What book had the greatest impact on your life, and which part of it is the most memorable for you?

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I was considering suicide as a young person. I had never read a book before. I read it in one sitting, only breaking to get some food and bathroom. It's a great story but it changed me and gave me something special. Confidence.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
- Not again.
It's the perfect balance between whimsy, deep themes, emotion and writing techniques.

Hyperion, first of all it's just great and should be right up there with other classics. Second, in this age of AI I keep thinking back to Hyperion.

My Side of the Mountain. Kid gets tired of family problems, runs away to live in the Catskills off the land on an old family farm. Befriends a librarian who lends him books on survival. He makes his own clothes from deer skin, catches his own fish with homemade hooks, lives in a hollowed-out tree, that sort of thing.

I am currently a bushwhacking bookworm. I suspect it was all that book.

I'm a full grown adult, but I still think about the book, The Giver by Lois Lowry frequently.

I remember reading it in middle school and seeing how sad the monotony of the restricted world was. How cruel people could be acting on orders and/or without their hearts. How educating yourself with different experiences opens your eyes. Among other great undertones and lessons.

I hope to introduce all of my nieces and nephews to it in the future.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

That's a self-help book, not a novel. It opened my mind to having a plan for life, having a reason for doing what I do - because I have decided that it's worth doing.

I heard about it while channel surfing in 1997, there was Oprah interviewing Stephen Covey and both made a big impression on 20yo me. I jumped onto Amazon and saw some reviews of the book. Back then you could contact the reviewers!! So I asked some of them some questions, and one of them turned in a close and life-long friendship.

Literarily: Ulysses. Such a layered work, poetical and so run through with themes and styles.

Philosophically: the mind's I by Dennet and Hofstaedter, great selection of articles surrounding consciousness and digital structures.

Infinite Jest, especially the sections surrounding the boarding house. Its strange mix of exaggerated reality and absurdness really made me question and rebuild a lot of my ways of thinking.

Das Kapital and the explanation of what money is.

The Lord of the Rings. It has become such a big part of my cultural self. I love everything about it, but especially the fact that there is an entire universe Tolkien created, mainly because of his love for languages. That kind of passion is absolutely amazing and it kind of taught me that it's good to be passionate about something. It also taught me that some thing "nerdy" is actually very widely accepted to be one of the greatest works ever written (and one of the greatest films), and in turn it led me to accept that you shouldn't be ashamed of the thing you like, even if they are nerdy/geeky/dumb or stupid in other people's opinion. It also got me super interested into world building, which I'm expressing currently in building a boardgame.

Favourite part is hard, but the Ride of the Rohirrim gives me goosebumps everytime someone even mentiones it.

Two things about getting into LoTR, especially as a younger person, that easily go undervalues:

It is basically a gateway drug to history. The world building goes beyond just "a world", it's a history. In fact I'd argue that Tolkien wasn't aiming at "world building", except for the minimal amount ... but rather "history", "culture" and "geography" building, which is why his "world" feels so real. As a young person, you'll basically become a history nerd without realising it.

It demonstrates very well some powerful ideas about what heroes actually look like. Neither Gandalf nor Legolas nor Aragorn are the heroes of that story. Not even Frodo, as he fails at the end despite his many virtues within the context of the story. It's Sam and Hobbits in general ... the little people with big selfless hearts who made the difference in the battle between good and evil. Eowyn is obviously a relatively feminist figure against the patriarchal backdrop of the world, but without knowing Tolkein's intent with that character, it's a pretty natural character arc when you're already doing the whole Hobbits thing.
- Someone should explain point one to the fake nerds over at WOTC!
  
  The dungeon is an abandoned mine. Fine.
  
  What mineral did they mine here? 🤷‍♀️
  
  Who mined it? 🤷‍♀️
  
  What was it used for? 🤷‍♀️
  
  Where was it smelled and processed? 🤷‍♀️
  
  How was it transported there? 🤷‍♀️
  
  The whole economy is just a big fake window dressing prop.

Plato's Republic.

I got really interested by its description in Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. After reading the book, I realized how arbitrary the setup of current society is. Then I followed it up with More's Utopia and Marx' Das Kapital. A true Big Bang for my political views.

“Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

I’ve read Utopia & Das Kapital, but admittedly at the time they were for school projects and I was young. Too young to pay attention to the real, major themes.

I love to learn about all of those things, I just don’t feel I’m equipped to do it solo & fully grasp the concepts being laid out. Like I almost need someone to tell me what I need to be looking for and why it’s important in each chapter. I love to read, and I do it a lot (fiction & nonfiction), but classics like that…it’s so weird, like I am incapable of understanding it in an intuitive manner, like other books. It’s almost embarrassing to admit.

I find it all fascinating & enjoy learning about it, but I don’t do so well when I go to the source…if that makes sense.
- Do give Russell's History of Western Philosophy a try. It places those books into a much needed context. When I first picked up that book, it was out of a hope to learn more about philosophy, but after finishing it, I only had those three books on my 'definitely must read' list. I know there's a companion book to Das Kapital written by David Harvey, but he's not the easiest to read either. And Marx, omfg, that mofo has a way of dancing around things for pages on end through the most labyrinthine sentences, so I can definitely commiserate! It took me months to get through the whole thing. Luckily I was in the middle of a move, without TV or computer, so that helped a lot :)

Momo by Michael Ende.

That time is the most precious gift we have to give and we should choose wisely how to use it.

Bit late to the party, but either Mortal Engines, the Young James Bond series, or Michelle Paver's Chroncal's of Ancient Darkness. They were all very engaging and transformative to a young me.

I probably remember parts of Young James bond the best, there's parts about leeches that really stuck with me. I can still remember Mortal Engines as a whole in great detail, the concept and descriptions of the city chases are fantastic.

"On the Shortness of Life" by Seneca, if we can call it a book. The claim that "life isn't short, we just waste most of it" was not by itself that impactful until he started listing examples, among them Caesar Augustus. You can think what you will about him, but nobody can say that he was a lazy man sitting around doing nothing. And yet Seneca shows that Augustus in his "productive" life spent a lot of time complaining how he wished he had more free time, and so he didn't really "live" all the time, just like someone who wastes their days drinking and gambling and whatnot. And the idea that a man who immortalized himself in history for all times "wasted" most of his life was really not something that ever occurred to me. I recommend it to everyone, it's short and written in simple language.

His Dark Materials. I was already doubting the faith I grew up with and those books helped me finally shedding all that non-sense.

1984- one hell of a way to start caring about politics

Hard to say any book competes with the Bible in terms of its personal effect on my life. Most memorable part has got to be the end. There was chaos sprinkled into other parts but the end is just off the walls. I won't spoil it, but an important character shows up again (although there were hints that it's going to happen if you pay attention).

Overall, I probably wouldn't recommend it. It's got a lot of shifting protagonists and time jumps, has many sections that are a slog to get through, and is not subtle whatsoever in the values it is trying to instill on its reader. There's also the plot holes. Oh, and expect to find spoilers everywhere since it's been out for a while.

On the other hand, it has a huge cult following with lots of active discussion so there's definitely a sense of community if you are a fan. They are also very welcoming to new fans, although invetibly you will run into plenty of gatekeeping.

1984- one hell of a way to start caring about politics