15 Influential Books in My Life
I read Lou Plummer’s blog post yesterday about 15 books with the most impact, and decided to write my own list. I can’t say these are the “most impactful”, only that these feel influential. I’m sure I am missing something that would displace one or more of these.
- Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin (7th Grade)
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (High School)
- Native Son, Richard Wright (High School )
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (College)
- Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl (College)
- To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm (College)
- The Thousand Mile Summer, Colin Fletcher
- Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat Zinn
- Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
- 1984, George Orwell
- Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach
- Earth, David Brin
- The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin
- Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
These are all older books, as I was thinking about messages that stuck earlier and stayed with me over time. There are more recent books that have built upon attitudes and philosophies included in this list. For example, all of Naomi Klein’s books, starting with No Logo. A ton of smart speculative fiction from William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, and more. I could go on and on.