Which book had the biggest impact on you

HalloweenJack

Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn.

One of the best books I've ever read. It helped me recover from depression as it showed me no matter how **** life is, it's still worth living.

TheQueen

Quaver wrote: »

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I first read it about 10 years ago, and the line "a Sophie-shaped hole in the universe" has always stuck with me. I've since re-read it countless number of times, and it has blown me away as much every time.

Love this book, it makes my all time top ten

joeystrider

Cider House Rules by John Irving. Fantastic book and helped to from my views on ethical issues.

Also by John Irving A Prayer For Owen Meany. My favourite book because it pushed forward my interest in politics and political history. I focused in on the Vietnam War for a project in college because of this book.

Would recommend both these.

plonk

Fletch123 wrote: »

Maybe the original question should be rephrased 'which book that you have read has had the greatest impact on you?' if the OP wants to discuss personal impact rather than a books impact on society?

I interpretted the OP as a personal question, so my answer would be Sophie's World. I read it not knowing what it was about when I was 11 and it really did change my outlook on life. At that age those philisophical questions hadn't occured to me yet and so it was interesting to ponder them without any outside influence.

I am just reading this at the moment and have to say I wish I had read it at a much younger age. Pretty good book

pauline fayne

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore.

I read it about 30 years ago ....If only i could write like that !

eZe^

Funnily enough, 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson really persuaded me that doing 4 sciences for the L.C was the way to go. I was worried the workload would be too much, now I'm an undergraduate physicist.... So I guess that'd be my choice.

Cows Go µ wrote: »

For me, it's definitely The Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis. Mainly because it was the series that got me hugely in to reading when I was ten. I haven't really stopped since.

First proper books I ever read too. The reason I started reading books instead of watching t.v as a youngin...

tfitzgerald

playboy only the articles of course:D

DeVore

The Selfish Gene by Dawkins... it explained why people are how they are plus a lot of other things.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory... I read it when I was very young and it gave me an interest in reading for the rest of my life. Plus Dahl is awesome

DeV.

silverwater

Well...
As a child, the big ones were Goodnight Moon and Guess How Much I Love You, which have stuck with me.
Never finished Narnia, got bored by number five and it was such a chore...

In my adult life it's easily The Stand by Stephen King.
It has everything. My favourite book and one that convinced me to work creatively.

Denerick

Actually, if I were to say which book had the biggest impact on me as opposed to which book I liked most, it wouldn't be a book at all. The Asterix and Obelisk comics really got me into reading and into history when I was about 8 or 9. From the first time I read any of it I strove to learn why the Romans wanted that little Gaulish village so badly... Which led me on to Julius Caesar, and well, everything else!

Valmont

Cows Go µ wrote: »

For me, it's definitely The Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis. Mainly because it was the series that got me hugely in to reading when I was ten. I haven't really stopped since.

Same here, I had a wonderful hardback collection. It's funny that while I know that they helped me get into reading as a kid, I have absolutely no recollection of what any of them were about besides a wardrobe and aslan. I read all of them too!

zesman

The Moon On My Back by Patrick Tierney, though I'd doubt if many people will have read it. The redemptive power of literature.

sogood

Jeremiah 16:1 wrote: »

Well, I've said it many times on this forum, but Oryx and Crake is a book where I've compared every new book I've read to it.

It will be interesting to see whether this speculative book of fiction will be mirrored during the rest of my lifetime.

As a big Atwood fan I tend to agree, reading The Blind Assassin at the moment. Handmaids Tale also worth a look see.

sogood

Going back in time to my teens, Catcher in the rye was my bible and I finished up reading all of Salingers work as a result. I tend to do this when I find an author that I like, dont stop until I've read all they've written, usually with something like a bio humming away on the side. Wally Lambs' " I know this much is true" also a great read, but he's only written 3 books, but all worth looking into, if you're interested in "the human condition" and interaction between people and within a person, if you get my drift.....

Kai

Dades wrote: »

If anything, On The Road.
Read it relentlessly during my formative years.

That said I don't believe any one book has had a particularly big impact on my life as it is now.

Interesting, I have read about 70% of the book and gave up. It just seemed to be him travelling here and talking to these people and then traveling somewhere else and talking to someone else. I couldnt connect with it at all for some reason. Can you tell me what im missing?

Amberjack

J.D Salinger's - The Catcher in the Rye is a great read.
Also enjoyed The DaVinci Code - it really got me thinking about the whole Catholic Church and their cover ups.

Denerick

Amberjack wrote: »

The DaVinci Code - it really got me thinking about the whole Catholic Church and their cover ups.

You may regret making such a comment amidst literary snobs such as ourselves here.

godspal

I know its cliched but there is one that stands out as the most influential in my life:
Catcher in the Rye (I know this has been mentioned before) this book represented a change in my thinking, Holden Caulfied's disillusionment began my question of sincerity in people. So it is the book that corrupted me.

However there have been a couple books that have been quiet influential in my life since then:

The Great Gatsby.
I read this the summer before the last year of my B.A.. Afterwards I began to shed some of the pretentious ideas I had myself (which I picked up through my degree) It also started a passion in me for literature, simply because it was written so beautifully written. Fitzgerald quickly became my favourite writer too.

Mrs Dalloway.
I found myself struggling with an existential problem of being miserable and being responsible for my misery when I read this. This book convinced me to keep true to myself despite the cost.

ZorbaTehZ

Robinson Crusoe. My father gave it to me when I was about 11/12 and it was the book that got me interested in literature. Still read it again the odd time I'm short of a book.

Funglegunk

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Swept away any remaining cobwebs and turned me from a deist to an atheist. Perhaps also God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens for in two words describing what religion always felt like to me: white noise.

For fiction I agree with an earlier post mentioning the Stand by Stephen King. Read it as a teenager, probably the first book I read where the characters felt like real people.

Denerick

I hated both Dawkins and Hitchen's book. Swayed me a little in my naieve adolescence, but they really do appear so absurd now. The sight of Dawkins telling Catholics at Lourdes that it was all nonsense in a C4 documentary really did it for me.

Radical atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens are just as sickening to me as the the fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. Let men live! Let life work out for individuals whether they think all of it is nonsense or not.

Funglegunk

Swayed me a little in my naieve adolescence, but they really do appear so absurd now.

Your naive adolescence ended recently then? Both books are just over two years old!

Let men live!

Yes! So let's go to Dermot Ahern's office and tell him where to shove that new blasphemy law.

Sorry, back to books

Cears

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

I tried to read this in 2005, failed and thought that it was rubbish. Then I picked it up again during the summer of 2006 determined to finish it. Something clicked and I realised how fantastic it was. Went on to read all of his other works and Im now writing my MA dissertation on O'Brien (he is also Myles na gCopaleen writer of the An Cruiskeen Lawn articles in the Irish Times from '33 - '65)
What can I say im obsessed!

monellia

Nineteen Eighty-Four had a pretty big impact on me. It made me aware of important societal concepts to which I was previously ignorant, such as the inverse relationship between privacy and government power. In reading it, I found myself questioning the way I look at dictatorships and society at large. Books rarely have that kind of impact on me. Orwell also influenced the way I write. As well as Nineteen Eighty-Four, I've read Animal Farm, A Clergyman's Daughter and some of his essays. I was inspired by his clear, lucid style and the way he can be so eloquent without using overly complicated language. This is pretty much the standard I set myself against when I write.

monellia

Amberjack wrote: »

Also enjoyed The DaVinci Code - it really got me thinking about the whole Catholic Church and their cover ups.

I also loved the DaVinci Code, but you must remember that it is a work of fiction conaining many false claims and historical inaccuracies.

Silent Partner

The books that got me into reading were the Thomas The Tank Engine books I read when I was 3 and 4 years old. Between them and my mothers continuous encouragement a lifelong love of reading began.

In slightly more adult reading The Celestine Prophecy was a wonderful book that defined a lot of spiritual beliefs for me. I can remember being truely moved after reading that.

DinnyBatman

As a kid: The Secret Island by Enid Blyton
As a bigger kid: The Stand by Stephen King
As a middle aged fart: We need to talk about Kevin by (can't remember)

deisedude

DinnyBatman wrote: »

As a kid: The Secret Island by Enid Blyton
As a bigger kid: The Stand by Stephen King
As a middle aged fart: We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

FYP

i-digress

My Dad got me to read 1984 and Brave New World when I was a teenager, one after another. Both amazingly different, influential and chilling. Since then its been The Bell Jar, its my favourite book.

LauraLoo

Khaled Houessini's book "The kite runner" left me speechless for about a week- the last book that impacted me like this was "The Pilgrimage" by Paulo Coehlo... But the kite runner has blown all others out of the water.

These books had a huge impact on my personal development and its mainly because they are fiction.