What Is A Book That Has Changed Your Life?

I asked this question yesterday on Twitter. OMG so many answers and so many books I want to read right now. What is yours? Add yours in a comment below?

15 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Always and forever “The English Patient” and “In the Skin of A Lion”. Both by Michael Ondaatje. They are a reminder that poetry can be everywhere.

  2. ÖKOTOPIA – Ernest Callenbach
    ..such an interesting read about the future 30 years ago – and now we can compare already what is done and what still needs to be worked on!!

  3. The Stranger by Albert Camus
    Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

  4. Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. Incredible.

  5. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

  6. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

    84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

  7. Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

  8. Pride and Prejudice. I was in the 7th grade and I felt like I was a little wittier than everyone in the room but too terrified to talk much. Boys were a foreign species I observed from afar and only occasionally exchanged remarks with. Elizabeth Bennett taught me what flirting should look and feel like. I didn’t give it a shot for several years though.

  9. 100 Years of Solitude and A Little Life.

  10. Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. It’s a trilogy, really. Each one is profound. I’m not religious yet they totally made sense to me, deep gut-resounding sense.

    Illusion by Richard Bach. That one is magical. It’s probably my most recommended book. I want everyone to read it.

    The Prime by Kulreet Chaudhary. I just read it about a month ago and it’s already changed my life. It’s made me feel better in almost every way. Another book I want all my loved ones, and anyone who has ever struggled with weight and food, to read.

  11. The Art Lover by Carole Masó. Excerpt

    On the Street

    We walk the same ten blocks, know the same faces, the same dogs. We hear the exact same half dozen or so raps from the street people, because they, like everyone else, are territorial, and we become attached to this all, against our will, somehow.
    Through a storefront window a man standing on a box. A nun closing the church gate, a bit of Greek, a radio blasting, a saxophonist, fresh pasta. There was another man kneeling at the feet of the man on the box, “a hundred images ago it seems. A woman with a stethoscope around her neck, pigeons, a hand in neon, a locksmith, boys on skateboards, Catholic school uniforms, flower markets, pink, blue, purple hair. Black men selling Gucci bags. It comes to me now, the man on the box was getting his pants fixed, the other man a tailor. Artichokes, acorn squash. It should somehow be possible to paint this scene in Father Demo Square with words.
    Why one must be poor.
    Why one is poor and another is not.
    Why you are poor and I am not.
    The sign on the telephone pole says, DANCING FOR OUR LIVES, a Dance Benefit at City Center for AIDS Research. I turn the corner and in a window a blonde has her head in a blue machine to make herself brown—a tanning parlor. I pass the Pottery Barn, Angelina’s, Cafe Degli Artistes and so on. We are dancing for our lives. Sticking our white faces in blue machines and coming out brown. This is not invented. This is just how it is.
    On my street a child’s school paper escaped from a bookbag or a hand that held a jump rope or jacks. I pick it up and go inside.

  12. How You Know by Yasmin Ahmad, a Malaysian Creative Director in the advertising industry who passed away. It’s beautiful and it feels limiting to say the book is about the advertising scene because it really isn’t – it’s so much more than that. It’s about forgiveness, grace, humility, and all the little things and big things that matter most when living a good life.

  13. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

  14. Camus with his Sysiphos. I read it first when I was 14 and because of it, I went on to study Philosophy.
    Margaret Atwood with her “The edible woman”.

  15. Hi Tina, I’m a little late to this, but can I nominate ‘Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain’ by David Eagleman? I’m only half way through, but it already feels like a life-changing read and an amazing introduction to our subconscious brain. It is also a powerful reminder that we shouldn’t make assumptions about what’s informing another person’s perceptions or behaviour (or our own for that matter) – which feels especially necessary these days.