Books, like movies and music, have a strange way of influencing who we are and how we look at the world. It seems a bit foolish to think a book can have this type of an impact, but if you’ve ever read a book that has opened your eyes to something you never knew before, then you understand what I’m talking about.

Honestly, I feel sorry for those people who have never read a book that has expanded their minds and even changed their lives. Because I have read many.

Below is a list of 50 books that have impacted me in some way, and either changed the way I live, think, or even look at the world. They are ranked by the impact they’ve had on me…more or less.

  1. Tuesdays with Morrie
  2. The Alchemist
  3. The Book of Learning and Forgetting
  4. Ishmael
  5. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
  6. Buddhism Plain and Simple
  7. A Child Called “It”
  8. A Long Way Gone
  9. The Rose that Grew from Concrete
  10. The Pact
  11. Fast Food Nation
  12. Othello
  13. Travels with Charlie
  14. Beloved
  15. To Kill a Mockingbird
  16. 1984
  17. The Miracle of St. Anthony
  18. The Grapes of Wrath
  19. The Catcher in the Rye
  20. Diamond Cutter
  21. A Man Named Dave
  22. Am I Blue?
  23. Go Ask Alice
  24. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  25. Siddhartha
  26. Middlesex
  27. The Diary of Anne Frank
  28. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
  29. Romeo and Juliet
  30. Catch-22
  31. Slaughterhouse-Five
  32. Invisible Man
  33. Native Son
  34. Give a Boy a Gun
  35. Night
  36. Morning Sun on a White Piano
  37. Maus I and II
  38. King Lear
  39. Breath, Eyes, Memory
  40. Fahrenheit 451
  41. The Sound and the Fury
  42. A Room of One’s Own
  43. The da Vinci Code
  44. Midnight’s Children
  45. Childhood’s End
  46. Three Cups of Tea
  47. How to Think Like da Vinci