Dune. Confirmed, not developed.

The Immense Journey, by Loren Eiseley, for its natural history.

The Golden Ass, by Apulius, for its irreverence.

The Rievers, by William Faulkner, for its young protagonist who stole a car, jockeyed a race horse, and got cut up in a knife fight in a whore house all before his tenth birthday. And for his genuine remorse and the compassion he was shown by his grandfather, the owner of the car.

Siddhartha, by Herman Hess, for its commentary in the world of the possible.

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, for its look at greed and obsession.

The Golden Shore, by Patrick O'brien, for its tale of perseverance and resourcefulness in the face of extreme privation and suffering.

"The Righteous Mind" Why Good People Differ About Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
Reads like a sociology text book but has some great insights

It all started in elementary school with The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

Nearly every single college textbook I read in my Liberal Studies BA program.

Ever since I gathered meaning from Sun Tzu's "know thy enemy..." there is value in anything written by anybody.

The satanic bible by anton lavey or the god delusion by Richard Dawkins

"Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin.

"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "Cancer Ward" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm.

"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck.

"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck.

"Nine Stories" by J.D. Salinger

"The War Prayer" by Mark Twain.

"Side Effects" by Woody Allen.

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell.

"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck.

It was assigned reading in high school and it is also the book that first got me interested in reading a lot more books. In Steinbeck's nonfiction book "The Sea of Cortez", he mentions the inspiration for the story was based on a story he heard from local villagers of supposedly actual events. "The Pearl" and "The Grapes of Wrath" both together show harsh relaities and put me in touch with the real world, after having been raised in an insulated religious home which left me very sheltered from reality.

It was not long after that I also read "Animals Farm" an d"1984" by George Orwell, which showed me tht although reality was harsh, things could always be/get much worse.

Those four books flipped me from the conservative mindset i ws brought up to have, to a progressive mindse, seeing fairness and equality for all.

Letter To A Christian Nation by Sam Harris is one of my go-to books when talking to religious people.

Wow, ill try to narrow it down to just a few.

Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. If you have not read this, please please do so.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirzig

The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan

Tao of Jeet Kune Do, by Bruce Lee

Universe, Earth and Atom, by Alan Nourse

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Book by Mary Roach
Made me realize our expensive religious rituals are stupid and inpired me to donate entire body to science when the time comes.

"A Generation of Vipers" by Philip Wylie, and "Invitation to Philosophy: Issues and Options" by (if I remember correctly (Honer and Hunt).

Atlas Shrugged

The Revolt of The Angels by Anatole France

The two books that did it for me; WHERE EVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE
by Jon Kabot-Zinn,

                                                                                                            THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL LAWS OF SUCCESS
                                                                                                            by Deepak Chopra            

I would enjoy healthy discussions with all who relate. I am also a GEORGE CARLIN deciple.
If I ever had a god it would have to be George.

Remember, the gods all died laughing!!!!!

RE Coyote

The Female Eunoch by Germaine Greer
and Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein

Philip Slater~ "The Pursuit of Loneliness"

I would say the first proper book I read had the most effect. Not because of it's content or story, it was The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but because it opened up the idea of reading. I never read anything in my own time and only read what I had to at school to get me by. John Wyndham opened up a universe of wonder.

Waaaay too many to enumerate. i know my writing style was more influenced by john lennon's books than by books i consider better written than those; i can't help it. they influenced me. but my worldview, apart from my writing style? hmm. maybe... oh gosh, i could list hundreds. before my eyes went bad i used to read an awful lot. i wish i still could. be that as it may, here are a few... or a few dozen... let's see how far i get before i have to stop myself. in no particular order: cancer ward and pretty much anything else by aleksandr solzhenitsyn, edith hamilton's greek mythology, cry the beloved country by alan paton, the danny kaye around the world story book, stranger in a strange land and pretty much anything else by robert a heinlein, the manchurian candidate, gentleman's agreement, the works of harlan ellison but in particular the glass teat and the other glass teat, all the books i could get my hands on by elie wiesel, elizabeth foreman lewis, chaim potok, stephen becker, charles dickens, thomas hardy, fyodr dostoevsky, primo levi, joanna russ (omg everyone go read all of her nonfiction, not that her fiction isn't wonderful, but her nonfiction is amazing), antoine de saint-exupéry (and pardon me if i have misspelled him), louisa may alcott, robert louis stevenson, mark twain, j d salinger, even albert payson terhune, though thankfully i did not adopt his racism, nevil shute, laurens van der post, desmond morris, robert graves, edward eager, maya angelou, ogden nash, robert lowell, john berryman, i am leaving out a boatload of important influences for sure but these came off the top of my head. oh, lewis carroll and edward lear. nonsense influenced me an awful lot, which is why lennon made such an impression, and that reminds me i should add s j perelman and h h munro to that mix. okay i'll stop but there are so many more....

g

Atheism the case against god

Probably have to say Anarchist Morality by Peter Kropotkin. I rarely quote it anymore but it lead me down a long path and many of the others that influenced me greatly I may never have read if it wasn't for this book.

Fredy Perlman's Against His-Story - Against Leviathan, a Jaques Ellul's The Technological Society are both in my top 3 as well.

Cutting it down to 3 is still substantial.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
The Creature from Jeckyl Island by G. Edward Griffin

"Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain

Was a logic book.