BOOKS THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE IN READERS' LIVES
Respondents to the Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits, conducted [fall 1991] for the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress' Center for the Book, cited the following when asked to name a book that had made a difference in their lives:
- The Bible**
- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
- The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
- The Book of Mormon
- (Five titles were tied for the next place):
- The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
- A Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
- Passages, by Gail Sheehy
- When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner
** A large gap exists between the #1 book and the rest of the list.
25 BOOKS THAT HAVE SHAPED READERS' LIVES
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- The Bible
- The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
- Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White
- The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank
- Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
- Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
- Hiroshima, by John Hersey
- How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
- Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery
- Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
- The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Roots, by Alex Haley
- The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
- Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
- War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
- What Color is Your Parachute?, by Richard Nelson Bolles
- The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
