@ShaulaEvans @afewbugs I know you said “book” and I’ve already answered with a series, but my real answer is “the library.”

I even wrote a bloody song about it. https://youtu.be/PsYB4tyTCEQ

@ShaulaEvans @falcennial I was seventeen when The Light Fantastic came out and already a fantasy fan, so when someone lent me their copies of those first two books I was hooked.

The “reading order” debate for me is easily solved: in the order they came out, as they came out. I feel kind of sorry for anyone’s who didn’t get to experience them like that and I always hope that another generation will get to experience something similar with a different writer. It’s magical.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon Oh my, this is a very difficult question, as I was long a book aficionado.

I guess I would have to say a biography on Jane Goodall. It opened my eyes to the larger world, and showed that kindness can survive and thrive in the world. This was 19-20 years ago.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

One Minute Nonsense by Anthony de Mello.

I don't remember when but I do remember where.

Lifeline bookfest in Brisbane. I bought it for $1 and I still have it!

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon I’ve had a few… The Prophet, as a precocious 16 year old: I realised that other religious folks believed stuff as deeply as I did, so how did I know what was true? Silent Spring which was my beginning of understanding quite how fucked we are by the corporate world. Maybe the Hobbit when I was 10 and I had an epiphany about how literature could seriously hook me (again with Day of the Triffids). Been a reader since. So many books have shaped me

@ShaulaEvans Simone de Beauvoir - All Men are Mortal. Completely changed my outlook on life and death. I read it at 17. @bookstodon

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon
The Hobbit set a path for fantasy literature when I was a kid, but most profound change happened after reading When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. It was a starting point for pure spiritual rebirth and joy. ️

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon I think the book that shaped me the most was Treading Lightly, KE Sveiby, T. Skuthorpe. I was a corporate Knowledge Manager at the time and read this book from a renowned KM professor: it was supposed to be about storytelling, a rather hot topic in KM at the time. The other author, the storyteller, is an aboriginal elder, and that's what changed me: his point of view on knowledge and human interaction with nature is what turned my life around #books

@ShaulaEvans

the Discworld series, of which Small Gods is the first one to have made my brain go "oh!"
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa and Outposts which made me realize that non-fiction could be an entertaining read.
Isabel Wilkerson's Caste because it gave me a different way of looking at how people interact with each other.
And Ursula Markham's How to Deal with Difficult People; it is a weird choice for a 13yo and deals with office life... but it helped me deal with my family a lot.

@MamaLake @ShaulaEvans @bookstodon amazing!

@satsuma @ShaulaEvans @bookstodon @alicemcalicepants
Gödel, Escher, Bach "switched my mind on" when i was 15 years old; i did not understand all in the book, but my mind was altered, and in a positive way. since then i check and double-check everything i read or see (or think).

@bookstodon @ShaulaEvans The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - I read the book the first time maybe 8 years ago. Since then, I return to read it again every other year.
It came at a rather bleak time in my life and started me on a path to reevaluate my values and act more towards how I want to be. I treasure this book because it finally made me realize that how I was and how I am are not how I will be or must be.

@bookstodon @ShaulaEvans Another great book for me was "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" (read maybe 5 years ago the first time) - I felt like it put into words what I was feeling missing in my environment at that time. It gave me a way to say / describe what I am looking for.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Read that in my early twenties and it helped consolidate what a load of old bullshit the right wing of politics are pumping out. Such a blatantly awful book. I couldn't even finish it.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan, back in grammar school. It motivated me to study physics, and even though that's not the career I ended in, it nevertheless set me on my path.