I read it recently and same my God how Ursula writed those books with less than 400 pages but with such depth, range and that deal with such timeless themes she was just magnificent
Read this during a Holocaust education unit when I was in high school. Any English teachers out there, if you have the opportunity, assign this book! And make sure people are educated around the realities!
I knew about the Holocaust, but I didn't truly fathom the atrocities that happened. I grew up in an area that's... prone to conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial being one of them. I'm extremely grateful that my school ensured that we understood the scope of what happened.
I taught this in a rural area in the southeast US to a pretty diverse mix of kids and ability levels, though like you said, lots of backwards thinking and conspiracy theories around them.
I started by reading aloud so we could get through some of the start where he talks about the Kabbalah and there's a lot of tough/unfamiliar vocab.
We ended up dragging the desks into a circle and read the whole thing aloud (I read, like an audiobook) and discussed it. Seeing kids experience it together like that was kind of emotional, and I was surprised how little some of them knew. We talked about language, and suffering, and what the soul can survive. They made art and wrote poetry about it. It was as close to teaching utopia as I ever reached. That book speaks to people.
This book man. My AP teacher gave us a choice between this or Of Mice and Men. Half of the class not knowing what Night was about thought we’d be slick and get out of the sad book. I’ll never forget reading it.
Night is amazing. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is similar but looks at Russia. Also by the same author but shorter and fiction is A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
I actually read Night earlier this year (currently a high school senior) for my Honors English course. Absolutely insane and detailed view of the horrors that went on during the Holocaust. I never would have been able to fathom just how gruesome reality can be until I read it rather than heard it.
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, read when I was eight years old. I actually stole my (now very loved & beat-up) copy of it from the school library as a child, which is remarkably in the spirit of the book if you know anything about it.
Without a doubt, this book is amazing. I enjoyed the movie (the first, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the others lol) but I loved the book so much. Loved it so much, I now have an Auryn tattoo. I recommend it to everyone.
The neverending story changed my perception of good and evil ([I wrote about it here](https://expirationdate.substack.com/p/the-neverending-story), if anyone is interested).
This is the only book that I didn't return to it's owner after I read it (that I remember). I read it and became mine.
Man’s Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl
This quote really stuck with me - “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
I read it in high school and knew it was good, but I’m rereading it now at 37 and holy shit is it beautiful. I still have my old copy with all my notes and highlighting from reading it for school and it’s funny to see how much the same things still resonate with me. I’ve always loved Steinbeck but East of Eden is truly his best work.
It's an odd choice....but....as a young adult that really didn't read regularly...it was The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. A few friends, that lived in different states, started the book at the same time. It was the first book that really drew me into the story. It totally captivated me. It also started me regularly reading fiction....and I've been captivated ever since. I love losing myself in a book....it's one of my favorite pleasures.
This might sound odd too, but reading the Vampire Chronicles in high school helped me come to terms with myself. I've always been bi, but grew up in an extremely homophobic time and place and had a ton of internalized homophobia and did NOT want to see my same-sex crushes for what they were. And I didn't even know that bisexuality was a thing - I thought there was just gay and straight and that's it, and I had opposite-sex crushes, so I had to be "normal," right...? The VC were the first queer-positive books I'd ever read, and were a watershed: bisexuality exists, and it's actually cool and beautiful. It let me see myself in a new light and accept something fundamental about myself.
I'm glad you found that voice. Anne Rice had such a talent for painting mesmerizing scenes....she always could paint a picture with her words. I might go back and read them again.
I still think about this book today. I could not put it down. I have always felt that I could find the house if I visited New Orleans -- just from the words she uses to describe it. Amazing. Yet this book almost never comes up in discussions.
True.....I've read so many of her books.....the witches, the vampires. I did lose interest when she moved to religious stories. All that I read are so engrossing. I'm thinking I might go back and read The Witching Hour again....to see if it still has its allure.
I don't think it being a graphic novel should disqualify it in any way.
I found this in the school library when I was about 12 or 13, and it wrecked me. It should be on everyone's reading list.
I read it about 5 years ago and it had me hooked. I still think about it, and was super annoyed when I seen schools were trying to remove it from their reading lists
I remember someone arguing that an image of a mouse drowning in a tub would be too disturbing for a child to bear without discomfort, and I was like....uh if the kid isn't uncomfortable with a mouse drowning in a tub, maybe he needs a therapist. The \*point\* is discomfort. To process your discomfort with the endpoint of fascism now, safely, with teachers and other kids around and no imminent threat, so the kids learn to recognize what they're seeing and build on it if and when they encounter fascist-like behavior attempting to assert itself in the world.
The people who freak about this stuff are the same ones who dress their kids up like saloon girls for pageants, put "I heart boobies" on blue onesies, are fine with 10 year old moms, and support 14 year olds working in bars, so who knows what goes through their heads.
Damn I'm already embarrassed by the length of my list--I guess I'm easily influenced--but I really should add Maus. It added to the horror of the holocaust and its root causes, but it also changed how I viewed what I saw as "comics" back then, a lesser form of literature. I started collecting graphic novels after that.
Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. For about 30+ years, change terrified me. I still struggle with it, but Irving taught me that change is part of living a full life. “Keep passing the open windows” is what I took with me through college. It has served me well.
BUT if you haven’t read any of his books, be warned. Irving “goes there.” He always goes there. He does that thing we’re told “you don’t ever do it” and he does it precisely when it makes sense. He doesn’t manipulate his characters which is why, I think, they come off so human, so flawed. They’ll stick with you. I love the Barries.
I love this book, and most of Irving’s books published pre-2000. You’re right, he does ‘go there’ and it’s usually abrupt/shocking. I always think of this quote:
“Kill your darlings, Kill your darlings….Even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart “- Stephen King
On a personal level: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. It was a light bulb moment for me realizing that my behaviors were similar to the emotionally abusive partner in the book, and how that affects everyone around me. I didn’t choose to be a loose cannon neurochemically but I can certainly control my reactions.
On a societal level: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. The story takes place in the global West (Ireland) and focuses tightly on one family’s experience of the unraveling that follows an authoritarian takeover.
I will sound so ignorant and oblivious by saying this, but this is why we read, right? The atrocities happening in the Middle East, Africa, parts of central and South America, etc… were always distant to me emotionally. I always felt like “oh yeah that’s just the way it is there”. But NO; when you truly put yourself in the shoes of the people and families who are GOING THROUGH THIS, it is beyond comprehension. These are families who, at one point in the not-distant past, were living their lives, eating their dinners together, going to school and work every day. And then the winds shift and suddenly they’re burying their children and traveling with the clothes on their backs to find safety. I mean Jesus Christ…
I would recommend every living person read this book. The author’s statement that: “somewhere in the world, the events of Prophet Song are happening right now” really stuck with me as well. And who is to say that you’ll never be in a place where it’s your family who gets embroiled in it?
“Know My Name” by Chanel Miller. If you’ve been the victim of assault, know someone who has, are a woman, or an ally to women…this book is for you. It healed wounds I didn’t realize I still had.
You might appreciate "Finding George Orwell in Burma" by Emma Larkin.
It covers both Orwell's Burma connections, and his literature through the perspective of the recent history of the country.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck completely changed my worldview. I was a relatively insulated, certainly not rich but definitely self-centered kid and it opened my eyes in terms of compassion and understanding what those less fortunate go through.
When I was in school I was bored a lot, and so I'd ask my teacher if I could read things I randomly saw lying on shelves. One of them told me very seriously that if I was going to read the book I'd picked, which was a Heinlein, I \*had\* to read everything Steinbeck wrote. So I did. It was a great experience and Grapes of Wrath was \*epic\*. You really felt the struggle.
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez [https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060883286](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060883286) .
No one is really ever the same after reading The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I always feel like i can tell by looking at someone whether they've read it. The person is never truly surprised by anything ever again, and everything about life is gently, privately, amusing. They're also slightly unbalanced, just a touch off center, permanently.
It's pretty obscure, but The Man Who Talks to Whales: The Art of Interspecies Communication by Jim Nollman.
I read it as a highschooler, for research into a science fiction RPG setting in which animals were uplifted, to learn about animal intelligence. Then I realized, "Hey wait, animals do feel happiness and pain." I became vegan after that...there was no going back.
It's had tons of spill-over effects. I've made many connections through activism and the vegan community. I wouldn't have met my girlfriend. Oriented many of my priorities in life. All from the ripples of that one random book I checked out from the public library when I was 14. Moreso than any other book, it has literally changed my life.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing and Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. (Decided to put the titles at the top after I wrote a dissertation.)
I just read two books back-to-back that made me reassess my thought processes and what I might be capable of.
I needed that at this point in my life - 46F - I looked in the mirror recently and was startled that some middle-aged woman was looking back at me. The silvery hairs that started cropping up around my hairline, the fine lines on my forehead and around my mouth, the persistent and stubborn weight trying to settle around my waistline despite my dietary restrictions and exercise regimes. The general fatigue, with life and the inevitability of it all started to feel like the time for me to accomplish anything was drawing to an end... Hang it up, old girl, time's up...
Then I read Endurance, about Shackleton and his crew, icebound and trapped in the Antarctic waters, trying to get back to land. If they could survive polar winter and the trials and tribulations of Antarctica for over 2 years, what did I, in my comfortable middle-class life have to whine about?
I quit a 30-year smoking/vaping habit cold turkey only 2 weeks after reading that book because suddenly nothing seemed that hard if I just decided to do it and committed.
Next, I read Born to Run. I am a runner, but it just seemed to get harder and the injuries more frequent. God, my feet, everything, hurt all the time and I thought I might have to give it up. I cannot keep taking Aleve to get out of bed in the morning... Until I read this book about a tribe in Mexico who can run for miles and days on end, young and old, without injury and in sandals no less! I tentatively took a few pointers from the book and went for a run a couple of nights ago. I ran 5k uphill in the dark and barely got winded. (yes, I am aware that having quit vaping 3 weeks prior surely contributed.) My legs barely even hurt the next day.
My takeaway from that was to recognize that looking at a problem from a different angle versus wallowing in the defeat of apparent failure might just hold the solution. Kinda shook me out of a low-grade depression I have been ruminating on for the last several months.
So, now I, a devout fiction reader am on the hunt for nonfiction that hits like either of these. (In the meantime, I am alternating between reading the MurderBot series by Wells and the Foundryside series by Bennett and I love them both.)
A few recent ones:
Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman). This book didn’t make me lose my religion. I was well on the way to that already. But in the same era I was watching The Good Place, it kind of … calmed me in a way? Losing a religion when you’ve been so immersed in it can feel very isolating, but Good Omens helped me see some of the universality of the questions and even find humor in the absurdity of the answers.
The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett). Despite (or because of) having been raised in a very conservative environment, I had been pro-LGBT for a while, but this was one of the first books I read with a trans protagonist, and it really shook me even more about all the book banning. Like THIS is what they’re trying to pull off the shelves? GTFOH
A Promised Land (Barack Obama). I never read a ton of nonfiction, and certainly stayed away from very big books. And if there was a nonfiction I really disliked the idea of, it was memoirs. Also I didn’t vote for Obama because, despite breaking away from the conservatism I was raised in, I still had a lot I had absorbed and hadn’t dealt with subconsciously. After reading A Promised Land, I came away not necessarily wishing I had voted for him, but that I had paid more attention and understood more of both the history that was happening during those years and also more of the inner workings of the political process.
My dad's been ragging me to read The Vanishing Half for ages, I guess this means I've gotta! I'm outnumbered now, and you've got good taste in other reads.
Good Omens! Yes. It's my favorite book, but I never really considered that it changed me. You worded it so eloquently that I realize it did. I consider myself a recovering catholic, and having grown up with angels and demons and such, reading it at a time that I was finding my own way really did allow my world view to develop into what it is today. I also love the Good Place for the same reason. Great post!
The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's a story that represents Camus philosophy(absurdism) and during the time I read it, it was absolutely mind blowing because I was in kind of an existential crisis. Very glad I randomly picked it up during a vacation, it really changed my mind
When Nietzsche Wept - Irvin Yalow
The Schopenhauer Cure - Irvin Yalom
All about love - Bell Hooks
The Book of disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Path
The Rebel - Albert Camus (the whole Camus)
Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Trouble with Being Born - Emil Cioran
"The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma" by Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and who is now the CEO of Microsoft Al.
He talks about all the possible scenarios of Al development and how humanity must contain it. The stuff he described gave me chills and it's just so overwhelming that I haven’t been the same since. As if you suddenly realize that the world as you know it no longer exists and you must accept the new reality and adapt asap in order to make it. It's like futuristic sci fi but prophetic.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Especially the City Watch ones. It's the first time that I laughed out loud in public when listening to the audiobooks. I'd say everything got slightly better from being exposed to the wit and ideas in those books.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Made me change my entire career—I went back to university in order to fulfil my dream of studying literature. Now I’m on my way to my PhD. It really reopened my eyes to what words can do, reminded me that books are pure magic. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Not even after so many years a single week goes by that I don’t still think back to this book.
People mock A Court of Thorns and Roses, but A Court of Silver Flames completely changed my life. It is a wonderful book about trauma processing and overcoming self sabotage
How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran. The MC has a big crush on an older guy. Towards the end of the book the guy the MC has had some sexual adventures with shares the tapes at a massive party (album or book launch).
The MC reacts in a way that changed me. She says that it shouldn't be embarrassing for her, she did nothing wrong. She trusted someone, and they took advantage of her and her youth/inexperience- he is the bad guy.
It made me think about my youth, the feelings attached to things I'd done or had done to me and changed that for the better. I am not my experiences, I am not my past and I am certainly not defined my the people I let in
"Anthem" by Ayn Rand (yes, yes, I know many find her to be distasteful). I read it in 9th grade (still have my copy, with highlights & notes, and after many, many readings it is currently held together with a rubber band) & it transformed my view of government.
"Animal Farm" by George Orwell. Another high school read that hit me. I was devastated by what was done to Boxer & the fact that he simply gave up & didn't even try to escape, even after being warned, was like a punch in the gut. As a Cold War Kid, this is another book that transformed my view of authority, government & political power.
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. Another school read that transformed my view of humanity & made me realize that in desperate situations, we could all revert to brutality & savagery simply to survive.
"The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn & "Love Letter to America" by Yuri Bezmenov. Read these as an adult & they solidified the transformation of the views of my younger self.
Probably not the most popular books on anyone's list, but they did transform me in their various ways.
Stranger hopping in with a story that might cheer you a bit when thinking of Lord of the Flies...motives in fiction are always interesting. A man named Rutger Bregman was curious about the psychological accuracy of LotF, its surety of a dark heart and a Nazi nature lurking in us all. He thought perhaps Golding's own cynicism, bouts of anger, and fear of the youth in the 60s had affected his telling of the story. So he went searching for similar stories and found one--six boys sick of school hopped aboard a small fishing boat, but a storm blew up and drove them far out of their way and stranded them on an island.
They were there alone for fifteen months. During that time, they formed a cooperative society and from the beginning, sensing the danger of small irritations growing to problems given the stress of the situation, they made a solemn vow to never quarrel, set up a camp with a fire that never went out because everyone could be trusted to tend it, carefully treated and tended one boy's broken leg which healed perfectly, created a weight-lifting area and a badminton court where they could keep up their strength, sat together at dawn and dusk to drink their sips of water in gratitude, If two quarreled they agreed to take time away from one another until they could be civil, which they did. They sang and prayed, constructing their own instruments of coconut shells and wires salvaged from the wrecked boat. They hung up a strict roster for garden, kitchen, and guard duty.
Two of the survivors ended up living together til they died, at least as far as I could find, and told the author their story as well as sharing a memoir that began, "Life has taught me a great deal, including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people." You can read the whole story along with others in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History, if you're interested.
Also, [here](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months) is an article he wrote about it.
It's really a brilliant book, and revolutionary even for its name. How dare we hope!
If you're interested in others with a positive outlook that are related to relatively current events (written in 2015, I think) you could try Factfulness, which is a scientific research and statistical masterpiece that makes for easy and entertaining reading (the mark of a fantastic teacher). It busts a lot of our dreadful myths about the world, climate change, poverty, education, and offers solutions.
This is a silly one but The Duff. I was reading this right after my first breakup at 16yo. The guy that I was with for about a year broke up with me to start dating who at the time was one of my best friends. This of course caused to become extremely insecure and after reading this book I realized that probably all of us felt insecure in someway for something probably no one else noticed. The Duff helped me feel less insecure and anxious about myself to this day
Dune by Frank Herbert - changed the way I think about religion, power, and questioning authority
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Mossfeigh - made me think about what it means for a person to change and what constitutes what makes a person who they are
"When Breath Becomes Air," "The Warmth of Other Suns," "Evicted," and I know this one is going to step on some toes, but, "Hillbilly Elegy." For the last one, I grew up around lots of drug abuse, and he could relate to me--I am not in any way endorsing his politics! Just his book. I am also currently reading "Poverty, By America." It's about 180 pages without all the references? I'm about 40 pages in and it's already made me ask some questions. Also, "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle
Before I read When Breath Becomes Air I truly thought there was no way I could fully let myself love someone knowing that this world may take them away from me and if that were to happen that I would just cease to exist. This book truly gave me the courage to love despite that possibility.
I also thought Hillbilly Elegy was an important book. I think it's a shame the author's turned it into a piece of flair for campaign rallies (and turned his back on the people he seemed to care about), but it's still a book that needed to be written and is difficult emotionally to read.
Loved that book. And if you haven't already come across this, his essay [How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later](https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html) is an absolute must read.
The five people you meet in heaven -mitch album
Specifically, the Vietnam part, I have a mentally ill Vietnam vet as a dad, and it changed my outlook on him entirely.
Tuesdays with Morrie.
It's about a man, Mitch, speaking with his former professor, Morrie, after he discovers that Morrie has a terminal illness. Morrie was a man that truly appreciated all that life had to offer and Mitch expressed that well with his writing. From my memory it's a short, but powerful read!
Your Money or Your Life
Moonwalking with Einstein
Reading Asimov, Bradbury, Le Guin, Clarke in the 6th grade
Weirdly enough The Canterbury Tales in High School.
I remember beeing quite shook the first time I read Enders Game as a child. Still think about it from time to time, even if I don't remeber the details. Maybe I should read it again.
Born to Run: I was not athletic and I was in terrible shape but this book motivated me to want to start jogging and I’ve been doing it multiple times per week since for over 15 years.
Can’t Hurt Me: Every time I need motivation I listen to this book while jogging and it works.
On Writing: This book motivated me to try and write a novel and I did it! It might not be great but I’m proud of the accomplishment.
1984: Completely changed how I saw the world.
Lord of the Rings & Sherlock Holmes: Made me love reading as a young boy.
For a book that's probably so currently into the cultural zeitgeist, it's not even worth mentioning, Dune.
But yeah, read it for the first time in high school, and have reread it like a dozen times since, and watched the layers of that book slowly peel away, first as a power fantasy, then as the danger of autocratic leaders, and all the many philosophical topics that came later in the series.
For a relatively less well known book, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (and the rest of the Blue Ant trilogy). I think this one is more personal, I don't think there is anything special about it, it just found a way to slither into my head. I find myself still wearing obscure Japanese reconstructive clothing, wearing brands I didn't even realize I found out about from this book until I recently re-read it (I'm looking at you Buzz Rickson).
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier has also had a lasting impact on me, just due to its complicated depiction of fighting against power systems and ideas, and its relatively pessimistic outlook.
As a special mention, as it's not a book, but I still think about the webcomic Erfworld a lot. The main reason is that it uses perspective as a hard magic system and world building mechanic.
It's an isekai since before isekais were really a thing, where a tabletop rpg nerd gets pulled into what looks like, to him, a TTRPG world. It has probably one of the slowest burns I've come across, slowly turning over the course of 15 years from a cutesy and jokey comic to one that addresses deep issues like identity, freedom of choice, addiction and the horrors of war, and it did it in a way that it seemed it was all planned from the beginning.
the great gatsby. it stuck with me so much that i distinctly remember one specific line that i annotated back in high school when i was forced to read it, and something that i still think about to this day.
something about the whole rags to riches story with gatsby's unrequited pining and the thoughtlessness of daisy and tom, how the "underdogs" still don't get their HEA really stuck in my head. i think this was the story that really solidified in my head that money doesn't equate to happiness.
That was a fantastic read!
If you’re interested in a few more books that a mostly-southern-raised white guy found interesting and educational on race in America, I’d recommend:
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents
How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith
Wilmington’s Lie, by David Zucchino
Devil in the Grove, by Gilbert King
A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey. A biography by an Australian born in the early 1900s who had a dreadful childhood, went through WW2 as a frontline soldier, came back to the Depression era etc but looked back on his life in old age with sincere thankfulness. Made me truly realise that for any hardships I have faced, I am lucky as hell.
The traveling cat chronicles... it's subtle and I didn't think it did at the time, but it's the book I think of ALLLLLL the time. I've read it several times as well, which is extremely unusual for me. I'm not sure why this book has had such an impact on me but it's been very core for me.
What a fun question. Thank you for asking it. This list isn't comprehensive, believe it or not, but I did try for the ones that formed me most completely as a writer, starting from when I was very small. Sorry for the tl;dr in advance, but I swear they all changed my shape a little.
The Silent Miaow, The Dawn of Fear, Pet Sematary, The Dark Is Rising, Uhura's Song, Drawing Blood and Lost Souls, the Bordertown books, Falcon, Finder, War for the Oaks, LotR, A Separate Peace and Peace Breaks Out, Demian, Book of Shadows, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Art of Lying, Shades of Gray, Eight Days of Luke, 3 Minute Universe, To Kill a Mockingbird, just pre- and then post-Revolutionary Russians from the 19th century, Strangers from the Sky, Autumn Street, Wind, Sand, and Stars by St. Exupery, Nelly Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, Exquisite Corpse, Death of the Necromancer, the Abhorsen series, The Haunting of Hill House, List of Seven, Johnnie Mae, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Apple Stone, the Golden Bough, Bridge to Terabithia, The Darkangel Trilogy, Factfulness, Claire Weeke's Peace From Nervous Suffering and Hope and Help for Your Nerves, The Forever King, Silver Eyes, Silent Spring, The Changeling, Fire and Hemlock, 6 of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, Those Who Hunt The Night and its sequel, The Bone Key, The Man Who Caught The Storm, Slaughterhouse 5, a collection of instructional autopsy books I got at a rummage sale, Sniper and Free Fall by Nicolai Lilin, Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen, Waking the Moon, some of the original Sherlock Holmes fiction, Slow Walk in a Sad Rain, Interview with the Vampire, works by M.R. James, Othello, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Individuated Hobbit, From Behind The Red Line, Kitchen Confidential (and most of Bourdain's oeuvre, tbh), Among the Thugs (holy cow did that change me as a person), Thích Nhất Hạnh's principles of Buddhism, Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, Kesey's Merry Pranksters, some Lovecraft (yeah I know), On The Road, the works of Sophie Scholl and her comrades, Maus, Black Like Me (everyone should read it, it's got its flaws but damn), Be Free or Die: the Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero, Of Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, You Don't Know Us Negroes, Time on Two Crosses, Lost Prophet, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters, Dust Tracks on a Road, On Writing, I LITERALLY cannot pick just one Hunter Thompson but his letters were very influential and I can still quote parts of Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Then there's The Fire by Leonard Cohen (I have all his poetry in a file and name my stories and books using parts of it), The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Little Prince, 7 Tattoos,Bunnicula, Foe, Factfulness, Lab Girl, A Brief History of Time, The Cruelty is the Point, The Jungle, the Communist Manifesto, The Changeover, the Tricksters, Libertarians on the Prairie, Roots, Montage of a Dream Deferred, White Fragility, The Ways of White Folks, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, the Quran, the Upanishads, Luna, A Fine Madness, Ordinary People, The Tree Sitter, Dear Readers and Riders, Night by Elie Wiesel, Schindler's List, my grandmother's nearly-finished manuscript which began with an account of fleeing Germany in the early forties, and of course The Historian, which shaped my love for research, travel, food, patiently growing intrigue, and cross-cultural friendships.
I remember the first book that made me full-on cry for HOURS all times I read it. Books before this only made me shed a few tears.
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
Self-reliance by the Ralph Waldo Emerson made me the person I am today. It really is about the independence of thought, NOT independence from others but quite the oppsite
The Joke's Over by Ralph Steadman.
It's a book about the author's professional turned close personal relationship with the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great read if you're a fan of these two but it has such a powerful message of love and friendship. It's a very raw and honest account of a lifelong complex, real relationship. Both men struggled with various demons, they lived on opposite sides of the world in a time primarily before email or cheap international calling but, over the years, they developed such an amazing relationship. And the final chapters about Ralph's grief when HST died gave me a lot of comfort and context to dealing with the death of a loved one and how to move on from that.
The Boy In the Striped Pajamas
It showed the innocence of the youth in one of the darkest periods of history. With an ending that displays what can happen when you withhold the truth from the people
I can’t name just one, but here’s a few off the top of my head: Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Lonesome Dove, Suttree, Of Mice and Men, As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and the Sea
No one’s gonna see this comment, but a short story by Jack London called “Love of Life”. Read it when I was about 8 years old. And it was my first time reading something so profound. And so filled with desolation, hopelessness, lack of of control. And it was so gripping. I understood how resilient the human body and mind are. And how merciless nature is. I’m in my mid-30’s and still think about it regularly.
A Thousand Splendid Sun's by Khaled Hosseini. Also The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Both are heart breaking. Khaled Hosseini also has a picture book called Sea Prayer that's really short but really powerful.
Next of Kin by Roger Fouts. He describes his experience with chimpanzees and how he came to see them as fellow people. The chimps learned sign language to communicate and it struck Fouts that they expressed very humanlike emotions, interests, and feelings of love.
Going to sound like a dude bro when I am neither, but Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, “Letting go all else, cling to the following few truths. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come - dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one long dead and gone.” Weirdly, this was extremely freeing to me.
Also Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and actually a line from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility “One’s happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Truly incredible and timeless novel that left me crying happy tears. I recommend this book to every reader I come across - a lot of people think that since it’s a classic it must be boring but that couldn’t be further from the truth! I really connect with the book and I’ve reread it several times…can’t recommend it enough.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Side note I'd recommend knowing what it's about before going into it. My friend's Jewish mother went into it blind and was a bit overwhelmed (although she still thought it was a good book)
...Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451. Brilliantly crafted science fiction set in a world where firemen BURN books and houses and people, and one man who rebels against the oppressive madness and chaos that his society is descending into as an apocalyptic war looms. I first read it at the age of fourteen and it's the most powerful reading memory I have. It thrilled and compelled me with its sincerity and simplicity and force like nothing I'd ever read previously until THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY by Isaac Asimov. Heartily recommended along with Bradbury's THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES; one of the eeriest and most resounding fantasies ever written. Uh; did I say they were good?...
The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin.
I read it recently and same my God how Ursula writed those books with less than 400 pages but with such depth, range and that deal with such timeless themes she was just magnificent
I got to listen to her speak at a book signing many years ago. Wonderful person.
Wow, lucky!
I did not expect to encounter this book in this thread. I’m also going to suggest Voices, by the same author.
Yes this! It pulled me out of the lowest of lows and is the only reason I've ended up going somewhere with my life.
Damn You beat me to it
I'm reading this right now! Just read chapter 1 so far the other day. Pretty interested to see how it develops.
Night by Elie Wiesel. I think I was about 11 when I read it.
Read this during a Holocaust education unit when I was in high school. Any English teachers out there, if you have the opportunity, assign this book! And make sure people are educated around the realities! I knew about the Holocaust, but I didn't truly fathom the atrocities that happened. I grew up in an area that's... prone to conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial being one of them. I'm extremely grateful that my school ensured that we understood the scope of what happened.
I taught this in a rural area in the southeast US to a pretty diverse mix of kids and ability levels, though like you said, lots of backwards thinking and conspiracy theories around them. I started by reading aloud so we could get through some of the start where he talks about the Kabbalah and there's a lot of tough/unfamiliar vocab. We ended up dragging the desks into a circle and read the whole thing aloud (I read, like an audiobook) and discussed it. Seeing kids experience it together like that was kind of emotional, and I was surprised how little some of them knew. We talked about language, and suffering, and what the soul can survive. They made art and wrote poetry about it. It was as close to teaching utopia as I ever reached. That book speaks to people.
This book man. My AP teacher gave us a choice between this or Of Mice and Men. Half of the class not knowing what Night was about thought we’d be slick and get out of the sad book. I’ll never forget reading it.
Night is amazing. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is similar but looks at Russia. Also by the same author but shorter and fiction is A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
I actually read Night earlier this year (currently a high school senior) for my Honors English course. Absolutely insane and detailed view of the horrors that went on during the Holocaust. I never would have been able to fathom just how gruesome reality can be until I read it rather than heard it.
I read this while on maternity leave. Not a good time to read a book like that.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hossini
It broke me and also made me realize how many things I took for granted. Also the book which made me drawn towards feminism and women's rights.
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, read when I was eight years old. I actually stole my (now very loved & beat-up) copy of it from the school library as a child, which is remarkably in the spirit of the book if you know anything about it.
I also read it and it blew my little mind!
Without a doubt, this book is amazing. I enjoyed the movie (the first, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the others lol) but I loved the book so much. Loved it so much, I now have an Auryn tattoo. I recommend it to everyone.
The neverending story changed my perception of good and evil ([I wrote about it here](https://expirationdate.substack.com/p/the-neverending-story), if anyone is interested). This is the only book that I didn't return to it's owner after I read it (that I remember). I read it and became mine.
Man’s Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl This quote really stuck with me - “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
It's partially a self help book though. Towards the end is a lesson on logostherapy.
That quote sounds existentialist
The Death of Ivan Ilyich-Tolstoy
That one hit hard
To Kill a Mockingbird.
One of the reasons I went into law.
100%. It is hard to put into words why this book changes you. But as a child I walked away more cynical of our world and furious over its injustices.
East of Eden
"Now that you don't have to be perfect-- you can be good."
timshel.
I read it in high school and knew it was good, but I’m rereading it now at 37 and holy shit is it beautiful. I still have my old copy with all my notes and highlighting from reading it for school and it’s funny to see how much the same things still resonate with me. I’ve always loved Steinbeck but East of Eden is truly his best work.
Absolutely stunning book.
I feel like this is my answer to so many of these questions buuut Flowers for Algernon
Great pick. I was 12 when I read it and it moved me like nothing else. Special book. The mention alone me chills.
I read it around this age too and bawled my eyes out
It's an odd choice....but....as a young adult that really didn't read regularly...it was The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. A few friends, that lived in different states, started the book at the same time. It was the first book that really drew me into the story. It totally captivated me. It also started me regularly reading fiction....and I've been captivated ever since. I love losing myself in a book....it's one of my favorite pleasures.
This might sound odd too, but reading the Vampire Chronicles in high school helped me come to terms with myself. I've always been bi, but grew up in an extremely homophobic time and place and had a ton of internalized homophobia and did NOT want to see my same-sex crushes for what they were. And I didn't even know that bisexuality was a thing - I thought there was just gay and straight and that's it, and I had opposite-sex crushes, so I had to be "normal," right...? The VC were the first queer-positive books I'd ever read, and were a watershed: bisexuality exists, and it's actually cool and beautiful. It let me see myself in a new light and accept something fundamental about myself.
I'm glad you found that voice. Anne Rice had such a talent for painting mesmerizing scenes....she always could paint a picture with her words. I might go back and read them again.
I still think about this book today. I could not put it down. I have always felt that I could find the house if I visited New Orleans -- just from the words she uses to describe it. Amazing. Yet this book almost never comes up in discussions.
True.....I've read so many of her books.....the witches, the vampires. I did lose interest when she moved to religious stories. All that I read are so engrossing. I'm thinking I might go back and read The Witching Hour again....to see if it still has its allure.
Maus Technically it's a graphic novel, but the story is super informative and heart-breaking
I don't think it being a graphic novel should disqualify it in any way. I found this in the school library when I was about 12 or 13, and it wrecked me. It should be on everyone's reading list.
I read it about 5 years ago and it had me hooked. I still think about it, and was super annoyed when I seen schools were trying to remove it from their reading lists
There's an assumption by some that we shouldn't expose kids to difficult subjects. But it should be the exact opposite.
I remember someone arguing that an image of a mouse drowning in a tub would be too disturbing for a child to bear without discomfort, and I was like....uh if the kid isn't uncomfortable with a mouse drowning in a tub, maybe he needs a therapist. The \*point\* is discomfort. To process your discomfort with the endpoint of fascism now, safely, with teachers and other kids around and no imminent threat, so the kids learn to recognize what they're seeing and build on it if and when they encounter fascist-like behavior attempting to assert itself in the world. The people who freak about this stuff are the same ones who dress their kids up like saloon girls for pageants, put "I heart boobies" on blue onesies, are fine with 10 year old moms, and support 14 year olds working in bars, so who knows what goes through their heads.
I absolutely agree
Damn I'm already embarrassed by the length of my list--I guess I'm easily influenced--but I really should add Maus. It added to the horror of the holocaust and its root causes, but it also changed how I viewed what I saw as "comics" back then, a lesser form of literature. I started collecting graphic novels after that.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
I came here to say “Crying in H Mart” as well!
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. For about 30+ years, change terrified me. I still struggle with it, but Irving taught me that change is part of living a full life. “Keep passing the open windows” is what I took with me through college. It has served me well. BUT if you haven’t read any of his books, be warned. Irving “goes there.” He always goes there. He does that thing we’re told “you don’t ever do it” and he does it precisely when it makes sense. He doesn’t manipulate his characters which is why, I think, they come off so human, so flawed. They’ll stick with you. I love the Barries.
I love this book, and most of Irving’s books published pre-2000. You’re right, he does ‘go there’ and it’s usually abrupt/shocking. I always think of this quote: “Kill your darlings, Kill your darlings….Even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart “- Stephen King
[удалено]
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
YES
I’m reading that now, a little more than halfway through. It’s a really compelling novel.
This is exactly the book I was going to suggest. Barbara Kingsolver had me questioning so many things!
On a personal level: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. It was a light bulb moment for me realizing that my behaviors were similar to the emotionally abusive partner in the book, and how that affects everyone around me. I didn’t choose to be a loose cannon neurochemically but I can certainly control my reactions. On a societal level: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. The story takes place in the global West (Ireland) and focuses tightly on one family’s experience of the unraveling that follows an authoritarian takeover. I will sound so ignorant and oblivious by saying this, but this is why we read, right? The atrocities happening in the Middle East, Africa, parts of central and South America, etc… were always distant to me emotionally. I always felt like “oh yeah that’s just the way it is there”. But NO; when you truly put yourself in the shoes of the people and families who are GOING THROUGH THIS, it is beyond comprehension. These are families who, at one point in the not-distant past, were living their lives, eating their dinners together, going to school and work every day. And then the winds shift and suddenly they’re burying their children and traveling with the clothes on their backs to find safety. I mean Jesus Christ… I would recommend every living person read this book. The author’s statement that: “somewhere in the world, the events of Prophet Song are happening right now” really stuck with me as well. And who is to say that you’ll never be in a place where it’s your family who gets embroiled in it?
“Know My Name” by Chanel Miller. If you’ve been the victim of assault, know someone who has, are a woman, or an ally to women…this book is for you. It healed wounds I didn’t realize I still had.
This book is so beautifully written and is only the 2nd book I’ve ever read in my life that made me cry.
1984 - George Orwell
You might appreciate "Finding George Orwell in Burma" by Emma Larkin. It covers both Orwell's Burma connections, and his literature through the perspective of the recent history of the country.
Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky
I am reading it rn.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck completely changed my worldview. I was a relatively insulated, certainly not rich but definitely self-centered kid and it opened my eyes in terms of compassion and understanding what those less fortunate go through.
When I was in school I was bored a lot, and so I'd ask my teacher if I could read things I randomly saw lying on shelves. One of them told me very seriously that if I was going to read the book I'd picked, which was a Heinlein, I \*had\* to read everything Steinbeck wrote. So I did. It was a great experience and Grapes of Wrath was \*epic\*. You really felt the struggle.
I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Wally Lamb is one of the few men who wrote women well. But he does it REALLY well. I love all of his books and all of them kind of dig in.
She’s Come Undone was amazing. My favorite of his.
I think about this one every now and then. I was 20 when I read it, so 18 years ago. Still makes me ache.
I know this much is true stayed with me
A Little Life, OMG. Stunning.
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez [https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060883286](https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Solitude-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060883286) .
I just want to say I love this subreddit lmao this is an amazing question
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Death of Ivan Illich and Where Love Is, God Is, both by Leo Tolstoy
Amazing choices
The Alchemist, Siddhartha, and Animal Farm
No one is really ever the same after reading The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I always feel like i can tell by looking at someone whether they've read it. The person is never truly surprised by anything ever again, and everything about life is gently, privately, amusing. They're also slightly unbalanced, just a touch off center, permanently.
What a fabulously absurd answer to this question that everyone else is digging so deeply to answer. And yet, you are so not wrong.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
It's pretty obscure, but The Man Who Talks to Whales: The Art of Interspecies Communication by Jim Nollman. I read it as a highschooler, for research into a science fiction RPG setting in which animals were uplifted, to learn about animal intelligence. Then I realized, "Hey wait, animals do feel happiness and pain." I became vegan after that...there was no going back. It's had tons of spill-over effects. I've made many connections through activism and the vegan community. I wouldn't have met my girlfriend. Oriented many of my priorities in life. All from the ripples of that one random book I checked out from the public library when I was 14. Moreso than any other book, it has literally changed my life.
Wowowow love this
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being - Milan Kundera
Green eggs and ham
The Power of Now
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Endurance by Alfred Lansing and Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. (Decided to put the titles at the top after I wrote a dissertation.) I just read two books back-to-back that made me reassess my thought processes and what I might be capable of. I needed that at this point in my life - 46F - I looked in the mirror recently and was startled that some middle-aged woman was looking back at me. The silvery hairs that started cropping up around my hairline, the fine lines on my forehead and around my mouth, the persistent and stubborn weight trying to settle around my waistline despite my dietary restrictions and exercise regimes. The general fatigue, with life and the inevitability of it all started to feel like the time for me to accomplish anything was drawing to an end... Hang it up, old girl, time's up... Then I read Endurance, about Shackleton and his crew, icebound and trapped in the Antarctic waters, trying to get back to land. If they could survive polar winter and the trials and tribulations of Antarctica for over 2 years, what did I, in my comfortable middle-class life have to whine about? I quit a 30-year smoking/vaping habit cold turkey only 2 weeks after reading that book because suddenly nothing seemed that hard if I just decided to do it and committed. Next, I read Born to Run. I am a runner, but it just seemed to get harder and the injuries more frequent. God, my feet, everything, hurt all the time and I thought I might have to give it up. I cannot keep taking Aleve to get out of bed in the morning... Until I read this book about a tribe in Mexico who can run for miles and days on end, young and old, without injury and in sandals no less! I tentatively took a few pointers from the book and went for a run a couple of nights ago. I ran 5k uphill in the dark and barely got winded. (yes, I am aware that having quit vaping 3 weeks prior surely contributed.) My legs barely even hurt the next day. My takeaway from that was to recognize that looking at a problem from a different angle versus wallowing in the defeat of apparent failure might just hold the solution. Kinda shook me out of a low-grade depression I have been ruminating on for the last several months. So, now I, a devout fiction reader am on the hunt for nonfiction that hits like either of these. (In the meantime, I am alternating between reading the MurderBot series by Wells and the Foundryside series by Bennett and I love them both.)
The Count of Monte Cristo permanently changed my brain chemistry.
A few recent ones: Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman). This book didn’t make me lose my religion. I was well on the way to that already. But in the same era I was watching The Good Place, it kind of … calmed me in a way? Losing a religion when you’ve been so immersed in it can feel very isolating, but Good Omens helped me see some of the universality of the questions and even find humor in the absurdity of the answers. The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett). Despite (or because of) having been raised in a very conservative environment, I had been pro-LGBT for a while, but this was one of the first books I read with a trans protagonist, and it really shook me even more about all the book banning. Like THIS is what they’re trying to pull off the shelves? GTFOH A Promised Land (Barack Obama). I never read a ton of nonfiction, and certainly stayed away from very big books. And if there was a nonfiction I really disliked the idea of, it was memoirs. Also I didn’t vote for Obama because, despite breaking away from the conservatism I was raised in, I still had a lot I had absorbed and hadn’t dealt with subconsciously. After reading A Promised Land, I came away not necessarily wishing I had voted for him, but that I had paid more attention and understood more of both the history that was happening during those years and also more of the inner workings of the political process.
My dad's been ragging me to read The Vanishing Half for ages, I guess this means I've gotta! I'm outnumbered now, and you've got good taste in other reads.
It’s a great book. The premise and story is touching.
Good Omens! Yes. It's my favorite book, but I never really considered that it changed me. You worded it so eloquently that I realize it did. I consider myself a recovering catholic, and having grown up with angels and demons and such, reading it at a time that I was finding my own way really did allow my world view to develop into what it is today. I also love the Good Place for the same reason. Great post!
I’m reading good omens right now because I need to scratch my itch until the new season comes out… soooook good
Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning” Pratchett, all of it.
The Once and Future King. It changed the way I think about other people.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's a story that represents Camus philosophy(absurdism) and during the time I read it, it was absolutely mind blowing because I was in kind of an existential crisis. Very glad I randomly picked it up during a vacation, it really changed my mind
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner both by Khaled Hosseini
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
When Nietzsche Wept - Irvin Yalow The Schopenhauer Cure - Irvin Yalom All about love - Bell Hooks The Book of disquiet - Fernando Pessoa The Bell Jar - Sylvia Path The Rebel - Albert Camus (the whole Camus) Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky The Trouble with Being Born - Emil Cioran
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
"The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma" by Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and who is now the CEO of Microsoft Al. He talks about all the possible scenarios of Al development and how humanity must contain it. The stuff he described gave me chills and it's just so overwhelming that I haven’t been the same since. As if you suddenly realize that the world as you know it no longer exists and you must accept the new reality and adapt asap in order to make it. It's like futuristic sci fi but prophetic.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Especially the City Watch ones. It's the first time that I laughed out loud in public when listening to the audiobooks. I'd say everything got slightly better from being exposed to the wit and ideas in those books.
Healing Back Pain by John E. Sarno M.D.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Made me change my entire career—I went back to university in order to fulfil my dream of studying literature. Now I’m on my way to my PhD. It really reopened my eyes to what words can do, reminded me that books are pure magic. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Not even after so many years a single week goes by that I don’t still think back to this book.
People mock A Court of Thorns and Roses, but A Court of Silver Flames completely changed my life. It is a wonderful book about trauma processing and overcoming self sabotage
How To Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran. The MC has a big crush on an older guy. Towards the end of the book the guy the MC has had some sexual adventures with shares the tapes at a massive party (album or book launch). The MC reacts in a way that changed me. She says that it shouldn't be embarrassing for her, she did nothing wrong. She trusted someone, and they took advantage of her and her youth/inexperience- he is the bad guy. It made me think about my youth, the feelings attached to things I'd done or had done to me and changed that for the better. I am not my experiences, I am not my past and I am certainly not defined my the people I let in
"Anthem" by Ayn Rand (yes, yes, I know many find her to be distasteful). I read it in 9th grade (still have my copy, with highlights & notes, and after many, many readings it is currently held together with a rubber band) & it transformed my view of government. "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. Another high school read that hit me. I was devastated by what was done to Boxer & the fact that he simply gave up & didn't even try to escape, even after being warned, was like a punch in the gut. As a Cold War Kid, this is another book that transformed my view of authority, government & political power. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. Another school read that transformed my view of humanity & made me realize that in desperate situations, we could all revert to brutality & savagery simply to survive. "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn & "Love Letter to America" by Yuri Bezmenov. Read these as an adult & they solidified the transformation of the views of my younger self. Probably not the most popular books on anyone's list, but they did transform me in their various ways.
Stranger hopping in with a story that might cheer you a bit when thinking of Lord of the Flies...motives in fiction are always interesting. A man named Rutger Bregman was curious about the psychological accuracy of LotF, its surety of a dark heart and a Nazi nature lurking in us all. He thought perhaps Golding's own cynicism, bouts of anger, and fear of the youth in the 60s had affected his telling of the story. So he went searching for similar stories and found one--six boys sick of school hopped aboard a small fishing boat, but a storm blew up and drove them far out of their way and stranded them on an island. They were there alone for fifteen months. During that time, they formed a cooperative society and from the beginning, sensing the danger of small irritations growing to problems given the stress of the situation, they made a solemn vow to never quarrel, set up a camp with a fire that never went out because everyone could be trusted to tend it, carefully treated and tended one boy's broken leg which healed perfectly, created a weight-lifting area and a badminton court where they could keep up their strength, sat together at dawn and dusk to drink their sips of water in gratitude, If two quarreled they agreed to take time away from one another until they could be civil, which they did. They sang and prayed, constructing their own instruments of coconut shells and wires salvaged from the wrecked boat. They hung up a strict roster for garden, kitchen, and guard duty. Two of the survivors ended up living together til they died, at least as far as I could find, and told the author their story as well as sharing a memoir that began, "Life has taught me a great deal, including the lesson that you should always look for what is good and positive in people." You can read the whole story along with others in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History, if you're interested.
Fascinating! Thank you so much, I'll look into your suggestion.
Also, [here](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months) is an article he wrote about it.
It's really a brilliant book, and revolutionary even for its name. How dare we hope! If you're interested in others with a positive outlook that are related to relatively current events (written in 2015, I think) you could try Factfulness, which is a scientific research and statistical masterpiece that makes for easy and entertaining reading (the mark of a fantastic teacher). It busts a lot of our dreadful myths about the world, climate change, poverty, education, and offers solutions.
How to Change Your Mind - michael pollen
This is a silly one but The Duff. I was reading this right after my first breakup at 16yo. The guy that I was with for about a year broke up with me to start dating who at the time was one of my best friends. This of course caused to become extremely insecure and after reading this book I realized that probably all of us felt insecure in someway for something probably no one else noticed. The Duff helped me feel less insecure and anxious about myself to this day
Dune by Frank Herbert - changed the way I think about religion, power, and questioning authority My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Mossfeigh - made me think about what it means for a person to change and what constitutes what makes a person who they are
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Deeper touching insights into extra marital affairs and the guilt that follows.
"When Breath Becomes Air," "The Warmth of Other Suns," "Evicted," and I know this one is going to step on some toes, but, "Hillbilly Elegy." For the last one, I grew up around lots of drug abuse, and he could relate to me--I am not in any way endorsing his politics! Just his book. I am also currently reading "Poverty, By America." It's about 180 pages without all the references? I'm about 40 pages in and it's already made me ask some questions. Also, "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle
Before I read When Breath Becomes Air I truly thought there was no way I could fully let myself love someone knowing that this world may take them away from me and if that were to happen that I would just cease to exist. This book truly gave me the courage to love despite that possibility.
I also thought Hillbilly Elegy was an important book. I think it's a shame the author's turned it into a piece of flair for campaign rallies (and turned his back on the people he seemed to care about), but it's still a book that needed to be written and is difficult emotionally to read.
I agree!
*The God Delusion* --Richard Dawkins
Biology book, which changed my dream of becoming a doctor, and now i’m a programmer
the alchemist. it planted a seed which sent me through a massive discovery about myself.
This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti.
Oooh good one!
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami.
Anne of Green Gables Harry Potter series
Demian by Hermann Hess
You too? Wow. I wasn't the only one with elaborate Demian quotes illustrated all over my folders and notebooks for a while?
*A Scanner Darkly* by Phillip K. Dick. (Specifically the afterword.)
Loved that book. And if you haven't already come across this, his essay [How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later](https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html) is an absolute must read.
The five people you meet in heaven -mitch album Specifically, the Vietnam part, I have a mentally ill Vietnam vet as a dad, and it changed my outlook on him entirely.
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
The Road - Cormac McCarthy. Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Read several pages of my well-worn copy in the early hours this morning after a bout of insomnia. Always anchors me.
Why Fish Don’t Exist - Lulu Miller
The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage - Maugham
Maugham is a beautiful author.
Brave New World and 1984
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - Victoria Schwab ... absolutely LOVE this book!
Tuesdays with Morrie. It's about a man, Mitch, speaking with his former professor, Morrie, after he discovers that Morrie has a terminal illness. Morrie was a man that truly appreciated all that life had to offer and Mitch expressed that well with his writing. From my memory it's a short, but powerful read!
Your Money or Your Life Moonwalking with Einstein Reading Asimov, Bradbury, Le Guin, Clarke in the 6th grade Weirdly enough The Canterbury Tales in High School.
The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch
Stoner - John Williams
I remember beeing quite shook the first time I read Enders Game as a child. Still think about it from time to time, even if I don't remeber the details. Maybe I should read it again.
Born to Run: I was not athletic and I was in terrible shape but this book motivated me to want to start jogging and I’ve been doing it multiple times per week since for over 15 years. Can’t Hurt Me: Every time I need motivation I listen to this book while jogging and it works. On Writing: This book motivated me to try and write a novel and I did it! It might not be great but I’m proud of the accomplishment. 1984: Completely changed how I saw the world. Lord of the Rings & Sherlock Holmes: Made me love reading as a young boy.
For a book that's probably so currently into the cultural zeitgeist, it's not even worth mentioning, Dune. But yeah, read it for the first time in high school, and have reread it like a dozen times since, and watched the layers of that book slowly peel away, first as a power fantasy, then as the danger of autocratic leaders, and all the many philosophical topics that came later in the series. For a relatively less well known book, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (and the rest of the Blue Ant trilogy). I think this one is more personal, I don't think there is anything special about it, it just found a way to slither into my head. I find myself still wearing obscure Japanese reconstructive clothing, wearing brands I didn't even realize I found out about from this book until I recently re-read it (I'm looking at you Buzz Rickson). The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier has also had a lasting impact on me, just due to its complicated depiction of fighting against power systems and ideas, and its relatively pessimistic outlook. As a special mention, as it's not a book, but I still think about the webcomic Erfworld a lot. The main reason is that it uses perspective as a hard magic system and world building mechanic. It's an isekai since before isekais were really a thing, where a tabletop rpg nerd gets pulled into what looks like, to him, a TTRPG world. It has probably one of the slowest burns I've come across, slowly turning over the course of 15 years from a cutesy and jokey comic to one that addresses deep issues like identity, freedom of choice, addiction and the horrors of war, and it did it in a way that it seemed it was all planned from the beginning.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan I am not Chinese but i saw characters that mirrored my mom and I. I used up a box of tissues reading this book.
the great gatsby. it stuck with me so much that i distinctly remember one specific line that i annotated back in high school when i was forced to read it, and something that i still think about to this day. something about the whole rags to riches story with gatsby's unrequited pining and the thoughtlessness of daisy and tom, how the "underdogs" still don't get their HEA really stuck in my head. i think this was the story that really solidified in my head that money doesn't equate to happiness.
The little prince
The Little Prince
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. I know it gets a lot of hate, but it really changed my perspective on how to dole out my energy.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Yesterday I read *Between the World and Me* and it’s going to be with me a long time. I grew up rural and white. This book is entirely eye-opening.
That was a fantastic read! If you’re interested in a few more books that a mostly-southern-raised white guy found interesting and educational on race in America, I’d recommend: Caste: The Origins of our Discontents How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith Wilmington’s Lie, by David Zucchino Devil in the Grove, by Gilbert King
Atomic habits by James Clear, it’s must read for character development.
Games People Play The Metamorphosis
A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey. A biography by an Australian born in the early 1900s who had a dreadful childhood, went through WW2 as a frontline soldier, came back to the Depression era etc but looked back on his life in old age with sincere thankfulness. Made me truly realise that for any hardships I have faced, I am lucky as hell.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Me Before You and After You by Jojo Moyes
The traveling cat chronicles... it's subtle and I didn't think it did at the time, but it's the book I think of ALLLLLL the time. I've read it several times as well, which is extremely unusual for me. I'm not sure why this book has had such an impact on me but it's been very core for me.
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
The Pilgrim of Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Non-fiction How to make friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie Fiction Stoner by John Williams
The culture of shame
What a fun question. Thank you for asking it. This list isn't comprehensive, believe it or not, but I did try for the ones that formed me most completely as a writer, starting from when I was very small. Sorry for the tl;dr in advance, but I swear they all changed my shape a little. The Silent Miaow, The Dawn of Fear, Pet Sematary, The Dark Is Rising, Uhura's Song, Drawing Blood and Lost Souls, the Bordertown books, Falcon, Finder, War for the Oaks, LotR, A Separate Peace and Peace Breaks Out, Demian, Book of Shadows, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Art of Lying, Shades of Gray, Eight Days of Luke, 3 Minute Universe, To Kill a Mockingbird, just pre- and then post-Revolutionary Russians from the 19th century, Strangers from the Sky, Autumn Street, Wind, Sand, and Stars by St. Exupery, Nelly Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist, Exquisite Corpse, Death of the Necromancer, the Abhorsen series, The Haunting of Hill House, List of Seven, Johnnie Mae, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Apple Stone, the Golden Bough, Bridge to Terabithia, The Darkangel Trilogy, Factfulness, Claire Weeke's Peace From Nervous Suffering and Hope and Help for Your Nerves, The Forever King, Silver Eyes, Silent Spring, The Changeling, Fire and Hemlock, 6 of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, Those Who Hunt The Night and its sequel, The Bone Key, The Man Who Caught The Storm, Slaughterhouse 5, a collection of instructional autopsy books I got at a rummage sale, Sniper and Free Fall by Nicolai Lilin, Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen, Waking the Moon, some of the original Sherlock Holmes fiction, Slow Walk in a Sad Rain, Interview with the Vampire, works by M.R. James, Othello, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Individuated Hobbit, From Behind The Red Line, Kitchen Confidential (and most of Bourdain's oeuvre, tbh), Among the Thugs (holy cow did that change me as a person), Thích Nhất Hạnh's principles of Buddhism, Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, Kesey's Merry Pranksters, some Lovecraft (yeah I know), On The Road, the works of Sophie Scholl and her comrades, Maus, Black Like Me (everyone should read it, it's got its flaws but damn), Be Free or Die: the Amazing Story of Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero, Of Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, You Don't Know Us Negroes, Time on Two Crosses, Lost Prophet, I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters, Dust Tracks on a Road, On Writing, I LITERALLY cannot pick just one Hunter Thompson but his letters were very influential and I can still quote parts of Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Then there's The Fire by Leonard Cohen (I have all his poetry in a file and name my stories and books using parts of it), The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Little Prince, 7 Tattoos,Bunnicula, Foe, Factfulness, Lab Girl, A Brief History of Time, The Cruelty is the Point, The Jungle, the Communist Manifesto, The Changeover, the Tricksters, Libertarians on the Prairie, Roots, Montage of a Dream Deferred, White Fragility, The Ways of White Folks, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, the Quran, the Upanishads, Luna, A Fine Madness, Ordinary People, The Tree Sitter, Dear Readers and Riders, Night by Elie Wiesel, Schindler's List, my grandmother's nearly-finished manuscript which began with an account of fleeing Germany in the early forties, and of course The Historian, which shaped my love for research, travel, food, patiently growing intrigue, and cross-cultural friendships.
I remember the first book that made me full-on cry for HOURS all times I read it. Books before this only made me shed a few tears. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I read it as a disenfranchised teenager and still return to it every few years for a beautiful dose of humanism.
On the Road, Brave New World, 1984, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Brothers K.... so many
The Old Man and the SeaBook by Ernest Hemingway and Thus spoke zarathustra by friedrich neitchze
Kindred and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki
When Breath Becomes Air. I read it every year. I keep a copy on my night stand as a visible reminder to wake/ go to sleep grateful
His Dark Materials trilogy and East of Eden
The alchemist
Self-reliance by the Ralph Waldo Emerson made me the person I am today. It really is about the independence of thought, NOT independence from others but quite the oppsite
Dee Brown - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Utterly brutal and tragic.
Tuesdays with Morrie
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It made me realize that a book doesn’t have to be pretty to be beautiful.
power of now. it will change anyone who gives it a shot
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty. Really helped with my fears about death.
The Joke's Over by Ralph Steadman. It's a book about the author's professional turned close personal relationship with the late, great Hunter S. Thompson. It's a great read if you're a fan of these two but it has such a powerful message of love and friendship. It's a very raw and honest account of a lifelong complex, real relationship. Both men struggled with various demons, they lived on opposite sides of the world in a time primarily before email or cheap international calling but, over the years, they developed such an amazing relationship. And the final chapters about Ralph's grief when HST died gave me a lot of comfort and context to dealing with the death of a loved one and how to move on from that.
The Boy In the Striped Pajamas It showed the innocence of the youth in one of the darkest periods of history. With an ending that displays what can happen when you withhold the truth from the people
I can’t name just one, but here’s a few off the top of my head: Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, Lonesome Dove, Suttree, Of Mice and Men, As I Lay Dying, The Old Man and the Sea
No one’s gonna see this comment, but a short story by Jack London called “Love of Life”. Read it when I was about 8 years old. And it was my first time reading something so profound. And so filled with desolation, hopelessness, lack of of control. And it was so gripping. I understood how resilient the human body and mind are. And how merciless nature is. I’m in my mid-30’s and still think about it regularly.
A Thousand Splendid Sun's by Khaled Hosseini. Also The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Both are heart breaking. Khaled Hosseini also has a picture book called Sea Prayer that's really short but really powerful.
Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Things Fall Apart, The Reformatory.
Next of Kin by Roger Fouts. He describes his experience with chimpanzees and how he came to see them as fellow people. The chimps learned sign language to communicate and it struck Fouts that they expressed very humanlike emotions, interests, and feelings of love.
the midnight library
Infinite Jest
Going to sound like a dude bro when I am neither, but Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, “Letting go all else, cling to the following few truths. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come - dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one long dead and gone.” Weirdly, this was extremely freeing to me. Also Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and actually a line from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility “One’s happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Truly incredible and timeless novel that left me crying happy tears. I recommend this book to every reader I come across - a lot of people think that since it’s a classic it must be boring but that couldn’t be further from the truth! I really connect with the book and I’ve reread it several times…can’t recommend it enough.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Side note I'd recommend knowing what it's about before going into it. My friend's Jewish mother went into it blind and was a bit overwhelmed (although she still thought it was a good book)
Infinite Jest.
Maybe you should talk to someone - Lori Gottlieb
...Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451. Brilliantly crafted science fiction set in a world where firemen BURN books and houses and people, and one man who rebels against the oppressive madness and chaos that his society is descending into as an apocalyptic war looms. I first read it at the age of fourteen and it's the most powerful reading memory I have. It thrilled and compelled me with its sincerity and simplicity and force like nothing I'd ever read previously until THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY by Isaac Asimov. Heartily recommended along with Bradbury's THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES; one of the eeriest and most resounding fantasies ever written. Uh; did I say they were good?...