What book has changed your life the most?

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Blew my mind. Thoreau's Walden did as well.

J.D. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics.

"A Billion Wicked Thoughts" by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. By a mile.

Justin91 wrote:

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. Helped me to understand that the parable of the prodigal son was *really* about the older brother and completely transformed my faith in the process.

Seconded!

Bruce Willis is lying in bed reading a book. the book is actually a piece of toast but Bruce is captivated. "how will it end?" he wonders

Atlas Shrugged was a POS. Honestly? The book that changed my life was Athletics by Percy Cerutty. Read it in '73. Struck up a written correspondence with the man that directly led to a career in coaching and indirectly led to a relationship with Fred Wilt, Chicks Hensley and Pat Clohessy that formed my coaching philosophy.

The Gulag Archipelago.

I read it during my first job after college.

It's a wonderful description of power and abusing power. Explained a lot that was going on in my workplace.

Debbie does dallas

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Gainesville/Miami guy:

Fitting you should mention the Cascades & Sierras. In the process of planning a family car trip thru NoCal and Oregon this summer--Yosemite, Muir Wilderness, Owens and Death Valley (average temp in July:116 degrees!)Then on to Mt.Shasta, Crater Lake & the Three Sisters near Bend, then a night or so in Eugene...got to check out Tracktown USA. Had a chance a couple of summers ago to climb high up in the fault-scarp of the Tetons above Jackson Hole...just fantastic. Actually, all of this talk fits well with the subject of literature, given that so many great novels use the American landscape as a character. Everything from "Little House On the Prairie" to Melville to Peter Mathiessen's "Killing Mr.Watson," which is set in the Florida Everglades in the early 1900's, a great, great, book. But my favorite American novel is "Blood Meridian," by Cormac McCarthy. It tells the story of the "Glanton gang," a group of mercenaries hired by Mexican authorities to extirpate native peoples along the Texas-Mexico border in the years following the Civil War. The book is both hyperviolent and beautiful and written in a near-biblical cadence. McCarthy goes back in time to describe the birth of modern military ideology, its confluence with science & technology, and their implications for the future, and he does so within the context of a western(!) An amazing book.

Jurassic Park

I'm cereal.

"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

The Red Book of Golf.

After reading it I realized the sneaking on well manicured golf courses to run was my future.

chilhowee:

Have you been out there before? Looks like you are going up the back (east) side of the Sierras. Good! Enter Yosemite from Mono Lake and see the high country first. The valley is incredible but I also love Tuolumne Meadows and Lembert Dome and Tenaya Lake.

Eugene is still Mecca - yeah, even to a Gainesville resident - but if you are that close, the Oregon coast is a must!

"Blood Meridian"? I will have to give it a try.

I think "Garp" too. Probably because some books come to you at the right time. You can really identify with the character(s)

"the Stranger" was like that too.

RE: What book has changed your life the most?

The one I read where it stated "make your life the fullest--live like you never have and train/race to your best ability whether you succeed for that day or not. And if not then try again and again...."

"The Gentleman's Guide to the Golden Age of Bl0wjobs"

Being and Nothingness by JP Sartre

In Persuasion Nation - George Saunders

Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver

What We Are - Peter Nathaniel Malae