What book do you wish someone had given you when you were 17?

Question

I spent most of my adolescent years in the northern New Jersey suburb where my parents still live. My younger brother is 17 this year, going to the same high school I did. As public schools go, it's a pretty good one and I certainly remember being challenged academically there. Still, it's easy to get stuck in the routines of going to school and going to church, just as I did at his age.

Ever since I went away to college (I'm almost 25 now), I've sent my brother books which I hope will encourage him to explore, teach him new things, and remind him to think for himself. And of course, to enjoy. The first one, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", remains one of my favorites.

What book do you wish someone had given you when you were a teenager? How do you think it would have changed you?

Answer 1

a lot:

Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men & Joe’s Boys by L. M. Alcott
Harry Potter by J. K Rowling
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Overcoat, The Nose and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahaeme
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Lemony Snicket’s series of Unfortunate Events
The Catcher in The Rye
A Clockwork Orange
The Lord of The Flies
Brave New World
The Handmaid's Tale
The Old Man and The Sea

I haven't read all of them yet, so I'm still waiting for sb to give me the rest!

Answer 2

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse if you think he'll read it and appreciate it. A lot of that depends on his level of maturity and spiritual openness. I've never heard of the book you mentioned, I'll have to check it out.

Answer 3

I think "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff: and it's all small stuff" is the book for him. It puts life in perspective about what's important and what isn't.