... I only read magazines.
Well - I say I read them - I really only look at the pictures.
;-)

Actually the real answer is 'Huckleberry Finn' I read it when I was about eight. I don't think I realised how exciting & totally absorbing reading could be until then.

Taking the Bunty Annual 1957 as a given, 'Homage to Catalonia' by George Orwell - particularly appropriate as the last few British and Irish survivors of the International Brigade yesterday received Spanish passports in recognition of their solidarity.
I know most people go for '1984' or 'Animal Farm' but HTC has an authenticity and intrinsic honesty which stuck with me and has informed my politics ever since.

Sometimes an author's lesser known work is their best. 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail' by Hunter S Thompson knocks spots of his other stuff (much of which descended into self-parody) and remains one of the best expositions of the US electoral process.

Going back half a century the 'The House at Pooh Corner' ends with a never bettered, poignant evocation of a child growing in adulthood and the consequent loss of an idyllic innocent friendship.

With good behaviour I should be out by 2012.

Made me realize that most work is to be avoided.

I remember reading it back in sixth form many moons ago - probably explains why I've been grumpy so much of the time ever since...

funny and deeply cynical, it's the perfect antidote to modern life.

And thence, feather-footed through the plashy fen like the questing vole, to PG Wodehouse and the Blandings novels. Infinitely re-readable.

And, at the risk of sounding like a character in just such a book, the memory of my dad reading Biggles to me as a child, which made me want to read.

...But "V For Vendetta" really made me think about politics'n'stuff...

but Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea made me make sense of it a little more. Profound in its simplicity.

Flann O'Brien's masterpiece, made it clear to me that the way my brain works is okay.

We did it for O Level which I think is the ideal age to start trying to understand what justice and fairness might mean. A little older and Slaughterhouse 5 opened up the insanity of the world

Schindler's Ark, 1984, and Under the Frog all to varying degrees made me truly appreciate my comfortable life and the freedoms I am so lucky to be able to take for granted.

I only read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists about 5 years ago, but it made me wonder why more people just don't understand the simple equity of socialism.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was maybe not life-changing, but it definitely shaped my world-view and sense of humour.

And my new girlfriend introduced to me to The Sandman graphic novels in 1995, helping me to realise just how awesomely cool she was. Needless to say, we are still together (and married).

Given to me for my 15th birthday, by a friend of the family (Peter Whitely, fondly remembered) who wanted to wean me off the usual sci-fi & thrillers I was reading then.

It worked; showing me how a book can make you think in new ways, opening my eyes to a skewed reality, and making me laugh out loud. I can trace most of my reading habits back to that one book - and thirty years on, it's still on my bookshelf.

The Bible. Pretty sure my parents wouldn't have met without that one. Bit of a Curate's Egg, granted, but full of humanity in all it's faltering glory.

Otherwise, I can think of plenty of books that have changed my reading list and plenty that feel like touchstones to various times and places but only one that feels like it really kick-started something in my life just by me simply having read it: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

A chunky Japanese comic book telling the true story of the Nakaokas, a normal, hard-working family living in Hiroshima during WWII.

The father of the family did not agree with the war but co-operated with the authorities and even allowed his eldest son join the airforce. Yet local councillors branded him a traitor for his occasional (and unanswerable) outbursts against the war -and his family suffered extreme hardship as a result.

It was the normal-ness of the brutality that struck me (no pun intended) and the fact that in hindsight, how remarkable it was that the Japanese people tolerated having their noble inherent qualities of honour and loyalty abused to such a degree.

Not as heavy as it sounds. There are frequent light and funny moments that underline the humanity. Once you get to know the family, it is hard not to be moved emotionally by what happens to them.

In terms of life-changing, I read it when I was about 12 and it helped confirm my pacifist tendencies and to approach any State-sponsored communications in the midst of conflict with a huge and healthy pinch of salt. Truth being the first casualty of war and all that.

While we do not face such issues now where we are, taking a stand against generally accepted wrongs requires bravery and sacrifice. It's a good companion piece to the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist as the themes of corruption and greed along with people's passive acceptance of poverty are all there. Also, the futility of how victims turn on each other, rather than realise that they are all collectively being duped.

by John Irving. Maybe not life changing, but opened my eyes to a more creative form of writing. I got a free copy after I saw an ad in Private Eye, inviting people to read the book and tell others about it. I finally came good on that then .....

To Kill A Mockingbird, for the reasons posted by Dave P above and because it was the first 'proper' book I read.

Macbeth, made me realise just how enjoyable Shakespeare could be, when I studied it for O Level.

Middlemarch, I got completely lost in it one summer.

The Da Vinci Code, because I swore never to waste my time reading another airport block-buster again. Life is too short for Mr Brown and his ilk.

Jeremy Reed is a writer who I recommend selectively to people that I have carefully vetted first. You’ll either find his purple prose and love of esoteric language absorbing, or you’ll want throw whatever it is of his that you are reading across the room. Reed’s Wikipedia entry characterises him as a “prose stylist” - a double edged description that will intrigue some and inspire others to give his writing the widest berth possible. My advice is that you go with your gut instinct.

My introduction to Jeremy Reed came through a Publishing Clearance shop, near the Oxford Street entrance to Tottenham Court Road tube. It must have been sometime in the early 1990s. I took a book called Blue Rock down from the shelves and began reading. The story opens with two boys trying on lipstick: “You won’t ever be the same after that,” says the more experienced of the pair. “Both men and women will treat you with detachment, we’ll be outlaws in a world our parent’s despise.”

Of course, having read that, I immediately wanted to buy it.

It’s been a long time since I last sat down with Blue Rock. All I can remember of the narrative is that it centres on a boy possessed by a feral animal consciousness, who gradually exchanges personalities with his more refined psychoanalyst.

At the time I was feeling pretty feral myself. My tangled hair was down past my shoulders. I never brushed it and the individual strands were beginning to fuse into an expanse of cobwebby dreadlocks that fell naturally across my face. I wore a torn coat and old worn out clothes. I kept nocturnal hours and would disappear on long night walks across the Belton Hills, or into the warren of lanes and footpaths that riddle Great Wakering. In a teenage search for identity I had ended up borderline schizoid in a cul-de-sac of my own making. Blue Rock is about transformation - about becoming something else. While it didn’t inspire me to get my act together, it did provide me with the impetus to f*** up in a completely different way.

Years later I was walking across Hampstead Heath. An old man sitting on a bench by one of the ponds called my over and asked me what book I was reading (It was Andrew Duncan's Walking London). He introduced himself as John. We talked for a while. John turned out to be a journalist who had interviewed Ted Hughes and Phillip Larkin. He asked me what authors I liked. When I mentioned Jeremy Reed, he said: “Jeremy lives near here. I’ll introduce you to him if you like.” I decided not to meet Jeremy Reed, but I did stay in touch with John.

Blue Rock was a pivotal book for me. It spoke to the person who I was at the time. It also led me to seek out other books by the author. These in turn introduced me to writers such as Rimbaud, Isidore Ducasse, Jean Genet and the Marquis de Sade – basically literature’s kinky brigade.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, soon to be ruined by Hollywood starring Johnny Depp. I read it when it came out and it is a modern day epic. Influenced by real life events of the author. Tragic, funny, brutal, uplifting. What more do you want ?

Gave me my moral compass...

Love by Pablo Neruda and Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy convinced me to run away and start again. New wife, new baby new house - so, yeah, life changing stuff.

Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald...Read it in a day or two several years ago and was quite annoyed with the detachment of it and hated it...I still think about it at least once a day, it is quite beautiful in a pint of Guinness worth the time waiting kind of way

by Viktor Frankl.

Damon Runyon - On Broadway : the joy of language, the precision of the stories and the slang.

The New Journalism - a Picador collection of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Michael Herr, and many others : this brought many of my favourite writers to me.

A William Burroughs Reader - hip, beatnik, beyond our ken.

Dave Marsh : The Heart of Rock & Roll - the 1001 Greatest Singles. Helped point me at Sam & Dave, James Carr and many others.

Other Men's Flowers - a poetry collection edited by Lord Wavell. The power of the word.

Maus. Whatever you call it (illustrated novel, comic), it is a deeply moving piece of art.

Made me the person I am today.

Just finished reading Catch 22 once again and realised I have on average read it every decade since my teenage years in the 70's. You can do the maths!! Still as poingnant and thought provoking and relevant today as at any time in the previous 30 years. Another great book is Paul Theroux's Millroy the Magician, if only for his celebration of reading in the loo! Not sure it changed my life but certainly struck a chord.

was a book I enjoyed immensely and I liked both the humility and the fortitude.Okay, it is now akin to something that could very easily be done as a 6 part docu-drama and probably already has been but at the time I read it docu-dramas didnt exist and I was enthralled with the vibrancy of the world that Orwell had put himself in. Another book that I found deeply moving was The Thorn Birds - I am pretty sure that this will create some ridicule on this site but I thought it was an exceptionally well crafted love story. Prior to reading it I had no interest in Australia as a country but Colleen McCullough brought it to life in a vivid portrait and it takes a special gift to do that.

I was 16, and I have tried to re-read it every two years. I suppose that means I've gotten through it at least a dozen times.

Ditto with Catch 22 which I read when in my early teens and only understood a chapter at a time - they do work that way still read in isolation - as I got older I understood the cumulative horror of it and the importance of how it finishes. 'Good As Gold' resonates more now I am older though. I have also read 'Gravity's Rainbow' a few times - when I first came to Pynchon it seemed like opening a door to a parallel reality or hidden truth - still wonderful but having read 'V' it seems like the essentially same book again in a different guise - the same sensation I get reading Peter Ackroyd or Iain Sinclairs books. Nothing necessarily wrong with plought=ing the same furrow of course.

The one that really changed my life because it felt the floor falling away was Empire Of The Sun. Nothing ever looks the same.