For those of us who love to read a lot there are those books that occasionally put us back, make our heads spin and exemplify the type of feeling you get having read something truly memorable.

Question is. What's the last thing you read that did this for you?

autobiography of malcolm x.

it's what made me the black nationalist that i am.

the next thing you'll tell me is that you're a tibetan monk sworn to poverty..

you gotta admit, that is a sweet ass book though. malcolm rocks.

...because i'm angsty.

LETTERS by John Barth. Dizzying metafiction as John Barth and various characters from or related to his previous stories and novels correspond with each other in the early 70s. The height of the nuttiness is 6/7th of the way into the novel when a character suggests to the novel-Barth that in the 6/7ths portion of the book that he is writing a character should write to novel-Barth and suggest that he write a letter explaining this phenomenom.

Keyso & Weygant - Accounting Principles

'Are you dave gorman?' by Dave Gorman.

sad, but the best read iv had for a long time.

Finally trying to finish up the Steinbeck catalogue and "East of Eden" really blew me away. I'm tempted to get the movie now but know it'll be dissapointing.

For completely different reasons, the "Fretboard Logic" books mentioned in another thread are really f*cking with my head.

i still carry scars from that text.

interesting fact -- weygandt was a prof in the b-school where i got my bachelor's (major: accounting).

w/respect to the autobiog of malcolm x -- i agree w/whoever said that it was a great book. no argument here. and all joking aside, it was something that altered my worldview (though the bigger mindblower was hearing 'fear of a black planet' for the first time).

I should have mentioned Gilligan's Wake by Tom Carson. Funny, heartbreaking and weird, all 7 characters from Gilligan's Island tell their background stories about what brought them to "the island" and along the way unexpectedly become symbols for America since the 1920s. It may sound like a bad David Foster Wallace concept, but it's a lot more than that. An amazing novel.

Probably the most recent book that I read that altered my worldview was "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.

Jonathon Ames, Wake Up Sir!

"Middlesex" by Jeffery Eugenides (same fella who wrote "Virgin Suicides") - I didn't want the book to end - equal parts historical lessons on Mediterranean wars, black nationalism & merchant princes in Detroit and free-flowing dialgogue and heartbreaking confusion...also made me laugh out loud often....now one of my Top 10 entries.

Tender is the Night, possibly. Before that, Lord of the Flies.

Wow, this book kicked my ass and took my name. A bit like "Lord of the Flies" actually. An end of the world scenario with amazing intensity. I think I read it in two days.

hey, you stole mine! I read it based on a recommendation by some girl I liked at the time, and was blown away. Definitely made me question my sexuality, but maybe that's just me.

Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. My fiance (now wife) surprised me with it for my birthday a few years ago...came out of nowhere and totally knocked me out. Hmmmmmmm, kinda like her, I guess.

Odd - I bought that a few months ago & Megan started reading it last week - she got frustrated, though, and reshelved it...now she's reading "Tailchaser's Dream"...it's about cats.

Trippy.

Read Mrs. Dalloway for the first time last semester and hot damn did that book rock my lit-geek world.

Well, I'm notoriously feeble-minded, as you well know, but I really enjoyed that book. Megan should pick it back up...if memory serves, there's a rather playful cat who figures prominently in the story.

Keiso was my professor for Intermediate Acctg.

I give kudos to both the Middlesex and Man Without A Country mentions. Also Zadie Smith's White Teeth rocked my fucking world when I read it in late 2004.

Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, which I read last year. That one got to me, big time.

Did you read the Wind-Up Bird? I remember finding that book fascinating while reading it, but I hardly recall any of it now.

How does Norwegian Wood stack up?

Okay, slackmo made me laugh out loud.

I loved Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but there was something about Norwegian Wood. Maybe it was the lack of those surreal moments Murakami tends to come up with in his other books. Or maybe it was the two female characters, who were both irresistible in their own weird way.

The Time Traveler's Wife. Audrey Niffenegger.

This was assigned reading for a class I took in college called Comparative Religion." I have to say it bored and confused me all at the same time.

Perusing this thread makes me sad about my reading habits in recent years. When I was a little kid I would go through 4 or 5 young adult books a week. I'd still read quite a bit up through my college years but lately I've been slacking.

I have no idea why, but my reading seems to go in six months-on/six months off cycles. The six months on just started last week, as I was given this to read:

I think I fell for some chick-lit without even realizing it.
Didn't know anything about the author or the book at all.
I picked this book up waiting for my girlfriend at Borders
and got hooked so I bought it. Pretty good so far.

I have and have read this. I'm not sure I would put in the "knocked my socks off" category, but he tells it as he sees it.

I'm not a big fan of modern fiction. Not a big fan of fiction period. Most of the non-fiction stuff I read is historical; so essays are usually what do it for me.

There is a chance you'll find the ending annoying like I did. Not a bad read though.

Don't be influenced by the HORRIBLE movie version of this. The comics are truly incredible.

Ah yes, very good stuff. You'd think a novel written in the voice of an autistic British teenager would be stupid, but it's actually riveting and thought-provoking.

good, but not world-turning-upside-down good.

the last one where everything made sense to me was Eggers "You Shall Know Our Velocity!"



I read this and thought it said "Competitive Religion". Now THAT'S a class i'd like to take.

NW is a much more conventional love story. I've always thought of The WUBC as more of a dream than a straight forward story, which would explain your lack of recall rather nicely.

Good to hear. I just bumped this to the on-deck circle.

James Ellroy, "American Tabloid"
Neil Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"
Peter Guralnick, "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley"
Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
David Simon, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"
Jonathan Lethem, "The Fortress of Solitude"
Norman Mailer, "The Executioner's Song"
Bob Dylan, "Chronicles, Vol. 1"

If you dug White Teeth, check out her new one, On Beauty. Great commentary on everything from miscegenated Liberal American intellegentsia couples to hip hop culture and infidelity. Very good Junior year effort (as opposed to sophomore).

In terms of "altering world view" I guess the last thing that did that was "The Brothers Karamazov", which I read at the end of last year. As a long time agnostic I find Dostoevsky's way of examining faith, and simply what it is to be a good person, very edifying.

Yes! One of the rare books that I've read that I actually still think about after putting down.

I was also quite changed after reading

this book was fucked up and I had no idea how forceful and violently poetic it would be. I've never read anything like it.

make sure you read the 400 page version & not the 350 page one. let me know when you're done