This is a list of books that have had a significant impact on me. These have influenced me – for better or worse – and they are the ones I recommend to others to read. I have divided the list into fiction and non-fiction. All the links will take you to the respective Wikipedia entry.
Fiction
- Albert Camus – The Fall
- Ernest Hemingway – For Whom The Bell Tolls
- Ernest Hemingway – Farewell to Arms
- George Orwell – Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- George Orwell – Coming Up For Air
- John Steinbeck – The Moon is Down
- John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath
- John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
- Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
- Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
- Douglas Adams – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
- Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance
- Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
- Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
- Robert Pirsig – Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Jack Kerouac – On The Road
- Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
- Ayn Rand – Fountainhead
- AA Milne – Winnie the Pooh
- Joseph Heller – Catch-22
- William Golding – Lord of the Flies
- Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
- Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange
- Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
- Franz Kafka – The Castle
- Fyodor Dostoevsky – Notes from Underground
Non-fiction
- Katherine Boo – Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punishment
- Desmond Morris – The Naked Ape
- Desmond Morris – The Human Zoo
- Bertrand Russell – Why I am Not A Christian
- Jean Paul Sartre – Existentialism is a Humanism
- Christopher Hitchens – Letters to a Young Contrarian
- George Orwell – Down and Out in London and Paris
- George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia