Influential Books

[railfancwb]

What are some books which seem to have been unusually influential in your life? Could be fiction or non fiction.

Many people will list the Bible or specific books within it.

For me, C S Forester’s Hornblower novels, Robert A Heinlein’s writings, and Louis L’Amour westerns have been significant fictional books of influence.

Couple non-fiction books:

Dance of the Money Bees by John Train

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne 

[Huaco Kid]

Mostly sci-fi (every asimov robot book / story).

I don't think any book has really 'influenced' me.  Nor, movie.

[gwalchmai]

I'm by no means an organized religion kinda guy, but I guess the Holy Bible has been as influential in my life as anything else has, and there have been a lot of influences. And distractions...  

I think the Judeo-Christian tradition is a great moral base upon which to build one's investigative journey. It worked well for Western Civilization. 

This thread reminds me of Wells' "three books" in The Time Machine.

[Gunboat1]

https://www.amazon.com/Flickering-Torch-Kim-Kipling-ebook/dp/B0C5YVR3NL?ref_=ast_author_dp

 

[Gunboat1]

[minderasr]

Not so much the books, but the author.  I loved Stephen King books in my youth.  But his politics influenced me to absolutely despise the man.

[janice6]

All Sci Fi I read as a kid and through High School.

It influenced me to think about solving problems differently.  This has served me well over the years I worked in Physics Research.  It caused me to use my imagination and to trust my intuition. 

[Batesmotel]

Anthem 

The Mainspring of Human Progress 

A Razors Edge 

[Valmet]

Unintended Consequences by John Ross

The Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway 

[Mrs.Cicero]

non-fiction - Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Discourses of Epictetus (and the Enchiridion), Paul Revere's Ride (David Hackett Fisher), 

fiction - My Side of the Mountain (I've been trying to get there since 3rd grade when I first read it),

 

 

[Brad]

Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey.

Three books: Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership, and Leadership Strategies and Tactics by Willink and Babin. I wish I had the knowledge from those books when I was younger.

[minderasr]

8 minutes ago, Brad said:

I wish I had the knowledge from those books when I was younger.

You bring up a good point.  One book I wish I read when I was much younger, The Bogleheads' Guide To The Three Fund Portfolio (or any of the John Bogle books).  This definitely had a profound effect on my investing strategy.

[Maser]

The Anarchist Cookbook

[geeorge]

[Borg warner]

Atlas Shrugged. I found the book somewhere when I was 12 years old and thought it was an "Adult" book and hid it from my parents and kept reading through it looking for the sex scenes. When I discovered there were no sex scenes I stopped hiding it. And when my dad discovered that I was reading it he asked me what I thought about it and I told him that I didn't really understand it. He said to read it again when I was older which I did.

I was always good at reading even though I was later diagnosed as being Dyslexic which caused me other problems like with mathematics, but I liked reading so much that I overcame the difficulties that I had in learning to read. Both my parents were impressed with my taste in books that I checked out from the library when I was in the sixth grade because I was unknowingly reading many of the Classics without knowing that they were classics or knowing who the authors were.

 

Two books I really liked that I picked out just because I liked th titles were "The Jungle Book" by Kipling and "White Fang" by Jack London. I also read Tarzan by Edgar rice Burroughs and later read some of Burroughs's Mars books.

 

Also there was one book my Dad got for me that I really liked as a kid and it was a large hardbound illustrated version of Gulliver's Travels which was a book with a lot of social insight and not necessarily a children's book although it was very creative an imaginative and enjoyable for children to read. another great children's book that has meaning for adults is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

 

I also read comic books when I was a kid and had almost every edition of Superman from about 1954 to 1959 but never took good care of them an threw them way after too many pages went missing. Later on in 60's I really liked reading Zap comics.

 

[janice6]

3 hours ago, Borg warner said:

Atlas Shrugged. I found the book somewhere when I was 12 years old and thought it was an "Adult" book and hid it from my parents and kept reading through it looking for the sex scenes. When I discovered there were no sex scenes I stopped hiding it. And when my dad discovered that I was reading it he asked me what I thought about it and I told him that I didn't really understand it. He said to read it again when I was older which I did.

I was always good at reading even though I was later diagnosed as being Dyslexic which caused me other problems like with mathematics, but I liked reading so much that I overcame the difficulties that I had in learning to read. Both my parents were impressed with my taste in books that I checked out from the library when I was in the sixth grade because I was unknowingly reading many of the Classics without knowing that they were classics or knowing who the authors were.

 

Two books I really liked that I picked out just because I liked th titles were "The Jungle Book" by Kipling and "White Fang" by Jack London. I also read Tarzan by Edgar rice Burroughs and later read some of Burroughs's Mars books.

 

Also there was one book my Dad got for me that I really liked as a kid and it was a large hardbound illustrated version of Gulliver's Travels which was a book with a lot of social insight and not necessarily a children's book although it was very creative an imaginative and enjoyable for children to read. another great children's book that has meaning for adults is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

 

I also read comic books when I was a kid and had almost every edition of Superman from about 1954 to 1959 but never took good care of them an threw them way after too many pages went missing. Later on in 60's I really liked reading Zap comics.

 

My favorite story was John Carter of Mars stories.  I read it from an original "little Big Book" around 1946 the other side of the book was Tarzan.  Wonderful stories.
 

[Lazy R]

20 hours ago, Mrs.Cicero said:

fiction - My Side of the Mountain (I've been trying to get there since 3rd grade when I first read it),

 

 

I read that in about 6th grade, really liked it.

[Lazy R]

The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark, when I was a kid.