I have to give two lists!

NON FICTION:
David Bodanis - E=MC2
Kerry Mulis - Dancing Naked in the Mind Field
Richard P Fynman - Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Richard P Fynman - The Meaning of it All
Paul Coelho - The Alchemist
Depak Chopra - The Way of the Wizard
Ralph Mayer - Artist’s Handbook
Dennis Willium Hauck - The Emerald Tablet
Janet Gleeson - The Arcanum
Will Durant - The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

FICTION:
Clive Barker - Imagica
David Farland - Runelords
Dan Millman - Way of the the Peaceful Warrior
Frank Hurbert - Dune
John Fowles - The Magus
Alexander Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth
Jack L Chalker - Lilith: A snake in the grass
Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel’s Dart
Jack Kerouac - On the Road

1. Papillon - Henri Charrière
2. Henderson, the rain king - Saul Bellow
3. Less than zero - Bret Easton Ellis
4. Altered carbon - Richard K. Morgan
5. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
6. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
7. Fabric of Reality - David Deutsch
8. The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda
9. Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
10. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut jr.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
Live from Golgotha - Gore Vidal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller


Those are 10 off the top of my head, in no particular order. Some I consider favorites, others made a strong enough impression that they always come to mind when someone asks a question like this.

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clark
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
The Stars my Destination - Alfred Bester
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Call of the Wild - Jack London

This list is the product of a few moments of reflection. I read many of these books when I was young but their subject matter combined with where I was in my life left me with indelible memories.

Also, the people above me have good taste.

1. Lolita
2. Tropic of Cancer
3. On the Road
4. Anais Nin's Diary, Vol II
5. Tales of the South Pacific
6. Sophie's Choice
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. The Great Gatsby
9. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s
10. To Kill a Mockingbird

*****

I really liked The Hobbit, too.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood
3. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
4. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
5. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
6. Beach Music - Pat Conroy
7. Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Paterson
8. Dhalgren - Samuel Delany
9. Titan - John Varley
10. A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge

*Please note, there is at least one non-SF book in there!

-Le Petit Prince by de Saint-Exupéry, because it permanently shaped the way I look at (and interact in) any and all attachments.
-Vinnie the Pooh, because in it's simplicity it provided unique and oh-so-valuable insights on social norms and the psychology of friendship.
-The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, because it gave me the final nudge to become a true bookworm. I like to boast - at age 5 or 6, I read it cover-to-cover in about 9 hours (refused lunch and dinner until I'd finished ).
-The Catcher in the Rye - I guess the most straightforward and requires no explanation.
-A Hero of our Time by Lermontov, because it presented me with a fatalist byronic hero and gave me a clear idea of someone I was very much like and I DID NOT want to become.

and last but definitely not least:
-The Lord of the Rings to which I practically exclusively owe my English skills - I started Book 1 in 1999, I think, with the thickest available dictionary in hand, which honestly, at first had to utilize for practically every sentence but finished Book 6 (not a month later) having clearly surpassed my English teacher in vocabulary and speech fluency.

It has happened before and it will happen again (I mean this kind of Sift Talk), so I guess it was just a matter of time before I participated.

I only stated the couple of books that actually altered my life somewhat (I'm saying this because I always somehow got the impression other people made their lists based on how artsy/fancy their titles sounded, which I really hope isn't true in most cases among Sifters).
Anyway, I guess it's also worth saying that I read every one of these before the age of 15, which helps explain why and how they have influenced my life to some extent.

It's funny though - by the time I was 16 I'd also read and re-read Hesse, Huxley, Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, García Márquez, Rand, Joyce, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Burgess, Hemingway, Rushdie and other "classics", but most some of these managed was to entertain me mildly (Vonnegut, Hesse, Huxley, Joyce - yes, I really did enjoy reading Ulysses), while I actually hated having to finish some of them (Orwell, Rand, Burgess).

P.S. Oh and I think I speak for us all when I say - Sagemind - WHAT. THE. F*CK??

>> ^Sagemind:
I have to give two lists!

FICTION:
Clive Barker - Imagica
David Farland - Runelords
Dan Millman - Way of the the Peaceful Warrior
Frank Hurbert - Dune
John Fowles - The Magus
Alexander Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth
Jack L Chalker - Lilith: A snake in the grass
Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel’s Dart
Jack Kerouac - On the Road

oh and what the hell, anything that helps me exercise some healthy verbal diarrhea is *quality

Awarding blahpook with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by EDD.

Ya, I knew someone would say something about that! Hey, I like sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Battlefield Earth is a a great Sci-fi read. It's not not like I listed Dianetics or something. It is what it is - A fun read where the good guys, the humans win - Have you read it?? Perhaps you should!

Has anyone read Infinite Jest? I'm reading it now, and it's definitely a fucking trip.

Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!

I can't believe I forgot Sophie's World which is a kickass book for parents who want to educate and create an interest in their teen in philosophy (it sure as hell succeeded in my case). HIGHLY recommended by your trusty anonymous internet commentator!

>> ^RhesusMonk:
Has anyone read Infinite Jest? I'm reading it now, and it's definitely a fucking trip.


No, but it's going on the list now.

* slapstick - kurt vonnegut
* bridge to terabithia - katherine peterson
* portrait of dorian gray - oscar wilde
* junkie - william s burroughs
* the captured - scott zesch
* mutant message downunder - marlo morgan
* all my friends are going to be strangers - larry mcmurtry
* beasts of no nation - uzodinma eweala
* a day in the life of ivan denisovich - alexander solzhenitsyn
* things fall apart - chinua achebe

OK, so I'll make a list now, and then read everybody elses and see if it reminds me of other books that really stick with me

1 Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 A Deepness In The Sky - Vernor Vinge
4 Interview With A Vampire - Ann Rice
5 Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Katie Hafner and John Markoff
6 The Tuning of The World - R. Murray Schafer
7 The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
8 National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe - Roy A. Gallant and Margaret Sedeen
9 The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine - Rudolph Chelminski
10 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan

OK, read others' and realize that I should have put Dune, for sure. I'm glad to see I'm not the only Hofstadter fan, and thrilled to see another Vinge on the list.

I feel kind of weird to have 1984 and Interview with a Vampire on my list. 1984, just because it really did stick and resonate, and well... I've probably read IwaV a few dozen times. Back in junior high I read it almost monthly.

I actually was considering putting The Star Wars Sourcebook by Bill Slavicsek & Curtis Smith on my list. That book blew my mind when I was young, and it definitely will always have a special place in my heart. Now that I look at a picture of the cover on Amazon, I wish that I had. Such an awesome book.

SHIT! HOW COULD I FORGET DAVID DEUTSCH!!?! Oh man! That book is SO AMAZING!! Argh, now I'm kicking myself for SURE!

The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications by David Deutsch is the best science book I've read in probably 10 years.

Cervantes: Don Quixote

Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians

Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Calvino: Mr Palomar

Dostoevsky: The Idiot

making history - stephen fry
misery - stephen king
the wasp factory - iain banks
beowulf
marabou stork nightmares - irvine welsh
lord of the flies - william golding
join me - danny wallace
to kill a mockingbird - harper lee
the beach - alex garland
the bfg - roald dahl

1. Choose Your Own Adventure: Secret of the Ninja
2. Ender's Game
3. Salt (Mark Kurlansky)
4. A Brief History of Time
5. An Underground Education (Richard Zachs)
6. 1984
7. The "Elfquest" Series
8. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Hey, it stuck with me alright?)
9. Into Thin Air
10. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Thus Spoke Zarathushtra - Nietzsche
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Dhammapada
Othello - Shakespeare
The Divine Comedy - Dante
The Fabric of Reality - David Deutsch
Sophie's choice - William Styron
Le petit Nicolas - Jean-Jacques Sempé

1) Dune
2) Complete works of Fernando Pessoa
3) Schismatrix
4) Brief story of nearly everything
5) If on a winter´s night a traveller
6) The Sandman
7) The Wind-up bird Chronicle
Einstein´s Dreams
9) 100 years of solitude
10) I´ll stop on nine, I can´t, can´t settle on my top 10 so this slot is a huge caroussel.

Wow so can I say that I initially limited myself to books I've discovered only in the past 6 years or so, and that currently influence the way I read, write and see the world (not to mention kick stupendous ass), but EDD's mention of Winnie the Pooh made me wish I'd done the reverse. So since I started it I'm going to post another list.

First I am allowing all of you to rag on me/sympathize with me now because I was one of the few people on this planet who didn't read or have read to her any of the LOTR books as a child. Any monetary donations to make up for my deprived childhood are welcome. I suppose until I get assigned to it in class (or get my degree, whichever comes first), I will need to add all these to my goodreads account.

So my (other) list:

1. Milne - Winnie the Pooh
2. Cormier - The Chocolate War
3. Raskin - The Westing Game
4. Smith - White Teeth
5. Plath - The Bell Jar
6. Thompson - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
7. Marquez - A Hundred Years of Solitude
8. Bantock - Griffin and Sabine
9. Mitchell - Gone with the Wind (I skipped class to finish this, and have yet by my own volition to see the movie)
10. Curtis - The Watsons Go to Birmingham

Wow, you just took me back.

These were HUGE for me before I really understood what I was reading:

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar (40th anniversary 3/20/09)
2. The Monkey and the Crocodile: A Jataka Tale from India
3. Three Days On a River in a Red Canoe
4. The Giant Jam Sandwich
5. Any Tintin Books
6. Any Curious George
7. Where Did I Come From?

(maybe this belongs on a whole different thread)

I'm of the mind that any reading is good reading. Sure, some is better than others, but even if a kid is sticking his nose in a comic book, that's still better than vegging out on the television.

Everybody that I've ever known who was a reader--whether their thing was romance, westerns, or sci-fi--was smarter than the average bear.

I think there's something about it that exercises the brain.

In no particular order:

1. Memoirs on an Invisible Man - H.F. Saint
2. Travels - Michael Crichton
3. Dune - Frank Herbert
4. Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King
5. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (yeah, yeah, it's really 7 books..)
6. My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George
7. Spunky - Dori Brink
8. The Amityville Horror - Jay Anson
9. D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
10. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris

Dune - Frank Herbert
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Paradise Lost - Milton
1984 - George Orwell
The Little Prince

Ender's Game
Watership Down
1984
Dune
The Hobbit
Hitchhiker's Guide

That's all I can think of for now, no particular order.