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At first, I was kind of interested in this story in the Guardian about how men and women tend to identify wildly different books when asked to identify the work that was most life changing. When I saw the list though and saw books like Ulysses I have to wonder if people aren’t just picking out books they think they should pick — sort of like people who claim to watch PBS when asked. I really tried to read Ulysses. I found it awful.

I was also kind of disturbed to realize that I’d never even heard of the book most often cited by men, , The Outsider. I wonder if it’s a British thing. If you asked people in the US would they pick a different story?

My favorite book is Dune. I don’t think I’d ever say it was life changing though. I recall Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains strongly influencing my thinking in some areas when I was a kid. I reread it recently though and found that what I took out of it was exactly opposite what the author intended, so either I wasn’t reading critically as a kid, or I was just reading it through a lens of my own making. There’s probably a little of both there.

The book I’ve given and recommended to the most people is Les Miserables. That is such a fantastic book, and while I realize that not everybody would like or appreciate a book like Dune, I think that almost everybody would really get a lot out of Les Miserables if they gave it a chance. Was my life really changed by that book though? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s probably come the closest.