Which novel most changed your life?

For men and women, the answers appear to be quite different, according to British researchers, who recently asked that very question to 500 men (many of whom worked in literature-related fields). The guys’ top three? Albert Camus’s The Outsider, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. In a 2004 poll, the same team asked 14,000 women the same question (thanks, Metafilter, for the link) with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre topping the list.

So let’s try our own PopWatch survey in the comments section below: What novel most changed your life? (Be sure to let us know your gender, too.) I’d have to say that as a kid, Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion fueled what became a lifelong obsession with horse racing, but as an adult, nothing quite moved me like Carl Sagan’s Contact. Which, yes, probably means I’m a complete dork, but doesn’t that make you less self-conscious about revealing your own favorite?