For men and women, the answers appear to be quite different, according to British researchers, who recently asked that very question to 500 men (many of whom worked in literature-related fields). The guys’ top three? Albert Camus’s The Outsider, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. In a 2004 poll, the same team asked 14,000 women the same question (thanks, Metafilter, for the link) with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre topping the list.
So let’s try our own PopWatch survey in the comments section below: What novel most changed your life? (Be sure to let us know your gender, too.) I’d have to say that as a kid, Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion fueled what became a lifelong obsession with horse racing, but as an adult, nothing quite moved me like Carl Sagan’s Contact. Which, yes, probably means I’m a complete dork, but doesn’t that make you less self-conscious about revealing your own favorite?
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1984,which changed my perceptions of the political left I had always followed so blindly. Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood changed my life, as it showed me a new way for writers to express themselves. Of course, Hemingway’s “the Old Man and the Sea”, because he’s able to tell the whole yarn with such few words. A verbose overtalker like me can appreciate that sort of thing…
I’m a male.
Catcher in the Rye, because angst is hormonal and biological and Salinger knew that. The bastard.
Charlotte’s Web, because even young savages have soft spots for personified animals.
Fight Club (before the film adaptation), because it opened my eyes to things I already knew and just wanted someone to say.
I’m female. I would say either “To Kill a Mockingbird,” –because how can you not love that?–or “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. While probably not technically life-changing, it is the book I loan people when they wonder why I read so much. It’s a book for people who love books, and it’s my favorite book ever.
I’m a 30 year old female. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, read as a 15 yr. old, was the first booked that ever really moved me and remains my favorite.
Oops, I meant book not booked. Sorry.
Perhaps it’s because I’m still 19, but I’ve picked stereotypically teen angst books.
–Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger… because it is the quintessential “I hate the world” teenage book.
–Franny and Zooey, JD Salinger… it follows the dysfunctional but glorious Glass Family. It’s spiritual undertones had me questioning everything I thought I knew, it’s familial dysfunction made me realize I wasn’t alone, and it’s craftsmanship with words made me want to be a writer.
–Twelve, Nick McDonnell… a very simply written book about rich Upper East Side kids gone wrong. I don’t know why, but it moved me.
–Perks of being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky… a modern “Catcher,” it captures perfectly what it’s like to be a wallflower in a teen-beautiful world.
I’m a 23 year-old male. At the risk of sounding unoriginal, I’d also have to say Catcher in the Rye. I identified with the angst and general malaise of being an adolescent on the fringes. My favorite novel as of late is Love in the Time of Cholera – it’s beautiful and epic – it shows all that love should be.
Female.
I call books lifechanging if they become so important that I will read them over and over again, and all of these qualify.
I read Vonnegut when I was 11, and it completely changed my life. Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse 5 were my favorites. Even today, I see all religion in relation to Bokononism, karasses, and granfalloons.
I found Shogun at about 20, and I reread it every few years because the characterizations and pacing are so brilliant. Never read another Clavell, though. I don’t want to ruin the experience.
The Dead Zone by our backpage pal, Stephen King. The Eyes of Horus by Joan Grant. Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.
Pride and Prejudice, sure – but I read that later on (after age 25). Also Jane Eyre.
Vonnegut and Austen – does this mean I’m a literary hermaphrodite? Hope so!
I’m a 25 year old female and the Tamora Pierce Lioness Rampant series I read when I was 12 have been my favorite books for 13 years. They began my life long love of fantasy novels, which I think are far more inventive, interesting, and worth the time away from ordinary life to read than the self-important, boring, and self-congragulatory “Literature with a capital L” that it seems adults are expected to read and apparently be moved by. Thanks but no thanks, life is depressing enough, I’d rather an author with a good imagination than a martyr complex!
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews…man, back in junior high, that was the bomb. always checked out of the school library!
“Less Than Zero” by Bret Easton Ellis. I read it when I was 18 and it just struck a chord with me. It’s the rawness and honesty and simplicity of the story, the multiple characters and motivations and how the main character just gets affected by everything throughout it. The writing style was different and unique and it made me realize that there was so many ways to write and tell a story. It changed how I viewed my own writing and influenced me tremendously.
I’m a 26-year-old female. Out of the Shelter by David Lodge really moved me when I had to read it for my freshman lit class. It became one of my all-time favorite books and I’ve read it hundreds of times since then. It’s about a teenaged British boy’s coming-of-age around WWII, but it still applies to females as well, I think. Amy Tan’s first three novels really influenced the way I see the world. And, I’m not afraid to admit, Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. I still have the same tattered copy that I read all through middle school and high school.
I’m a guy. Man. Dude. Male. “Changed my life” is a tad dramatic, but the novel that I return to most is Stephen King’s massive mission statement of a novel, It. It’s 1,100+ pages, and I think I’ve read it five or six times–and certainly will again. Wonderful treatment of childhood and an ingenious structure that gives the big story the space it needs to be told.
“Little Women” made a lasting impression for me. It was probably my first “novel,” once I had branched out beyond the Nancy Drew series. I can’t wait to read it with my daughter.
I’ve read literally thousands of books, but I wouldn’t say any changed my life. I guess reading a Teen Titans comic when I was in elementary school started me on comics, and I’ve got some favorite series that I read, but it’s hard to see how any of them profoundly changed my life.
32 yr old female. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” because it captured my imagination as a child and led to a love of reading. “Dune” showed me that science fiction could be one of the best ways to reflect on our modern society. “Valley of Horses” because everyone can use a few smutty sex scenes.
Thank God no one I know lists Catcher in the Rye as an influence on their lives. What an incessantly whiny piece of blah.
I’m a 30 year female who’s had a number of novels change my life…most notably Contact, as you’ve mentioned. I struggled all through adolecense trying to articulate where religion fails science and vice versa, and Carl Sagan did it in a chapter. Best religion vs. science argument I’ve ever come across, and have quoted it many many times.
I also have to list…
Kindred, by Octavia Butler for showing me that chicks can write some socially-conscious yet totally entertaining science fiction.
The Shining, by Stephen King, just for scaring the crap out of me time and time again.
And lastly, The Time Traveler’s Wife, for showing me just how capable I am of loving someone.
31 year old female…. read Lord of the Rings at 14 and still can remember the excitement that i experienced back then reading the trek through the Mines of Moria by flashlight.
damn i feel like such a geek.
The one book that still haunts me to this day, and is possibly the one book that I can honestly say changed my life and outlook, is “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s an exquisite account of family life throughout generations, in a village that must change its nature in an attempt to modernize. Adding to that is the magic that saturates every page, every life, and every moment. I’ve read it twice, and both times were powerful experiences. btw, I’m a male.
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Michael Ende’s Neverending Story (the book is better than the movie, trust me) were very influencial to me.
Ditto to “one hundred years of solitude”
Also “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. Sort of a chick’s “catcher in the rye”
Catch 22-never has satire been so funny, nor so poignant
Without a doubt, Hubert Selby Jr.’s “Last Exit to Brooklyn”. It made me become an English teacher.
Stephen King’s “The Stand”.
Judith Guest’s ORDINARY PEOPLE had a tremendous impact on my life, and it’s still a favorite.
For me as a kid it was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott or Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The books just opened up a whole new world for me and led me to find more books by these authors and read them endlessy over and over. The worlds in these books and sequels to these books were my favorite escape as a kid and also led me to explore the worlds and time periods in which the characters resided further through research and other books that took place during these times.
I’m a 33-year-old female, and I’ll mention a few books that influenced me, for better and worse: Where the Red Fern Grows (I can’t remember the author); Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary; um, Lucky, by Jackie Collins; The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters; If Tomorrow Comes, by Sidney Sheldon; Tale of the Body Thief, by Anne Rice; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling.
Most of these are simply the first books that I read that were written by some of my (now-) favorite authors, and one (Where the Red Fern Grows) is the first time a novel made me cry (in 3rd grade). You’ll notice that I didn’t list too many classics, but that’s really just because I dig my pop-culture writers so much more. Because of all of these novels and authors, I’ve developed a life-long love of books and reading, and I thank them!!
I’m a female, and I’d have to say Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.
Three?? Yikes. In chronological order of my discovery…
(I’m Female, 37)
“Little House on the Prarie” (Mom read this to me)
“Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”
Madeline L’Engle series “A Wrinkle in Time”
“Lord of the Flies”
“Jane Eyre”
“Gone with the Wind”
Steven Kings “The Stand”
Eli Wiesel’s “Night”
“On The Road” Jack Keruoac
All of Alice Walker’s books
“I know Why a Caged Bird Sings” Maya Angelou
Harry Potter (First one–I read it to my son)
“The Hobbit”
“Lord of the Rings”
I think Im ready for my next one…