I'm not much of a reader, and my life was a bit unconventional, but there were some books that changed it.
Making Comics, by
Scott McCloud, taught me how people's emotions and motivations worked (in the chapter on characters), as well as basic body language and just generally introducing me to new ways to communicate. (I was weird back then.)
2001: A Space Odyssey, by
Arthur C. Clarke, taught me that you should shouldn't jump to conclusions about people based on their actions, but instead learn about their intentions. (I saw the Kubrick movie first. The movie showed what Hal did. The book explained why.
Kyubey Hal did nothing wrong!) This in turn inspired me to be proud of my thinking process. Just because I'm missing a few key human instincts does not make me "irrational". I'm just, like HAL 9000, operating under different starting conditions.
Code:
[holy book corresponding to my respective religion]
, by ______, taught me not to be spoonfed answers and instead come to my own conclusions, by making less sense the closer you examine it. (It helps that I learned
Code:
[modern dialect of original language in which book was written]
as a second language.)
Breakfast of Champions, by
Kurt Vonnegut, taught me
not to be a professional writer, as well as to see people as mechanical devices, which was a useful coping mechanism when my relative's brain sprung a leak.
Flowers for Algernon, by
Daniel Keyes, taught me how the masses view intelligence, wisdom, happiness, popularity, and the absence of the above. I didn't agree with all of it. It also taught me what happens to people who are forced to be "normal" when they're not. That, I agreed with.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by
Mark Haddon (which over a dozen people independently asked me to read), taught me not to be
that guy. Not if you can help it. You don't have to be
obsessed with what other people think of you, but tone yourself down in public. At least a little.
Dr. Seuss taught me not to make up words when rhyming. It's hacky.
C. S. Lewis taught me how
not to espouse an agenda through literature, as well as that you should probably stop defending an argument when you have to change the definition of words in your original argument to make it true (his essay on theodicy is basically that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent for some value of "omnibenevolent").
The works of
Jonathan Swift taught me about satire, irony, and--through them--SARCASM!
The
Discworld series by
Terry Pratchett taught me that originality's a myth, logical consistency an illusion, and humor our greatest defense against whatever dangers we can't stop.
Lastly, various issues of the DSM taught professionals to shoehorn my brain into little pre-written boxes in order to get treatment. If that didn't change my life, nothing did.
Except for Dr. Seuss, the DSM, and
, I read all of these as a teenager. I don't know if I regret it, but I can't undo it.