---
title: "What book have you read that has forever changed the way you view or live life?"
url: https://www.kickassfacts.com/what-book-have-you-read-that-has-forever-changed-the-way-you-view-or-live-life/
date: 2020-09-25
modified: 2020-09-25
lang: en
author: "jazz"
description: "We asked our regular contributors through e-mail What book have you read that has forever changed the way you view or live life? We got many interesting responses. Here are..."
categories:
  - "AskReaders"
  - "Specials"
image: https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/books.jpg
word_count: 1277
---

# What book have you read that has forever changed the way you view or live life?

We asked our regular contributors through e-mail **What book have you read that has forever changed the way you view or live life?** We got many interesting responses. Here are some of them. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way.

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/introduction-to-linear-algebra.jpg)

1. Introduction to Linear Algebra.
After the first chapter, I decided I was going to law school.

- callyjohnwell

2. The Count of Monte Cristo. I have no idea what it did to me but after I finished it I knew I was no longer the same person.

- Courbet1Shakes0

3. Man's Search for Meaning.
"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." -Viktor E. Frankl

In my opinion, it is a must-read.

- EverGreatestxX

4. I read [*The Phantom Tollbooth*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/378.The_Phantom_Tollbooth) at a young age & it changed the way I viewed the world.
One of my favorite quotes from the book: "So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible."

- KitsuneGao

5. 1984.

- InterstellarPancakes

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Enders_game_cover.jpg)

6. Ender’s game. Summed up, it’s not about winning, it’s the way we win.

- KarrostheDecapitator

7. Dune. The pragmatism is real. It cuts through politics and religion like a hot knife through butter. It's like reading The Prince but applied to a very cool and original sci-fi world.

- SatanTheTranquil

8. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. Jeez, it's such a weird-but-in-a-good-way book that really makes you reflect on morality.

- oteudeuss

9. Of Mice and Men... seriously scarring but effective.

- cloutiaaa

10. *The Giver*
I remember reading that book in 6th or 7th grade and just being blown away. I had never experienced a book like that before and it really had a huge impact on me. I'd add *I Am The Cheese* along with it.

- eDgAR-

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest.jpg)

11. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

- direwolf50

12. The Book Thief.

- jaetransform

13. Les Miserables. It's just such a great story of redemption and duty and the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law. Javert and Jean Valjean are great character juxtaposition about what it means to really do the right thing.

- Thechaser45

14. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse or Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

- DSUlax

15. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's *The Little Prince.* It's quite short and can be read online as well. Every time I read it, I seem to derive a different lesson from it.
[HTML](http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/arts/tributes/antoine_de_saint-exupery_le_petit_prince/the_little_prince.htm) [PDF](https://verse.aasemoon.com/images/f/f5/The_Little_Prince.pdf)

- seventeenblackbirds

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/NightWiesel.jpg)

16. Night by Elie Wiesel.

- 7thtrydgafanymore

17. To Kill A Mockingbird.

- gobigred3562

18. The Brothers Karamazov. Don’t remember the exact quote, but something along the lines of “If God did not exist, man should have to invent him.” It really challenged my nihilistic outlook on life and intense dislike for God. Not that I’m religious now, but more open minded on the morality that God imparts.

- fauxylady

19. Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, made me completely perceive time and perspective differently.

- BARDaniel48

20. "The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe"
If I had to choose one story specifically "The Cask of Amontillado". It's an unbelievable journey into vengeance and patience. Be good to people cause they hold grudges.

Another really fitting one for these times would be "The Pit and The Pendulum". It shows the suffering an individual can endure merely because they are a member of a certain group.

- Eldoggomonstro

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Educated.png)

21. Educated.
I have never outright bawled my eyes out from reading a book over multiple occasions. This one made me really appreciate my parents as people, value how they raised me, and cherish that they encouraged me to think for myself and not blindly follow other's rules.

- Allyoop_750

22. The Lorax.

- Cyburking

23. The Great Gatsby.
It continues to teach me how hope is a two-ended street. One side that pushes a person to achieve greatness and the other impairs the human's sense of reality. To stay between the opposition is what I strive for, despite the difficulty that follows.

To live a life of tragedy is not inherently a complete loss - it's a choice. One must understand the risks that come with standing defiant by their vision at all costs. It may be lonely and dark to take a unique path, but in the end, it will be worth everything. The decider comes down to whether one achieves it or falls short. That's the gamble, and I hope I'm on the better half of it.

- sanaru02

24. Catch-22.

- Auroren

25. I mean... the Bible. I'm not religious, but it did change my perception of things.

- Joshua-S-B

![](https://www.kickassfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/sapiens-a-brief-history-of-humankind.jpeg)

26. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

- ElectronicTop0

27. Don Quixote, it shows that the world does not change...

- manohell

28. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.

- beamane

29. The Bell Jar.

- booksoverppl

30. The Stormlight Archive. The characters suffer from many many issues, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but they push through because their entire world is at stake, everything they know, love, and cherish could just vanish in an instant if they don't fight for the right to live. The quotes from the characters are also extremely good but there is just one sequence that just breaks me entirely.
“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.

“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”

“People who don’t understand pain.”

“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s…”

“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grasp it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”

“Yes.”

"The sensation -- it’s not sorrow, but something deeper -- of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just.. haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”

He stopped in the chasm.

She turned and looked at him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you, screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

-  VideoZealousideal976