A Book That Changed Your Life

All right. This topic is for people who've read a certain book that's change the way they perceive life, or anything.

I've read plenty of books, but I think the ones that were most influential were the Harry Potter Series. They taught me words I use today and basically got me into the gifted program at my school and jump-started my school career and made me who I am today!

But I have to admit, there are a couple runners up...

The Isabel Factor—There's always going to be people who change the way you think and open your mind, change your perspective, and change who you are. Isabel was one of those people. It taught me that there's a solid thing, and an invisible thing—you just have to figure out what they are for yourself.

This Lullaby—The most romantic book I have ever read in my natural born life. I love this book.

Looking for Alaska—I know I already posted a topic about this book, but I think it changed how I think about religion. Where exactly DO you go after you die? Or do you just stay a memory, forgotten eventually and visible only in photographs? That was the main question. And awesome book, made me cry.

What about you guys? Have you read books that changed your life as you know it?

 

"Gray's Anatomy"

 

I don't think any book has straight up changed my life but each one has pushed me just that little bit further down the path of truth or freedom.

In a time of my life when i felt utterly beaten by the world, Kesey's "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" gave me a reason to try and occupy a space in the universe rather than just go mad and fritter away. "Factotum" by Bukowski and "Lonesome Traveller" by Kerouac inspired me to just drift and start letting go of my money, fear and my 'normal life'. "The Way of the Earth" by T.C. Mcluhan is full of the most diverse and mind expanding wisdom from cultures around the world. That and "One straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoku made me try and see myself in the Earth. Ghandi's autpbiography was pretty boring but in the first parts it really inspired a lot of thriftiness and thoughtfulness in my life.

Other books like Brave new world, Lord of the Rings, Crime and Punishment, Homage to Catalonia i guess just filled me with excitement and showed me the power of storytelling.

Its not necessarily my favourite set of books, but I do owe a lot to Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" series. They really sowed a lot of seeds for rethinking human life on this planet. Quinn's autobiography was also good, very honest and direct. I reccommend it to anyone with ambitions to change the world, but suffer from self hatred.

 

well, Fight Club did, but I saw the movie first

Invisible Monsters also gave me some new perspectives on life and such

and Anthony Burgess books always do

 

double post

 

Eh, we always knew you were a cynical bastard

 

Lenin - Imperialisme as the highest ...
I don't know the english translation.
What truly struck me with this book is one of it's first sentences:
The wealth of this wolrld is in the hands of 5%, or when measured loosely 10%, of the worlds populace.

And I truly thought: "Wow, that still is that way"
There are many more great things in this book, but this one truly struck my soul.

 

i've read a lot of books. most of them have changed me. but above all,

the little prince.

i don't even know what to say about that book. if i could only have one material possesion, it would be the one.


other books that changed my life:
the pippi longstocking series - taught me how to be spontaneous, weird, adventurous, and random and see the fun and wonder in everything.

the tao of pooh/the te of piglet - taught me to relax, be kind, be happy, and appreciate life.

conversations with god - showed me that everything in life has a purpose, and everything in existence is perfect. there is no such thing as good and bad, and the only two emotions are fear and love. it taught me how to pray (a real prayer, not a beg for something), and have faith that i will always get exactly what i need.

stargirl - gave me a realistic role model, showed me that there are people in this world who are genuinely selfless and good and i can be one of them.

go ask alice - made me want to do drugs .

 

this might sound weird but when I was 17, I sat and read Douglas Coupland's Generation X and his other book Life After God. It was such honest writing that I totally felt in synch with, the characters I totally idealized with, it was kind of cool. They were both good reads at a very weird and lonely point in my life.

 

*Closes eyes*

*Cradles head in hands*

*Shakes head at people who said TV Shows or Movies...*

 

wait... why?

 

because i think if i could memorize that book, and practice everything i can learn from it in my life, every day, i would never be sad or angry or bored or jaded or lonely ever again. it's enough to make me euphorically happy, no matter what is going on.

 

what is it about?? ( the little prince )

 

you really have to read it....

 

but.... it's such a boring book...

PS I like the new sig

 

I don't know if a specific book as noticeably changed my life but as a whole Dr. Seuss' works have changed my life.

Oh wait...looking at my bookshelf I see Astral Dynamics, which definitely changed my life. The change wasn't immediate, though I see now, a few years after I read it how it has changed me. I guess I'm not even sure if that book specifically changed my life but it started me on a gigantic adventure and thought stream. It's ultimately probably the reason why I ended up at this forum, for example.

brad

 

All the books about don Juan by Carlos Castaneda have changed my life. I recommend them to everyone.

 

the little prince isn't boring! i could understand (sort of) how someone might possibly find the story itself boring (although it's hard to imagine).... a guy lost in a desert... a little boy who went to other planets, was friends with a fox, loved a flower, and at the end more-or-less commits suicide. but it's full of metaphors and meaning. i hate to break it down in a text-book ruining the poetry kind of way, but the book deals with:

the way adults stifle creativity and natural wonder for things that don't matter (drawing number one, all the different men on the different planets)

the ability to see things with an open mind and find different possibilities, instead of a mental automatic label system (drawing number one, the box with the sheep, describing a friend to an adult)

how things which are not unique or special in and of themselves become priceless to us because we love them and care about them, and took time to understand them (the fox and the rose)

how loving is always worth it, even though it might hurt, because in the end you will always have reminders of a happiness you otherwise couldn't have known (the wheatfields, the laughing stars)

sillyness of our society, where we do pointless and not-fun things for no reason (the people on the trains, the men on the planets)


it's really hard to list these things out, because it's more a feeling and an understanding than an actual bunch of lessons to be learned. i think the book encompasses all of life and shows it in an innocent and honest way, it makes it easier to see what's really going on without being swallowed by the illusions we normally live in.


and thanks

 

no that's my point exactly, the metaphors mean shit to me when they are not expressed in a nice way
like fortune cookie philosophy, that zen metaphor bullshit, it's stylish, so it seems to mean more
or like a chuck palahniuk book or something

the story itself bores the crap out of me, and therefore the metaphors just kinda fly past me

maybe if they were even revolutionary ideas, then that would make up for the shitty story, but these things are all more or less logical to me

satire is alot better to me when you can relate to it (i.e. Colbert Report, South Park, Baseketball, Wayans Bros. crap, Palahniuk books, etc.)

 

I loved the little prince XD


Anyway...the book that really changed my life was the Tao Te Ching. I firts read it at about 19, after a good five years of soul-searching and being a quasi-agnostic pagan-ish eclectic occultist. I've kept a copy in my pocket ever since, and can honestly say it's definately changed my life for the better in basically every way.