Most influential book?

[BloomingRose]

So... I want to know what was the most influential book you've ever read, why, and when you read it

[Dinkleberry2010]

The most influential book I've read is Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. I read it in 1972. Reading that book was like being slapped hard on the side of the head. It was like having cold water splashed in my face. For the first time I was reading something wherein it seemed the writer was inside me and was writing from inside himself at the same time. Notes From Underground woke me up and made me realize just how great writing can be. It shook me up.

[dfloyd]

Several come to mind. Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck helped the migrant workers from Oklahoma be treated more humane by the California state government. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair called attention to the problems encountered in the meat packing industry, and the book was primarily responsible for the Pure Food and Drug Act. It is rumored that Teddy Roosevelt threw his breakfast sauseges out the White House window after he read the book. That story is probably apocraphyl, but he did invite Sinclair to the White House after reading his book.

[JBI]

Influential on your life or influential on history or whatever?

[blazeofglory]

The Prophet to me written by Khalil Gibran is matchlessly the most influencing book I have ever read. I have read it so many times but I always found this book unputdownable. This is awesomely overpowering and I always found it a treasure trove of inspiration. This is full of revelations and it indeed has transformed into new ideas and thoughts in point of fact

[Red-Headed]

I would say that Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment has influenced me more than any other single novel. It introduced me to Russian 19th century literature, Russian Nihilism & the incredibly deep psychological insights of Dostoyevsky himself. After reading C&P I went on to read a lot of other Russian writers including Turgenev, Herzen & Gogol. Joyce's Finnegans Wake would come a close second, but for very different reasons! Mill's Essays On Liberty & Utilitarianism have also had a profound affect on the way I think politically. Primarily for their brilliant attack on the 'free market' economic system & its ridiculous claims to be scientific & to have succeeded moral casuistry when it had just given a superficial cogency to a collection of moral sounding slogans. I wasn't surprised when I heard that Tory councils had removed Mill from school libraries. I sometimes feel like giving copies of it away on street corners! I could also mention the works of Shakespeare & Kant's Critique of Pure Reason & Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, but this list could go on for a while...

[mal4mac]

"The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom. I've been reading and re-reading it since 1994. He's probably the main influence on me turning away from 'false gods' (philosophers, God, Buddhists, 'popular' scientists, 'popular' novelists, physics, TV, film, 'programming', forum hopping , alcohol, newspapers ...) to spending perhaps the majority of my spare time reading classic literature, thereby having *much* more fun than before... Of course, although he is a good writer, he is really best thought of as a sign & map showing you the way to greater writers like Shakespeare, Montaigne, Dante, Fielding, Austen, Hardy, Dickens, Tolstoy, Joyce, Chaucer... and these are the real influences. Other people may have other maps, so before (again!) slagging Bloom off, I'm just pointing out that he was *my* main map...

[DisPater]

Manifesto of the Communist Party or Karl Marx - Capital ---> worldwide

and for me:
non-fiction
Mario Vargas Llosa - Letters to a Young Novelist
Umberto Eco - Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
Vladimir Nabokov - Lectures on Literature

fiction
l. sterne, g. flaubert, j. conrad, w. faulkner.... and many mooooooooore.

[Desolation]

The general works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky have had the largest influence on me, most certainly.

[[Juliet]]

Beyond all doubt, Les fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire.
I know it's a collection of poems, but they had such an impact on me the first time I read them - I was 13 I think, or maybe 14 - that I just fell in love with the author. I have a very nice French edition on my bedside table and I constantly read them. I know my favorite poems by heart.

The second title I thought of is La Nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre.
I read it when I was 16 and it really was an eye-opener.

[MorpheusSandman]

I really can't think of a book that has really influenced my life. As far as one that really got me to thinking about things I hadn't considered I'd probably list War & Peace. A scattering of philosophical/psychological writings have effected me but I've read most of them online instead of in books.

He's probably the main influence on me turning away from 'false gods' (philosophers, God, Buddhists, 'popular' scientists, 'popular' novelists, physics, TV, film, 'programming', forum hopping , alcohol, newspapers ...)

lolwut? These things are "false gods" compared to the "true god" of classic literature?

[Saladin]

The Koran

[ALF]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, It's like a Gospel for me
I'm always reading it

[Lumiere]

The most influential book I've read is Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. I read it in 1972. Reading that book was like being slapped hard on the side of the head. It was like having cold water splashed in my face. For the first time I was reading something wherein it seemed the writer was inside me and was writing from inside himself at the same time. Notes From Underground woke me up and made me realize just how great writing can be. It shook me up.

I will second Notes From Underground, by Dostoevsky. I have never before read anything that depicted human nature in such a horrifically honest way. That being said, it's not a particularly uplifting work. But by God, it is honest, and mostly spot on.

[Babak Movahed]

Crime and Punishment.

In my opinion every work of literature written since Crime, has in some way or another been influenced by it.