Top six books for you

Saga of Burnt Njal
Heimskringla by Snorri Sturlusson
Iliad of Homer (4X in Greek, never in translation)
The Bears of Blue River by Charles Major (when I was a kid, made me a gun nut)
Sixguns by Elmer Keith
The Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Col. James Corbett

Common Sense (and other writings) Thomas Paine The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension Rucker Relativity Einstein ...

Hmm...There are a lot of books that have influenced me positively...

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Light in August by William Faulkner

Originally Posted by coldarchon

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actually I think all books of my life have had an impact on me, so children's books should count as well, they gave me a fundament for what I am today ..

the very hungry caterpillar
winnie-the-pooh
alice in wonderland
capital
moby dick
divine comedy

I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I read it to my daughter all the time, but I never had it as a child. Mine were Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh. Apparently I had something for bears.

Older me:

1. War&Peace - I first read this in the sixth grade, I think. Obviously, I didn't understand all of it, and the parts where Tolstoy goes on a tangent about Napoleon bored me (and bore me still), but I remember that this was the first book about adult themes that really touched me. I've read the book several times since.

2. We didn't have much money when I was a kid, but we spent a ton of time in libraries, the result of which is that that one of the most influential books I read, I don't properly remember the name of, nor the author of. In any case, it was a science fiction book by something Bela, written in either the 60s or 70s. The plot reads something like the The Truman Show. A kid discovers that he is the last white person (no kidding), or at least, the last white male, and he escapes from a 50s styled "prison", making contact with the last black people, the last Asian people, and so on, as well as the last white girl. Everyone else is a "muddied" person, of indeterminate race. The upshot of the story was that although the white dude falls in love with, I think, the Asian girl, he decides to go back to his community to be with the white girl, so that the diversity will be preserved. I guess that this is what happens when kids are allowed to roam free in libraries and no-one has culled the collection in quite some time.

3. Atlas Shrugged - At first, I thought that this was awesome. Then, I realized that it was a ****** novel and that the Ayn Rand's Objectivism was full of huge, gaping holes that she adroitly sidestepped by using the novel as a medium. In my personal novel, I am a ninja with a flaming sword who is irresistable to chicks.

4. Fifth Business - by Robertson Davies. If you like grotesque characters and fairly obvious lessons caged in a neat little narrative, you'll like this. I read this at an impressionable 14 (or was it 13), so it really made an impression on me.

5. Some book about Moshe Dayan. I picked it up (again, at the library) because a) I liked reading biographies, and 2) He looked pretty cool on the cove. After reading that book, and a ream of others about the history of Israel, from any number of different viewpoints, I've come to the conclusion that the Jews are some tough, badass Mofos, and that if there is a god, he is mos def coming out of the Jewish corner, and swinging. In my real life, I honor such heroes by eating at Katz's whenever I am in NYC. Those Jews make some awesome food too. Potatoes, cured meats, matso ball soup. What's not to like?

6. The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov - read at another impressionable moment.

I guess that if I was allowed to choose a seventh, it would be Cien Anos de Soledad. I read it in English and in Spanish, and whatever problems there are with that book, it is powerful.

Originally Posted by milosz

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It's a great song, no doubt. I love that they had to put a "NO REALLY, DON'T KILL AY-RABS" sticker on the cover of their first singles collection.

hmm... literary re-imaginings in song:
Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil" (Master and Margarita)
Cure, "Killing An Arab"

after that, I got nothing.

Originally Posted by RJman

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Simon and Garfunkel did a version of Richard Cory.

"Rain King" (counting crows/saul bellow)

I think the waterboys did a version of "the stolen child", although they may have set the text to music rather than re-imagining as such.

Ten, in no particular order:

Jude the Obscure
L'Etranger
Earthly Powers
The English Patient
The French Lieutenant's Woman
1984
Life of Pi
A Farewell to Arms
American Psycho
Farnham's Freehold

Not for any literary greatness (in fact, I had a long discussion with my literature professor on the merits of such a novel), but for me personally:

Richard Laymon - Funland.

It's the book that got me reading again seriously after high school had dropped my level of interest in books to that which was only necessary to pass a given class. Added to the facts that I was around the same age as the protagonists, lived in a similar location, and was of a similar state of mind, the key themes of the book really rang true with me, at that time. It was one of those definitive Eureka moments. Nothing else has ever quite touched home in the same way, despite being (arguably) superior works.

For that reason, I can quite understand the level of teen appreciation for stuff like Twilight. It seems like unsophisticated drivel to many, but if you're one of the target demographic, it decisively hits a home run.

Originally Posted by JohnGalt

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Atlas Shrugged The Fountainhead A Brief History of Time Brave New World Into Thin Air Hamlet
Atlas Shrugged The Fountainhead Ayn Rand - people who appreciate her are those who understand her. The others who don't, go read the bible.

Originally Posted by adobe10

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Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand - people who appreciate her are those who understand her.
The others who don't, go read the bible.

-1

To Kill a Mockingbird
Count of Monte Cristo
The Hobbit
Red Badge of Courage
French Laundry

I dunno. Some other book.

Originally Posted by JLibourel

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Saga of Burnt Njal
Heimskringla by Snorri Sturlusson
Iliad of Homer (4X in Greek, never in translation)
The Bears of Blue River by Charles Major (when I was a kid, made me a gun nut)
Sixguns by Elmer Keith
The Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Col. James Corbett

Nice call on Corbett and the Icelandic Sagas.

Mine:

The Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov,
Soldier Sahibs by C. Allen,
A Christmas Carol by C. Dickens,
Fifth Business by R. Davies,
The Normans in Sicily (Hard to choose between Norwich's books, his works could certainly comprise the entire list, actually I could have made multiple selections for every author on this list),
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse.

Originally Posted by Teger

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just portrait. I really enjoyed dubliners. I think portrait is the most whiny, self serving worthless ************* book ever made. watching other annoying self possessed artists masturbate over it is horrifying.

Sorry, but isn't everything Joyce has written absurdly masturbatory and egoistic? The man has an awing command of the English language, but Ulysses and what little I've read of Finnegan's is most certainly absolute literary masturbation at its most elegant.

Originally Posted by adobe10

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Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand - people who appreciate her are those who understand her.
The others who don't, go read the bible.

There's understanding Ayn Rand and then there's tolerating her habit of beating a dead horse for 5,000 pages. Not the same.

Originally Posted by Thomas

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There's understanding Ayn Rand and then there's tolerating her habit of beating a dead horse for 5,000 pages. Not the same.
I actually like that line of thinking that guy has. If people don't like my cooking, they just don't understand good food. If they don't like my clothes, they simply can't grasp what style really is.

Don Quixote
Crime and Punishment
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
A Confederacy of Dunces, take it for whats its worth
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
The Giver, early years lol

a few others...never appreciated all of the traditional american writers