Life-changing books

Have to think about it. Books that I thought were changers at the time turned out to be part of a continuum.

Offhand, Steinbeck gave me a clue, but, then, Dickens might have first. I read David Copperfield in one long day into another when I was about seventeen, and Tale of Two Cities about the same time. I guess those were the first books that let me into history, as opposed to my high school texts that had me looking at it as all so long ago and far away. Since then, history has gotten less far away.

Some long time later, Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini reasserted for me the idea that we are much the same, though years fly by, and I reassessed what years meant, again.

Naked by David Sedaris.

Siddartha (Herman Hesse).

I had been loosing interest in school or a long time by my senior year in high school. By then I was pretty much uninterested in anything. Until I took an English class with Mr Lamb. He and the books we read changed my view of life dramatically. The class was one which compared books from around the world - existentialism from Europe, peasant life from India, enslaved existence from our own history here in the US. One of the books we read was Siddartha. The course itself changed me, but Siddartha stayed with me. I reread it turned to it when I was under emotional distress. Haven't reread it in at least a decade.

Very soon after I learned how to read, I got a library card and headed for the local branch with my father. I got out a book about dinosaurs. Mostly photographs of skeletons.

I was surprised when this book popped into my head after I read your question, velvett. After all, I majored in literature in college. But it was the dinosaur book that had the greatest impact on my life. It was through that book that I discovered that I could find out about things too distant to be seen or known. I could explore the world through books.

I know there was a book that changed my life, but sadly I cannot remember the title nor much of the story...

I was having a real hard time in my relationship at the time and was staying with a friend.
He was housesharing and since one girl was away for a while, I got her room.
In it I found a book that I read, and somehow the story felt so much like my own, and looking at it 'from the outside' I realized how pathetic it/I was.

That really made me develop my 'This is me and if you don't like it, piss off' attitude that I have kept ever since!

I wish I could remember what book it was.

I wish I had such a class in my life !..

Well, but thanks for sharing the background of your 'relationship'with the book. That's exactly what i was hoping to get in the answers. Cause I'm interested not only in 'which book', but 'why' as well. Sort of content and context.

That's a pity indeed!
I guess you'll just have to re-write it for the sake of mankind (or womankind)

I've been trying to collect my thought on what my changers would be. Here's the short list (in random order):

"Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho. I've read it long before the Coelho boom took off in Europe (dunno how it got into my hands) and I think this is the best book by Coelho (in the later books he starts repeating himself). For me this book opened this sort of spiritual view of the world, connected thinking with the universe and the idea that your thoughts and intentions are material.

"Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. Well, this is in fact the book about everything (destiny, faith, love, historic epic), but for me this is the book is about the philosophy of life.

"Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. Built my view on the true meaning of integrity of a person.

"Les Hommes Cruels Ne Courent Pas Les Rues" by Katherine Pancol. This was the best book I've read on man-woman subject (and Pancol is the best writer). When I read it it was like reading about myself, all my fears about finding Mr Right etc :-) Pancol knows the chicken side of women.
http://www.katherine-pancol.com/

"7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. I must admit, I am quite sceptical to all this 'become a leader in 10 steps/days/actions" literature. Because only 1% of them is good and the rest is just the repetition of the well-known. I guess the real purpose of all these books is not to invent something mind-blowing with every book, but to serve as an excercise for your self-awareness, you should read one of these books once a year to dust your values system etc. But Covey's book actually contains some interesting concepts, mind techniques that help a person to build a different mentality. For me some of them painted a bit different pcture of the world.

The Fuzzy Trilogy[/i] by H. Beam Piper (Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens, and Fuzzies and Other People.


I could cite numerous books as being 'life-changing'--Dune, The Republic, Walden, Siddhartha, Stranger in a Strange Land, Ideology and Utopia, The One-Dimensional Man, The Power Elite, Manufacturing Consent, The Grapes of Wrath, etc.--but the Fuzzy trilogy, with its exploration of the meaning of truth and what it means to be a 'person,' built the framework in my then thirteen-year-old mind to which all the other great ideas I've encountered have been attached.

All sorts of books--some classics, some trash--install a layer of velcro in a developing mind. Ideas stick to brain-velcro.

Valley of the Dolls. (I'm serious.) I read it when I was 16 or something. I led a sheltered life.

I can definitely see how Dolls could open a young girls' eyes. Especially back in the 60's.

Swimpy, my eye-opener was a decade or two before yours. I borrowed a copy of Forever Amber and read it, hidden under a brown paper cover, in bed at night. I must have been 15. It was really quite an interesting book -- about the years of the Plague in England -- but all I wanted to learn about was the racy details that made the book forbidden reading. I had been getting books out of the library since I was 11, but books like this were not in the "children's" section.

I read a book last year that was life changing. Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. Remember the plane with the soccer team that went down in the Andes 25 years ago? One of the survivors was Nando Parrado and he is finally writing the story, years later. I will never forget when I came to the part of the story when Nando saw his first human being after 70 days....I realized that tears were streaming down my face. I knew suddenly that I would never give up again, no matter what adversity came upon me. If Nando could do it, with all he had to deal with in this unbelievable series of events, I could do it. Anyone could do it, and survive.

Nando Parrado

1984 -George Orwell
Not only did this book turn me on the the joys of reading. It made me stop and think about things I blindly accepted. I realized you have to look beyond the media and the information we are given to get even a glimps of the truth. But doing that may come with a price.

"The Complete Works of Voltaire" was probably the most important book of my childhood, and it set me on a course that has changed little.

"The Dhamapada" was one of the first Buddhist texts that I read, and it drew me to other, more detailed texts. As most of you know, I've been a Buddhist for over 40 years.

"The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. There is danger in ideological purity.

"Thinking the Unthinkable" and "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn. The value of analysis and how it can be applied to large, complex ideas was a revelation. I spent a good part of my working life doing analysis and projections on complex public policy issues.

"Plato's Dialogs" made me aspire to Socratic integrity.

Hey, I could probably list half a dozen more books that have had a major influence on how I lead my life, how I think, and believe.

DRyanWalker,

What book are you talking aobut?