To ask which book changed your life?

[SunshineYello]

I'm after some inspiration, as I realised I haven't read a good book in so long, mostly due to being glued to the same old rubbish on my 'smart' phone. Coupled with lockdown, I think my brain is grinding to a halt.
I will offer up Wuthering Heights; bit of an obvious one, but I love how my perception of it changes year to year, from 'how romantic' (impressionable teen) to 'dysfunctional much'?!

Loving this thread. Yes to Catch22, Orwell. The Edible Woman by Margaret Attwood was very eye opening. The Yellow Wallpaper was also important to me. But Fat is a feminist issue really helped the teenage me

Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene. It's not a book I'd recommend to others particularly but it hit a note about me and my family. The Gerald Durrell Corfu books do the same but I only saw that later in life.

Beyond that, so many books have inspired me though the ones that did when I was 16 are not the same ones that do 40ish years later.

I've just finished "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" which I enjoyed a lot.

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

The Four Agreements

The white Marie Kondo book and
'Goodbye Things' by Fumio Sasaki. Got us thinking in a totally different way and life changes followed.

I'm a great reader and could list loads of books but, for something that gave me, as a typical westerner, a different worldview, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achibe.

A self-help book which really speaks to me is The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N Aron.

A favourite easy read is Poldark by Winston Graham. It does also teach facts about the history of the era.

A tale of two cities. Affected me for such a long time afterwards.

To kill a mockingbird- deeply affecting

The tenant of Wildfell Hall -Anne Bronte. I do think this is one of the first feminist novels.

Where the crawdads sing, it made me get in touch with my birth mum after 31 years. Amazing book

The Lymond Chronicles, by Dorothy Dunnett. Unfortunately the first in the series is not the easiest to get into. But I have read and re-read these books every few years since my teens (when I fell in love with Francis Crawford and have never quite got over it) and get something new out of them every single time.

They are billed as sort of 'historical fiction' or 'historical romance' but they are much, much more than that. I've read a lot of authors in my life but consider DD to be among the very greatest of the greats.

The Female Eunuch- Greer
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein
Brave New World - Huxley
The Women's Room - French

Wow @SugarNyx - that really is life-changing! You should tell the author on twitter or FB. I bet she would be over the moon.

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was just so tragic.

More recently Expectation by Anna Hope - the characters are my age and I relayed so much to their experiences. It made me miss the days when your friends were your life and nothing was that complicated.

I love faction books and read The Island by Victoria Hyslop - inspired me so much I visited Spinalonga which is featured in the book last year.

Also remember reading Amitiville Horror as a teenager - couldn't sleep for weeks.

Also learned a lot reading Half of a Yellow Sun.

The Women’s Room ... a bit of a cliche because on my dog eared 1980s copy it says “this novel changes lives”. But it really did.
Couples by John Updike, I would give a lot to write like that.
And yy to the Country Child! I love the Christmas chapter: But at Christmas the wind ceased to moan ...

And a Thousand Splendid Suns.

Agree re The Goldfinch, probably the best fiction I've ever read

Also just remembered Kahled Hosseini - A thousand splendid sons - truer life version of the handmaids tale.

Watching with interest op

Toni Morrison and TS Eliot

Jane Eyre had a big influence on me as a youth. In later years The Night Watch by Sarah Waters stayed with me and so did One Day by David Nicholls in terms of it being life affirming.

When I was 17, my lovely Sociology tutor gave me two books that helped me so much, they probably did change my life:

The Female Eunuch (and I would make this required reading for any young female who believes they may be trans) and a self-help book called A Woman In Your Own Right by Anne Dickson.

Just placemarking as I need to fall in love with books again

Definitely The Women's Room for me. I reread it approximately once every ten years. It was a slightly tatty copy, given to me by a friend in 1981 and I have kept it carefully ever since.

To kill a mockingbird.
The sorrows of an American
Great thread.