22 replies to this topic

[Aphrodite]

List books that have moved you or influenced you (fiction or non-fiction) and made you look at the world with a different perspective.

[JLL]

Can't think of ten off the top of my head, but here's certainly one:

The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (by Keith Stanovich)


http://www.amazon.co...n/dp/0226770893

[Walken on Sunshine]

Hmm...

No particular order

1. Foundation
2. The Sun Also Rises
3. Sirens of Titan
4. Dragonriders of Pern
5. Dune
6. 1984
7. Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

First 7 that came to mind

[TheFountain]

List books that have moved you or influenced you (fiction or non-fiction) and made you look at the world with a different perspective.

You first?

[Shepard]

I shouldn't have started this, I hit twelve after I started listing and can't narrow it down to ten. So, I'm stopping here before the list gets ridiculous.

A Tale of Two Cities
American Psycho
American Prometheus
Things Fall Apart
A Farewell to Arms
Starship Troopers
Ender's Game
The Selfish Gene
Cosmos
god is not Great
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Meditations

These aren't necessarily my favorite books, nor would I argue that some are all that important. Each is special to me for various reasons, but only one (American Psycho) induced a pre- and post- level of influence. I'm not sure that's a good thing in this instance, though.

[okok]

Look to Windward
The Algebraist
Player of Games
Permutation City
Cradle
The Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon
Mark Brandis Series
Lord of the Rings
Karl May

[Aphrodite]

Here are my ten, in no particular order:


1. A Canticle for Leibowitz
2. Aesop's Fables
3. Beyond Good and Evil
4. Brave New World
5. Childhood's End
6. Crime and Punishment
7. Faust
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
9. Island
10. Narcissus and Goldmund

Edited by Aphrodite, 13 November 2011 - 01:47 AM.

[Cephalon]

Aphrodite, your 4. and 8. could make it into my list
and I'd add Shepards American Psycho

Basically all remaining Breat Easton Ellis novels would be in the list, though that would be only 5 or so. I'm currently reading 10 books simultaneously which is not very effective. Neuromancer by William Gibson, Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney and off course the easy to read books on CR. I'm currently reading an interesting book called "Better than human" by Allan Buchanan about the ethics of human enhancement. And of course The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil, though I must admit, while I find it very interesting, I do not understand everything, since it's quite a difficult read for someone who is not a native speaker. Shakespeare is cool too. And the Bible should be on the list. Oh and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.

[Brafarality]

Prufrock and Other Observations
Lyrical Ballads
Howl
Collected Poems (e. e. cummings)
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Leaves of Grass
Songs of Innocence and Experience
The Man With the Blue Guitar
The Waste Land and Other Poems

(No attention span for long novels (generally), so get literary fix from short stories and poems)

[Dorho]

Scientific/philosophical:

1. Alan W. Watts - The way of Zen
2. James Lovelock - Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
3. Jacques Monod - Chance and Necessity
4. John Gribbin - Deep simplicity: Chaos, complexity and the emergence of life
5. Paul Davies - The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life
6. Susan Blackmore - The Meme Machine
7. Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker
8. Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus
9. Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
10. Donella Meadows et al - Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update

Other:
11. Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
12. Isaac Asimov - The Foundation
13. Asimov - The Gods Themselves
14. Asimov - I, Robot
15. Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
16. George Orwell - The Animal Farm
17. Orwell - 1984
18. Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
19. Art Spiegelman - Maus
20. John Steinbeck - East of Eden

[TheFountain]

I wish people would list authors, as opposed to just titles.

[Daruman]

Siddhartha and PiHKAL probably influenced me the most... but I can more easily list authors:

Hermann Hesse
Alan Watts (books and speeches)
Aldous Huxley
HP Lovecraft
Junji Ito

Edited by Daruman, 27 August 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[suspire]

In no particular order:

1) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
2) Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
3) The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
4) Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges
5) In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
6) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
7) The Foundation Series (hard to chose one) - Isaac Asimov
8) Dune - Frank Herbert
9) The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
10) Hunger - Knut Hamsun
11) Billions and Billions - Carl Sagan
12) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I really could have listed a dozen more if we're talking about books that influenced me--from a lot of L.E. Modesitt's sci-fi/fantasy stuff (even though the writing is often awful, I enjoyed some of the ideas), to Herman Hesse's Siddharta, to Ender's Game, and so on. So hard to limit it.

Edited by suspire, 27 August 2012 - 06:34 PM.

[Adaptogen]

Any updates? I want to read something life changing

[Super Neuro]

Here's mine, for Adaptogen's sake:

1. In Your Face (Evolutionary Psychology; about how are faces tell more about us than you think)
2. The 4-Hour Workweek (Business; how to run your life without your job running it)
3. Getting Past No (Negotiation; teaches how to deal with people who shut down your propositions)
4. How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child (Parenting; great for showing you how to correct problematic behaviors in kids -- I'm not a parent but a teacher)
5. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Marketing; a handful of unchanging concepts for a marketer, businessperson or a copywriter to apply in his business)
6. The Hypomanic Edge (Biographies; if you've ever thought you might be bipolar but rarely get depressed, you might be hypomanic, just as many of American's past heroes were)
7. Impact Pricing (Marketing; the best book on pricing you'll ever read)
8. Japan: Understanding & Dealing With the New Japanese Way of Doing Business (Culture/business; one of the most insightful books on Japanese business culture and how it's been changing after the recent earthquake)
9. The Power of Habit (Psychology; shows how humans are creatures of habit to the extent that it is often habits controlling our major actions and decisions)
10. Thinking Fast and Slow (Psychology; summarizes Daniel Kahneman's lifetime of research on how the brain's two phases work)

[lemonhead]

Not ranked, just numbered for convenience so I know when I've got 10:

1. We Who Are About To... / Joanna Russ
Can't say I love or like this book, but I think about it often. I had a great affinity for the narrator, until she did the unthinkable. I met my own version of Natalie, once.

2. The Persistence of Vision / John Varley
Collection of short stories; I like Varley's early works, not so much his later stuff.

3. Heart of Darkness / Joseph Conrad
'We live as we dream... alone'

4. A Fire Upon the Deep / Vernor Vinge
Vinge's best. I was a librarian, so of course I like a book with librarian protagonist.

5. A Deepness in the Sky / Vernor Vinge
Vinge's second best. I've always hated human resources management.

6. City of Illusions / Ursula K. LeGuin
'I am Falk'. Great except for an implausible ending; still a favorite.

7. The Disposessed / Ursula K.LeGuin
Even utopia isn't that great sometimes.

8. The Peace War / Vernor Vinge
I need to get me a bobbler.

9. Parable of the Sower / Octavia Butler
What happens when society crumbles.

10. Boodchild and Other Stories / Octavia Butler
After reading this short story collection by Butler (I think it was 'Amnesty' that did it), I cried because I would never be able to meet her (already deceased). I never really cared about meeting an author, except for her.

Edited by lemonhead, 11 September 2013 - 11:41 PM.

[JBForrester]

Have any of you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig? I'm considering picking it up after hearing/reading good things...

[Being Tesla]

In no particular Order, except for the first one

1. Fight Club
2. A Beautiful Mind
3. Ender's Game Series.
4. Bean's Series (From Orson Scott Card's Enderverse)
5. Sword of Truth series (Read every one of them)
6. Harry Potter series (Read every one of them)
7. Dune 1-3
8. The Singularity is Near.
9. Who Took Einstein's Office (A great book on The Institute of Advanced Studies or as it is known, the place where the great researchers go to die, lol)
10. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series (I've never laughed so hard, as I did during the first 4 books, and felt so emotional as during the last book, with it's sad ending dystopic ending in what was supposed to be a comedy. It was like the author all of a sudden got real at the end of it, and it was kind of emotionally unsettling in a very unique way, that inspired me to take writing more seriously).

In all honesty though, that is only a fraction of my top books because I'm a voracious reader. I didn't even get to the books of my childhood, and Phillip K Dick, and I totally forgot A Song of Ice and Fire series, which I've read all of. Most people call it Game of Thrones, but hardcore fans know it's really called A Song of Ice and Fire.

I can't call Greek Mythology a "favorite book" but my various readings on Greek Mythology books, was one of the formative experiences of my childhood. And then there was also C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series. You know what, it turns out that this question is not appropriate for me. I've just read a lot more books than most people, since I don't really read individual books, but more like book series.

[brainstorm11]

Here are mine (also in no particular order):

1. The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
2. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
3. Ishmael - David Quinn
4. Body by Science - Doug McGuff
5. Losing My Virginity - Richard Branson
6. The Ultramind Solution - Mark Hyman
7. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
8. I Was Blind But Now I See - James Altucher
9. Stop Giving a F*ck - Jake
10. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

[cylon]

A sampling of a few that left their mark. Didn't really overthink this, these were the first ten that popped into my head.

 

1. The Year with Swollen Appendices - Brian Eno

2. Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Yung

3. Permutation City  - Greg Egan

4. Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem

5. Franny & Zoey - JK Salinger

6. Ulysses - James Joyce

7. From Chocolate to Morphine - Andrew T. Weil

8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

9. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

10. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light - William Irwin Thompson

[Duchykins]

I was an early reader, and read quite a bit, and almost decided not to post here because I couldn't whittle the list down to only 10 books.  I'll list books that changed me or influenced me in a significant way, though some are not my favorite books and some I don't really like at all.  So, in no particular order:

 

 

 

(when I was a child)

 

 

[I am not recommending these three Jehovah's Witness books, only listing them here because of their impact on me]

 

My Book of Bible Stories

 

The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived

 

Life - How Did it Get Here?  By Evolution or by Creation  

__________

 

 

 

Where the Red Fern Grows  - Wilson Rawls

 

Old Yeller  - Fred Gipson

 

A Wrinkle in Time  - Madeline L'Engle

 

Little Women  - Louisa May Alcott

 

The Crucible  - Arthur Miller

 

Lord of the Flies  - William Golding

 

The Scarlet Letter  -  Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Call of the Wild,    White Fang  - Jack London

 

Julie of the Wolves  - Jean Craighead George

 

Sense and Sensibility,     Pride and Prejudice  - Jane Austen

 

Dragonflight  - Anne McCaffrey

 

Redwall,    Mossflower,   Mattimeo,   Mariel of Redwall,   Salamandastron,   Martin the Warrior  - Brian Jacques

 

Misery, The Stand  - Stephen King

 

The Clan of the Cave Bear  - Jean M. Auel

 

Flowers for Algernon  - Daniel Keyes

 

Songmaster  - Orson Scott Card

 

Night  - Elie Wiesel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(as an adult)

 

 

Fiction

 

Dust  -  Charles R. Pellegrino

 

The Dispossessed  -  Ursula K. Le Guin 

 

Black Sun Rising,     When True Night Falls,    Crown of Shadows      -  C.S. Friedman 

 

Ender's Game,    Speaker for the Dead,    Xenocide    - Orson Scott Card

 

Death Gate Cycle  - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

 

The Wheel of Time series  - Robert Jordan

 

Mistborn series - Brandon Sanderson

 

The Hyperion Cantos  -  Dan Simmons

 

The Andromeda Strain, Next  - Michael Crichton

 

Harry Potter  (yup)

 

 

 

Nonfiction

 

No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species   - Richard Ellis

 

On the Origin of Species  - Charles Darwin

 

The Selfish Gene,      The Ancestor's Tale     - Richard Dawkins

 

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory  - Brian Greene

 

Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon  - Daniel Dennett

 

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark  - Carl Sagan

 

Why Evolution is True  - Jerry Coyne

 

Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith  - Carlene Cross

 

Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith  - Charles Templeton

 

The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind  - Terry Glavin

 

The Logic of Scientific Discovery,    All Life is Problem Solving,    The Open Society and Its Enemies    - Karl Popper

 

[Mango]

As a kid:

1. Winnetou 1-3 - Karl May
2. Dick sand A captain at fifteen - Jules Verne
3. The prince and the pauper - Mark Twain
4. Chariots of the Gods - Erich Von Daniken
5. The clan of the cave bear - Jean M Auel
6. I robot - Isaac Asimov
7. Taras Bulba - Gogol
8. Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz
9. A brave new world - A. Huxley
10. Divine comedy - Dante


Older:

1. The trial - Franz Kafka
2. Fathers and sons - Turgeniev
3. The adolescent - Dostoevsky
4. Great expectations - Dickens
5. Dracula - Bram Stoker
6. The Art of war - Sun Tzu
7. Il principe - N. Machiavelli
8. 1984 - Orwell
9. Les miserables - Victor Hugo
10. The slave - Isaac Bashevis Singer

[phix]

Not necessarily my top picks but they came first to mind for some reason. The impact a book can make on us depends heavily on the time of reading, which for most of the books listed below was a long time ago.  

 

- F. Kafka - The Trial. 

- J.L. Borges - Fictions / The Aleph.

- A. Huxley - Brave New World.

- G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday.

- S. Pinker - How the Mind Works / The Blank Slate.

- R. Dawkins - The Selfish Gene.

- D. Hofstadter - GEB / I Am a Stange Loop.

- S. Nasar - A Beautiful Mind.

- J. Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel. 

- S.J. Gould - I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History.

- S. Hawking - A Brief History of Time.

- J. Brockman (editor) - The Next Fifty Years - It led me to read other interesting books written by some of the contributing authors, like P. Davies, I. Stewart, M. Csikszentmihalyi or R. Sapolsky.

 

Finally, two notable Spanish authors:

 

- S. Ramon y Cajal - I will single out a short book that is particularly relevant to these forums: The World Seen at Eighty, Memoirs of an Arteriosclerotic. It includes a couple of chapters on the aging theories of his time and the quest for immortality.  

 

- J. Ortega y Gasset - The Revolt of the Masses -  A warning quote for transhumanists:

 

"As they say in the United States: “to be different is to be indecent.” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated".