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What the book changed your life?

Often people ask: “What the book changed your life?”

It was John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent. I read it at a time when the haze of youthful idealism is beginning to dissipate and a cynical reality is opening in my eyes. I went through an emotional fall with the hero and experienced hope with him.

After that, there were many more books that shaped the person I am now. If not Steinbeck, Irvin Yalom or Yuval Harrari, I would have thought differently today.

And when you are asked about life’s most important books, then there is a great opportunity to remember who you were yesterday and what you want to be tomorrow.

© Fortune, 2009

  • Do you have a book that changed your attitude to life?

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Written by Fortune

10 Comments

  1. I was waiting for someone to ask this question (lol) Yes. The book, Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale certainly changed my way of thinking.

  2. Yes , I have book called the Holy Quran that not only change the attitude but complete life . I think every one should read their religions sacred scripture to understand the real purpose of life.

  3. it would be a tie- there are two series that really informed the way I see the world, the first chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and the Book of the New Sun, for entirely different reasons…

  4. I read a great many different kinds of books. However, there is one book that you could say turned my life around. It was given to me by my father whose poetic and writing talent I inherited. It was The Golden Book of Children’s Poetry and at the age of 8, I was writing poems in both English and Latvian.