the most important book you have ever read

[cacian]

books to read are many but which was the most important to you
and most importantly
why
any response most appreciated :)

[Danik 2016]

One book that was very important for my developement was A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens because it made me want to learn English.

[prendrelemick]

I was reading a Wilbur Smith best seller, it was so predictable and formulaic I suddenly lost all interest in it and decided there and then to seek out good "Literature" (whatever that is). That was an important moment for me - not life changing perhaps, but I think I'm a more rounded person that I would've been if I hadn't had that epiphany

[Dreamwoven]

Anne Perry's series of books set in the First World War made me realise just how awful WW1 was, incompetent leadership, near mutiny, terrible suffering from Trench Warfare, the mud, the trenches where giant rats fed on the dead, just horrific. I came to realise the power of stories. I became convinced that the horror of war is best captured in novels than in straight descriptive history.

[Lokasenna]

Before I went to university, I had never read anything medieval except for a bit of A-Level Chaucer (which I had enjoyed). Then I sat down to read the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer for a module I had - and it completely capitvated me. I was fighting back tears by the end of it, so much had it moved me. From that point on, I was firmly a medievalist.

[PeterL]

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G. C. Edmondson was the best novel of the 20th century (and maybe ever). It speaks to some of the
essences of what a human is in a way that I think is better than any other. The novel that I'm trying to sell now is partly a response to it.

[Marcus1]

Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

[tonywalt]

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger because it told me I was not alone in many of my frustrations and Beauty is rare, and worth holding onto.

[EmptySeraph]

While I cannot respond to such a question with any conviction, for the real effect that a book can have upon us and our spirit can only be perceived in retrospective, watching our acts following the specific lecture, carefully analysing the practical consequence that crowns our daily doctrine, I can definitely say that E.M. Cioran's De l'inconvénient d'être né has made a great impression on me and has pretty much impelled me to turn my attention towards skepticism and authors gnawed by that obsessive lucidity.

[Blanchot]

Discipline & Punish - Foucault

[Poetaster]

Dante's Divine Comedy. It had a huge impact on me personally.