Books that Changed Your Life - Now with bonus Perec!

I was browsing around the other day and saw the usual "list of books that changed your life" and must say I was very disappointed with the sheer predictability of those selected. Life-changing book lists always seem to incorporate: The New Testament, Ayn Rand, Camus' The Stranger, Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and that dross ejected by J K Rowling. There were no surprises (other than "Oh - people still think they can impress people by saying that they've read Camus"), and I would have love to have been surprised by something honest and unexpected on that list -- ("Hey, Watership Down *is* deeply inspiring now you come to mention it!").

Here's mine, with my age at the time because when is just as important as what.

The Tree Wakers - Keith Clare - age 7
The first proper novel I remember reading (I'd read some Paddington beforehand and can't say it changed my life much), it's extremely eerie and captures the otherworldliness of Kew perfectly. When, as an adult, I finally saw the Pagoda I was immediately brought back to the book. I hunted a copy down a copy a couple of years ago and it's still creepy.

Watership Down - Richard Adams - age 8
It was hefty, it had rabbits on the cover and I was 8 years old with limited browsing time left in the library. The longest thing I'd read up to that point, I learned a lot about language, plot structure and snares. When, after I read it, I discovered that a film was being made, that private world I'd occupied was suddenly exposed and my head nearly exploded with the synchronicity of it. I still think of Keehar fondly.

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman - age 10
Utterly gripping and with proper science, this crams a lot in a complicated story - an allegory of the Vietnam war, it clearly demonstrates that conflict is horrible, foolish and an inescapable feature of Humankind.

The New Testament - various - age 11
Yes, it did change my life - this was the book that made me an atheist. Already with strong suspicions, I thought I would go to one of the source books to see if it added any evidence to a shaky foundation for a cult. Quite the opposite, all the flaws of religion were exposed; suddenly I was free to live my life in a meaningful way. I consider it the book for atheists everywhere who want to know more.

Dune - Frank Herbert - age 15
Even to this day, I can't say for sure that I understand the subtleties of Frank Herbert's masterpiece - but that's OK because none of the people who have filmed it got them either. A true rarity in that it has a deeply philosophical plot, describes a detailed world and society, yet never allows the story to be bogged down in details. Instead, the unforgettable characters and concepts carry it along.

UBIK - Philip K Dick - age 18
What can I say about UBIK that's not been said before? There's a strong case for it being the best PKD novel, it certainly has some of his best-realized characters and will keep you guessing for a long time.

Life, a User's Manual - Georges Perec - age 19
Completely different to anything I'd read up until the time or since - each chapter is a description of a different apartment within a Parisian block, developed according to a Euler Square, and describes a snapshot of life within it at one moment, in all 100 apartments, shortly before 8pm on June 23rd 1975. I kid you not. Despite there being no motion, there are 100 interlinking stories here, like looking at a photograph of an event unfolding.

Swimming to Cambodia - Spalding Gray - age 20
Or "I hate that existential idiot" as an ex once described him. Spalding's monologues showed what a unique and beautiful person he was, pushed and dragged this way and that by the encounters that he invited, lured upon himself. Everyone can see a little of themselves in his neuroses and experiences, but at the same time he takes it to new extremes.

The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker - age 22
The musings of a guy as he takes the escalator back to his office after going out at lunchtime to buy a shoelace and some milk. Covers drinking straws, model aeroplanes, fraying, the postal service. Gave me a key "Wow - other people think like that too" moment.

A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley - age 24
Another from the genre of "horribly honest, admitting things no person should ever admit" books. This semi-auto biographical account is a confession of a life spent looking for a purpose and then finding it in writing. And pissing people off.

Ulysses - James Joyce - age 24/25/26
This took several attempts and a number of other books as assistance, but I got there in the end and it was wonderful. It contains a beautiful and intricate world where logic seems sometimes optional but it makes sense eventually. The last chapter, consisting of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, is one of the most dazzling things in the English language - and the final sentence, at 4391 words, is captivating.

Winterdance - Gary Poulsen - age 27
Poulsen decides that he wants to write about the Iditarod and then comes to the conclusion that the best way to do this is to race in it - by training his own team of dogs and living in a kennel with them. With angry moose, wolves, weather and what have you he goes through hell and you feel it with him. You will probably read this in one sitting - because you have to know what happens to him.

Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon - age 28
"My goodness - you can read Pynchon" I consider this the starter novel for people who want to read Thomas Pynchon, over and above The Crying of Lot 49. It has all the scope, bad jokes and cheese-rolling of his more notorious works, but you can just swim up a couple of levels and read it as the story of two guys out surveying. A handy book to read beforehand is Dava Sobel's Longitude.

Underworld - Don deLillo - age 30
Good grief this book is incredible - I may never read anything that moves me more, and I'm actually OK with that, I'm happy that it's this one. A gigantic poem about longing disguised as a novel, when I closed it after finishing it, I knew I was in a new stage of my life.

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson - age 31
It takes a good piece of fiction to finally get me to understand the ζ-function where several non-fiction books and plump, crotch-scratching maths teachers* have failed. And then there's the rest of the book, which is smart, funny and, being Stephenson, has a weak ending.

Scissors and Comb Haircutting - Bob Ohnstad - age 38
I've not actually read this, but my wife has - and this isn't "Books I've read that Changed My Life." This book changed my life because I never have to spend time at the barbers being asked questions about why I don't understand football.

Kindred - Octavia Butler - age 39
Since I am now this huge mass of experiences, behaviours and opinions, built up in layers like sediment, in motion since the Sixties, it requires considerable force to change a life this far along. This book did it, by prompting me to ask a lot of questions about identity and to search out other books in the small, but rewarding, field of African-American Feminist Science Fiction.

Next up, Books that Didn't Change My Life.

* His own crotch. It wasn't that sort of school.