Books to Eat loves to bring you great book recommendations in our book lists, to inspire you to read more good books. This book list is dedicated to those books that have a profound impact on your life, shift your perspectives, and change how you look at the world or a particular aspect of life.
However they impact you, your life isn’t quite the same after you read one of these books. We hope you like this latest book list, and for more, check out the BookstoEat book lists section.
10 Good Books to Read that will Change Your Life
1. Johnny Got His Gun
Author: Dalton Trumbo
Review: In Johnny got his gun, the following excerpt illustrates how this book will change how you may perceive wars and the military in general.
“If the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for then it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you’ve given it away you’d ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and the stars and stripes forever?
You’re goddamn right they didn’t.
They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please god just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.”
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2. Man’s Search for Meaning
Writer: Viktor E. Frankl
Review: Frankl, who survived the concentration camps, writes that suffering is inevitable and that avoiding suffering is futile. Rather, one should be worthy of one’s suffering and make meaning of it instead of surrendering to nihilism, bitterness and despair. He uses poetic, moving anecdotes from the concentration camps to illustrate those souls who find a deeper humanity from their suffering or who become animals relegated to nothing more than teeth-clenched self-preservation.
This is a quick read and could conceivably change your life. Man is more than the sum of his biology and his environment. We inevitably choose to be who we are. Frankl’s argument is that, if we choose wisely, we can triumph even in tragedy. A book that will undoubtedly change your life after you read it.
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3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Writer: Douglas Adams
Review: No matter how many times you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it will never fail to thrill you and induce bouts of almost uncontrollably hearty laughter.
This is science fiction made to laugh at itself while honoring its own rich tradition, but the book is much more than that. Adams’ peculiarly spot-on humor also draws deeply from the well of sociology, philosophy, and of course science. Beneath the surface of utter hilarity, Adams actually used his sarcasm and wit to make some rather poignant statements about life itself and the manner in which we are going about living it. This is one reason the book is so well-suited for multiple readings-a high level of enjoyment is guaranteed each time around, and there are always new insights to be gained from Adams’ underlying, oftentimes subtle, ideas and approach.
This book is not only one of the best science fiction books, its also one of the funniest books of all time and well worth the read and numerous rereads.
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4. The Things They Carried
Author: Tim OBrien
Review: This book will be an education for anyone who reads it. Visceral, haunting, provoking, gripping – the stories Tim O’Brien tells in the book will rip into you. He puts you on the front line facing the man you just killed – in Vietnam watching your best friend slowly sink into a field of mud as sniper fire is raining all around you – back at home with no sense of purpose surrounded by people who don’t know how to welcome you home.
This book is the best education on the Vietnam war you never received, and it will change your life forever.
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5. Slaughterhouse Five
Writer: Kurt Vonnegut
Review: Slaughter House Five deserves its reputation of being a piece of great American literature and one of the best science fiction books of all time.
The book follows a young man, Billy Pilgrim, through his life. Billy believes aliens have abducted him and we assume that it’s through these aliens that he learns to time travel, a skill he frequently uses. In the book, Pilgrim bounces around time to all the various portions of his life, many times returning to World War II where he was captured, taken prisoner, and held in slaughterhouse five in Dresden, Germany. He seems to be defined by this moment in his life as he frequently returns there. This is the major setup for this antiwar novel as Dresden was home to over 100,000 persons while at the same time Dresden didn’t have any industry lending itself to the war effort.
Vonnegut seems to say that yes, war is one of those things we cannot avoid, but we need to change the things we can about it, like the atrocious bombing of Dresden.
The story of Billy Pilgrim is an enjoyable read, and contains more than dry philosophy that some antiwar novels are filled with.
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6. How to Win Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Review: For anyone who hasn’t read this book, it isn’t only a book you should read in your 20s but at any point in your life.
For those rare few who may not know what this book is about, here’s a brief description: Dale Carnegie explains that by appealing to the other person’s highest ideals, remembering the other person’s name, letting the other person do most of the talking, speaking in terms of the other person’s interests, allowing the other to save face, you can make a friend out of just about anyone.
Not only is this book for people who work in the sales field, for which it was initially intended, it is a useful read for anyone who wants to succeed in almost any field. Getting along with people is an essential skill that you can not get ahead without.
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7. Fahrenheit 451
Writer: Ray Bradbury
Review: This describes a time in the future where censorship prevails and minds are caged. Nobody has original thoughts; with the abolishing of books, creativity was lost as well. Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a fireman (firemen burn books in this story) who has to fight to pull himself from the grip of an overpowering government and tradition, only to see that it is all useless. The book shows what censorship can do to a society, and why individuals must not accept the norm without some serious critical thinking and scrutiny.
It’s a thoroughly thought provoking book and due to its length, its one of the best books to read over a weekend. Overall, read this book immediately and apply what you learn from it into your everyday life. It will not only change how you think, it will change what you do in your dad to day life.
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8. 1984
Writer: George Orwell
Review: The story is set in London, in a dark 1984 that for Orwell might well have been a possibility, writing as he was many years before that date. It is clear that in writing this book, he was just trying to warn his contemporaries of the dangers of not opposing the perceived communist threat, a threat that involved a new way of life that was opposed to everything he held dear.
in 1984, Orwell depicted a totalitarian state, where the truth didn’t exist, but was merely what the “Big Brother” said it was. Freedom was only total obedience to the Party, and love was an alien concept, unless it was love for the Party. The story is told from the point of view of Winston Smith, a worker in the Ministry of Truth, whose work involved the “correction” of all records each time it was decided that the truth had changed. Little by little, Winston begins to realize that things are not right, and that they should change.
1984 should be read by anyone who is interested in freedom and preserving theirs, in light of interference and threats from the outside, whether it be from domestic spying agencies or other forces, who’s only motivation is the restriction of personal freedoms in favor of total control.
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9. Siddhartha
Writer: Herman Hesse
Review: Set in India, Siddhartha is subtitled an “Indic Poetic Work” and clearly it does owe much to both Buddhism and Hinduism, however the philosophy embodied in Siddhartha is both unique and quite complex.
Siddhartha is one of the names of the historical Gautama and while the life of Hesse’s character resembles that of his historical counterpart to some extent, Siddhartha is by no means a fictional life of Buddha and his teachings.
Hesse’s protagonist seeks his own personal path to fulfillment, not someone else’s. It is one of trial and error and he is only subconsciously aware of its nature. The primary theme of the book is the individual’s difficult and lonely search for self-fulfillment. Both the means used by the hero in his quest and the nature of his fulfillment are of prime importance and reflect recurring themes that thread their way through all of Hesse’s work.
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10. Night
Author: Elie Wiesel
Review: In a simple and unadulterated manner, Elie Wiesel relives the spiraling insanity that was the Jewish population of Sighet, Transylvania. As insulated a world as one could imagine and certainly a community who understandably could not embrace the insanity of the extermination occurring around them.
Inevitably, they are taken to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, two of the most infamous concentration camps, where Wiesel provides painfully palpable detail of the day-to-day living conditions. He not only records the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazi guards toward the Jews, as other have, but more tellingly, describes the inhumanity of the camp inmates toward each other for the sake of survival.
It’s a stark peek into the nature of evil that is at once uncomfortable to acknowledge and invaluable to read and absorb.
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The post 10 Good Books to Read That Will Change Your Life appeared first on Books to Eat.