Top books that changed your life

[geeza]

A take off on the "top 5 movies" thread. Books have affected me more than movies. Doesn't have to be 5 either.
Mine:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Atlas Shrugged
Ender's Game
The Fountainhead

[fdeck]

Simandl and Dotzauer
Goedel, Escher, Bach
The Art of Electronics
The Good Soldier Svejk

Atlas Shrugged influenced me, but probably not in the same way.

[Marcus]

is playing through BioShock considered reading Atlas Shrugged?

[sobie18]

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

[Unrepresented]

Originally Posted by geeza

A take off on the "top 5 movies" thread. Books have affected me more than movies. Doesn't have to be 5 either.
Mine:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Atlas Shrugged
Ender's Game
The Fountainhead

I suspect our political views would not be compatible.

Neuromancer (not the book per se, but rather the thoughts that accompanied it's reading)
Fast Food Nation (this book effected me on every level - socially, environmentally, politically, etc. Should be required reading.)

[WalterBush]

Originally Posted by Marcus

is playing through BioShock considered reading Atlas Shrugged?

No. The main characters in Atlas Shrugged were sane.

1) The Bible
2) Neuromancer
3) Atlas Shrugged
4) The Illuminatus Trilogy
5) 1984

I could've included The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, too, but I was raised with all those, literally as long as I can remember. They more shaped, rather than changed, my life.

[IconBasser]

1) 1984
2) Atlas Shrugged
3) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
4) Redwall [it turned me on to reading when I was a kid]

I can't think of any others that really "changed me". but as far as other books that I emphatically enjoyed, I'd probably put down Catch-22


*edit* DOH! I just remembered one!

5) A Clockwork Orange

[rcarraher]

Originally Posted by geeza

A take off on the "top 5 movies" thread. Books have affected me more than movies. Doesn't have to be 5 either.
Mine:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Atlas Shrugged
Ender's Game
The Fountainhead

A Farewell to Arms-Hemmingway
A Movable Feast/Finca Vigia Edition/The Sun Also Rises-Hemmingway
East of Eden-Stienbeck
Skinny legs and All-Tom Robbins
Snow Falling on Cedars-David Guterson
The Prince of Tides-Pat Conroy Cider House Rules-John Irving Trinity-Leon Uris

As usual, I can't make up my mind....my top tens alway have at least 11, my top 5's now have 8

[WookieeForLife]

Tuesdays with Morrie

Speak

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

[ryco]

Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do - Peter McWilliams
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck
Incident at Exeter - John G. Fuller
Whiewash I & II - Harold Weisberg
Once & Future King - TH White

[Papazita]

Originally Posted by WalterBush

1) The Bible
3) Atlas Shrugged

These two; plus:

One Day In the Life Of Ivan Denisovich, and The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[JohnnyPustular]

At different times for different reasons:

The Kingdom of God is Within You- Tolstoy
On the Road- Kerouac
Poetics- Aristotle
Brave New World- Huxley

[kserg]

Hustler

[geeza]

Originally Posted by Unrepresented

I suspect our political views would not be compatible.

I don't understand.

[ADbassman]

The Fountainhead
1984
Ragtime
Casino Royale

[Unrepresented]

Originally Posted by geeza

I don't understand.

Rand's work is a large influence on a particular political leaning, one I happen to frequently disagree with.

[cdef]

Originally Posted by geeza

I don't understand.

I believe Unrepresented was referring to the fact that Rand's books are simply ultracapitalist propaganda poorly disguised as literature. And that's why discussing this further will get the thread closed.

[Noak2]

Stupid White Men
The God Delusion
The Wall
The Communist Manifesto
Das Kapital

[sixstring-lym]

The 4 Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss

[BullHorn]

Allen Carr's EASYWAY to stop smoking.

Read it almost two years ago and haven't smoked a cigarette since.