While She Knits - Books that Have Changed You

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

There 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?"

Comments

[ninedaysaqueen.livejournal.com]

Of course I have how mention how Queen's Thief changed my perceptions...

Before I read Mrs. Tuners work, I did not have a profound understanding of political intrigue and how it ties in with human nature. After I finished "The King of Attolia" for the first time, the courts of Elizabeth I, Henry II, and Catherine de Medici suddenly came to life for me. I did not expect to deepen my understanding with a novel, and I'm quite thrilled that it happened. That understanding proved to be very important concerning the quality of my historical studies, and I have to thank Mrs. Turner for it.

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

'Harry Potter 7' made me feel better about death. :)

'What Happened To Lani Garver?' made me think about angels;
'After' scared the bejeezus out of me, made me think of escape plans, and made me glad I wasn't in school;
'Shiva's Fire' forever changed the way I think about dance;
Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy made me believe, just a little, in Myrddin Emrys. :D

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

"Liberating Paris" gave me a glimpse, as a youngish teen, of what adult life was like.
"Keturah and Lord Death" gave me a perspective on all the things I have to offer.
"Mrs Dalloway" made me feel better about life, and friendship, and growing older.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Lord of the Flies, which I read at 13 or so, gave me an over-pessimistic view of human nature which took me many years to shake off.

Reading Simon (Rosemary Sutcliff) and The Children of the New Forest at around 8 sparked a huge enthusiasm in the English Civil War, which led to a huge enthusiasm in history in general, which ultimately led me to study history at university.

Reading The Lord of the Rings and Roger Lancelyn Green's Arthurian legend retellings as a child ultimately led me to joining my university's Tolkien Society and Arthurian Society ten years later. Twenty years on from that, I still meet up with friends from those societies several times a year, go on holiday with them, interact with them every day on LJ... and have been married to one of them for 15 years. :-)

More recently, Watching the English by Kate Fox has made me look at the people around me - crowds, queues etc. - in a very different way, and has turned me into a Watching the English bore. :-)

I'm not sure what is responsible for my over-long answers to questions, but it was probably a book. ;-)

[openedlocket.livejournal.com]

"My Sister's Keeper"- a very touching book, made me cry in the end
"QT Series"- helped me better understand politics

last but not the least...

the Bible- I haven't exactly finished it but the bits I have read changed me, a lot. No more needs to be said

[sgwordy.livejournal.com]

When I was younger:
Jonathon Livingston Seagull
Stranger in a Strange Land
Great Expectations

More recently:
Life of Pi

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

When I was 12, and had just finished The Lord of the Rings for the first of many times, I picked up a copy of Paul Kocher's Master of Middle-Earth and my life was never the same afterward. That was my first experience of literary criticism and it blew me away to realize that people didn't just write books -- they also wrote books about books, metabooks, that took stories apart and showed you all the fascinating mechanics of how they worked and what they could mean. Twenty years later I took my doctorate in English literature, and that's why.

In college, I was unexpectedly bowled over by Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night -- I was groping toward an understanding of my own identity as a woman and an intellectual, and reading a well-written story about a sympathetic character doing the same threw a raking light across my own struggles. Unfortunately, I wasn't hanging out with anyone as compelling as Lord Peter Wimsey, so there was a certain amount of vicarious wish-fulfillment involved :-), but I reread that book a lot because it spoke to my fledgling social/intellectual integration in a way that no other feminist text did.

Most recently, I read The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris and developed an interest in Benedictine spirituality. I'd been surrounded by friends who came up in the Ignatian tradition, but it was The Rule of Benedict that really spoke to me once I'd rediscovered it (sorry, Holy Cross people!). Norris's poetic evocation of the seasons of the church year made me want to pay more attention to the spiritual rhythm of my own life. I haven't always been successful, but I return to this book whenever I need to reinvigorate my commitment.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy made me believe, just a little, in Myrddin Emrys.

*seconds this*

For me, her Merlin trilogy was the first to take the Arthur story out of fantasy and put it into a plausible historical fiction.

[coyul.livejournal.com]

My Sister's Keeper was such a good book. It made me wonder if I would do the same if I were in that same situation. I know I'd feel just as resentful. I forget her name, but the main girl reminds me of me in how she felt about it.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Too many to name them all, but here's a sampling: Middlemarch. Cyrano de Bergerac. The Lady's Not for Burning and The Dark Is Light Enough. The White Darkness. The Ear, The Eye and The Arm. TT, QoA, KoA.

For nonfiction, this will sound odd, but I was really affected, positively, by How We Die, by Sherwin Nuland. It describes exactly what happens to the body in various death scenarios, but the main point is that we don't choose this, there is not something wrong with us if we don't get the "perfect death" where we lie peacefully in bed and bestow our blessings on our offspring -- because almost no one gets that, and we shouldn't feel "cheated" if it doesn't happen that way. His conclusion is that we can only control how we live, and that, as my great-grandmother once said, the day of a person's death is NOT the most important day in his life.

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

'The Secret Garden' - Frances Hodgson Burnett
'A Wrinkle in Time' and 'A Swiftly Tilting Planet' - Madeleine L'Engle
'The Language of God' - Francis S. Collins
'The Good Girl Revolution' - Wendy Shalit

Books I first read when I was younger than had a huge effect on shaping my life/interests/the person I became would probably be... Little House on the Prairie (all of them), Pride and Prejudice, and Harry Potter. Oh, and Lord of the Rings, of course.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid the way history was taught in my school was too awful for me ever to consider history at uni, but reading Simon as a child made such a strong impression on me that with essentially no further reading/learning on the subject I was able to recognise the flagrantly inaccurate presentation of the Civil War in I, Coriander over 35 years later. Which is less impressive than its leading me to study the subject at third-level, but still something!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Have you read Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season? It's a long time since I've read it, but I found a lot of L'Engle's non-fiction very powerful.

[9mil.livejournal.com]

After first reading Chuck Palahniuk's 'Fight Club' and then 'Choke,' my writing was forever changed in a way that no other book or author has altered me. Reading him helped me find my correct voice.

It was either 'Fahrenheit 451' or 'Brave New World' that changed what I read and write about and ultimately given me something I want to my schooling for.

And, though it's not a book, T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" has inexplicably grabbed me and shaken me. I love this poem and everything it does or could represent.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I always feel a bit inadequate when people talk about how books they read as children changed how they view the world, as I can't remember more than loving them and occasionally wanting very much to be in them. (The silly wishing for living in the past - most often Elizabethan or Regency times - was grown out of eventually!)

Pride and Prejudice was very important though. I read it first when quite young, after my mother recommended it, saying it was 'about 5 girls looking for husbands'. When I studied English Lit on my second go-round with university, P&P was the first text in the first module that was solely literature. I was a bit nervous, but the realisation that I could love and enjoy it as a comedy of manners romance *and* also love and enjoy it as a realist novel with appreciation of what that meant, was a very joyful one.

And then there's Howl's Moving Castle, which, through a variety of twisty paths, led me to start that English Lit degree. If I could just get the seven-league boots from that book, it would be a huge help for me and my long-distance sweetie, whom I met through another bunch of twisty paths involving Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret!

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

I know, right? *__* I wanna go find his cave now. *has to restrain self*

[annikah.livejournal.com]

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell revolutionized how I approach science fiction and faith and anthropology and life in general. I was practically raised on sci-fi, but something about The Sparrow is... different. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a very emotionally exhausting book and I waver between recommending it everyone and to no one.

I'm a closet fan of political philosophy, but it wasn't until I read The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin that I realized I'm probably an anarchist at heart. The Dispossessed is an example of an anarchist society that actually works, albeit in very special circumstances. It also has some very poignant digressions on time, relationships, and one's place in society.

And, I suppose if I never read my uncle's copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales however many summers ago, I would not have chosen to write my undergrad thesis on Chaucer, or go on to grad school in medieval literature.

[philippas.livejournal.com]

I'm sure a lot of books have changed me in ways I don't even realize, but I always think first of The Chronicles of Lymond, which both blew the borders off my ideas about how big a story could be, and began to show me just how deep redemption can go.

[katewaits.livejournal.com]

I love "Howl's Moving Castle"! I'd seen the movie first and then reading the book made me so angry at Miyazaki for changing such a great story and making so many people think THAT was what HMC was about. Grrr. I still think it's beautiful animation, but I have to pretend it's a totally different source. I love the book too much.

And, yes, seven-league boots would be awesome. *nods*

[sun-bird-498.livejournal.com]

The Book Thief completely changed my perspective on human relationships and their dynamics. I suppose the QT books helped with this, but The Book Thief goes beyond even that. It also convinced me that I want to major in something English related.

[katewaits.livejournal.com]

"Harold and the Purple Crayon". Not kidding. It sparked my imagination like nothing ever had. I know I was just a kid at the time, but I count it as an ongoing influence since I still have that very tattered book I read so many years ago, and I still look at it for inspiration from time-to-time.

"The Hobbit". My mother gave this to me when I was eleven or twelve and told me she thought I might like it. I can't see her ever reading a book like that, so I don't know how she knew, but she was right. It was great fantasy, both dark and light in one book, and it had a profound effect on my standards.

"To Kill a Mockingbird". Again, my mother gave me this one and told me I might like it. She couldn't have been more right. It remains my favorite book of all time. I was young enough to understand it but not old enough to find the kids 'cute'. It was the first book that included 'serious' matters that I could relate to. And I developed a wicked crush on Jem. ;D

"A Confederacy of Dunces". This book made me look at character creation in a different way. There was not one cliched or 'typical' character in the whole bunch, and yet they all touched on enough that was familiar to me that they came to life.

And, of course, the Queen's Thief series. Raised my expectations of YA and surprised me more than any reading had in years. I hadn't realized how 'meh' I'd gotten toward plot until I was escorted into such a masterful one.

[twtd]

Not a novel, but Jihad vs. McWorld completely changed how I looked at the world and the purpose of democracy (particularly the American form). A Problem From Hell did the same thing.

For novels, I reread Contact at least once a year because it so profoundly affected how I look at the world and my views on science and faith.

There have been others, but I can't think of them off of the top of my head.

[(Anonymous)]

1984

I was about 11 and it was the first Orwell that I ever read. To this day, I'm a massive fan. I guess it was the first political book I read too so it had a profound impact on me. Whenever I read about totalitarian/police states I always relate it back.

~crazyviolin

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Oooh yes! I just finished reading The Irrational Season for the first time last week. I really liked it. I've read the first two in that series as well but not the last one yet.

What else of her nonfiction would you recommend?

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Is The Good Girl Revolution her third book? I've read Girls Gone Mild and A Return to Modesty (I thought GGM was very good and ARtM was so-so).