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Most influential book you ever read?

V

Violanthe

New Member
What book has had the biggest impact on your life? Has a novel ever changed your life? Altered your thinking?
 
There definitely was a most influential book in my life in that sense of the word and it is listed second on my profile. I read it quite a while ago, in my 20's, and it is the book that aroused in me a lifelong curiosity to seek after my own answers to all the cynical questions and barbs that people direct at Christianity. It has been a very fruitful quest and has produced a much more settled and deeper understanding of my own faith than simply accepting other people's answers, pro or con.
Peder
 
I have two - both are classics in their way.

The first is Darwin's Origin of Species. Reading this book gave me a passionate interest in science and in the scientific method. I've applied those principles to my life ever since, which has taught me to think logically and ask questions. It's also taught me that larger forces are acting all the time, and that the short, obvious answer is not always the right one.

The second is the Sunset Western Garden Book, which sounds funny, but I learned most of the basics of gardening from it. Botany and horticulture also became passions for me, and before I picked up this book I knew nothing about plants. It's still my most used general gardening book, with dirt stains and book marks sticking out all over. Even if the orchid section isn't very good.
 
I decided not to drink alcohol partly due to a non-drinking character in a book I read once. Not hugely influential or completely to do with him, but that's something I've changed due to reading a book. Don't think I've read anything else I've considered influential more than just putting across a view I hadn't considered or had well argued, but nothing life changing.
 
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving prompted me to consider a number of different ideas about God. I don't think it really changed my mind, so much as pushed it open a little more.
 
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Reading it, you come to understand that merely because a person is destitute, that in itself is not a reflection of a weak or poor character, of laziness, or of any inferiority of spirit. You come to understand that, through the capriciousness of outrageous fortune, anybody could find themselves in dire circumstances, even you.
 
Novels like 1984 and Brave New World definately made me realise that sometimes making people happy and being happy yourself is not always the most important thing in life. It showed me that rather than protect people their whole life in order to guard them from the horrers of reality, it is better to let them go free and experience these things themselves, in order to build their character and their tolerance to things that may go wrong in their life. It showed me that guarding and protecting is not always helpful and positive.
 
Year 501 by Noam Chomsky, really deconstructed U.S. foreign policy and showed me the real reasons why foreign policy events occur.
 
Hard Times by Dickens. Made me re-evaluate my position on capitalism and labour.
 
Hmm.......

I'd have to say

Confessions of a mask - yukio mishima

along with

American Psycho - Brett Ellison
 
I know it might seem crazy but ONE of the most influential pieces of writing I've ever read was only about 4-5 pages. It was Vonneguts "Harrison Bergeron". I loved it through and through and it gave me a totally different view on egalitarianism.
 
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Scared the hell outta me as a teen and changed the way I look at a lot of things.

The Story of O by Pauline Reage. Introduced me to a whole other world of books besides Stephen King and Robert E. Howard, which was pretty much all I was reading in my early teen years, when I discovered this book.
 
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevskiy. That book is such a masterpiece, and the three brothers each brilliantly represent different moral, philosophical and religious standpoints. It's touching, exciting, psychologically intriguing and philosophically unrivalled.

The speech in the end is something to keep in your mind as you walk through life.
 
ions said:
Hard Times by Dickens. Made me re-evaluate my position on capitalism and labour.
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In that case I hope you reminded yourself that the novel was written in 1854, so using it against capitalism would be unfair. We've come a long way since 1854.
 
Morty said:
In that case I hope you reminded yourself that the novel was written in 1854, so using it against capitalism would be unfair. We've come a long way since 1854.
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LOL. Or maybe not?
 
Violanthe said:
Ghostwritten... What did you find so influential about it?
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David Mitchell's use of separate naratives to tell one giant story. number9dream did this in a slightly different way, and Cloud Atlas as well. David Mitchell is one of the two authors who got me interested in writing; Stephen King is the other. Both styles of writting are reflected a bit in my own works.
 
Morty said:
In that case I hope you reminded yourself that the novel was written in 1854, so using it against capitalism would be unfair. We've come a long way since 1854.
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I don't know, an Indonesian sweat-shop is just as similar to one in America circa 1900. The only difference is the ethnicity of the workers who are under-paid and over-worked.
 
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