The His Dark Materials was probably the first books I got really in to and some of the only books I've ever re-read. I read a couple of others by the same author but wasn't grabbed as much. I think I was around 13 at the time. Harry Potter were probably some of the first "long" books that I ever read but I wasn't a huge fan and gave up by the third.
I'd say those along with random Discworld and assorted fantasy books planted the seeds of enjoying reading but it did go hand in hand with sitting next to my mum and enjoying the experience. Taking a book on holiday and sitting in the sun reading rather than just playing on my gameboy, which happened too but without bans on screen time more like just encouragement to join in the reading activity. Maybe bad battery lives and non-backlit screens helped too.
One book that's always stuck in my memory since is Freakonomics. I read it when I was a teenager and the very logical thinking hit a real nerve. I know the book has had controversy since but I can't say I took away any specific example of "Sumo wrestlers like to cheat" or whatever, but the way of thinking it encouraged has definitely stuck with me.
My partner read some Malcolm Gladwell books when she was younger and she was definitely a fan for a similar reason. I think they're a load of tosh with generous leaps of logic but I can understand the appeal of something that encourages you to look beyond the obvious.
Stretching the mental legs of young readers has value so having a few series of quick, punchy, engaging literary trash is a good thing.
When I was a kid, Point Horror, Goosebumps and various adventure books were the reading gym that gave me the stamina for the books I actually enjoyed (Tolkien, Pullman, and so much Pratchett).
I'm going through this with my daughter now. We still lean on thriller subjects but there is so much more choice. Goodreads is great for finding subgenres of interest and then similar books to ones that hit the mark.
But use your local library. Pick up random books co-read opening chapters, and review the style and quality together. Use your judgement and public reviews to bin out the real trash and slowly but surely give then confidence to pick up real literature.
Forcing your kid to grind through a book rarely goes well but if you really want to push it, taking it in turns to read aloud can inject enough performative energy to carry it.
Pippi Longstocking. I was read that book so many times I knew it by heart. Her mix of courage, playfulness and of speaking truth to power, her refusal to follow society's rules where they made no sense, her innate sense of justice. I'd say that even today hers would be a personality I try to be.
The translation into our language was good and we had a copy that was almost a family relic, given to my father by his mother who would soon die much to young - it's the closest thing I have to an atheist family bible in a way. I was so disappointed when neither of my children were particularly interested when I read them that same book, but they have different personalities than me, so my theory is that the book wasn't so much of an influence on me as it was simply a story that jived really well with my character.
So much of the world still runs on fucking bullshit, just look at the justifications for the ongoing [redacted because it'll probably derail the conversation].
As a teenager, I was fortunate that my Dad bought me a copy of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.
Quote:
Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they can choose their behavior.
While it may be common sense/doh-so-obvious today, this was such a mind-blowing reframe for the teenage me back then, and it shaped me immeasurably as a person for the better, for the 30+ years that follow.
Those were just the ones I remember reading as a kid/teenager. There are others that I read later in life which I'd also recommend such as the Foundation series by Asimov, Moby Dick, Dune, Life of Pi, works by Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Terry Pratchett, Stanislaw Lem, Pierre Boulle, etc.
Ender's Game and especially Ender's Shadow. I hesitate to recommend OSC at all due to his Problematic™ personal politics, especially as a member of the maligned group, but they had a big impact on the way I see The System in which we all live.
Spoiler-free: based on a shared societal belief in a looming existential crisis, a group of young adults attend a military school whose curriculum revolves around a war game with sports-like rules. The System uses the war game to identify for positions of relative prestige those students most willing to interpret the game rules in creative ways, most willing to question assumptions brought with them from the school-world into the game-world, but naïve enough to believe the game is over once they've “graduated” from it. The books explore the many ways in which the “real world” : school-world :: school-world : game-world.
I remember being very disappointed reading Speaker for the Dead, in that it's a total change of pace from the more "hero's journey" structure for Ender's Game, but now looking back, I really appreciate how it expanded the themes and brought a more nuanced flavour to the whole series.
And yes... I try to separate the art from the artist too when it comes to OSC.
I guess it was the hobbit that got me into reading (even more than I already was) and into computers as it came with the c64 adventure game which my godparents had. Every time we went there I got some computer time as they'd bought it for "office work", but I played scuba dive, the hobbit, manic miner, hunchback etc. It also led to reading the lord of the rings, which felt like a massive achievement at the time. I've just read the fellowship of the ring to my kids and it was a fun (though slow) experience.
As am adult The Stranger - Camus and The Old Man and the Sea had a big impact, I think because you can read and get the whole experience in a single sitting.
I also grew up with three full-sized bookcases mostly filled with all sorts of sci-fi and adventures by my granddad. But when I think of a book, this one always comes to mind first.
Unlike other sci-fi I’ve read before it, this novel had this out-of-usual-limits existential mystery and background dread, mostly unresolvable by its very nature and built into the plot almost immediately so that you have to re-realize it, as if you were at a therapist. I’ve read books with galactic wars, dark corners of space, empires, horrors, strange alien encounters, but only this one touched me so deep.
From non-fiction, it was “from basic to assembly” (noname, can’t find it) and few years later some 80386 system programming manual. I remember another book on assembly in between, it was dark blue.
Books that stood out to me as a teenager:
- A series of Unfortunate Events (all of them)
because I liked the never ending mystery of it all, and I was both annoyed, and pleased by the fact that you never actually find out what actually happened to the parents. I know it was a fictional series, but it was, and still is, the only fictional books I’ve ever read. I was particularly impressed by the author’s playful use of words and punctuation that could draw me in and keep me interested and curious. He kind of inspired me to be more creative with the way I use words when I write. Not that I’ve done much writing for fun lately, but occasionally I do.
The other book, I’m almost embarrassed to admit was:
- The secret by Rhonda Byrne.
I got particularly obsessed with this book, I think partly because I grew up in quite adverse circumstances, I started to think that if I was just more positive, more positive things would happen for me. I really developed quite a strong positive and optimistic attitude to life, believing that if I just thought about good things often enough, good things would happen. In practicality this often meant that as a teenager sometimes I came across optimistic to the point of seeming delusional. As I’ve got older, I’ve really come to the conclusion that the book “the secret” is a load of crap. However, I do think that I cope better in life with adversity than some of the people I went to school with have because of how I frame life events, often choosing the frame them as the next opportunity and frame them in more positive ways. I think that’s something I gained from reading that book, even if it was mainly a bunch of nonsense.
The rest of the books I read as a teenager were to do with serial killers. Particularly Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, and other stuff to do with weird, horrible, violent crimes.
A great, short read that gives you a very gentle introduction to the world of pure mathematics following the life of Uncle Petros, a mathematical prodigy who devoted his life to trying to solve Goldbach's Conjecture.
Ironically, this is one of the main reasons I didn't study mathematics.
I loved the Box Car Children, mostly book #1, but the rest were good.
Hardy Boys was also a series I adored, but I am not sure how they have aged.
My son is 7 and he is reading Harry Potter and just loving it. So I highly recommend that one. I didn't read it until college and it is one of my favorite series. She writes incredible characters and weaves them together so perfectly.
As I got to my teenage years...
- Dirk Pitt's adventure books kept me reading all day.
- Snow Crash really blew my mind.
- Catch 22 stood out fo rme.
- Atlas Shrugged and all of her books I liked (but not for the weird cult thing.
- Classic Tom Clancy
- Upton Sinclair The Jungle - Seismic impact on my view of the world.
- Native Son in high school is something I think about to this day and bothers me.
- From The Holy Mountain - Huge influence on me in my early 20s and where I ended up.
One that comes to mind is John Wyndham's The Chrysalids - a post-nuclear dystopia that is perfect for adolescents (or was for me, anyway) because it expresses the feeling of being an isolated mutant. Eventually the isolated mutant kids find each other, band together, and defeat the dysfunctional authorities. That was profoundly satisfying when I was 14 or whenever I read it.
Depends on the age, but for age 9-14ish, one series is hands down the most influential thing I've ever read:
The Animorphs series.
It's both incredibly good entertainment, but also really digs into morality in a way that has shaped how I think of things even so many years later.
Second to that is the "My Teacher is an Alien" series. They're fun books, pretty light, but the last book of the series, likewise, instilled a lot of morality-sense in me, since it's basically a tour of the bad (and good) of humanity.
For a bit of an older age (~15?), nothing quite impacted me like Ender's Game did. Again, a lot of ideas of what is moral and what isn't. (And yes, as others in this thread have pointed out, the author has a problematic legacy, make of that what you will.)
Dune. So many thought-provoking quotes throughout the books, especially the first one. This one pops up in my head often, many years after having first read the book:
"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"
Also Starship Troopers. Reading it made me somewhat regret not joining the military.
It helped me escape from a lot of stuff, gave me a fantasy world to run to when books were all I had.
All of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books gave me a character to look up to, someone to aspire to be like. At the time, there was maybe only 3 released but I read them over and over again.
Clive Barker's Books of Blood, Stephen King's stuff up until the early 90s (I later found out the point where the books turned boring was when he'd stopped using drugs), short stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, and The Destroyer pulp novels, particularly after Will Murray started writing them.
As I became a teen my reading became varied thankfully and I came across this book at a time when nothing felt important.
When all feels lost and nothing matters, Ecclesiastes is great for giving a view into what’s it’s like to grapple with the questions of happiness, life and humanity in a way that doesn’t end in your own depression and suicide.
The author finds his reason and method for living. We all must do the same.
I was given "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill as a teenager (long ago) and fascinated by the Prisoners Of War resourcefulness in not being controlled by their environment. Some innovations included stealing electric wiring to light the long tunnels, making forged `official' documents without a typewriter and hiding the tunnel `tailings' in plain sight. The movie doesn't do justice to the true story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(book)
I have an insatiable appetite for non-fiction - history, geography, politics, etc which I'm fairly certain can be traced back to a series of educational picture books I devoured as a child.
Each would survey some broad topic, for example Ancient Egypt. It would be full of detailed drawings/illustrations and accompanying text snippets. "What did the inside of a pyramid look like?", "How did the Ancient Egyptians use chariots?", and so on.
Mum would always buy me a new one every other week. The topics were diverse & broad, and so never got boring.
A bonus was when a subject I had read in these books happened to come up at school :-)
I just want to upvote this one; it is amazing and one of the most recommended books on a book website I run when people talk about life changing books (https://shepherd.com/book/siddhartha)
I didn't read it on my own personally, rather, it was read in my eighth grade class from beginning to end. Lots of discussion was had about the foreshadowing and meaning behind Dickens' words. At the time I really didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, but I'm incredibly grateful that my teacher made us read through that.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian was another one read in class that I think helped shape my perspective on the world for the better.
Self help books like "Do It!" (can't find the author) and "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield. They're simplified to the point that they're basically children's books, but they also provide a wide range of tools to deal with the future, with career and failure, and choosing your destiny.
Catcher in the Rye, Salinger captures that feeling of being a lost teenager while at the same time thinking that we know everything. It's an amazing book to read as a teen.
I second this. I read it at school and felt such a strong connection with Holden (as did everyone else that read it) and it really showed me there is so much more value in books outside of simple entertainment. I would also recommend Botchan by Natsume Soseki for the same reasons (although I came upon this much later in life).
Dune series. Still a unique and thoughtful take on a future space-faring humanity.
The idea of the 'Butlerian Jihad', a galactic wide outlawing of AI basically, seems even more prescient today than it would have in the 60s when it was written.
Motel of the Mysteries, David Macauley's satire of then-modern America intertwixed with a satire of archaeology and historical and academic understanding, masquerading as a picture book. A remarkable work I still think about today.
When I was pretty young, I was given a copy of The Way Things Work. It had an incredible impact on me and is probably what steered me down the path of engineering. Truly, a fundamental part of who I grew up to be.
The chapters about electronics are obviously quite dated, but I think it still stands up. I'd absolutely give a copy to the kind of kid who has to take everything apart to see how it works.
(1) Knowledge. Give knowledge of yourself, what do like, don't like, want, believe, think, plan.
Notice that another person who stands off doesn't give such knowledge.
(2) Caring. Care about the other person, monitor their life, reach out to help them.
Notice how common it is for others just to give you their middle finger.
(3) Respect. Grant credibility, honor, pride, praise.
Notice how others may give you contempt and insults, try to manipulate, take advantage.
(4) Responsiveness. Monitor what they do, listen to what they say, use those two to think about their lives, and do respond appropriately.
Notice how others can not respond, just ignore, turn away.
(5) Affection. It's basic, involves physical contact, especially with facial contact, hand holding, hugging, and apparently is universal at least in all mammels.
Notice how others avoid physical contact.
Uh, as a teen boy dating a teen girls, mostly interested in (1)--(5) or just some anatomy lessons? With some girls, it's easier to have sex or even marriage than much or anything in (1)--(5).
By their teens, maybe boys/girls could benefit from realizing (1)--(5).
My first exposure was through "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes" and it made such a huge impression on me with its focus on the use of step-by-step logical reasoning to solving problems that in a sense it taught me to "think rationally" in real life. I then set about acquiring the complete canon and have read them all so many times that i can quote entire dialogues/passages from memory. The language used is also elegant and beautiful with lots of memorable phrases/quotes/quips etc. Every kid should be asked to read the complete canon and then discuss takeaways from them.
2) Charles Dickens - Started with Oliver Twist, Great Expectations
These books (read the unabridged versions) were my introduction to the "Human Condition/Human Values" faced by people from different economic strata. His books span different genres but always end with a positive note. The writing style is beautiful with a healthy dose of Melodrama, Humour, Vivid descriptions etc. which draw you in and keep you engaged. Here is a good essay on his narrative technique - https://www.lsj.org/literature/essays/dickens
Non-Fiction:
1) Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman - You can get scans of all his and other Soviet authors books at - https://mirtitles.org/
In those days (80s in India) American/British books were generally not available and too costly but Soviet books were easily available and very affordable. My dad bought me this 2-vol set and that motivated my lifelong interest in Science. An example: I was enamoured of the protagonist in "The Invisible Man" by H.G.Wells but Perelman uses it as a scientific case study and shows that instead of being a most powerful man (because he is invisible) he would be the most powerless/pathetic man. Read the book to find out why :-) It also kick-started my collection of Soviet Science books eg. "Science For Everyone" and "Little Mathematics Library" series. Teachers/Students should take a look at these books and use them productively in the classroom/self-study. They are concise, precise with no fluff and a high s/n ratio.
The His Dark Materials was probably the first books I got really in to and some of the only books I've ever re-read. I read a couple of others by the same author but wasn't grabbed as much. I think I was around 13 at the time. Harry Potter were probably some of the first "long" books that I ever read but I wasn't a huge fan and gave up by the third. I'd say those along with random Discworld and assorted fantasy books planted the seeds of enjoying reading but it did go hand in hand with sitting next to my mum and enjoying the experience. Taking a book on holiday and sitting in the sun reading rather than just playing on my gameboy, which happened too but without bans on screen time more like just encouragement to join in the reading activity. Maybe bad battery lives and non-backlit screens helped too. One book that's always stuck in my memory since is Freakonomics. I read it when I was a teenager and the very logical thinking hit a real nerve. I know the book has had controversy since but I can't say I took away any specific example of "Sumo wrestlers like to cheat" or whatever, but the way of thinking it encouraged has definitely stuck with me. My partner read some Malcolm Gladwell books when she was younger and she was definitely a fan for a similar reason. I think they're a load of tosh with generous leaps of logic but I can understand the appeal of something that encourages you to look beyond the obvious.
Stretching the mental legs of young readers has value so having a few series of quick, punchy, engaging literary trash is a good thing.
When I was a kid, Point Horror, Goosebumps and various adventure books were the reading gym that gave me the stamina for the books I actually enjoyed (Tolkien, Pullman, and so much Pratchett).
I'm going through this with my daughter now. We still lean on thriller subjects but there is so much more choice. Goodreads is great for finding subgenres of interest and then similar books to ones that hit the mark.
But use your local library. Pick up random books co-read opening chapters, and review the style and quality together. Use your judgement and public reviews to bin out the real trash and slowly but surely give then confidence to pick up real literature.
Forcing your kid to grind through a book rarely goes well but if you really want to push it, taking it in turns to read aloud can inject enough performative energy to carry it.
Pippi Longstocking. I was read that book so many times I knew it by heart. Her mix of courage, playfulness and of speaking truth to power, her refusal to follow society's rules where they made no sense, her innate sense of justice. I'd say that even today hers would be a personality I try to be.
The translation into our language was good and we had a copy that was almost a family relic, given to my father by his mother who would soon die much to young - it's the closest thing I have to an atheist family bible in a way. I was so disappointed when neither of my children were particularly interested when I read them that same book, but they have different personalities than me, so my theory is that the book wasn't so much of an influence on me as it was simply a story that jived really well with my character.
Carl Sagan's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
Will probably make your children atheists though.
So much of the world still runs on fucking bullshit, just look at the justifications for the ongoing [redacted because it'll probably derail the conversation].
> So much of the world still runs on fucking bullshit
I would suggest now perhaps more than ever. Evolution of social media and corruption of big media played it's role
As a teenager, I was fortunate that my Dad bought me a copy of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.
Quote: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they can choose their behavior.
While it may be common sense/doh-so-obvious today, this was such a mind-blowing reframe for the teenage me back then, and it shaped me immeasurably as a person for the better, for the 30+ years that follow.
Have Space Suit Will Travel (Heinlein)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (one story in the book "Different Seasons" by Stephen King)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)
Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky)
Frankenstein (Shelley)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Farenheit 451 (Heinlein)
Never Cry Wolf (Mowatt)
A Whale for the Killing (Mowatt)
The Machine Stops (Forster)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
Starship Troopers (Heinlein)
The Jungle Book (Kipling)
Lost in the Barrens (Mowatt)
The Republic (Plato)
Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke)
Ringworld (Niven)
The Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
The Odyssey (Homer)
The Man who Would be King (Kipling)
The Pearl (Steinbeck)
Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)
A Scanner Darkly (Dick)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Dracula (Stoker)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (Carroll)
Watership Down (Adams)
Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
My goodness, did you write those by using your memory?
Those were just the ones I remember reading as a kid/teenager. There are others that I read later in life which I'd also recommend such as the Foundation series by Asimov, Moby Dick, Dune, Life of Pi, works by Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Terry Pratchett, Stanislaw Lem, Pierre Boulle, etc.
I’ll guess yes, since Fahrenheit 451 is by Bradbury. Great list, though.
Whoops! I don't know why, but I'd always thought it was by Heinlein...
Ender's Game and especially Ender's Shadow. I hesitate to recommend OSC at all due to his Problematic™ personal politics, especially as a member of the maligned group, but they had a big impact on the way I see The System in which we all live.
Spoiler-free: based on a shared societal belief in a looming existential crisis, a group of young adults attend a military school whose curriculum revolves around a war game with sports-like rules. The System uses the war game to identify for positions of relative prestige those students most willing to interpret the game rules in creative ways, most willing to question assumptions brought with them from the school-world into the game-world, but naïve enough to believe the game is over once they've “graduated” from it. The books explore the many ways in which the “real world” : school-world :: school-world : game-world.
I remember being very disappointed reading Speaker for the Dead, in that it's a total change of pace from the more "hero's journey" structure for Ender's Game, but now looking back, I really appreciate how it expanded the themes and brought a more nuanced flavour to the whole series.
And yes... I try to separate the art from the artist too when it comes to OSC.
I guess it was the hobbit that got me into reading (even more than I already was) and into computers as it came with the c64 adventure game which my godparents had. Every time we went there I got some computer time as they'd bought it for "office work", but I played scuba dive, the hobbit, manic miner, hunchback etc. It also led to reading the lord of the rings, which felt like a massive achievement at the time. I've just read the fellowship of the ring to my kids and it was a fun (though slow) experience.
As am adult The Stranger - Camus and The Old Man and the Sea had a big impact, I think because you can read and get the whole experience in a single sitting.
The City and the Stars, Arthur C. Clarke.
I also grew up with three full-sized bookcases mostly filled with all sorts of sci-fi and adventures by my granddad. But when I think of a book, this one always comes to mind first.
Unlike other sci-fi I’ve read before it, this novel had this out-of-usual-limits existential mystery and background dread, mostly unresolvable by its very nature and built into the plot almost immediately so that you have to re-realize it, as if you were at a therapist. I’ve read books with galactic wars, dark corners of space, empires, horrors, strange alien encounters, but only this one touched me so deep.
From non-fiction, it was “from basic to assembly” (noname, can’t find it) and few years later some 80386 system programming manual. I remember another book on assembly in between, it was dark blue.
Books that stood out to me as a teenager: - A series of Unfortunate Events (all of them)
because I liked the never ending mystery of it all, and I was both annoyed, and pleased by the fact that you never actually find out what actually happened to the parents. I know it was a fictional series, but it was, and still is, the only fictional books I’ve ever read. I was particularly impressed by the author’s playful use of words and punctuation that could draw me in and keep me interested and curious. He kind of inspired me to be more creative with the way I use words when I write. Not that I’ve done much writing for fun lately, but occasionally I do.
The other book, I’m almost embarrassed to admit was:
- The secret by Rhonda Byrne.
I got particularly obsessed with this book, I think partly because I grew up in quite adverse circumstances, I started to think that if I was just more positive, more positive things would happen for me. I really developed quite a strong positive and optimistic attitude to life, believing that if I just thought about good things often enough, good things would happen. In practicality this often meant that as a teenager sometimes I came across optimistic to the point of seeming delusional. As I’ve got older, I’ve really come to the conclusion that the book “the secret” is a load of crap. However, I do think that I cope better in life with adversity than some of the people I went to school with have because of how I frame life events, often choosing the frame them as the next opportunity and frame them in more positive ways. I think that’s something I gained from reading that book, even if it was mainly a bunch of nonsense.
The rest of the books I read as a teenager were to do with serial killers. Particularly Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, and other stuff to do with weird, horrible, violent crimes.
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture.
A great, short read that gives you a very gentle introduction to the world of pure mathematics following the life of Uncle Petros, a mathematical prodigy who devoted his life to trying to solve Goldbach's Conjecture.
Ironically, this is one of the main reasons I didn't study mathematics.
My Side of the Mountain was one my mom got me that has really stuck with me. About a boy running away from home and living in a tree, so good -> https://shepherd.com/book/my-side-of-the-mountain
I loved Robin Hood, and at my local library, I found this amazing book called Bows Against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease. I highly recommend it as I loved it -> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1719399.Bows_Against_the...
Rifles for Watie was another one a librarian recommended me and I read in grade school and loved -> https://shepherd.com/book/rifles-for-watie
The classic Dragonlance Chronicles were amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Vol-1-3-Dragonlance-Chronicles-Set/dp...
I loved the Box Car Children, mostly book #1, but the rest were good.
Hardy Boys was also a series I adored, but I am not sure how they have aged.
My son is 7 and he is reading Harry Potter and just loving it. So I highly recommend that one. I didn't read it until college and it is one of my favorite series. She writes incredible characters and weaves them together so perfectly.
As I got to my teenage years... - Dirk Pitt's adventure books kept me reading all day. - Snow Crash really blew my mind. - Catch 22 stood out fo rme. - Atlas Shrugged and all of her books I liked (but not for the weird cult thing. - Classic Tom Clancy - Upton Sinclair The Jungle - Seismic impact on my view of the world. - Native Son in high school is something I think about to this day and bothers me. - From The Holy Mountain - Huge influence on me in my early 20s and where I ended up.
One that comes to mind is John Wyndham's The Chrysalids - a post-nuclear dystopia that is perfect for adolescents (or was for me, anyway) because it expresses the feeling of being an isolated mutant. Eventually the isolated mutant kids find each other, band together, and defeat the dysfunctional authorities. That was profoundly satisfying when I was 14 or whenever I read it.
Depends on the age, but for age 9-14ish, one series is hands down the most influential thing I've ever read:
The Animorphs series.
It's both incredibly good entertainment, but also really digs into morality in a way that has shaped how I think of things even so many years later.
Second to that is the "My Teacher is an Alien" series. They're fun books, pretty light, but the last book of the series, likewise, instilled a lot of morality-sense in me, since it's basically a tour of the bad (and good) of humanity.
For a bit of an older age (~15?), nothing quite impacted me like Ender's Game did. Again, a lot of ideas of what is moral and what isn't. (And yes, as others in this thread have pointed out, the author has a problematic legacy, make of that what you will.)
Dune. So many thought-provoking quotes throughout the books, especially the first one. This one pops up in my head often, many years after having first read the book:
"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"
Also Starship Troopers. Reading it made me somewhat regret not joining the military.
Darren Shan's books about vampires/vampaneze.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Darren_Shan
It helped me escape from a lot of stuff, gave me a fantasy world to run to when books were all I had.
All of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books gave me a character to look up to, someone to aspire to be like. At the time, there was maybe only 3 released but I read them over and over again.
"What will you do, Reacher?"
"The right thing, Mom."
I read Orwell’s 1984 in junior high in the 1970s, during the Nixon/Viet Nam era.
I started it thinking it was just another scifi book about the future, but it served as a really good inoculation against governmental lies and cant.
Stacks and stacks of encyclopedias and atlases, some for adults and some for kids, the way things work, books in foreign languages
Clive Barker's Books of Blood, Stephen King's stuff up until the early 90s (I later found out the point where the books turned boring was when he'd stopped using drugs), short stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, and The Destroyer pulp novels, particularly after Will Murray started writing them.
Doestoyevsky's Crime and Punishment
I read it 20 years ago once, and I still think about it everyday.
For other heavy reading:
Ecclesiastes (Qohelet)
As I became a teen my reading became varied thankfully and I came across this book at a time when nothing felt important.
When all feels lost and nothing matters, Ecclesiastes is great for giving a view into what’s it’s like to grapple with the questions of happiness, life and humanity in a way that doesn’t end in your own depression and suicide.
The author finds his reason and method for living. We all must do the same.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes
I was given "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill as a teenager (long ago) and fascinated by the Prisoners Of War resourcefulness in not being controlled by their environment. Some innovations included stealing electric wiring to light the long tunnels, making forged `official' documents without a typewriter and hiding the tunnel `tailings' in plain sight. The movie doesn't do justice to the true story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(book)
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick (2012)
The Prince by Machiavelli.
Gödel, Escher, Bach. Opened my eyes to the beauty of pattern and mathematics.
(Edited for typo)
Just for curiosity, do you remember at what age did you read it?
I have an insatiable appetite for non-fiction - history, geography, politics, etc which I'm fairly certain can be traced back to a series of educational picture books I devoured as a child.
Each would survey some broad topic, for example Ancient Egypt. It would be full of detailed drawings/illustrations and accompanying text snippets. "What did the inside of a pyramid look like?", "How did the Ancient Egyptians use chariots?", and so on.
Mum would always buy me a new one every other week. The topics were diverse & broad, and so never got boring.
A bonus was when a subject I had read in these books happened to come up at school :-)
reminds of the dk eyewitness books and stephen beisty books that captivated my youth
A few come to mind, over the course of my childhood up to and including high-school.
The "Mad Scientist's Club" series
The Great Brain
Those "Encyclopedia Brown" stories
The "The Three Investigators" series
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
The original Doyle "Sherlock Holmes" canon
The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
Nineteen Eighty Four
Siddhartha
I just want to upvote this one; it is amazing and one of the most recommended books on a book website I run when people talk about life changing books (https://shepherd.com/book/siddhartha)
Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. It's amazing
A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
I didn't read it on my own personally, rather, it was read in my eighth grade class from beginning to end. Lots of discussion was had about the foreshadowing and meaning behind Dickens' words. At the time I really didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, but I'm incredibly grateful that my teacher made us read through that.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian was another one read in class that I think helped shape my perspective on the world for the better.
Self help books like "Do It!" (can't find the author) and "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield. They're simplified to the point that they're basically children's books, but they also provide a wide range of tools to deal with the future, with career and failure, and choosing your destiny.
a shame he couldnt manage relations within his own family as well as he helped others.
“The Age of Spiritual Machines” by Ray Kurzweil.
Catcher in the Rye, Salinger captures that feeling of being a lost teenager while at the same time thinking that we know everything. It's an amazing book to read as a teen.
I second this. I read it at school and felt such a strong connection with Holden (as did everyone else that read it) and it really showed me there is so much more value in books outside of simple entertainment. I would also recommend Botchan by Natsume Soseki for the same reasons (although I came upon this much later in life).
Dune series. Still a unique and thoughtful take on a future space-faring humanity.
The idea of the 'Butlerian Jihad', a galactic wide outlawing of AI basically, seems even more prescient today than it would have in the 60s when it was written.
Motel of the Mysteries, David Macauley's satire of then-modern America intertwixed with a satire of archaeology and historical and academic understanding, masquerading as a picture book. A remarkable work I still think about today.
https://www.vox.com/22753080/motel-mysteries-book-david-maca...
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. It's a sci-fi adventure with self-reliance and counter-cultural themes.
When I was pretty young, I was given a copy of The Way Things Work. It had an incredible impact on me and is probably what steered me down the path of engineering. Truly, a fundamental part of who I grew up to be.
The chapters about electronics are obviously quite dated, but I think it still stands up. I'd absolutely give a copy to the kind of kid who has to take everything apart to see how it works.
The wind in the willows The Wizard of Oz
Indian folktales - The Panchatantra, The Jataka and the Hitopadesa.
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
Well before I could read I was enamoured with my grandmother's National geographic collection.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
ABC book, still love reading it on rainy nights
A wizard of earthsea by Ursula Le Guin The moon is a hash mistress Heinlein Weirdstone of Brisingamen The red car
Alfred Morgan's The Boy Electrician
The Catcher in the Rye
Danny Dunn series
Yes! "Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy". It incorporated virtual reality with tiny flying drones for 'invisibility'. It was published in 1974.
I was inspired to make a handwriting copying machine based on the "Homework Machine" book.
Great series!
Dune.
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Can you tell more? I loved Ken Kesey story at some point but haven’t revisited him for a while
Lord of the flies.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Masquerade, by Kit Williams. He hid a treasure in the UK and wrote a book with clues on how to find it.
Such a wonderful thing to discover as a child.
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
For kids, other than science and engineering:
Intimacy
(1) Knowledge. Give knowledge of yourself, what do like, don't like, want, believe, think, plan.
Notice that another person who stands off doesn't give such knowledge.
(2) Caring. Care about the other person, monitor their life, reach out to help them.
Notice how common it is for others just to give you their middle finger.
(3) Respect. Grant credibility, honor, pride, praise.
Notice how others may give you contempt and insults, try to manipulate, take advantage.
(4) Responsiveness. Monitor what they do, listen to what they say, use those two to think about their lives, and do respond appropriately.
Notice how others can not respond, just ignore, turn away.
(5) Affection. It's basic, involves physical contact, especially with facial contact, hand holding, hugging, and apparently is universal at least in all mammels.
Notice how others avoid physical contact.
Uh, as a teen boy dating a teen girls, mostly interested in (1)--(5) or just some anatomy lessons? With some girls, it's easier to have sex or even marriage than much or anything in (1)--(5).
By their teens, maybe boys/girls could benefit from realizing (1)--(5).
That's my "book" for kids!
Atlas Shrugged. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Animal Farm. Cat's Cradle. Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. Flowers for Algernon.
Fiction:
1) The Sherlock Holmes Canon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Sherlock_Holmes
My first exposure was through "The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes" and it made such a huge impression on me with its focus on the use of step-by-step logical reasoning to solving problems that in a sense it taught me to "think rationally" in real life. I then set about acquiring the complete canon and have read them all so many times that i can quote entire dialogues/passages from memory. The language used is also elegant and beautiful with lots of memorable phrases/quotes/quips etc. Every kid should be asked to read the complete canon and then discuss takeaways from them.
2) Charles Dickens - Started with Oliver Twist, Great Expectations
These books (read the unabridged versions) were my introduction to the "Human Condition/Human Values" faced by people from different economic strata. His books span different genres but always end with a positive note. The writing style is beautiful with a healthy dose of Melodrama, Humour, Vivid descriptions etc. which draw you in and keep you engaged. Here is a good essay on his narrative technique - https://www.lsj.org/literature/essays/dickens
Non-Fiction:
1) Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman - You can get scans of all his and other Soviet authors books at - https://mirtitles.org/
In those days (80s in India) American/British books were generally not available and too costly but Soviet books were easily available and very affordable. My dad bought me this 2-vol set and that motivated my lifelong interest in Science. An example: I was enamoured of the protagonist in "The Invisible Man" by H.G.Wells but Perelman uses it as a scientific case study and shows that instead of being a most powerful man (because he is invisible) he would be the most powerless/pathetic man. Read the book to find out why :-) It also kick-started my collection of Soviet Science books eg. "Science For Everyone" and "Little Mathematics Library" series. Teachers/Students should take a look at these books and use them productively in the classroom/self-study. They are concise, precise with no fluff and a high s/n ratio.
Just read to them! Every day ! For hours
I have found that there is a big difference in quality of books. It is really great to have people mention what impacted them, and why.