[jimduk]

All of the above, Life and Fate is essential, but also add Middlemarch: George Eliot - grown up problems, don't lie, be careful around money Bleak House: Charles Dickens - avoid lawyers, don't let money get to you

More left field - Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend - consistency is over-rated; any Houllebecq - keep thinking; Quartered safe out here - George McDonald Fraser - generation close to ours, but war-time experience like soldiers for the last 2000 years.

[libraryofbabel]

+1 to both Middlemarch and Bleak House - I generally go for the Russians over the Brits when it comes to 19th century fiction, but those two are the exception. And both Eliot and Dickens certainly influenced Tolstoy, at least according to this list of books he himself compiled: http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/leo-tolstoy-creates-a-lis...