Books that changed our lives, vol I

Everyone has that one book that changed the way they thought about things forever. Well, for me that book was On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. Cliched, maybe, but true. Why write about it now, 15 years after I read it for the first time. Well, it is the 50th anniversary of the publication of this Beat masterpiece.

I reread this book two years ago as a book club pick, and didn't find it as revolutionary as it was when I was 18. I still enjoyed the book, and only one of my fellow book club members (who also read the book as a teenager) actually finished the book (out of a group of 8).

As a teenager, this book profoundly affected me and it moved me to reevaluate my life up to that point. It may have had this effect on my because I was a naive 18-year old living in a small city, who up to that point had lived a fairly mundane, normal existence. I may not now be living life of Kerouac and his band of merry men, but I definitely look at the world through different eyes.