Literature that changed your life?

Indeed - be impractical by all means! LOL!

Hope you enjoy it here.

Books books books
Why such scorn for the idea that someone's life could be changed by Tolkien's books? It's all well and good to say Dostoyevsky has changed your life. Yes, yes, Proust, Dante, Homer, Aeschylus, Joyce, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Virgil, of course! But for me, the books that shaped my childhood are the most influential, the books that filled me with joy mixed with hope and desire. The Lord of the Rings was certainly one of those. I spent countless hours imagining and dramatizing that intricate world out in the woods. Children of Green Noah (Boston) is another, absolutely stunning. It evoked emotions in me as a child that I didn't know existed until I read that book. Even now I can hardly put them into words; a sort of breathless excitement that comes on the verge of uncovering a mystery. The fine line between reality and imagination. The joy of exploration. Narnia, Norse and Arthurian myth, Earthsea, there are many others, some half-remembered, some with complete clarity. They may not have changed my life in the sense of turning it from one direction to another, but they undoubtedly shaped who I am profoundly. So, yes, I went on to read all the Big Guys listed above, and many more, and yes, they were all life-changing in one way or another, or at the very least thought-process-altering, if that makes any sense. Nevertheless, I believe the the books that truly had the most profound influence over me were those I read long ago, and I can't even remember many of their names.

Welcome to A2k, Nsherrard - can you expand more on HOW these books shaped you?

You know, i read a book about ten years ago, and can't recall the title or the author. At one point near the end, the author spoke of lying awake in the night, and considering whether or not one sought justice in their relations with others. Although it did strike me at the time, i soon forgot it. However, it has returned to my recollection many times in the last few years, and i realize that this seemingly innocuous literary incident had the effect of leading me to willfully change my attitudes toward others.

Now, THAT'S interesting.

You know, I really hoped this thread would develop more into discussion, with illustration, of whether literature had any life-changing qualities - but it has become more a "this book changed me" with no real detail or argument sort of thing - so I lost interest.

For anyone who likes to read , atlas shrugged is the one book that really changed my life . and two of my freinds , slomichizzuh and francisco d'anconia....detect a minute patern?

"The Holy Bible changed my life!"

That's nice.

: )

The Bible is a great read and many parts are literature. I am not a Christian, but I agree that the Bible does have some impact.

Unfortunately very few of the folks who call themselves "Christians" seem to have taken the time to read the Bible outside of the few narrow passages that modern churches take way out of context.

The words of Jesus and the actions of the early Christians were quite liberal by the standards of today average American Christian.

The early church was a group putting into practices the ideas of a socialist called Jesus. As Jesus taught they "sold what they had to give to the poor". "They had everything in common and gave to each as he had need".

Jesus taught against violence. Stopped capital punishment from taking place and went out of his way to help immigrants.

If the Christians of today were anything like Christ...

But there are several parts of the Bible that I find particularly interesting.

The entire book of Ecclesiastes is a very interesting set of transcendalist meditations on mans place in the Universe.

The book of Job is a very good story of a man questioning his fate.

The book of Jonah is a fable that ultimately speaks against racism.

I love the challenging moral vision of the book of James. It challenges the reader to examine his own life, rather than judging others.

Religious people today spend so much time worrying who is doing what and who marrying whom that they completely forget what their religion says. They don't accept the true challenges of every religion - to love their fellow man and to be a better person without judging (or hating) those around them.

Yes ... If only the Bible impacted the life of "Christians" ....

I'm not certain there has been a book that has impacted me to the point of changing my life. I have read many that I absolutely loved and wanted to share with everyone else, but none that had a profound effect. Maybe it is yet to come?

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving gave me pause for thought about religion. It's a weird book because it was funny, yet such a heavy theme to it at the same time. Maybe more twisted dark humour than funny.

I remember having to read The Good Earth in school, but it didn't hold the same meaning for me that it has for others here.

I absolutely loved Wuthering Heights but I thought Pride and Prejudice would have been a Harlequin romance novel if it was written today!

1984 by George Orwell had an effect of sorts, mainly because it led me to read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and that one really chilled me.

I also read A Fine Balance, but tell me, what is it that those who have read it liked about it? I found it one of the most depressing books I've ever read! These poor people struggling so hard to make a better life for themselves and they end up worse in the end than at the beginning. I found it so disturbing.

While I'm here, and being that dlowan is the bibliophile that she is, maybe she has encountered this book. I read it as a kid, although my reading level was a few years ahead of kids my age. (Not meaning to brag, just that I loved reading! I am not certain of the title, but I think it was Ophelia after the central character in the book. She starts off as a cat, falls down a well, and thinks her 9 lives are up. She is retrieved from the well, but as a woman. It takes a while for her to adjust to human form. That's all I remember! But I haven't been able to find this book anywhere. I know I didn't dream it, so maybe I have the character's name wrong. Suggestions?

I must confess I follow Oprah's book club. Her tastes are different than mine though, but I'm intrigued by her latest offering One Hundred Years of Solitude since she quotes the New York Times as stating "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." How can anyone resist that sort of endorsement?

Oh! I almost forgot! One book I would definitely include in my top 10 is Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport. Great book! I highly recommend it. It's a story about a family of women (a few generations worth). I think the author weaves their stories together beautifully. It's written with a lot of Hawaiian slang, so it can be difficult to follow at times, but it's very intimate and it reads like someone is telling you this family history, their loves and losses -- which in essence it is. Good book. I may have to reread it.

Hmmm - I am not familiar, sadly, with the book you mention about the cat.

There IS a Paul Gallico book, called "Thomasina" about a cat who, well - here is the customer review from Amazon.....

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380515245/qid=1075194855/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-4904741-3418358?v=glance&s=books.

Huxley's and Orwell's dystopias are chilling, are they not? You find Huxley more complex?

I have still to rad A Fine Balance - it is "in the queue".

Ok, no roads to Damascus in you reading experience - but - overall, do you think you are a different person in any way because of all these worlds and minds you have entered?

(I shall attempt to forgive you for dissing Pride and Prejudice!)

The bible is an obvious one, is it not, ebrown and kvjtrue?

I read the review and found it quite interesting. Perhaps, even if it is a child's book, I'll have to give it a read.



I read a commentary once comparing the premise of both books and how Huxley's world is the more disturbing because Huxley's is the one that "could" happen. The reviewer felt that history has shown us people who are oppressed rebel and that the human desire for freedom would never allow for a totalitarian state to exist as it does in 1984. But the world in Huxley's book is one that might be feasible because rather than fear and oppression (as in 1984), happiness and pleasure being fed to the masses would be acceptable.

I completely agree with you though. The prospect of either world is scary indeed. Storylines aside, it is amazing how the authors used concepts that didn't exist at the time of their writings, isn't it? The technologies that is.



Ooops, hope I didn't ruin anything for you!



That's difficult to say. I guess in a way yes because they have given me a different perspective on elements of life. Various books have also given me insight into lives I would otherwise never be exposed to in my own life. To give you a specific example...well let me go with the most recent book to impress me. That would be Shark Dialogues. Although it's fiction and there are those who say the author took poetic license with the history of Hawai`i, I think it does give some insight into what the Hawaiian people went through in the earlier years after the American hostile takeover of the islands and its people. It also made me yearn to experience the type of love some of its characters experienced. That was one part of the book I think the author did very well...relating the relationships of the characters, both the love relationships and the family ones.

That reminds me of another book I read that I enjoyed called She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. When I first started reading it, I looked back at the cover to see who wrote the thing because I couldn't help think "this sounds like a guy has written it". I often find men don't write women very well. But that's just me. I've read several comments by women on this book by Wally Lamb and they are amazed a man wrote it because they feel he writes from a woman's perspective so well. Go figure.

I guess what hits me most about books I really like is the life lesson or epiphany a character discovers by the end of the book. And through the character, I discover it too.



*LOL* I'm sorry but when I read the book (for an English class at university) that was what I thought when I finished it. I can always re-read and see if my opinion changes. I recall a short film (from Australia!) I saw at a local international film festival that I volunteered at one year. Upon first viewing I thought it was one of the most stupid things I'd ever seen. But the second time I saw it, the "message" the filmmaker was trying to get across suddenly became clear to me and I thought it was brilliant. So you see, I am capable of having a different viewpoint.

dlowan:

I found this online. A movie based on a book written by Annie M.G. Schmidt (a Dutch author of children's books.) Although similar, it's a little different than the book I read. And I'm positive the character was Ophelia. Oh well.

I gotta wonder if the book is just out of print.

Yay! I hope 'tis the one!

Now look, dammit - Austen is so perfect and so polished that it is easy to skate on her surface, as on a frozen pond, without ever realizing what lies beneath.

The other thing is (IMO) that we are glutted with the dramatic and over-emphasised and over-embroidered. Austen is the mistress of the large writ small.

I have a thread on her, called, if I recall "Smeg it, I'm a Janeite!" which expands this theory. Our epiphanies and our earth-shaking moral choices and our dark nights of the soul seem to me to be overwhelmingly related to and expressed with the minutiae of daily life - does this make the import to our "souls" less essential?

We are, (in the west) I believe, despite post-modernism and the art of the extreme, creatures who live, for the most part, in similar structures to the small villages of Austen's imagination. How many people do you really interact with? REALLY? How many of our life-shaping decisions are about the compassion, respect and understanding we show to the "village' we effectively inhabit?

So much of this is displayed, in Austen, by the early 19th century dilemma of the middle class woman - whom shall I marry?

A restricted time, manner and place - but universal, I think, dilemmas.

Now - go (please) and read Pride and Prejudice, or Emma, again - then engage me!

I shall be back to discuss other aspects of your reaponse - hey! This is fun!

*L* Glad to see you enjoying yourself!

P & P will have to wait a bit. I have a library book that I need to finish, so once that's done, I can dig out P & P. It's in a box, near the bottom of a pile of boxes, in my parents basement. Ugh. Maybe it will be easier to just borrow it from the library.


In terms of entertainment, I agree with ya 100%.



Well I certainly can relate to the dilemma factor. I'm going through a major one right now!

Ah books! I cannot understand those who don't read. Books have so much to offer! Escapism, thought provoking insights, humour and so much more.

Looking forward to your response!

Very interesting thread. Thanks to all.

The books of my childhood that left lasting Impressions - "The Little Engine that Could"; Aesop's Fables; "Paddle to the Sea" (a charming tale of an Indian boy living above Lake Superior in Canada who carved a wooden figure of himself in a canoe with an inscription asking the finder to put it back in the water. A fascinating tale for a boy with a great tour of the Great Lakes thrown in. In the last chapter, some years later, the boy, now grown, finds the figure washed ashore near Quebec; "Freckles" by Gene Stratton Porter; A small anthology of familiar poems, which I still have and which introduced me to lyric things and similar lasting pleasures. Speeches and elocution pieces by Robert Ingersoll and others - particularly, "After Visiting the Tomb of Napoleon". Later it was Lowell Thomas' "The Sea Wolf", the story of Count Felix Von Luckner, who captained a square rigged sailing ship commerce raider during WWI - great adventure.

In my teens I read a great deal, but mostly without instruction, books I found in the house. Lots of Conrad, Dostoyevski, and Graham Greene. "Alamayer's Folly", "The Nigger of the Narcissus", "Victory", "The Shadow Line", and "The Secret Sharer" left lasting impressions of Conrad's world and formed the background for my own introspection. "Crime and Punishment" was another awakening as, indeed was Greene's "The End of the Affair". They and the autobiography and stories of Maxim Gorki caused me to encounter very different worldviews from my own.

Later the stories of Balzac and Maupassant fascinated me with their varied images of humanity and ironic insights. Mikhail Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" was my first literary encounter with an utterly alienated figure, set in the midst of the most colorful of adventure stories. (Much later I realized that Camus had stolen the central idea for his novel "The Stranger" from this source.)

Finally, I much later was introduced to a wonderful Brazilian writer of the 19th century. J.M. Machado de Assis. His Masterpiece,"Epitaph of a Small Winner", or Posthumous Reminiscences of Bras Cubas is unique - bittersweet irony, intense realism and lyric beauty in a spare literary form.

I couldn't end without citing Will Durant's History of Western Civilization. The 12 volumes provided escape and solace between operating periods on carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin during three combat cruises.

I reccomend that you all read the book, Ishmael. It was written by Daniel Quinn. it changed my way of thinking profoundly and I guarentee that it will change yours. You can also read the sequel to it called, My Ishmael. Please read it and tell me what you all think.

Oh, Georgeob - sorry, I did not see your post for some reason - very interesting!

Can you tell us more about the Brazilian writer?

Welcome, Sljanus! I hope you enjoy it here.

Can you tell us more about what Ishmael is about?

Caprice - I will get back to you when I have a working brain again...

Hello, glad to be here.

Ishmael has a very strange plot and is mostly dialogue. It is a fiction book about a young man named Alan and a gorilla. The gorilla, whose name is Ishmael, becomes a mentor/tutor to Alan because of a newspaper ad that Alan answers. They speak to eachother through the mind, and Ishmael takes Alan on a philisophical journey of the human nature and the answer to save the world. My Western Civilization instructor reccomended me this book and it will change one's views on life immensly. It is a pretty easy read (300 pages). Hope you all get the chance to read it.

-Steve

Very pleased to meet you, Steve. Welcome!