Aaaah - no Diceman fans out there then ?
For me it was a book called Stories from Shakespeare that my dad brought back from a business trip to England when I was ten.
A month later, I was dragging the Complete Works everywhere I went and forcing my little brother to act out scenes from Hamlet. (“NO! You have to STAY dead! That’s what ‘tragedy’ MEANS!”)
Fourteen years later, I’m a grad student. English Renaissance drama, of course.
The Hot Zone- by Richard Preston
It talks about the different Ebola scares throughout the world. Helped steer me into the career path I want to have when I grow up.
The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka (short story)
Aided in turning me into the cynical person I am today, and turned me into a Kafka worshipper, for it was the first thing I ever read by him.
I thought I was the only who has ever read that book…
Gone With the Wind
Scarlet was not exactly nice, Rhett was not exactly a perfect gentleman, and Ashley was something of a wussy, but it taught me a few things. One: I can prevail. Look at Scarlet, her world was destroyed, her family devastated, her planatation laid to waste, yet she did what she had to do. Two: Money may be nice when you need clothes, food, and a home, but it will not bring you happiness. “Frankly, my Dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Also, it was the first real novel I read. It took me three months, when I was 9, and 1 week when I was 17. 
Ramona Quimby: Age Eight
Nothing special, except it was the first book without pictures that I had ever read. When I was in 2nd grade, I knew how to read. I was even pretty good at it…but I refused to read. I would not do it, for anything. Finally my teacher handed me the book, and told me to read it, that I would really like it. Intrigued by its size (all 118 pages of it) I read it. That was the beginning of a life time love affair with the written word.
The Scarlet Letter
This is how I want to write. This is what I want to do. Every word, every punctuation, every description, has meaning, and lots of it! It was the first novel I ever read that actually meant something to me, other than just a cool story. Symbolism! Allusion! Ambiguity! It has it all.
Not a book in the regular sense, but a play:
‘Our Town’ by Thornton Wilder.
The scene with Emily’s birthday hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks and I realized for the first time how important it is to live in the moment.
Jeez, I thought I had an interesting book, but I haven’t yet read anything earth-shattering like you guys have.
The most influential book I’ve read is one I got recently called PC Interrupts. It’s about - you guessed it - computer interrupts which can be called via inline assembly. Sounds boring, but while scanning through the book, I realized there are so many things I can do with it!!! Including:
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Setting the video resolution (the most important part)
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Reading from hard-drive sectors and bypassing files which I normally don’t have privelages to access
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Using the mouse, in DOS mode.
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Extended memory in DOS mode.
And various other miscellaneous knick-knacks which I need to use in my programs. Call me shallow, but this book has influenced me more than any other book.
The Little Prince by St. Exupery changed how I look at other people. I didn’t read it until I was 20 or so, and I couldn’t believe I had lived 20 years without ever coming across this book. The opening chapter made me see what draws me to certain types of people–they’re the ones that see the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant instead of the hat. And, no matter how far away you may be from your asteroid, your rose is out there, somewhere… and that thorns aren’t always the best defense.
It’s sad, but I’ve been know to judge people by how they react when I tell them that this is my favorite book!
non fiction: The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
Fiction: SHOGUN by James Clavell
I didnt just like these books, they changed my life like the OP said.
You DO know that the actual Rhett Butler line in the book was “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
The “Frankly” was added to the screenplay.
I liked Gone With The Wind myself, though I was considerably older when I read it, around 31 or so. I was self concious enough being a 31 year old male reading a “femme” book (I don’t know if it’s femme but I thought it might be), that I hid it in a newspaper when I was reading it in public. :eek:
Obviously, Shakespeare and Issac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare were among the most important books I read.
I’ll second that.
hmmmm, book that had the most impact on my life? That’s tough. I could say something like the communist mannifesto, or Reflecctions on Violence. But, that wouldn’t be true. They merely helped take me on a path that I was already travelling, merely solidify ideas that were already embryonic in my mind.
Would it be a work of fiction? Wizard of Oz maybe, or one of his other books, what about C.S. Lewis, the chronicles of Narnia? Emil in the Night Kitchen? NO, all have changed me, but none have greatly influenced me.
So what?
hmmmm.
I would have to say…Washington Babylon. By Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silversteen. yes. I’ve read it 4 to 6 times. Since then, I went back and have read most of Cockburn’s work. It has very much influenced my life’s work.
This is so sad. I don’t belive I’m admiting it, it’s so sad.
That first D&D book, whichever it was. That set my path into hard-core geekdom at an early age . . . a role which more or less definded my life for more years than I care to admit.
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“Roll the dice to see if I’m getting drunk”
I wouldn’t say that just one book affected my life. There were several over a period of many years that would bend my course of thought. And I’m sure that there are more to come.
The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton. The first chapter book I recall reading. There, my love affair with books began. I subsequently read every book that my library had by Enid Blyton.
Bloom County books (along with watching Monty Python) refined my sense of humour. Further refined when I discovered The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Postcards From the Edge was the right book at the right time. I don’t know how much it changed my life, but it reflected my thoughts with uncanny precision. I held onto that book dearly. It made me realize that I was not the only one who was truly messed up with a warped sense of humour.
Two things happened at once. I went back to school to finish off the high school courses I dropped out of the first time, which is when I discovered that not only am I not an idiot when it comes to math and the sciences, but that physics and chemistry came to me naturally. At the same time, the Trekkie that I am, I started reading The Physics of Star Trek, which was my introduction to Hawking, the Heisenburg Principle of Uncertainty, and many new (to me) theories about the universe. This put me into my scientific frame of mind, and encouraged me to buy A Brief History of Time which solidified my desire to become a physicist someday.
This is obviously just a brief run down. There were many more books in between that moved me into an arts frame of mind, then over the course of my 20’s, got me interested in the physical history of the Earth, which laid the foundation of my interest in science.
I’d have to say “Lipstick Traces” by Greil Marcus. Changed the way I looked at everything from history to punk rock to consumer society. I have to also give props to “The Demon Haunted World” and “Night”, both previously mentioned in this thread. Also, a book by Philip Gourevitch entitled “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families”, about the genocide in Rwanda. Made me weep.
So many choices…
"The Hobbit" and “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien, which helped spawn my imagination and the spark to see and experience new things…
"The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis, which helped me to develop my ethics and sence of responsibility…
"The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain which set in motion the questioning of my own beliefs and motives…
I believe in gestalt, the whole is more.
That said I would have to pick…
"The Bible" It in itself has had more influence directly and indirectly on my life than any other.
I’m going to second The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read it when I was fourteen, and was absolutely enthralled by its treatment of religion. Looking back, it wasn’t revolutionary, but it was revolutionary to me. I became fascinated with paganism, which led to an interest in pagan influences on Christianity, which led to an interest in religious history in general. In college I majored in Anthropology with a focus on Religion. I read the bible for fun and interest. I have copies of three versions of the Bible (two Christian, one Jewish), the Qur’an, the Bhagavad-Gita, and other various religious writings. I could go on… and I pretty much date my interest in religion to reading this book.
Also: Orientalism by Edward Said. I read this book in my senior seminar (Space, Place, Culture and Power - gotta love pretentious anth course titles) and it blew my mind. Not really light reading, and the untranslated French is annoying, but it totally altered my view on how we as Westerners view the world and the East in particular.
Brave New World and 1984 because they taught me that there are some pretty horrible worlds in the future if we don’t do something to stop them in the present.
The Autobiography of Malcom X because it was the first autobiography and really the first in-depth historical book i read, and it got me interested in how people become who they are and how certain events can change your life.
And finally, {b}Another Roadside Attraction{/b] and all subsequent works by **Tom Robbins{/b}. These books have taught and always keep instiling in me that a) everything in life is connected, and b)in all of life’s comedies there’s a little tragedy and vice versa.
sorry, hit submit instead of preview
Reading Animal Farm was just an epiphany. It changed my whole way of thinking.
The Bible.
Second - The “Left Behind” series.’
I would have to say The Bible, and it still does.