Watershed Novels

Which books helped you the most during your life (thus far)?

This idea comes from a Guardian article of April 2006. It has been linked in the Prizes discussion group (thread: "Award and Gender", many thanks to jargoneer) but I thought I'd not link it here and just see what happens. The article spoke of the one watershed novel but I think most readers would have several.

My watershed novels are (presented chronologically as they appeared in my life):

Little Women, Jane Eyre, Doctor Zhivago, The Handmaid's Tale and...possiblyThe Idea of Perfection.

It's possible The Count of Monte Cristo figures in there also, around the same era as Zhivago. The first four are, of course, readily recognizable as classics but the fifth is lesser known and much more recent. It may be too recent in my reading history to declare confidently.

I feel the same about Little Women and Jane Eyre where the heroines are women. Jo March made me believe that one could be different and still be valuable. Jane Eyre made me believe that no matter how bad things might be, there is always hope. It does sound corny, but these are positive messages and affected me so as a teenager.
Catch-22 I've mentioned elsewhere as contributing to my teenage realisation that the powers-that-be are not always right.
I bet there are more...

Not certain individual titles could be singled out as helping me but there have been some high water marks in my reading life. Probably, but not definitively, the top three from mid teens to mid twenties would include:
Pride and Prejuidice - Elizabeth Bennet was, and is, a sterling heroine.
The Mayor of Casterbridge - the first novel I read which really bit home and demonstrated the complexities of human characters. It moved me on to a different levels and gave me the confidence to experiment with the "classics", rather than be pushed in to them at school.
The Magus by John Fowles - this was a phenomenal, magical, all-in-one-session read. I can remember the breathlessness with which I read every bewitching and transporting word to this day, as well as seeing and smelling the room I read it in.
It was a long time before I read anything as remotely wonderful.

Ok, I don't know that these "helped" me, but these are the books that changed what I read, and, sometimes, how I think.

1984 - first book I remember that really struck me
Eye of the World - got me reading books
A River Runs Through it - my favorite book, maybe
Desert Solitaire - for the line "implacable indifference" in reference to the desert
Small Gods - got me reading Terry Pratchett
Annals of the Former World - sorry, a bit of a specialized interest for my geology side.
The Prize - sorry again, I work in the oil industry, and this is special.
Crime and Punishment - re-fired my reading, esp. of classics. Led to Checkhov among others
Snow Crash - not sure why
Goodbye to a River - the way I would want to write, if I ever did write
The Kite Runner, Middlesex, The Time Traveler's Wife - just more favorites

I had a bit of a problem with how the article defined "watershed" novels. I prefer to think of them as the books that made a profound difference in my life. I've read many powerful books, but sometimes it's the book and my life at the time.

In Little Women, it was Jo March. In Jane Eyre, I identified with the plain, bookish, independent Jane.
In Doctor Zhivago I thought much about love, loyalty, poetry and the struggle between community and individuality. In The Handmaid's Tale it is everything from oppression, choice, apathy, freedom...
In The Idea of Perfection it's about history... baggage, if you will, and love (beyond the romantic).

I think the way the authors of the study defined "watershed" discouraged male readers from discussing the books which really meant something to them over their lifetimes thus far.

Com'on guys, share!?

Since I posted the link to original article I should stump up. Not sure what a watershed novel is, but these are books that impacted on me for one reason or another.

I suppose Dune would be one. At the time I thought it was the most mind-blowing thing ever, that a whole new world was opening up in front of me. Unfortunately, although I can still remember these feelings, I re-read it years later and wasn't that impressed. Some of the ideas were still interesting but I was much better read by then, and I realised that the actual writing wasn't that great.

The orginal article lists Albert Camus at number one, and I would agree with Camus but would change the novel. I was forced to read The Plague was a course on existentialism and was just so impressed by humanity. So much of existentialism is dry, dusty and depressing but Camus shows the good in ordinary people, that we are all capable of making a difference.

Fools of Fortune. I can honestly say that I had never cried at a book when a child but I read the end of this novel with tears streaming down my face. It proved that the reading experience is not just about head but the heart as well. Still the most devastatingly emotional climax to any book I have read.

The Dancers at the End of Time, for doing the opposite, proving that a book can be laugh out loud funny.

Lilith by George Macdonald. One of the oddest fantasy novels of it's time - three of the main characters are Adam & Eve, and Lilith, Adam's first wife. I'm not really a religious person but this book does make you think about the spiritual dimension of life. Amazing ending.

avaland - you asked about the survey for women before, here's the link Women's Watershed Novels

So start thinking which novel made a difference, gave you hope, kick-started a course of action, or changed your mind.

From the link above.

Although I'm sure there were books that meant a lot to me when I was younger than 14, it was at that age that I first read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and those books made a huge difference in my life, leading to a lifelong love of mythology, folklore and fantasy. At around the same age, I began reading SF and found some of the feminist sf writing of the time (mid-1970s) most inspiring: I'm thinking of anthologies like Aurora: Beyond Equality and Women of Wonder. Also, again around the same time, I read Ursula K. LeGuin's marvelous "The Word for World Is Forest," and that had a strong effect on my awareness of ecological and environmental issues.

I was 11- or 12-years old when I first read A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s wonderful novels The Big Sky and The Way West, and I don't think I ever got over either one of them. Of course I've read them both many times since then, and now own very nice first eds. of them too, but every time I pick one of them up now, they still seem fresh, and I can recall many of the first impressions these terrific books made on my much younger self.

The same goes for Moss Hart's Act One as well. Up until then I had no idea that a memoir could be as full of life, or as exuberantly entertaining as this one was, and I still love Hart's book. I was lucky enough to find a signed first ed. of this some years ago and it remains a highly prized item around here.

I should also include James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on this list too. I first read it in the early 60s and was never able to get Agee's stunning prose/poetry confessional out of my head. I read it again in 2001 and found it as affecting as it ever was, still grandly haunting, still Agee's and Walker Evans' uniquely American masterpiece.

In the last 20 years I'd guess that Marcel Proust's Swann's Way probably has had more meaning and influence than any other novel I could name. I'd always been shy of attempting to read Proust, but in 1989 I decided to give Swann's Way a shot, and recall that I was about halfway through it when I just sort of totally fell in love with this breathtaking book, and went ahead and bought all the remaining novels of In Search of Lost Time (Within a Budding Grove, The Guermantes Way, Sodom and Gomorrah, The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained), read them straight through, and the profound effect they produced has never really worn away. I reread them all in 1998, loved them even more then, and have since read the new translations that have appeared just in the last few years. But yet, as great as they all are, Swann's Way still easily rules, the undeniable bedrock of the greatest novel sequence anyone's ever written in any language.

Swann's Way was certainly a watershed in my reading experience. It didn't change the way I looked at life but took me into a new literary world. I had to read slowly and carefully and, like Louis, I fell in love with it. ACTUALLY, as a result of reading Swann'sWay I began to experiment with my own creative writing. A lovely summer it was - Proust and writing. Mmmm

Tuesdays With Morrie. Excellent message on life.

The Hamlet by William Faulkner, because it was my introduction to Yoknapatawpha County, which has been my second home now for about 35 years.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, because, although I have come to see the chinks in Rand's philosophy, it struck me as so original and compellling when I first encountered it 30-odd years ago that I do believe it changed the way I think about things without turning me into a true Objectivist.

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren In conjunction with my growing love for Faulkner, this novel plunged me into a lifetime love affair with American Southern Literature.

I have re-read The Hamlet more times than I can count. Faulkner is a fairly constant companion--I'm usually dipping into one or another of his novels, or reading some criticism or analysis of his work along with whatever else I'm "into" at the moment.
I discovered each of the last two novels on my own in the early '70's (after I had received my B.A. in English!) having never been introduced to the work of either author. They each grabbed and shook me, in a figurative sense, and I have loved them for it ever since. I can re-read All the King's Men every few years, but nothing else of Warren's has appealed to me, and I can no longer read Rand at all.

I read Dodie Smith's book The One Hundred and One Dalmatians at about 10...I hadn't seen the movie until I was in my 20s and rented it for my daughter. (Disney-fication ruins so many things in life, I've found, this book was no exception.)

It was a dark and difficult passage in my life, and I was so captured by the theme of rescue and acceptance that I re-read it about 20 times. The librarians wouldn't check it out to me after the 20th time, and my parents weren't about to buy it for me because I'd read it so many times...the fleeting nature of external help was brought home to me forcefully. So it was a watershed in more than one way.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I read them both as a teenager and was drawn to the idea of the outcast or the outsider in society. I especially like Boo Radley and the way that he looked out for Scout and Jim even though he was misunderstood by everyone.

Oh yes, Carson McCullers was a complete unknown to me and I loved that novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter . I can't say it was a watershed novel but it certainly came at a time in my life where it struck a chord with me. Has anyone here read any other McCullers books that they can recommend?

#15 warbrideslass
I absolutely recommend The Member of the Wedding and Ballad of the Sad Cafe. If you liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter you will like these as well.

>15 warbrideslass: warbrideslass, I second amandameale's recommendation of Ballad of the Sad Cafe though I'd add that you'd do well to read this one next.

I think the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis was huge for me as a kid, I was brought up in a fundamentalist religion with a harsh version of god, and reading about Aslan gave me a much healthier vision of god.
Later on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley had a major effect, it was one of the first books that made me actively evaluate society.
In high school The teenage liberation handbook by Grace Llewellyn helped realize that it wasn't my fault that high school made me miserable, and it encouraged me to learn on my own, apart from school

I'm not sure what the term "Watershed" in this instance means. For me a few books lighted a way out of the self-absorption and provincialism I experienced as an adolescent. In somewhat chronological order:
The Catcher in the Rye (I wasn't the only angry kid), The Lord of the Rings (I could actually read a huge work), Childhood's End (hope for mankind), On the Road (there can be a working class hero) , Stranger in a Strange Land (just mind-bending and positive), Howl (poetry can be visceral), The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test (there's a community out there), and Naked Lunch (even strange, obsessive fantasy has value). All of these books spoke to me in a context I considered familiar, and each gave me permission to be who I already was.

Others, which have affected me deeply since then are: The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary (even a great artist can be a jerk), At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien (cynicism and great art are not mutually exclusive), One Hundred Years of Solitude (no touchstone?) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (a novel can transport a reader completely), and lots of poetry: Original Love: Poems by Molly Peacock (poetry comes from real-life, and real life comes from poetry) and The Carrier or Ladders by W.S. Merwin (acid-rock without the annoying noise) are two stand-outs.

Little Women, Jo is still my hero.
The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia taught me to open my imagination.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead taught me plays could be hilarious.
A Picture of Dorian Gray was the first high school assigned book I really loved.
Pride and Prejudice was one of the first "real" books I read on my own and it made me fall deep down the rabbit hole of classic literature.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil taught me nonfiction could be just, if not more, beautiful than fiction.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Ender's Game were great life lesson books and there are so many more I can't name them all. Books are one of the best ways to get to know the world around you, both past and present.

Jane Eyre was the book I read that convinced me I loved literature. The Age of Innocence persuaded me to study it for the next four years of my life. These two books are honestly my absolute favorites.

The Eye of the World opened my eyes to fantasy and gave me my imagination back when I was a teenager.

For the Love of Pete showed me, I think, how diverse love could be, even though my family was very cookie-cutter ordinary at the time.

I seem to have one or two for each decade of my life so far.

Huck Finn, Diary of Anne Frank, Helen Keller, To Kill a Mockingbird and Little Women were the books that most affected me in childhood.

As an adult:
20s: Roots
30s: Women's Room, The Chalice and the Blade
40s (a busy decade - went back to school): Beloved, Ishmael, Artist's Way, House of the Spirits, People's History of the United States, Refuge, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Circle of Stones
50s:A Path with Heart, Lovingkindness.

oops, I missed that it was supposed to be novels.

Can't wait to see what the next phase will be!

Like many, Little Women affected me greatly as a child - also the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Great female characters, especially for girls who don't fit the 'girly' model and fancy themselves writers. :)

On a lighter note, I also count Shel Silverstein as influential because his poem (I think contained in A Light in the Attic) about peeling one's skin off as a last ditch effort in order to get cool always sticks with me and makes me think "well, better to be too cold than too hot, since ya can't peel your skin off!"

Jane Austen has also been hugely influential in my recent reading life because reading Pride and Prejudice got me interested in reading fiction again after having gone for a very long time without reading it.

I'm a little puzzled by the original post's interpretation of "watershed" as something that has "helped you most during your life", because that's not what watershed means to me. To me, the term suggests a source of knowledge, inspiration or enlightenment, flowing into the vessel that is me---as water flows from the surrounding land (the literal watershed) into an accepting body of water. Using that as my definition, I'm going to mention here several books that astounded me upon first reading, and that have become part of my essence, like water added to a pool. I re-read most of these from time to time.

Walden I remember soaking this up and commiting sentence after glorious sentence to memory when I first encountered it at about the age of 14. I think we were assigned some excerpts from an anthology reader in English class, and I went to the library to borrow the book itself so I could read the whole thing.

All the King's Men I picked this up on my own sometime after college and devoured it. (It may have been on some recommended list or other during my college days--I don't recall.) I've probably read it five times. I feel the urge to go read it now. A terrific argument could be made that this is the G.A.N.

Atlas Shrugged Another title (and author) whose existence I discovered AFTER college. Despite my B.A. in English Literature, I had never heard of Ayn Rand at the time. I was blown away by her philosophy, and very briefly embraced it. I haven't left the world behind, or stopped paying my taxes, and this one I do NOT re-read. I really don't like the characters or the story enough to go back to it, but it was important to me in its day.

To Kill a Mockingbird I can't remember when I first read this book. I can't remember not knowing Atticus and Scout and Jem and Dill and Miss Maudie and Calpurnia.

Rosemary by Josephine Lawrence I’d guess I first read this when I was about 8 or 9. It’s the story of a family of 3 young girls (12, 9 and 4) coping with the absence of their mother, who’s off in some kind of a sanitorium or rest home for about a year. Their father is dead, and the head of their household is their much older brother, a doctor. Of course they have a highly competent, slightly scratchy housekeeper who REALLY runs things. This was my Little Women, as I never was especially taken with that book. Rosemary is set in the very early 20th century, in a small American town, and it is totally UN-sentimental.

I’ve left Faulkner for last, as he’s the most important to me. I’ll list The Hamlet here, as it’s the first of his novels that I read--it set me off on a lifetime love affair with his work in particular and Southern Literature in general. For many years I re-read his trilogy-- The Hamlet, The Town,The Mansion --or some portion of it every summer.


EDIT: Good lord, why doesn't someone shake me and point out that I'm repeating myself!! I just realized I had already posted to this thread a couple months ago. At least I'm not contradicting anything I said before! I'll go back to my rocking chair now.

>24 laytonwoman3rd: I think we are talking about the same thing essentially. That particular wording came from the Guardian article. You phrased it very lyrical, thank you:-)

For me it was (and still is):

The Shining Stephen King. It scared the pants off me and got me into horror books. Not a classic maybe but showed me how powerful the written word can be when used with an active imagination. Also an excellent illustration of how film can take an excellent piece of fiction and tear it apart.

The Lord Of The Rings. Again in my early teens, I fell in love with Frodo and Bilbo.

To Kill A Mockingbird. Early twenties, and like laytonwoman3rd, I can't remember not knowing Scout and Jem.

Well, so many of mine have already been mentioned...but here goes:

Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House On the Prairie series. I read these over and over again.

Wuthering Heights My grandmother gave this to me when I was 13. I'd start it and get bored. Finally when I was 16 I picked it up and read through the night. It was like I had matured enough to enjoy the classics. In some ways I credit this book for my decision to major in english.

Atlas Shrugged I read this twice during college. My dad gave it to me and it really changed our relationship which had been quite rocky. I believed in the whole philosophy hook line and sinker for a short time.

The Bell Jar I was unsure and depressed at the time and related with her. Now this book doesn't effect me at all like it did when I first read it.

The Age of Innocence After reading this and The House of Mirth I spent an entire semester of independent study on Edith Wharton and her books.

In the past few years I have a lot that it is hard to pick, but I think in 5 years I'll probably remember my 20's differently. Not sure if that makes sense. If I was to say right now it would probably be Les Miserables, The Prodigal Summer and A Fine Balance.

As a young child:

The Beatrix Potter books, especially Peter Rabbit by Beatrix, which we had on tape as young children and were allowed to listen to if our parents went out for the evening.

Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin for wonderful reads with my parents and the discovery of characters which seemed written just for me.

The Dolls' House by Rumen Godden which was a true treasure for me as I adored the idea of a dolls house coming to life and never tired of the illustrations and reading about Tottie.

As a pre-adolescent:

Clive S. Lewis and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a young child, which gave me an instant admiration for the genius of imaginative expression and opened up my life into the world of reading books.

Arthur Ransome with his book Swallows and Amazons which introduced me to the world of childhood companionship and co-operation.

The Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit because I thought that this is how my life should have been, instead of having to leave England and adapt to a new life in New Zealand.

Jane Austen with Pride and Prejudice which gave me some perspective on my life during teen years and made me realize that true romance was totally dead (just kidding, I think).

All these books were read in a household without TV and I did not go to movies until late high school, so books filled my imagination more vividly than any real live drama in my life.

Late Adolescence:
Ayn Rand for Atlas Shrugged and George Orwell for Nineteen Eighty Four and If this is a man by Primo Levi and Animal Farm for making me think about political and social values - although I was reprimanded by my University friends for daring to read Ayn Rand in front of them and branded a fascist - not true of course!!

Gray's Anatomy textbook because that is mostly all I read for the first three years in med school and I can still remember the pain of those long hours squinting at it's pages.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson which was given to me to read by my first boyfriend (now my husband) and made me realise I lived a very sheltered life.

The Joy of Cooking as I tried to master basic cookery (futile attempts never mastered as I always managed to burn everything while distracted in a book).

Crime and Punishment which I read on a hiking trip to Nepal in my late twenties - both the trip and the book highlighted the plight of poverty and the political ramifications of power. I wanted to give it to one of the Sherpas when we finished, but he said he would rather have my shoes!

John Steinbeck for his Grapes of Wrath and Evelyn Waugh for his Scoop which brought me back to reading after a dry 8 years of study.

All of the Thomas Hardy novels which captivated my imagination through-out my first pregnancy.

All of the Bronte Sisters novels which I read or re-readthrough my second pregnancy.

Very hard to narrow it down so tightly, so will stop there.

#25 avaland: "lyrical", am I? I thank you kindly. *blush* AND thank you for starting this thread. It's a good one.

> 24 & 25 : 'Watershed' is one of those words with two meanings. In the UK - as the Guardian used it - it means the divide between two catchment areas and, by analogy, a 'watershed event' is one where life irrevocably goes 'this way' rather than 'that way'.

Yes, I am familiar with that meaning of 'watershed' as well. And not to quibble with GreyHead OR the Guardian, but that does not quite translate to "helped you most during your life" either, does it? That phrase suggests the plague of self-help, self-analysis "THE SECRET" kind of book, which I am sure is not what the Guardian had in mind. Everyone on this topic does seem to be ignoring that implication and interpreting 'watershed' more as I did, or as you have, so maybe I'm just picking nits.

DEFINITIONS for WATERSHED!!!

A critical point that marks a division or a change of course; a turning point: "a watershed in modern American history, a time that ... forever changed American social attitudes" Robert Reinhold

An event marking a unique or important historical change of course or one on which important developments depend; "the agreement was a watershed in the history of both nations"

turning point, landmark

juncture, occasion - an event that occurs at a critical time; "at such junctures he always had an impulse to leave"; "it was needed only on special occasions"

SO......
Ignoring the geographical definitions of this word of course, I think that watershed could not be interpreted as a defining of 'help' or self-help' but of more the mild 'epiphanal' status or marking the stage of life - the book that was prominent/important at a turning point or landmark in your life - a book you recognize as imbedded in a developmental period of your life and associate strongly with that time.

I think that most people on this thread has looked back and chosen books that echo or mark a developmental period in their lives - books that added to that period?

This is probably why I was unable to define the last 10-15 years of my life with a book, as I am too close to the events to see it. But all the books I mentioned above reflect a developmental stage in my life, became infused into my life and contributed to each 'landmark' period - although I don't really think that you could really call any periods of my life a true landmark to anyone but myself!!!

Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking of, karenwardill, the epiphanies. My introductions to racism, disability, the Holocaust, feminism, literature written by people of other cultures (beyond the Dead White Men canon!), spirituality (beyond the traditional Judeo-Christian thought) -- these books have all affected my life greatly, have literally opened new world views to me and probably changed the course of my life.

Makes one realize how much power there can be in the written word.

I would have to choose The road less travelled by Scott Peck and Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. Both books came during a time of great upheaval for me and a time of a lot of personal growth. I really identified with the idea of Frannys that people just do things for ego - still cant really put this idea into words but it has guided my behavior ever since.

Although The Road Less Travelled isn't a novel it also saved my bacon after a period of death, destruction, job loss, failed romance, ill health and a variety of other misfortunes in a very short period of time. When it rains it pours. As far as novels go, Jane Eyre and Les Miserables, read at a tender age, helped point me towards my interest in history. I had to go digging around for more info on Victorian England and post-Napoleanic France. The one that did the job completely was Ivanhoe which I probably read 5 or 6 times between the 8th and 9th grades. 35 years later, men with swords still push my buttons.

I know two of these aren't novles, but I don't care. I'm a REBEL.

Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail changed my life forever. It made me realize I want to be a journalist, and showed me that I didn't have to write like everyone else.

Since then, I have become a psychotic fan of Hunter S. Thompson.

Also, Prozac Nation really helped me out during my own battle with depression. It was reassuring to know I wasn't alone.

Hmm... a few others that are ACTUALLY novels:
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (one of the reasons I moved to New York City)
Of Mice and Men
From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
The Phantom Tollbooth

There are many more, but I'm not listing them.

I have found this a most intriguing thread..
I can't help but add my own:
Little Women and the Emily series - female characters that resonated strongly with this bookish kid
The Women's Room read as an 18 year old
Art and Lies Jeanette Wintersen - odd choice but it made me relive my english lit days and made me rethink about the world in a different way when I felt stultified by work and life
Middlemarch favourite book in my BA in literature
Cat's Eye Margaret Atwood

Steinbeck's "EAST OF EDEN".

Timshell (thou mayest!) is a great concept.

I came to reading fiction late in childhood. I was a sports loving, nature loving gal who did not have much time for fiction. (I am choosing fiction for my watershed books because I can't list all the non-fiction science books that blew me away.) But I do remember a few ah...ha books...
Once and Future King by White. and Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Twain. My father read us tales of King Arthur and bits of Malory. I was intrigued by the modern continuation of old myths. Nicholas and Alexandra by Massie, read in early high school introduced me to the power of storytelling as a way to present history (non-fiction I know but it read like a novel. Gone with the Wind fed the romantic adolescent heart mightily. Here is more of a list:
Rebecca by du Maurier
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Jane Eyre
Dune
Pride and Predjudice
recently, I have been stunned by The Time Travelers Wife
and Snow Falling on Cedars just to mention two.
That's enough for now.

I don't know if these are watershed, but they are all books which have a large impact on me in some way shape or form. (They are listed here in no particular order.)

The Man Who Fell to Earth
by Walter Tevis

High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby

Intellectuals
by Paul M. Johnson

The Baron in the Trees
by Italo Calvino

Compleat Moonshadow
by J.M. DeMatteis

Goodbye, Columbus
by Philip Roth

The Crazy Ape:
by Albert, Szent-GyOrgyi

The Rachel Papers
by Martin Amis

The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Camp Concentration: A Novel
by Thomas M. Disch

Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury

A Passion for Books : A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Love and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books
by Rob Kaplan

All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren

Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury

House of Stairs
by William Sleator

The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel
by Margaret Atwood

The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Cat's Eye
by Margaret Atwood

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth
by Hermann Hesse

The Stranger
by Albert Camus

The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster

V for Vendetta
by Alan Moore

The Lord of the Rings
by J.R.R. Tolkien

Empire of the Sun
by J. G. Ballard

Franny and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey

The Wisdom of Insecurity
by Alan W. Watts

A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess

Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen

Looking For Alaska
by John Green

The Music of Chance
by Paul Auster

The Sound of Waves
by Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
by Yukio Mishima

Mockingbird
by Walter Tevis

A Case of Curiosities
by Allen Kurzweil

The Grand Complication: A Novel
by Allen Kurzweil

Bedlam Burning
by Geoff Nicholson

Hunters and Gatherers
by Geoff Nicholson
Drag me to re-order

Not quite limiting it to novels:

Walden, or Life in the Woods, by Henry David Thoreau: This book has, by far, stayed with me the longest.

I have had major enthusiasms for Lord of the Rings, James Joyce's Ulysses, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

Frank Herbert's Whipping Star and Dosadi Experiment (more so than Dune).

Actually, some philosophers have been more "watershed": Alfred North Whitehead, Richard Rorty, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Taking "watershed" to mean turning point, which in turn means a point at which a significant change occurs, I would say the following few novels quality in my life:

The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe - read as a senior in h.s. after having a traumatic experience with reading literature for class; showed me that a literary novel doesn't have to be stifling. Also imbued me with a sense of adventure and a desire to travel to foreign lands and meet lots of new people and have lots of interesting experiences.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell - read at a critical juncture in my life, when I was feeling the need of a spiritual connection with God but wasn't sure quite how to do it; put faith in perspective. Plus it was a ripping good story.

Lord of the Rings by Tolkein - read in my 20s on the bus on my way to work past overturned cars and burned-out buildings and mobs of people threatening violence upon their fellow men on the south side of Chicago during one of Martin Luther King's marches in that city. Showed me that evil cannot win in the end, if there is even one person who will stand up against it and fight.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - went a long way to forming my views on religion and the problems that occur when individual faiths end up becoming organised religion.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - I read this and it hit me... we are going to have to do something about our environmental impact on this planet; we are going to have to leave this world and settle on others; we are going to have to come up with a better system of government and economics; and we are going to have to shed blood, sweat and tears to get there...

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card - there is something about these books that reaches into the very heart of me, and I am, in some ways more than others, Bean (bet you thought I was going to say Ender)... even now, after I have read each of these books many times, I still cannot read them and stop until I finish.

I tend to define personally important books in sort of the opposite way, so the books that come to my mind when thinking about this question are ones that I was reading when particularly important events happened to me or during particularly happy or very sad times in my life.

So, for example, I remember when I was in very early grade school that the first book I checked out of the school library was Secret of the Andes, and I was so excited about it, but, although I didn't know it at the time, I was getting ill and soon needed surgery, so at the time I started to read it, I had a pretty high fever and couldn't understand the words on the page. It was the first time that had happened to me (not being able to understand what I was reading) and it upset me very much. So I have mixed feelings and memories about the book (which I found again years later and read, just so I could finally understand it!).

Then there's David Edding's books (The Belgariad and the Mallorean and all those), which I read when I was in college, and I remember them so fondly because I felt really in my element at college and had a fantastic experience there (#43: Ender's Game and it's sequels fall into this category too).

The Sparrow, as mentioned here earlier too, is another fond-memory-holder for me. I read it (and was really touched by it) during a turning point in my life (professionally, emotionally, romantically, all at the same time), so it too is very important and meaningful to me.

#12
Atlas Shrugged was almost a watershed novel for me. As a railfan, it was the first piece of fiction I read that gave a real sense of what many people, including myself, like about trains and railroading. I never id take to the philosophy (what was it, objective realism?)

Regarding William Faulkner, having relatives who grew up in the area of Mississippi that Faulkner writes about, I felt that he struck too close to home (a feeling I had from 40 years ago), and could not get very far with him. Some day, maybe I'll try again.

Two wateshed novels for me when I was getting involved in interfaith matters some 15-20 years ago were:

Deep River by Susako endo, and

A River Sutra by Gita Mehta.

Both of these talk of pilgrims in India who find more about the wonders and varieties of the world and philosophies they encounter.

My watershed book was Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
World literature in my high school (1970's)consisted almost entirely of works written in English like Canterbury Tales. I had no exposure to REAL world literature until this book was recommended to me. I loved it and now devour books that were written in a multitude of languages. I am taking Spanish and my ultimate goal is to reread this book in the original language.

#47 mcna217: Good on you! I think you'll find that your Spanish efforts will be very well rewarded. There's nothing like reading a treasured work in its original language (says the language teacher)- it's like the difference between watching a good movie in mono sound and watching it with a surround sound system.

Wow, so many of you have mentioned books that are "watershed" books for me too! There are so many books that have influenced me so strongly. I'll just list a few here.

• Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. I read this one in high school and got caught up in its vast historical descriptions and intense plot. Ten years later it is still in my top three books of all time.

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis were books I read to pieces as a child and still love. They greatly influenced my faith in God.

• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I only first read this one about a year ago, but it leaped to being my favorite book of all time. Reading it was like a baptism. I could feel my soul expanding.

• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. What more can I say? It rounds out my top three.

• Anne of Green Gables and the rest of that series by L. M. Montgomery. Taught me that humor is the saving grace but does not nullify beauty.

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. It was my first book of hers, and it was so good I read all of novels straight through, one after the other, once I finished S&S. I am now an avowed Janeite.

And there are many others...