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queensthiefThere was an article in the Guardian about stories that have changed you - how you think, how you feel, how you live your life.
the very idea of a novel changing hearts and minds on a massive scale is rather shocking. Stories are no longer the sacred cultural treasuries they once were. Books have become unholy, cheap and familiar. You've read the seven plots again and again; you've ploughed through Proust with the same blasé greed with which you ploughed through the trash on the front of the mag. You may have cried, and laughed, and shaken your head at the terrible ways of men, but when did a novel last actually change what you think and what you do?
I need to think a bit to come up with a novel that meets the criteria (although I know they exist, in my attic or on a bookshelf), but what comes first to mind is that after reading Stiff, a book about happens to a body after a person has died, I've never been able to think about having Rice Krispies for breakfast, or chicken soup for lunch, in quite the same way. And I Wanna Be Sedated ("30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers") left me much more tolerant of various parenting styles and teen behaviour.
How about it, Sounis? What have your read that changed how you view some aspect of the world? altered the course of your life, either a little or a lot? As the Guardian article finishes, "be it in a serious or frivolous way, for good or for bad – what was the last story that really changed you?"
the very idea of a novel changing hearts and minds on a massive scale is rather shocking. Stories are no longer the sacred cultural treasuries they once were. Books have become unholy, cheap and familiar. You've read the seven plots again and again; you've ploughed through Proust with the same blasé greed with which you ploughed through the trash on the front of the mag. You may have cried, and laughed, and shaken your head at the terrible ways of men, but when did a novel last actually change what you think and what you do?
I need to think a bit to come up with a novel that meets the criteria (although I know they exist, in my attic or on a bookshelf), but what comes first to mind is that after reading Stiff, a book about happens to a body after a person has died, I've never been able to think about having Rice Krispies for breakfast, or chicken soup for lunch, in quite the same way. And I Wanna Be Sedated ("30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers") left me much more tolerant of various parenting styles and teen behaviour.
How about it, Sounis? What have your read that changed how you view some aspect of the world? altered the course of your life, either a little or a lot? As the Guardian article finishes, "be it in a serious or frivolous way, for good or for bad – what was the last story that really changed you?"
