Which books changed your life or mind?

[hamsunite]

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas changed my valuation of myself as a woman. I wish I had read them in college, when my position in society as a student and soon to be professional wasn't so clear.

[rekha123]

My experiments with Truth by Gandhi Ji.

[fever33]

What a tough question.
I would say something that changed my life would be Dave Ramsey books on financial planning. He lays it out so simple.

[MollyKFarris]

mandikennedy: [Interview with a Vampire"] showed me that there was a whole world out there other than the "normal world" I lived in."

Thing is, we're not supposed to believe made-up stories, that's among the reasons they are called fiction.

I was actually talking about the fact that it was the first book I had read with gay characters and as a lesbian it made me think about my own sexuality for the first time. That's why I put said "normal world" in quote marks because up until then I hadn't really come across any gay or lesbian characters in books and it made me actively go out and search for books with other gay characters in.

When I read your first post, I thought maybe you meant you thought you are a vampire. I wasn't sure how to respond to that, ha ha.

A book that changed my life/mind: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I read it in college (before I had really had many dealings with immigrants or people with a different socioeconomic status than my own) and it was really formative in my views on the immigration debate just because it changed it (in my mind) from a political issue to a human problem.

[mrdougbrown]

Paul's letter to the Galatians from the Greek New Testament.

[Heather]

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. It has given me a huge love for history, and has made me strive to be a better person.

[EnjoiSkyler]

"On Guard" William L. Craig
"Growth Mindset" Carol Dweck
"The Creator and the Cosmos" Hugh Ross

Skyler

[talia_in]

The Giver! It made me see life differently.

[K-katastrophe3]

The books that changed my life were by Sherrilyn Kenyon; a series called The Dark-Hunter series. The book that started it all was Dark Side of the Moon.

Now this book was no where near the beginning of the series, but that is okay because her series (though related to one another) do not have to be read in any order, as I found out when I picked this book up from a library.

It is a paranormal romance, not typically one might find to change one's life. However, I was in a hole. I was at the beginning of depression and I had turned to books to help me dig my way out. I went through the library and I just randomly selected a few books off of the shelves without so much as a glance as to what they might have been. When I got home, I couldn't even bring myself to pick them up. I didn't want to do anything anymore. They next day, I saw the pile of books and grabbed the one on top, determined to read at least one. It was Dark Side of the Moon by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I started to read it and I could not seem to put it down. I fell head over heels for this story, this universe of which was not my own. It was so captivating and heart warming that it gave me hope. I wanted to keep reading, not only this books but the others she had written (for if she wrote this there had to be more right? ;])
This series, no the characters in the series helped me with confidence. I was able to dig my way out of my hole of depression. I have her to thank for that. Her books kept me going when I thought that I had nothing else to go on for.

Her books were just the beginning.
I now own all of her books as a reminder of what I went through and how she helped.

[FearlessLiteracy]

Did I Ever Wake Up by Mod Sun. It's a short book, and I read it almost weekly. This book opened my eyes to the power of positive thinking, and pushed me toward leading a more positive life. I think EVERYONE needs to read it.

[jmalone1994]

Angel and Demons by Dan Brown
It changed the way I thought about science and religion and how they interact together.

[x1f4j8k9]

Over the years I consistently grew an affinity and devotion to science, and though many things played a factor in this paradigm shift, the Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan really solidified it. Watchmen (movie) also really changed the way I look at things on a grand level.

[tracydinh96]

The Crucibles and Benjamin Button

[Bella_0772]

The Harry Potter series have been most influential in my life.

[Raymy12]

Books that have changed my life hmm? I would have to say everything that I read affects me. Some of the books that affected me greatly are Siddhartha, The Alchemist, Animal Farm, The Odyssey, Eleven Minutes, The Witch of Portobello, The Celestine Prophecy, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and The Old Man and the Sea,