My Dad has. He was in the Navy, and reading this paperback, and he got to a certain point where he walked to the edge of the ship and threw it overboard because he realized the main character was him, and he hated that (because the main character was not exactly nice). He never told me what book but I think he forgot.

--
"...the great tragedy of the world is not that people suffer, but how much they miss when they suffer. Nothing is quite as depressing as wasted pain, agony without an ultimate meaning or purpose." ~Fulton Sheen

Well, nothing that I have read so far ever seemed to be about me, but in the 4th grade I remember reading a book about a girl who died because of the after effects of the Hiroshima bomb. That book scared me so much that I went into some kind of 8-year-old depression, and ever since I haven't gone a day without thinking about death...

I'd think that was a pretty life-changing book myself, but I don't really know.

--
"Sometimes I get so weird,
I even freak myself out.
I laugh myself to sleep
It's my lullaby." - Avril Lavigne

I have to say "This is all" had a very profound effect on the way I view life, and "Timeline" by Michael Crichton was the first time I realised maths/physics could be cool

--
What doesn't kill you makes you stranger...

The sandman comics by Neil Gaiman

--
The sleep of reason produces monsters - Fransisco Goya

Any novel by Romain Gary...

--
fuck literature, let's dance

I read too much. A novel, maybe two, a week.

I don't read stories that are too deep anymore. And nothing will top the birth of my boys anyway.

When I was young and impressionable, The Stand had a big effect on me. A lot of King's novels did.

--
Where we're going, we won't need roads...

No tethers ~ No boundaries

I haven't read anything that I could relate to myself really, but The Question Of Time by Rasputina really got me thinking.
My Unconquerable Soul by William Ernest Henley is another that I enjoyed.

--
She makes green fire
In a tunnel of thorns
And she's got yellow eyes.

Something that affected me was Moon Palace by Paul Auster, but I didn't relate to it. Has something you've read affected your life?

--
50 free poems, for you! EXCLUSIVE PRESENT. [link]

Hmm. Well, the only two that have changed my life have been Golfing with God by Roland Merullo, and Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (not in the religious sense because I'm not much into that, but they change they way you think about religion). I think any one of Neil Gaiman's books are the ones I feel truly connected to (particularly Neverwhere, apart from The Giver by Lois Lowry.

Hope that helps.

--
<sub>FLOCCIPAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION!

“A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every time someone says it’s against the rules I wonder why the rules exist.</sub>

fight club.

lolita and the picture of dorian gray greatly influenced my early writing as well.