Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The idea of objectivism and running the world on your own shoulders is idealistic at best, but for 14-year-old me, it was like a free pass to feel intellectually superior to others. It cost me 2-3 years of my social life to realize that I'm not an island.
Can't up vote this enough. I read it around 16 yrs age and strongly influenced me. "intellectually superior" accurately captures how I felt.
I continued on path of "self discovery" and am much mature now. Now, I strongly recommend NOT to read her books. She takes objectivism to extreme lengths, even in relationships and love. For brief time after reading, I started living like a robot with no room for emotions and treating people like they were machines too with no emotions.
