Two books which I've read (both when I was a child, so I suppose when I was particularly impressionable) have helped to shape who I've become today, in terms of political and religious affiliation, as well as my reflexive response to hardship: Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, and later, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read Steinbeck when I was around eight, and Huxley when I was eleven, and they've both stuck with me as frequent re-reads ever since. They taught me "life's unfair, suck it up or change it" more profoundly than anything else.