Has a book ever changed your life?

Is there a book that has affected you so profoundly as to change your life?

I would like to place a few ground rules first. I would like to rule out any holy books, i.e. The Bible, The Koran, The Talmud, etc.

Books about religion are allowed, i.e. The Tao of Poo, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair, Misquoting Jesus,etc.

I do this because I don't really want this thread to devolve into a huge flame war, not because I'm decrying them as invalid.

I'll start, Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman:

Before I read Smoke and Mirrors, I hadn't really considered writing as anything more than an outlet for amusing my friends with silly poems and song parodies. reading has always been a passion for me, but Gaimans "Chivalry" is a tale so gorgeous that I was immediately consumed by an urge to write about it. I haven't stopped since then, and I've been able to forge a career for myself out of something I really love. Thanks Neil!

Ok who's next?

The Flower of Life changed the way I look at everything, that's for sure. It's a great book to be taken with a grain of salt, but the message is still there.

Also, another book called Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy is a great read and will change you as well.

Many books have changed my life. Here's just a few.

THE TIGHTWAD GAZETTE

1984

A MAN CALLED INTREPID

INTO THE WILD

Great question

And congratulations on making your career out of such a noble profession

I think you're either a "book" person, or not a "book" person.

When you're a "book" person, I think the most magical and life-changing moment is when you discover that you're a book person...so that one for me was Lord of the Rings when I was in 4th grade And the madness just continues Books rock! So I am copping out here, because there's no way to pick even the top 10 life changing books...but I had to contribute to such a great thread!

[edit on 3-7-2008 by LateApexer313]

Thanks for the kind words!

Ok I have read a ton of books including many bibles. Which by the way the study of books is biblography, the word 'bible' means book in fact.

But anyway one book really and drastically changed my entire life. That book was "Illusions" by Richard Bach. Excellent source of truth. It touchs the spiritual, scientific and material world. It is my bible and none of the books I have read would have meant anything had I not read Illusions.

Also good reads are:
The Greatest Miracle in The World
The Greatest Salesman in The World
anything by Richard Bach
The Meaning of Life by Victor Frankyll
The Science of Mind (do not confuse this with The Science of the Mind) it's different than that book.
You Can Heal Your Life by Lousie Hays
Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox
and of course how could we go with out...
Catcher in the Rye....
there is so many more...

The Revolution of Everyday Life.


It should be standard in all high schools, as is Catcher in the Rye, and 1984. We need more black sheeps, less white ones.




Racist.



Edit: I thought I'd make myself useful and throw a link up.



[edit on 4-7-2008 by DeadFlagBlues]

As an artist (painter), it has always been important for me to try to understand the reason for me working so hard to produce works of art.

To get to the bottom of this, I pored through many books on philosophy, theology and history. These helped, no doubt, to make me think, but few provided real answers.

Then, one day, I picked up The Mind in the Cave, by David Lewis-Williams and found exactly what I'd been searching for most of my life. More than any other book I've read, I now found the reasons why the human race (and myself) is the way it is.

The art produced by prehistoric peoples the world over is key to understanding why we do anything at all.

It told me why we tend toward civilization and it ultimately changed my life.

Thanks everyone, my ulterior motive to increase my reading list is proceeding very well. Mwa Ha Ha!!

I've read an awful lot of books, and I think a lot of them have changed my life one way or another. In the last year, though, to make my post shorter, I'd name Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", for giving names and substance to a lot of ideas and beliefs I already had, but didn't know what they were called, and Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" for showing me some of the really shocking things that have happened in American history, particularly ones that most history books don't get into.

I'm not sure if those changed my life in a massive, groundbreaking, profound way, but they definitely altered the way I look at a lot of other books and things in everyday life. Certainly that pair has had the most influnence on me recently.

Okay, I'll go back a bit further, lol, and add two more.

"The Sword of Shannara", by Terry Brooks, both for being a great fantasy novel, and for suckering me into the genre so badly when I was in grade 7 that I must own hundreds of fantasy books by now, plus read however many more I've borrowed. The guy who recommended that book to me had no idea what he was doing! (and I owe him a massive debt, if I ever knew what happened to him after junior high)

"The Planets", author who the heck knows, because I read it when I was five. It was a rather simple nonfiction astronomy book about the solar system, but it forever hooked me on astronomy and later into science fiction. To give you an idea how hooked I was on this book (please remember I was five!) I read it probably a dozen times in the week I had it on loan (it was like 30-40 pages, with pictures) and actually went to the effort of getting paper and copying word for word the text so that I'd still have it when I returned it to the library! My dad saw me doing this, and probably thought I was a little nuts, but he went out and bought me "The Planets and the Stars", which was the same book, only a later edition with some extra stuff in it, so that I'd quit copying it out by hand. I still have that book in a box somewhere, too, so I guess I could figure out the author, but whatever. Don't bother actually getting this book unless it's for your young kid or something; it's too simple by far for an adult, but it sure influenced me at the time. This is probably the one that fits LateApexer's moment where I figured out I was a book person.

The Art Of War.


I believe that I learned more from that book than any other.

Honorable mention, "The Art Of Deception" By Kevin Mitnick

Conversations With God books 1,2 and 3 by Neale Donald Walsch.

They absolutley changed the way I look at life. there are other CWG books as well but these are really the main three. they are very deep spiritual books.

[edit on 13-7-2008 by gimme_some_truth]

reply to post by siFtInG

---

Yeah Art of War is a very good read, you can apply the lessons learnt from it to pretty much everything in life. Always nice to give yourself an edge!

On a similar theme 'Romance Of The Three Kingdoms' is another very interesting read, a historical novel from China that I've heard is the second most read book of all time after the Bible!!

Not sure I would say that reading a book has ever led me to a life changing experience or anything as dramatic as that, but certain books have definitly changed my outlook on life (even if only for a certain period of time)

Shogun

That book not only entertained me but gave me my first insight into an entirely different (ancient) culture.
I still read it once a year and even though I have almost every sentence memorized it still awes me.

wiki article

This book has affected me in ways even I will never understand.

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Enrikez]

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Enrikez]

I feel kind of humble submitting this work as an example of life changing literature, but it is true:

"The Door Into Summer", by Robert Heinlein.

Really. This book made the engineering profession out to be such a glamorous and fun occupation that I declared it as my major in college.

Little did I know!

THE CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD books...........I believe there are 3 of them.

The Carlos Castinada books...........

Anything by Richard Bach........

The most profound life changing book I ever read is:
FAR JOURNEYS by Robert Monroe
That one changed my basic beliefs about life & existence.

reply to post by AccessDenied

---

Do you mean this book:

Into the Wild

oddly enough, Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abignale was rather life altering. Not the con artist scams itself but the knowledge of confidence in yourself. That has helped me throughout my life.