Foo - Top three books that changed your life

1984 - Orwell
Lord of the Flies - Golding
Brave New World - Huxley

If I had to distill it to three, probably these changed my way of thinking the most.

Brave New World seemed waay overrated when I finally read it.

For me:

Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Great Divorce - CS Lewis
1984 - George Orwell

The Bible
Hammer of The Gods
Playboy

The Bible
Hammer of The Gods
Playboy

:lol: Wow, what a combo!

The Bible
Hammer of The Gods
Playboy

Quite the diverse reading list. ;)

The Bible
HighTimes
Playboy

FIFY:thumb:

FIFY:thumb:

Pot head!

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett

The M*********a Growers Gide-Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-Robert M. Pirsig
Fear and Loathing-On the Campaign Trail '72 Hunter S Thompson

Lord of the Flies - Golding +1
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
HTML: The Definitive Guide - O'Reilly (no srlsy)

Lord of the Rings/Hobbit - Really struck a cord with me in grade 3 when I started it. It definitely created some direction into all future reading
Issac Asimov - Foundation series
Timothy Leary - change your brain - came at a time in my life when I hated life. Difficult read though, as he moved through the book you can tell he does more and more drugs...becomes almost babble by the end.

I could go on with all the IT text books I have read, as they have all had a direct or indirect influence on my life. But those above are the first influences.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Not in my top 3, but if I expand to top 5 or 10 that would definitely make it in too. That's book is definitely a mind trip.

Three books. You gotta be kidding.
It's not about the Bike,
The Prophet
Home from Nowhere.
People's History of the United States
Columbia History of the World.
Labor's Untold Story'
Immortal Poems of the English Language.

I could go on with all the IT text books I have read, as they have all had a direct or indirect influence on my life. But those above are the first influences.ha, ditto. when i was 14 I asked my dad how to make a website, he gave me a book- pretty much shaped everything from then.

Sex With A Mountain Bike

AC43.13 1B, 2A

Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance

Eyelids Of Morning (http://www.peterbeard.com/publications/morning.htm)

Iron John
The Millionaire Next Door

Together, these books inspired me to start my own business.

4 Agreements
Bringing Down The House
The Power of Now

The Power of NowHow great? Kinda good, or really moving and fantastic?

Just curious because Eckhart Tolle has been on my "round tuit" list ever since Dr. Pete raved about being impressed with "A New Earth".

fahrenheit 451
the cather in the rye
<insert something that sounds intelligent here>

fahrenheit 451
the cather in the rye
cosmopolitan

fify

Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The five people you meet in heaven - Mitch Albom

the cather in the rye
Look out....America's next political assasin is here - it's Timmhaan!!


Actually, I read that book because of all the stigma associated with it and wasn't nearly as impressed as I thought I was going to be.

The list is WAAAAAAAY more than three books, but here's the first three that come to mind

Garth Nix-Abhorsen Trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen)
Okay I'm cheating--it's three books. I was inspired to compose a suite about the Nine Bright Shiners because of them, and it has been my pet project for over a year now (I'm constantly revising as I find new aspects of their personalities with every re-read of the books. Plus I still can't get the right catty theme for Mogget).

Arthur C. Clarke-Rendezvous with Rama
This basically was the first sci-fi nover I ever read, and I fell in love with it so much that now I'm a total geek reading everyone from Asimov to Zelazny.

My intro to psych book
I was bullied into taking up nursing by my mom, but then I took an intro to psych class and found out that THIS is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

edit: bonus one
Ayn Rand-The Virtue of Selfishness
Taught me that I shouldn't be totally self-sacrificing--I learned to put my needs first, or else I will not be able to take care of anyone else's.

Anthem - Ayn Rand
Yea! Another Anthem lover. Not only moving, but my favorite book of all-time.

Yea! Another Anthem lover. Not only moving, but my favorite book of all-time./high five.

I read that book in about a day. I couldn't stop reading it.

I currently have Atlas Shrugged and (soon) The Fountainhead on my shelf of books I want to read. I also want to read 1984 one of these days.

Look out....America's next political assasin is here - it's Timmhaan!!


Actually, I read that book because of all the stigma associated with it and wasn't nearly as impressed as I thought I was going to be.

i think it was the right book for me to read at the right time. not sure i'd get the same out of it if i read it now. this is one reason i rarely re-read books that i enjoyed long ago.

Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
Carl Sagan - The Dragons of Eden

/high five.

I read that book in about a day. I couldn't stop reading it.

I currently have Atlas Shrugged and (soon) The Fountainhead on my shelf on books I want to read. I also want to read 1984 one of these days.

Well Anthem is a REALLY SHORT book, so its even *I* can read it in one day (and I'm a slooow reader).

Read 1984 back to back with Anthem. Those two books are sooo perfect together. It's like they tackle same issue from opposite viewpoints, both having same conclusion.

Atlas Shrugged is one of the wildest books you will ever read, but let me warn you. Have time and be in the mood before you try to tackle it. It's a long and VERY COMPLEX plot. You will be 200 pages in and still be introduced to new characters. It probably has 75+ characters you are keeping up with all at the same time. I did it as book on tape and it was still hard to keep up with at times.

i think it was the right book for me to read at the right time. not sure i'd get the same out of it if i read it now. this is one reason i rarely re-read books that i enjoyed long ago.

True....it was definitely geared toward a younger audience and I'm sure would be very impressionable for, say, a 15-20 year old. I read it last year....I was 37, so it didn't have the affect on me.

/high five.

I read that book in about a day. I couldn't stop reading it.

I currently have Atlas Shrugged and (soon) The Fountainhead on my shelf on books I want to read. I also want to read 1984 one of these days.

If your a Rand fan, I strongly suggest "We the Living".

If your a Rand fan, I strongly suggest "We the Living".

I recently broke out my copy (picked up at some time from a book store) and tried to read it. I'm sure its a great book. I know Rand is a great writer, but I was struggling to get into it at the beginning. I never did get very far. That was just recently too....probably 6 months ago.

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Plato - Symposium
Thomas Pynchon - V

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) by Douglas Hofstadter
The Art of Computer Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_art_of_computer_programming) by Donald Knuth
The Elements of Style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_elements_of_style) by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White

The Art of Computer Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_art_of_computer_programming) by Donald Knuth
If you actually READ that book, then my hat goes off to you. That's not a book many people could easily sit down and read.

I have the first 3 volumes (haven't got the recently released 4rth volume), but they are mostly reference books in my book shelf. I've never tried to sit and read them through. Just trying to read one topic takes enough time to digest.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach) by Douglas Hofstadter

+1 Difficult to get into at times, but quite rewarding.

Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class
Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Orwell – Animal Farm


I think all read in 10th grade. Kinda makes you view all displays of superiority as inherently suspect.

Fitzgerald – The Great GatsbyYay, another for The Great Gatsby.

If you actually READ that book, then my hat goes off to you. That's not a book many people could easily sit down and read.

I have the first 3 volumes (haven't got the recently released 4rth volume), but they are mostly reference books in my book shelf. I've never tried to sit and read them through. Just trying to read one topic takes enough time to digest.

One of my "life goals" is to complete all of the exercises from the first volume. I have a loooong way to go! :)

One of my "life goals" is to complete all of the exercises from the first volume. I have a loooong way to go! :)

I, for one, will be very impressed if you reach that goal! Good luck (neighbor)!!

(neighbor - I see you live in Woodinville).

Atlas Shrugged. Not an assigned reading. Discovered Ayn Rand on my own at 17 and was hooked. To this day, most influential book of my life.

I stumbled across Ayn Rand's Anthem when I was wandering through my school's library my sophomore year. Since then I've been hooked.

I, for one, will be very impressed if you reach that goal! Good luck (neighbor)!!

(neighbor - I see you live in Woodinville).

Don't hold your breath...

I read half of Atlas Shrugged. I had this urge to fling it out the window, so I stopped reading it.

I feel like Ayn Rand is a bizarre cult of personality.

Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3

I was 10 years old!!

I stumbled across Ayn Rand's Anthem when I was wandering through my school's library my sophomore year. Since then I've been hooked.

My story of discovering Anthem is kind of amusing. My junior year in high school, apparently, there was a lot of rampant cheating going on with tests from books being read.

The teachers would each pick a different of the same four books each semester and change the next so the different classes were all reading different books at the same time.

Students were giving tests from their book of last semester to students who were reading it the next semester, etc.... So my teacher decided to trick all of us one semester by choosing an old book that was still on the curriculum, but not one other students had been assigned. I'm guessing the book hadn't been assigned as a read for 20 years or more.

I was notorious for not reading the assigned books in school. Heck...I remember hiding the book *I* was reading (The Sword of Shanara) underneath our assigned book one term (All Quiet On The Western Front). Anyway, Anthem was one of the few books I did end up reading because it engrossed me from the beginning. And as Ms. Gio said....I'd looked for Ayn Rand ever since and read some other stuff too.

I read half of Atlas Shrugged. I had this urge to fling it out the window, so I stopped reading it.

I feel like Ayn Rand is a bizarre cult of personality.

I love her stories. I'm not so fond of her philosophy. She makes Ronald Reagan look like a liberal.

The Bible (God)
The Ultimate Gift (Jim Stovall)
Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

Runner Up: Jonathon Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F7WDJ50AL._SS500_.jpg

Night; Elie Weisel
Gods of Eden; William Bromley
The end of Faith; Sam Harris