Which books changed your life, and why?

[juniper904]

I'm of the Catcher in the Rye camp. I know it's very mainstream and therefore I am a dick, but it genuinely changed my life. I remember lying in bed, with snow falling heavy outside, reading the book whilst I should have been at sixth form. It hit me in a way no other book has.

My DP was equally moved by To Kill A Mockingbird and wants to give our first born son the middle name Atticus, but that's a different thread but I didn't feel particularly enamoured by the book.

So which books have changed your life, and why? What should I read to have another heart-stopping, existence-questioning moment?

Matilda when I was young. Showed me that reading books was awesome and adults are stupid

When I was around 13 I remember sitting up all night reading Wuthering Heights. Realised that classics are sometimes called that for a reason.

White Teeth was amazing and I went round telling everyone to read it.

More recently Book Thief and Boy in Striped Pyjamas. Both left me speechless and thinking about them for days afterwards. The sign of a good book in my humble opinion.

We need to talk about Kevin did that for me. The 'nature/nurture' argument fascinates me and this book sums it up in one shocking novel.

I read Wild Swans in my twenties and that book stayed with me for years. I couldn't believe that nobody had ever mentioned The Cultural Revolution in China to me and just how ignorant people are about billions of people.

The Poisonwood Bible just for its sheet brilliance at story-telling. I have never read it again as I'm scared it won't live up to my memory of it.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Joyce I only read last month. I'm still thinking about it. Every now an again I read a book that I should have written.
Simple, tragic and beautiful. Have tissues.

I'm in fact a complete wally. The book is The Unlikely Pilgrimage by Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.

Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi, I read it when I was 20 and it made me think about the choices I was making in life and realise that I didn't have to make them.

Fabulous book - sadly made into a terrible film directed by Michael Winner.

If this is a man. The Truce. By Primo Levi

I was told it was life changing and you had to be ready to read the book.

That kind of built it up in my mind. When I did read it, it blew me away. Profound, raw, light of touch, devastating.
An Auschwitz survivor who gave a gift to the world by sharing his experiences.

I also love To Kill a Mockingbird.
Magical book.

For me it was the Fountain Head by Ayn Rand, the book is so diametrically opposite to what I believe that I was shocked. It was so well written and so engaging though I couldn't put the book down.
It also made re-evaluate some of my own ideas.

Flowers for Algernon. Read it at the age of 14 and have read it ever year since.

The five people you meet in heaven. At the time I read it I was going through a tough time feeling that I was just bumbling along and not doing anything worthwhile.... that book made me feel better about myself.

In a less sentimental way, The To Do List by Mike Gayle has inspired me to actually get things done.

Cry The Beloved Country, apartheid, hearbreaking.

To kill a Mocking bird.

The Glass Bead Game

Lord M. Why politics is so difficult to get right.

I think I read them all within about 18 months when I was 15 and they have coloured my life.

I'm not sure that I have ever read a book that fundamentally 'changed' me, but I have certainly read many that have stayed with me, and that I find myself thinking of from time to time. If I suggest a book based on that, it would have to be "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry. I think I was about 11 the first time I read it, and it became a summer tradition of mine to borrow it from the library every summer to take to the beach for a week (I would sit on the flat's balcony, stare at the ocean and read away, it's a big novel). I'd highly recommend reading the entire series, in fact, but in chronological order instead of the order in which they were written. Beautiful stories. :)