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the books that changed your life!

saliotthomas

saliotthomas

New Member
i Know i sound a bit dramatic(and journalistic)but some book have more importance than other ,they sort of give you new ways,raise your hopes,depresse you,...They are like miles stones in your life.

The first one to really hit me was as a kid "the hobbit" the travel,the fantastic world,i felt so sorry it didn't exist!

the segond one was as a teenager was Dostoevsky "the devils",finding a society so rafined,elegant,clever.I didn't leave my house for weeks so digusted i was with real life.I refuse to socialise with the apes surronding me(till i reallised i wasn't so different from them!)

there was other but i keep it short.
The last one was Ayn Rand "the Fontainehead" amazingly she is unknowned in France! Being an Artist it was very easy slipping in the caractere skin and it sort of gave me the strengh to be more exigent with my work tough not as intrensigent as him

so what about you!
 
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann – my first real encounter with a 'novel of ideas'. It was a couple of months after my first piece of fiction had been published and reading it left me unable to write for several months. I simply could not see what I had in the world to 'say'.
 
Deltora quest. I was 12 when I read it, 8 years ago. It pretty much got me into reading. I love that series, though it takes only an hour or two to read one of the books nowadays.
 
Faust by Goethe was the first book I read that changed my viewpoint on human nature.

I just finished Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and though I wouldn't say it was "life-changing", it did get me more interested in history, more specifically the American Civil War and its effects on society. I'm from the "Southern Cusp" of the war, and, though I've heard about it all my life, I never really had much interest in it. Now I'm entranced. It also gave me the ability to find respect for a character which I deeply despised throughout the whole book (Scarlett O'Hara) and understanding that, when forced, a person will go against all of their scruples in the name of survival.

Black Order by James Rollins was another that wasn't necessarily life-changing in itself, but boosted my interest in quantum physics and evolutionary science.
 
Definitely Cosmos by Carl Sagan...it made me realize how wonderful this Earth we live on is, while at the same time how tiny we are (or: "humans aren't as important as we think we are in the grand scheme of things, but we should still cherish life")
 
Well, aside from the obvious (The Bible), I'd say that The Lord of the Rings was very inspiring to me. Thankfully, I was able to read it just before the movies were released (which, while excellent films, still take away from the full grandeur of the story), so that I was able to participate in the mental co-creation of Middle Earth without seeing Elijah Wood or Orlando Bloom!

Also, Fahrenheit 451 was an insightful read. It really opened me up to the reality that our Democratic ideals are not guaranteed forever, and that we can lose the freedoms we treasure if we're too lazy or afraid to stand up for them. Yeah, I got all that from such a tiny little book...which makes it all the more powerful!
 
Sweet topic!

As a kiddo:

Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel-Helped me to love reading

Ferdinand the Bull-Ditto, a bull-fighting version of Rocky.

Junior high:

Animal Farm-I had an interest in politics early on and this one helped to stoke the fires of it.

College:

The Communist Manifesto-A slim book that struck me as being "out there." Marx influenced history, sociology, political science, not to mention economics. Definitely a classic book about class, though the solutions followed in later years was deadly for those who had to live under the iron curtain.

The Marriage of Sense & Soul-Written by Ken Wilber, this book featured a model that Wilber created whereby religion and science include and transcend each other in four distinct "zones." "Third wave" thinking has always intrigued me, this one was a very powerful influence on me.

As an adult:

The Brothers Karamazov-Two years ago, I didn't like where I worked, let alone who I worked with(colleagues wise, etc.) This book helped me not give a damn in the beginning, but to later on, embrace the fact that nothing everything is planned and that in the ensuing chaos that life throws you at times, it's best to just embrace it. Making meaning out of where there is no meaning is what life is about.
 
SFG75 said:
The Brothers Karamazov-Two years ago, I didn't like where I worked, let alone who I worked with(colleagues wise, etc.) This book helped me not give a damn in the beginning, but to later on, embrace the fact that nothing everything is planned and that in the ensuing chaos that life throws you at times, it's best to just embrace it. Making meaning out of where there is no meaning is what life is about.
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I agree. I've never felt my world view expanding more than this book. I have been able to apply so many things from Brothers Karamazov to the way others around me act and the way I want to live my life.

also:

To Kill A Mockingbird : I saw the movie when I was very young but the subplots in the book about Scout's adjustment to growing up and realizing the strength of the the women around her. I don't know if it changed my life but it really confirmed what I was feeling growing up.
 
The catcher in the rye. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this was a watershed event in my life. You know, the kind where you cross a personal milestone and a new you emerges at the other end ? I vividly remember when and where I read it, and what my thoughts were during that passage of time. I should probably add that this was 10+ years back.

It is just the effect the book had on me I'm referring to. Any literary merits to the novel were purely incidental. It was much later, with the advent of the internet and the information it made accessible, that I realized I wasn't alone in my reaction to this book.

I can probably cite a number of other books that have influenced my thoughts and actions over the years, but none that shaped my views the way this book did.

I read everything ever published by J.D. Salinger in the next couple of years, even the ones that weren't much good.
 
When I was growing up, The Bible was required reading in my household. I have an old copy that I highlighted every passage as I read it. The entire thing is yellow. What an awful way to treat a book, but I wanted to be sure that I read it from cover to cover at least once. I can't say it "changed my life" because it was all I knew from the first day I could comprehend a sentence.
 
BeerWench13 said:
When I was growing up, The Bible was required reading in my household. I have an old copy that I highlighted every passage as I read it. The entire thing is yellow. What an awful way to treat a book, but I wanted to be sure that I read it from cover to cover at least once. I can't say it "changed my life" because it was all I knew from the first day I could comprehend a sentence.
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I think it has to be something that isn't forced on you. Like, I can say that Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life, and while He also is for my parents, I don't base my faith on my parent's expectations. They've given me the freedom to choose for myself.
 
I'd have to say that when I was young, Flight of the Dragon Kyn by Susan Fletcher was the actual book that hooked me into reading in the first place when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I haven't stopped reading since.

Also Envy by Sandra Brown because that actually made me realize what I wanted to do for my career, which is to be a copy-editor.

A third book is King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. I've been reading this book in class and it tells the history on King Leopold and how he put together his Congo state while brutalizing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Africans. Unlike many other history books it shows the Africans points of view at times. Makes me ashamed I can't do anything about it.
 
Fennicy said:
Makes me ashamed I can't do anything about it.
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I feel the same way when I read any book about slavery, either that in the U.S. or those that were selling them from Africa.
 
BeerWench13 said:
Faust by Goethe was the first book I read that changed my viewpoint on human nature.
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If I may be so bold to ask: How did Faust change your viewpoint on human nature? And how did that fit in with reading the bible? I would have thought there would be an almighty (sigh) clash of ideas there.
BeerWench13 said:
Black Order by James Rollins was another that wasn't necessarily life-changing in itself, but boosted my interest in quantum physics and evolutionary science.
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Now there would HAVE to be that clash.
 
chuephödli said:
How did Faust change your viewpoint on human nature?
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The basic insatiability of humans really stood out to me when I read this book. I read it in school many, many years ago and it's on my reread list so I can see if I will glean the same meanings from it at my current age.

chuephödli said:
And how did that fit in with reading the bible?
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It didn't. That's why I chose to read it!

chuephödli said:
I would have thought there would be an almighty (sigh) clash of ideas there.
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That was the idea! I was trying to expand my mind and break out of the mental bubble in which I had been forcefully kept.
 
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Not his best, nor even that great overall, but it was the first "real novel" I read and it made me want to read more.

Novelizations of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Return Of The Pink Panther
After finishing these I never read another novelization again.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche
Though this book has its own problems, it proves that philosophy doesn't have to spew formalism. It can be beautiful.

Dao De Ching by Lao Tsu
The farther one travels the less one knows...

If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
Exposed the possibilities of literature.

Of Time, Work, & Leisure by Sebastian De Grazia
Outdated, boring, and overly idealistic. Nonetheless, it makes a good point that society doesn't always have to choose work. So why did we?

Collapse by Jared Diamond
Societies can fail.

...and many more that I can't pull out of my cortex at this moment...
 
The Far Pavillions--by M.M. Kaye. I was ten when I read it, and though I had already started reading adult novels by
that time, they were much lighter.
( ''Hound of the Baskervilles'' for one.) " Far Pavillions " though, enthralled me. The war, the culture...it was beautiful.

That same year, I also read 'The Idiot' by Dostoevsky, and it has remained an important part of me. I've never gotten past my enjoyment of Russian literature and the way it perceives humans and their relationships.
 
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