The books that define us (with apologies to Lazydolphin)

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killerdwarf

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I'm totally ripping off Lazydolphin's idea, but I'm making the subject books, not movies (I love movies too, but I like books better).

Did you ever read a book that just grabbed you and changed the way you look at life? Did the characters in that book resonate for you? Did you develop new strategies for living, dealing with others or making decisions? Are there books you just can't read enough times? I need to add to my reading list, so let's hear 'em!

In no particular order, these are the books that matter to me:

Shogun by James Clavell
LOTR by JRR Tolkein
The Iliad by Homer
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
A Game of Thrones/A Clash of Kings/ A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory

There are more, but these are the tops!
 
A book that i can read and read and never get bored of is a book called Adventure land by Steve Harris...i first read it when i was about 15 its about a fairground and all these kids keep going missing whenever the fair is in town, but its mainly based around a character called Dave who all these strange things keep happening to and its to do with the fairground...well i tried to explain it without giving to much away LoL
But the main reason i love it is because its written by someone my grandad knew and its based in the town my grandparents live in...
The first book i ever remember reading is Jane Erye by Charlotte Bronte...so that will always be a favourite...

But...i love reading anything by Steven King and Clive Barker...Cabal is my favourite, the film was good to renamed "Nightbreed" but the books are always better for some reason!!!
I wouldnt say that any of these have changed my life or anything but there worth reading 🙂
 
No apologies necessary, killerdwarf! Rip away. 🙂

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is by far the most defining book I've ever read. It is the most intelligent book I've ever read. It is the most heartbreaking and moving book I've ever read. It is by far the funniest book I've ever read, and along with the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams it helped shape the LazyDolphin sense of humor when I was a young and impressionable lad. Plus it's funny. Also, it is funny. And it's about war and death and the sanctity of life and questioning authority and the lunacy of bureaucracy. Oh, and did I mention that it's almost unbearably laugh-out-loud funny?

Aside from Catch-22, here are some other books that made a big impact on my life in some way:

  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. My older brother saw that I was reading nothing but Piers Anthony fantasy novels when I was in junior high, so he bought me this and said something cryptic about broadening my horizons. I thought he was nuts at the time, but now when I'm drunk late at night and my breath smells like mustard gas and roses, I always call him up and offer him thanks and praise.
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I can't believe Oprah just chose one of my favorite books for her book club...it'll be interesting to see how the daytime talk show masses respond to magical realism.
  • Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein. I might have been weaned off of Piers Anthony, but Tolkein will forever kick ass in my heart.
  • VALIS, by Philip K. Dick. Wow. I love the gleeful paranoia of Philip K. Dick. He was a nut who thought God spoke to him via a pink laser beam, but he was a very intelligent nut who could occasionally coalesce his insanity into some very compelling reading. VALIS is by far my favorite of his many novels.
 
I'd like to think the books that define me are something like 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' or 'The Catcher In The Rye' or 'The Bell Jar'. Hell I'd even settle for being intelligent and hilarious like all the 'Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy' books but if i'm honest I'm probably best defined In Winnie The Pooh or Barney and Friends books.
 
Whereas I luv to read all sorts of different things, I believe the best and most endearing messages lie within the pages of children's books. I read and collect children's books that touch my heart...

My favorite and most defining is: You Are My I Love You- by Maryann K Cusimano and Satomi Ichikawa

When I first read this book, I balled my eyes out and then immediatly bought it and sent it to my parents with an inscription. It is a beautiful book about a parent telling the child how much he loves...
 
Lord of the Rings - nuff said.
Dangerous Visions/Again Dangerous Visions anthologies - Harlan Ellison edits the world's best speculative fiction - ground breaking.
Flowers for Algernon - as mentioned in another thread.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld books - very very funny but with a nice slice of humanity.
Hitchhikers Guide - just very very funny!
Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics - you can buy them in book form now and they will be hailed as great literature...
Stephen King's books for the most part - esp. The Dark Tower series.

Good call on the George RR Martin Dwarfy-boy - I've read many a fantasy epic in my time but the Song of Fire and Ice (or is it Ice and Fire? I can't be bothered to go downstairs to check) is my favourite so far.

When I was in my teens - anything by Heinlein, Clark, Asimov, Dick, Ellison, Zelazny, Silverberg - y'know, the sci-fi greats...oh, and Vonnegut - good call LD.

I do read mainstream stuff as well but it's the sci-fi/fantasy/horror that has "defined" my reading habits for most of my life...

Bloody Hell! I do go on a bit, don't I?
 
Dune by Frank Herbert
Whipping Star by Frank Herbert
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I like pretty much any "serious" science fiction. (Not like Star Wars, which is considered by most to be "just for fun".)
 
Oh, it's such a good thread ! What would we be without books !!!

I'm a big LoTR fan, but oddly, I can't put it in the list of the book that had an impact on my life.

Last year : Little big by John Crowley =>such a strange book & I can't tell why it appealed me so much, I can't tell how I change after reading it, but I know it changed sommink in me, weird, lol -

In my childhood : Le bracelet de Vermeil (the bright red bracelet in english) Serge Dalens => I learnt with this one that friendship wasn't a piece of cake, that both of ppl in a friendship had big efforts to do but it's worth & that discrepancy between two person coming from different background wouldn't prevent them to be friend (it's a serie of book, the last one, during WW1 is particulary striking since the characters r young)

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe for some reasons
 
Well so far all i can say is The Lord of the Rings, since thats the only really good book that i have read so far.

i have also read boks like His Dark MAterials trillogy and Hrry Potter but i dont think that they have changed the way that i look at life in anyway.
 
LazyD: Thanks, I didn't want to step on any toes...

RandyGiles: I forgot Dune...good call!

I didn't add any commentary to my list because I was short for time, but I really enjoy the Byzantine political struggles as well as the swordplay in Shogun. LOTR, well, tour de force just doesn't cover it, does it? The Song of Ice and Fire is just amazing, isn't it Mr. P...it's like a truer-to-reality LOTR, if I can make that comparison...sex and politics and a high MKPP average (that's Messy Kills Per Page). My buddy has been pushing me to read Vonnegut, so with a stellar thumbs up like Lazyd's, I guess I'll just have to go get it...and Philip K. Dick's short stories are awesome...they make great movies too, (Minority Report, Blade Runner).

Hmm, after looking at my list, I see a trend...lots of swordplay, and very defined good vs. evil characterizations and situations...I'll have to go over and tell LadyLavinia that I just might have an overactive superego...you know, duty, honour, all that stuff...I mean, fergodssake, Arthurian legends?? Maybe I gotta get out more...

Or maybe I'll stay in and read all the good suggestions...thanks, all, and keep 'em coming, I'm really building a list now!!!

Let me add a couple more:

The Wealthy Barber by Lance Chilton. Investing 101 for anyone interested in being financially sound when they retire, or richer at a younger age.

The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. This guy is a security consultant to the stars (Michelle Pfeiffer, Barbra Streisand, etc.) and he tells some amazing stories as well as teaching people to learn how to protect themselves from harm at the hands of others...it may be sexist, but every woman should read this book to learn about the ways predators operate...unfortunately, as he points out, most predators are male...
 
MKPP - ROTFLMAO killerdwarf.

I got into the Ice and Fire books after reading the story that George Martin wrote for the "Legends" fantasy anthology. But I've liked his work since I read "Sandkings"...and there was a good one of his about vampires on a Mississippi riverboat (the title of which I've forgotten, sorry).

"Legends" is well worth a read IMO if you're a fantasy fan as it gives a taste of several authors' ongoing series. I think that I've also seen "Legends 2" in book shops as well - I just checked on Amazon and they are both available.

Here is the link to Legends on Amazon UK
 
Not much of a reader. I read some Dutch Books for Literature, it was obligatory, but you wouldn't know them. And let's see I've read Harry Potter.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the Merchant of Venice, MacBeth, a Midsummer Night's Dream and the Tempest. I liked them all very much, except MacBeth, that one was a bit off, much less then the others. All of the others really define my view on love. Romeo and Julliet ofcourse mostly, I think that book is the definition of love.
 
The George RR Martin vampire/riverboat book I was trying to think of was "Fevre Dream" - highly recommended, even though I couldn't remember what it was called 🙂
 
Originally posted by Mr. Pointy
Dangerous Visions/Again Dangerous Visions anthologies - Harlan Ellison edits the world's best speculative fiction - ground breaking.
Click to expand...

OMFG! Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions are two of the most fantastically kick-ass speculative fiction anthologies ever published! I love Harlan Ellison...he's such a bitchy little troll. 🙂 I'm a huge addict of golden-age science fiction short stories...Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederik Pohl, Alfred Bester, Brian Aldiss, Spider Robinson (well, okay...he's not exactly "golden age"), James Blish, and on and on...

My favorite anothology is the one with the most ungodly-long title in history: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America, edited by Robert Silverberg.
 
Originally posted by LazyDolphin
OMFG! Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions are two of the most fantastically kick-ass speculative fiction anthologies ever published! I love Harlan Ellison...he's such a bitchy little troll. 🙂 I'm a huge addict of golden-age science fiction short stories...Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederik Pohl, Alfred Bester, Brian Aldiss, Spider Robinson (well, okay...he's not exactly "golden age"), James Blish, and on and on...

My favorite anothology is the one with the most ungodly-long title in history: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time, Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America, edited by Robert Silverberg.
Click to expand...

I'm more and more convinced that you and I are probably the same person LD - this is uncanny. I'm sure I have the Silverberg anthology somewhere (probably at my Mum's). "The Silverberg Anthology" - is this a new Robert Ludlum book?😉
 
I've been picking up the Asimov anthologies from his Analog mag. They come out in a volume of stories of the same type...Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts, etc. Some of the stories are very well done, with contributers like Andre Norton, and a lot of other Nebula Award winners who I can't remember now! They're great for reading at work (for me), since I can polish off a whole story during a break! These are great suggestions!
 
Books really to seem to bookmark our lives, and I'm amazed how similar a lot of the ones on this thread are to mine.

I'd like to echo, LOTR, The Iliad, Dune, Dangerous Visions, Slaughterhouse five, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest

and add

* The Teachings of Don Juan: Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castanedas,

*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maitenance - ?

* Tale of Two Cites - Charles Dickens

* Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

* The Sun Also Rises - Ernst Hemingway

* Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlen

* Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven and some other guy

* Anything by Harlan Ellison

* Anything by William Kotswinkle (one of the great undiscovered geniuses of our time--try Doctor Rat)
 
Originally posted by nerd4hire
* Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven and some other guy
Click to expand...

Was it Jerry Pournelle? His is the name that's just sprung to mind. If I'm right, he's published a couple of (at least) collaborations with Larry Niven.
 
Are you Dave Gorman
and
Join Me by Danny Wallace

i just know one day im going to wake up halfway round the world trying to complete some crazed quest with my best mate trying to talk me out of it while secretly having a bit of a laugh 😀
 
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