One of the things I hate getting asked about are my favorite books. It’s not that the topic poses any sort of controversy to me, but my answers are likely to change day by day. Depending on the day, my top five favorite books could be based on story, message, characters, or other such factors, and makes it near impossible to have a definitive and consistent list. However, I have taken twenty of the books that have had the biggest impacts in my life and arranged them in no particular order. Some of these books may be famous and renowned, while others may be some that nobody has ever heard of; either way, take a look at any of the entries on this list, as they will have some sort of effect on the reader.

#1: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The story of what life was like for a slave in pre Civil-War America with all of its heartbreak, brutality, and relentless labor.

#2: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

A dystopian future where drugs, machinery, and their lack of motivation to question anything rule people.

#3: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The escapades of a young African American-man who moves to Harlem in the 1930’s, in the hopes of building a better life, only to find a world of exploitation and dismay.

#4: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

A book that shows the importance of maintaining freedom as an individual in a world that tries to place whatever labels it wants on you.

#5: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

A dizzying and decentralizing tale about a WWII soldier living through the bombing of Dresden, involving aliens, plane crashes, and porn stars.

#6: Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant

A change of pace, but describes how our morality is a built-in function of our minds and is a response to any given action.

#7: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

A tale of redemption as a Russian businessman engages in buying the souls of dead peasants and mortgaging them to the government.

#8: Amerika by Franz Kafka

The story of a young German immigrant who has to make his way through the promised, but highly confusing, land of America.

#9: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Three Russian brothers engaged with the difficult questions of knowledge, morality, and religion, as it seems that the entire Russian Empire is crumbling before their eyes.

#10: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

A comedic take on a WWII pilot stationed on a small Italian isle and has to contend with annoying superiors, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and the nonsensical Catch-22.

#11: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

A Lithuanian immigrant is exposed to the horrors of the early 20th-century meat packing industry in Chicago.

#12: Principia Ethica by G.E. Moore

Focusing on the question of ethics and morality, as well as distinguishing whether there can exist such a thing as good or evil.

#13: Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo

A novella that exposes the true horror of WWI as it focuses on an American soldier who had his arms, legs, jaw, face, and lower half blown off by an artillery shell.

#14: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

A Kansan woman has to figure out what really happened on the night when her brother, under satanic pretenses, murdered her family.

#15: Republic by Plato

The cornerstone of western philosophy as it focuses on what virtue and justice are, along with what a government should comprise of.

#16: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The story of a whaler in mid-18^th century America as he boards the Pequod with the vengeful Captain Ahab to hunt down the infamous White Whale.

#17: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

A Cuban fisherman who goes out fishing for a legendary creature to find himself bonded closer with nature and himself.

#18: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A fictional documentary about the Joads’ exodus from Oklahoma to California, along with many other families, to flee the Dust Bowl that ruined their farmland.

#19: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

A play on the 1930s Louisiana politician, Huey Long, replaced with Willie Stark as he gains popularity throughout the state and is corrupted as a result of it.

#20: Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

The story of a group of Navy SEALS who are deployed to Afghanistan to fight off members of the Taliban in a truly inspiring narrative.