment and Lolita because they give great insight into the characters' minds and in spite of them being awful people the author succeeds in evoking sympathy, or at least understanding, for them. Think it's carried over to real life and caused me to be more inclined to see people as flawed rather than malicious or "evil".

Legs.Eleven · 23-01-2014 11:05PM

All the depressing fiction I read. Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was the first book that made me cry. Colm Toibín's books also leave me feeling unsettled after I read them along with Carol Shields. I recently read Alice Munroe's Too Much Happiness and although I liked it, it was depressing as fook and left me with a headache after reading it in a week (for a book club). Also all of JD Salinger's fiction and Aldous Huxley's 1984. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing as well and Sylvia Platt's The Bell Jar. And many more.

I love my depressing fiction, me.

IvaBigWun · 23-01-2014 11:20PM

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

Aldous Huxley's 1984

Another to add to my list.

Im reading a lot of non fiction lately, I really must get back to that classics/"must reads" list!

SHANAbert · 23-01-2014 11:24PM

Motley Crue's "The Dirt"

Vojera · 23-01-2014 11:25PM

Sky Burial by Xinran Xue.

It's a beautiful book, a sort of biography of a woman who went to Tibet with the Chinese army in the early stages of the occupation to look for her husband, an army doctor. She gets lost and ends up being taken in by a nomadic Tibetan family with whom she stays for 30 years and it recounts how she slowly loses her Chinese identity and embraces the Tibetan way of life.

Except that that doesn't seem to capture it at all. It just resonated with me on some level and gave me a great sense of peace.

Legs.Eleven · 23-01-2014 11:25PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Another to add to my list.

Im reading a lot of non fiction lately, I really must get back to that classics/"must reads" list!

Prepare to be disturbed. It's a tough read but truly brilliant.

Rabelais · 23-01-2014 11:28PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Another to add to my list.

Im reading a lot of non fiction lately, I really must get back to that classics/"must reads" list!

Legs.Eleven wrote: »

Prepare to be disturbed. It's a tough read but truly brilliant.

Huxley didn't write 1984. He drank tea with George Orwell though.

endacl · 23-01-2014 11:30PM

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Another book that I see on many "Essential Books" lists and one I definitely plan to read

'Essential Books' aren't for reading. They're for buying, intending to read, and popping on a shelf.

Legs.Eleven · 23-01-2014 11:31PM

Rabelais wrote: »

Huxley didn't write 1984. He drank tea with George Orwell though.

How ****ing embarrassing :-( So embarrassed.

*Runs away in shame*

I read it, I SWEARS!!

Edit: I was thinking of Brave New World although I meant 1984. Backtracking goodio here.

duckman!! · 23-01-2014 11:31PM

the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster........ Today’s fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion!!

jobeenfitz · 23-01-2014 11:32PM

Awareness by Anthony De Mello.

Daveysil15 · 23-01-2014 11:32PM

I haven't read a fiction book since The Da Vinci Code.

Tell No One was the best fiction I ever read. Just brilliant.

I mostly read non-fiction now. Recently I read Banged Up Abroad about the two British lads who were caught smuggling drugs in Venezuela. That certainly made an impact - a harrowing read.

PVincent · 23-01-2014 11:34PM

Tuesdays with Morrie, By Mitch Album is a must read. Fantastic book and if it does not impact the way you look on life , then I'll eat my hat!

Scartbeg · 23-01-2014 11:40PM

Fattypuffs & Thinnifers by Andre Maurois.
An excellent treatise on the state of mankind, for 10 year-olds

Gonna make mine read it anyhow.

Happyman42 · 23-01-2014 11:41PM

Custardpi wrote: »

The first book which really had an impact on me & one which I can vividly remember many years later was Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. The realisation that a skilful enough writer could conjure up characters & scenes so vividly that the book actually played like a film in your head was an amazing revelation for me & gave me a thirst for reading which over the years has provided a very helpful escape whenever the real world has threatened to overwhelm me.

+1
Had read a lot up until I read this, and have gone on to re-read 4 or 5 times since. In fact I might have another delve! Sweet Thursday is good too but not the same impact.
Had the good fortune to meet and get to know a friend of Steinbecks and saw some of his notebooks...the man wrote everything dow, incredible details.

languagenerd · 23-01-2014 11:46PM

rawn wrote: »

"Yes Man" by Danny Wallace. Seriously changed my life. It's quite funny to read as well, but there's some deep stuff in there. Kind of like "The Dice Man", except not all dark and twisty.

The first thing that came into my head when I saw this thread was "Yes Man"

I read it at least once a year - whenever I start feeling bored with my current situation, really - because it makes me go out and seek new adventures. Even though I don't have the sort of job or money that would allow me to do the mad stuff he ends up doing, I'd like to think I've gone on a few more trips, attended a few more parties and made a few more friends because of what I took from that book.

The movie is a very poor reflection of the book, IMO, and probably puts people off reading it.

Other than that, I haven't read as much as I should have in the last while. Rather ironically, doing a degree with a large literature component actually put me off reading for a bit cause I'd just had enough (endless study of very deep texts from the medieval era to the 1800s will do that to you!). But I hope to get back to it now, have bought quite a few books recently

Pherekydes · 23-01-2014 11:46PM

History of Western Science by John Gribbin.

IvaBigWun · 24-01-2014 10:32AM

duckman!! wrote: »

the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster........ Today’s fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion!!

I had to Google that to make sure you weren't making it up. It sounds like something Father Dougal might read

Shenshen · 24-01-2014 10:52AM

I love books - in fact, I never leave the house without one in my bag. And for the most part, I would read fiction.

But I would say the book that have influenced me most would almost all have been non-fiction. "Guns, germs and steel" by Jared Diamond springs to mind, I found that book to shine a bright light on a question that was always kind of in the back of my head, but never even got put into words. I'd seriously recommend it.
"The seltfish gene" by Richard Dawkins was a similar experience, as was "The blank slate" by Steven Pinker.

Taken together, these books shaped my understanding of the physical world.

As for philosophy... I'm not ashamed to admit that my biggest inspiration in the quest to understanding the human mind and human actions is Terry Pratchett.

BBDBB · 24-01-2014 11:05AM

The Hobbit had me entranced as a child, it was read to us at school by my favourite teacher, Ive read a dozen times since, a wonderful book

Replay by Ken Grimwood, a story of a man who dies and then loops and starts his life again as he was 25 years ago, he lives that life and the same thing happens several times more and his reactions to it of how he tried to change things and what stayed the same was what blew my mind

How to Win Friends and Influence people - Dale Carnegie. Aged 17 I did a computer test to make suggestions about my career based on my preferences and interests
The top 3 options were
Social Worker, Probation Officer and Psychologist, the first two held no interest for me, but I was intrigued by what a psychologist was, at the library in the psychology section one of the first books I found was Dale Carnegie, I stood there for over an hour reading it at the bookshelf before getting coughed at by the librarian. It changed the direction my life took re uni and later career, I still read it today and refer to it in my attempts to understand why people behave the way they do. Fascinating stuff.

Duffy the Vampire Slayer · 24-01-2014 11:14AM

Svlad Cjelli wrote: »

The Hobbit. There was a snippet in one of my primary school English books and I was enthralled by it. In secondary school while being forced to pick a novel to read and report on I found it in the pile and from start to finish I was glued to it.

Up to that point books were just more school work and something I avoided but it all changed after reading The Hobbit and I've loved reading ever since. Had I not been captured by that masterful tale back then I doubt I'd have developed such an interest in literature.

Was it the description of the Lake Town in Chrysalis?

fortwilliam · 24-01-2014 11:55AM

Shantaram, I read it while living in Hyderabad, I would sit in a bar or restaurant reading it and would find myself lost in the story with the sounds and smells of the city bringing the story to life, it was a strange experience.

Timothy Bryce · 24-01-2014 12:00PM

'Damage Done' by Warren Fellows.

Read it while traveling across SE Asia. Scared the p1ss out of me, and probably kept me from 'misbehaving' with the wrong people in Thailand/Laos/Vietnam/Cambodia etc.

Merkin · 24-01-2014 12:22PM

I LOVE this thread!

fortwilliam wrote: »

Shantaram, I read it while living in Hyderabad, I would sit in a bar or restaurant reading it and would find myself lost in the story with the sounds and smells of the city bringing the story to life, it was a strange experience.

I'm reading it at the moment and am totally engrossed.

Anything by Haruki Murikami has left an impression on me, he never disappoints. I loved Steinbeck's East of Eden, it has stayed with me.

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky is really worth reading too read it a long time ago and should read it again.

I've been meaning to read Brave New World for ages so this thread reminded me, thanks.

What books have made an impact in your life?

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