When Books Could Change Your Life

http://www2.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=16743#.UOGXYitLEFM.twitter

This article discusses how books read at a certain age--around 12--seem to have a bigger impact on you than anything you read later. Yes and no for me. The books I read at that age touched my heart but maybe not my head. It was the books I read about 4-5 years later that really impacted my thinking. Are "Cry me A River" books more important in the long run. I am not sure. Certainly THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK would be in either category. Same with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT.


Some of the books that had a big impact on me would include The True Believer (Hoffer), the works of Colin Turnbull, The Lonely Crowd (Riesman), The Feminine Mystique (Friedan), The Second Sex, (de Beauvoir) The Silent Spring (Carson), In the Shadow of Man (Goodall) (a few years later), Catch 22 (Heller) The Greening of America. the works of Kurt Vonnegut and some of Bradbury.

I am sad when I think how rarely I read books like this today. The age of sociological studies seems gone.

What books had a pivotal influence on you as a kid and later?