There is an interesting discussion over at Kuro5hin : What books have influenced your life ?
Most of the comments are intelligent but (as always happens when strangers discuss books) there is some literary dick-wagging, and some trolling/flaming. What can you do?
Anyway, here is my (incomplete) list of Books Which Have Influenced My Life:
The Tao Te Ching – my first introduction to non-Western ways of thinking.
Wolf, by Jim Harrison – I never knew writing could be so powerful and so personal at the same time.
Notes From a Bottle Found On the Beach at Carmel, by Evan S. Connell – The first poem/book of poetry which really hit me.
No Boundary, by Ken Wilber – put into perspective all the disparate pieces of philosophy bouncing around in my head.
The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks – the first “serious” fantasy/science fiction novel I read; kind of made it permissible for intelligent people to enjoy genre fiction.
The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman – did the same thing for comics.
Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse – kind of turned the way I thought about things inside-out.
That is all I can think of at the moment. So what about you ?