A book that changed your life (or at least your mindset...)

[rosie79]

I'm sure this has been done before but an curious to hear about what book or books people think helped changed their life or the way they view the world, or helped them in some way. For me it has to be:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho when I was 20

The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck (first discovered a few years ago but have read it four times now!)

What about you?

Danny Wallace's book about doing random acts of kindness. Not earth shattering but made me wish we could all approach life in this positive way.

'Pay it forward' by Catherine Ryan Hyde

The film is also very good.

It is a story about a little boy who comes up with the idea of paying favours forwards instead of back - thus spreading the milk of human kindness.

Sherbert - Join Me is great

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett got me reading again after not picking up a non-course book for the whole of secondary school.
Then A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess made me realise how you can fall in love with a character in a book and off I went.

we need to talk about Kevin - made me really look hard at how my personality affected my parenting and has made me a lot less controlling and more relaxed with my dd1 . the book really shook me as i have struggled sometimes feeling i didn't/couldn't love my child , i know it is a work of fiction but really made me think hard and now feel a lot happy and relationship wiht dd1 hugely improved

Swallows and Amazons got me started on sailing obsession as a child - I later fell in love with dh for his boat, so must have been significant

The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir) for feminist awakening aged 17

Most recently, Joanna Blythman's 'Bad Food Britain' (leading onto 'Shopped' and Felicity Lawrence's 'Not on the Label') which have had an immediate impact on the way I eat and shop.

Lots already mentioned hit a chord:

The magic faraway tree got me started

Primo Levi- If this is a man/ Truce
Sebastian Faulks-Birdsong

Both have such a huge emotional impact and are important stories (primo levi true experience tho) to be told and remembered. Theses are 2 of the only books I've read more than once as an adult. (malory towers over and over again as a child)

My Brilliant Career- Miles Franklin.
Read when I was about 14 i think.

The Dog's Bollocks, by Viz.....changed me forever

Ooh sounds good NurseryJo, may have to go and get that. Haven't found a book for ages that totally absorbs me, that could be it. I have read some Margaret Forster, but not come across that one.

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy was the fiction that informed my feminism, started my obsession with feminist fantasy writing, ie Sheri Tepper.
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem. I agree with Handmaidstale (poster)that I was convinced that feminism would be accepted by all, it makes so much sense to me! I was so naive in my beliefs about fairness and equality!
Pride and Prejudice was the book that got me reading, and Dylan Thomas started a love of poetry, a visit to Stratford at 14 opened my eyes to theatre.
I was so lucky in my teachers as we had very few books at home. My home is full to overflowing, it's my 'not so secret' vice.

When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone

'For Those I Loved' by Martin Gray left a huge impression on me.

Not a novel, an autobiography. Martin Gray was a child in the ghetto in Warsaw, was sent to concentration camps twice but escaped/survived. He had only an auntie left in America, so went there, made his fortune, met a girl, had children....then tragedy struck again. If this book was a novel you'd think...aw, come off it....but it was all true.

I'm not particularly fond of his writing style but it certainly tells an amazing story.

The book was published in 1972 and is out of print but available on Amazon.

The Speed of Dark
The Black Sheep
Almost anything by Robertson Davis gives me a different view of something
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Green Eggs and Ham (when I was very little)
Little Women
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Animal Farm
Clockwork Orange

Many more which are packed away in boxes and I don't want to think about them until I can get them out again!