Which books, fiction or non-fiction, have had the largest impact on you?
I'm always looking to grow, especially through the reading of life-changing books. So which books have made the largest change in your life, and how did they do so?
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Changed my whole way of thinking about 'my' country.
And not for the better.
I am now a dissolutioned cynic.
Not happier, but wiser.
He donates much of his time with projects involving human rights and struggles against injustice.
I love an anecdote told on him by a friend of his: AR was visiting a country where poverty was rampant in hopes of bringing attention to the need for assistance. He was surrounded all day by children who did not know him as a celebrity ... no TV or film in their world ... But who were fascinated by his sunglasses, another item they had never experienced. He sat patiently all day and let them crawl in and out of his lap, all taking a turn at putting on the shades. Two weeks after he left the village, a large package was was flown in containing hundreds of pairs of sunglasses, one for each child and adult.
I've read it 3 times in the last 3 years and at one time I had each of the Agreements on post-it-notes on my desk. Time to dust it off and read it again.
Heinlein's "Lost Legacy" (part of the "Assignment in Eternity" stories)
Baroja's "El Árbol de la Ciencia"
Rodney Whitaker ("Trevanian"
's "Shibumi"
Gary Jennings' "Aztec"
Al Franken's "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot"
Aksyonov's short story "На полпути к луне (Halfway to the Moon)"
Fogelström's "Mina Drömmars Stad"
Howard Fast's "The Immigrants"
Tom Robbins' "Jitterbug Perfume"
And only probably five hundred others.......
considering that I've read thousands upon thousands of books. I've never thought of any title as being "life changing," but that the reading of so many broad, diverse things has.
And I think that anything "life changing" would probably be highly personal, and might not be for anyone else.
The earliest "life changing" book I can remember was when my 4th grade teacher read My Side of the Mountain to us. I bought it from our book order when it came around, and have had a copy of it for almost 5 decades now.
It was life-changing because it was the first time I recognized myself. It resonated like a tibetan singing bowl in my soul. I wanted to BE Sam Gribley. I wanted to leave behind my life and live in a tree, alone and uninterrupted by human interaction. While I loved the book, I was horrified when his family found him in the end, moved to the mountain, and started to "civilize" it, making him move back into a house.
It was the first clue to who I was, and who I am: a Lone Wolf, an introvert, who craves solitude like air.
Another? The Bible. I picked it up when I was 16 to read because I was tired of being made to feel inferior by new people in my life because I hadn't been raised "Christian." I read it straight through, beginning to end, twice. I compared it to what I heard being said in the church I was pressured to attend, by the pastor and the attendees. I noted the contradictions in the Bible itself, and between what it said and what was being taught in the church, and how the church members lived their lives. Then I left it behind. I still have a copy on the shelf somewhere, along with my Boomer Bible and other similarly blasphemous versions.
Those 2 Bible readings added greatly to my background knowledge in understanding and negotiating western culture, traditions, idioms, etc.. It also sparked a life-long interest in comparative religion, a study in which I've amateurishly dabbled.
There are plenty more, but not for this post. The time spent sorting through memories of books read is well worth it, though, and will probably continue as I move on with the day.
I read "Journeys" years after I'd been having OBEs (out of body experiences) and his book was a refreshing take on a topic that had been ignored for decades. The only popular books on the topic were from experiments done in the late 1800s! Monroe was rather clinical in his recording and and so forth, so it makes for dry reading.
Still, the Hemi-Sync technique of brain-hemisphere synchronization opened many doors in meditating and higher spiritual functions and journeys. I've had a few due to getting recordings of the HS system 
Edward Espe Brown's "The Tassajara Bread Book" was my first baking book. Sure, I had "The Joy of Cooking" and it taught me much in cooking. (As a guy, "home-ec" was not taught to boys, so I first learned cooking at home, then in Boy Scouts, then from Julia Child and other PBS cooks, and more from the JoC.)
Plus, he's a former Zen monk, so his approach to cooking and baking teaches patience and calm. Or maybe it's more that he incorporates the Zen mindset into a cooking art that does require patience. His recipes are quite good, too, and I've used many of them, developing gook skills over the years.
My Dad apparently decided I needed another perspective along with my Catholic upbringing. He gave me the book on my 12th birthday. I tease him that doing that really messed up my head, but the truth is, the book was the best gift he could have given me. 
For different life stages & different reasons. Both changed my life for the better.
