Books That Changed My Life

This Lifehacker post asks the question: What books have changed your life? It seems like as good as any reason to get back into the blogging swing, so here's my list. I don't know if I'd really say that all of these changed my life, but at the very least, they all left lasting impressions.

Mila 18: Of all the wars in America's history, the only one that ever really captured my interest was World War II. This book confirmed that interest. Leon Uris's novel takes you inside the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw, starting from the beginning of the German invasion of Poland. The book also offers chilling insight into the workings of the Nazis. The constant struggle that ensues after the Jews take back Warsaw is inspiring, even though it's clear there is no way they could win. Highly recommended.

I, Robot: When I was a kid, I was way into what passes for kid's sci-fi--namely R.L. Stine and Bruce Coville. My first taste of true sci-fi was Asimov's classic collection of stories, I, Robot. It opened up the genre for me and set the foundations of science fiction for an entire generation of writers. When I think sci-fi, Isaac Asimov is still the first name I think of, and I still pick up an Asimov novel whenever I find one.

Thank You For Smoking: I scored this book at a library book sale for fifty cents. I fell in love with it immediately--it's a fantastic satire of the war on tobacco. More imporantly, it challenges everything we've been told about smoking since cigarettes first got slapped with warnings and points out that while we're so quick to jump on the agendas of tobacco lobbyists, why doesn't anyone ever think that maybe the anti-tobacco lobbyists have some agendas of their own?

Obedience to Authority: Granted, I didn't read Stanley Milgram's novel cover-to-cover--at certain points it becomes fairly unreadable for anyone without a significant interest in statistical sociology--but the descriptions of the experiment itself and a few of the unique cases are impossible to look away from. It puts human morality in a whole new light, but perhaps the most disturbing thing about the experiment is that although we can read it and say that we would never do what those people did--the whole point of the experiment was that yes, we would. And we wouldn't think twice.

The Sword of Shannara: Keep in mind that you don't need to -like- a book for it to be significant. I first picked up The Sword of Shannara in seventh grade. It wasn't the best book I'd ever read, but it was by far the biggest. Weighing in at over 700 pages (and this was before Harry Potter came along and made longs books cool) I made it through the entire slow-moving story. The book has some good moments, but really, the most important thing I learned from Terry Brooks's Shannara series is best summed up in the words "cookie-cutter fantasy." Elves and monsters and quest-for-the-item do not a fantasy epic make.

Neverwhere: Okay, Neverwhere didn't -really- change my life. It did, however, start my man-crush on Neil Gaiman.

Honorable mentions go to Ender's Game, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I Am the Messenger. There are others, of course, but these are the ones that came to mind first, so that must say something about them.