I asked Substack: what is the one book that changed your perspective on life the most?

After HUNDREDS of responses, these were the top 25 — in order of how often they were suggested (save this list):

25. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

24. On the Shortness of Life, Seneca

23. Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman

22. Tao Te Ching, Laozi

21. The Stranger, Albert Camus

20. Stoner, John Williams

19. Confessions, St. Augustine

18. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

17. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

16. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

15. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

14. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

13. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

12. Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

11. East of Eden, John Steinbeck

10. Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

9. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

8. 1984, George Orwell

7. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig

6. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

5. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

4. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

3. Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

2. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

1. The Bible (and several mentions of Ecclesiastes, specifically)