June 23, 2008
Books that changed my life.
What is it about people and lists of books that changed their lives? Do books really change lives? Or did we just happen to be reading them at key moments? I’m sure in some cases books helped people develop their personal philosophies, find the right job, or get the girl, but in the end, this is one English major who is skeptical of the lasting ability of literature to really, truly, change things.
I come about this skepticism in the most obvious way: I can’t for the life of me think of a book that really changed my life. I can think of bits and pieces, small quotes, that I’ve used to piece together my personal outlook on life. I can think of books that maybe stuck in my consciousness a bit more than others. I can think of books that made me do specific things. But an entire narrative that I can say made me make a fundamental shift like losing or gaining my religion or chucking it all to become a woodworker in Vermont? Not really.
KK’s post at Cool Tools is more optimistic:
Books still have the power to change lives. Which ones have changed yours?
I don’t mean merely great books, or memorable ones, or favorite ones. I mean books that altered your behavior, changed your mind, redirected the course of your life. Books as levers.
As a bonus, the post includes another list of lists at the end.
So, without further ado, I give you the list of books that maybe kinda sorta changed my life just a little bit in some small way and without a lot of fuss and in no particular order:
Rabbit Run, by John Updike. I was 16 and this was one of the books on the grid of books my English teacher let us chose from. Like everyone else I read Catcher in the Rye and was appropriately blown away. I read Cat’s Cradle and felt briefly, fleetingly, clever. But I was one of a handful who chose to read Rabbit Run, and as far as I know I was the only one who commenced to reading Updike’s entire oeuvre. I felt sympathy for Rabbit, and even at 16 I could see the beginnings of myself in him. Caulfield would probably have considered Rabbit a phony like everyone else trying to get him to conform, but I though Rabbit was genuine in a thoughful but pathetic way.
Collected Poems by Wendell Berry. When the woman who would become my wife and I first started dating, in fact on our first date, we found that we both had an affinity for Berry. I began reading Berry because I thought it lent credibility to my eco-intellectualism (see previous post). This was the era when I began to get heavily into environmentalism, the budding organic movement, and the presevation of farm land (see comments on the previous post). But Berry also spoke to the more traditional me, the one that believed in things like love, and marriage, and family. He also spoke to the political me. His poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” pretty much says it all:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Hang around me long enough and you might hear me refer to a solution to a problem as a “Huck Finn solution” or a “Tom Sawyer solution.” This refers, of course, to the sadly weak last part of Huckleberry Finn when Tom Sawyer makes an appearance and tries to talk Huck into all sorts of convoluted ways to get out of a predicament, while Finn tries to find the path of least resistance. But the middle part, from when Huck finds Jim on the Island until he meets up with Sawyer, is a phenomenal story that parallels the maturation of a young America trying to find itself (put that on your back cover, Penguin Classics!) Twain asked that we not analyze it, but he’s dead now.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. There are a handful of authors that seem to make it onto a lot of these kinds of lists. Tolkien is one. I chose The Hobbit because, if my half-brothers hadn’t given it to me one Christmas, I may never have become the reader I am today. Because of The Hobbit I read Lord of the Rings. Then The Once and Future King, Dune, the Dragonrider novels, and Farenheit 451. Because of a summer devouring Fantasy and Science Fiction, I spent another summer reading War and Peace, then every summer after that reading a lot of books. Maybe I even majored in English because of The Hobbit.
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. Lewis is another one. I could take or leave the Narnia books. They just didn’t grip me the way Lord of the Rings or even The Chronicles of Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander did. But this novel helped coalesce in me what was to become a key element of my personal theology, expressed best by Hamlet in the eponymous Shakespeare play: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Essentially, how can we, beings of Earth, delude ourselves into believing we can begin to comprehend a divinity, if one exists?
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Rand is another one. And I’m totally kidding. You knew that right? And I can’t really comment on her philosophy because I couldn’t make it more than a hundred pages through this plodding, thick, one-dimensional novel.
Getting Things Done, by David Allen. Groan. Yes, I am a member of this cult. But frankly, this was the first “getting organized” book I’d read (and I’d read a lot of them) that really started to make sense to me. Allen’s system has enough room in it to tinker with it to make it your own, but enough structure that someone with a little bit of willpower could fully implement it. Unfortunately, I don’t have much willpower.
Le Rouge et Le Noir, by Stendhal. Where do I begin with this book. Oh yeah. I read it in French! En francais! Boo-ya!
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Interesting list! I share your skepticism, but, like you, couldn’t resist posting my own list:
http://www.sveldheim.com/Site/Blog/Entries/2008/6/24_Books_that….html
Re: your list:
I’ve been convinced by my co-teacher that the final chapters of “Huck” are necessary to firmly establish how much Huck is breaking from Tom’s world, and to reinforce that he hasn’t just escaped from his home, he’s escaped from the illusions that make the unacceptable (viz. slavery) acceptable to Tom and, by extension, to the rest of the myth-ridden south. Agree/disagree?
“Out of the Silent” is indeed marvelous. Though goddamnit if Lewis didn’t need, some time in his life, to sit down with a thoughtful, ethical scientist; his men of science, whether evil Dr. Weston or blinded-by-rationalism atheist dwarves, are such straw men it’s fairly infuriating.
Sometime you’ll have to explain GTD to me. It seems sensible, but I can’t, somehow, get my head around it.
I somehow managed to get through all of school without ever reading Catcher in the Rye. I suspect the niche of angry outcast adolescent fiction was filled by Elfquest. Which may explain entirely too much about me.
June 24, 2008 @ 9:04 am
My list is going to be a little…different. Fiction doesn’t generally hold life changing power for me. I read and like it, but it’s more entertainment for me than anything deeper.
Having said that:
1984 – I read most of this novel (didn’t finish) unprompted and unassisted as an 11 year old in 1984. I didn’t get the deeper themes at work, but I very much got that authority and repetition of life, job, etc. are oppressive. I’ve had problems with authority since being suspended in Kindergarten for calling my teacher one of Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words. 1984 taught me that I wasn’t the only one.
Affluenza – This book started me on the road to referring to nearly everything I own as “crap.” Life is about experiencing, not owning. I firmly believe that having less stuff improves your quality of life. This seems obvious, but the garages in my neighborhood say it’s not: The solution to too much stuff is not a bigger house, it’s less stuff. When I want to buy new stuff, I grade it on a “How long of a trip to Europe/Hawaii could I take with this money” scale. Which leads to…
Rick Steves Europe through the Back Door 2006 – Yeah, it’s a guidebook. A guidebook to a magical world where I get to walk everywhere and where awe-inspiring works of art and landmarks are around every corner. A place where there are no gang bangers, frat boys, strip malls, parking lots, jacked up 4X4’s or religious zealots, and where the politics make sense. In this magical world, museums outnumber prisons and all the buildings are beautiful. Obviously, the place is more life changing than the book, and I’ve certainly got my Europe-colored glasses on when I talk about it, but the guidebook to this wonderful place helped me change the way I think about the world.
Into Thin Air/Touching the Void – These two absolutely searing books about survival in extreme conditions made me realize the almost unbelievable limits of human endurance. I’m not climbing Everest any time soon, but these books helped me push myself to try things I might never have attempted.
Understanding Exposure – This is a wonderful how-to manual for taking good photographs. It set me on a path for doing something I greatly enjoy and can share with other people for the rest of my life.
June 24, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Matt; I agree with the interpretation that the end parts of Huck Finn are necessary but I bemoan the fact that they aren’t as engaging as the middle section. Plus, I’m not entirely sure they don’t end up telling a different story. I’ll let you know though. I’m in the process of re-reading it, but it’s been slow.
Carl; “Affluenza” got you to call everything “crap”? You sure you can’t attribute that one to Carlin? I can.
June 24, 2008 @ 11:58 am
nah, that’s just other people’s stuff.
I read “Atlas Shrugged” primarily so I could argue with Objectivists about its merits or lack of same on the Internet. I suppose that says something about me…it’s not an easy book, or a good book, but it’s a fun book to argue about.
June 24, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
These all tripped out of my head way too easily. That must be an MLIS for you.
1. A house like a lotus. M. L’Engle. Unlike the rest of the world I didn’t read A wrinkle in time in the 6th grade. I’d never even heard of L’Engle until my senior year of college, when my roommate Emily had this book. So I borrowed it and was hooked. So this book changed my life because it got me to finally read all those books I’d missed from childhood. (Want to know what I was reading in junior high – Ian Flemming. God I wish I was kidding)
2. Pride & Prejudice. J. Austen. Again, everyone I knew in school had read this as kids (I’m talking to you Cyn! Ms. “I read Trollope in the fifth grade”) My all-time favorite novel, and what I consider the height of the english novel. Don’t argue with me or I’ll have to pull out the paper I wrote for Laura Bloxham 15 years ago.
3. Lolita. V. Nabokov. Because I didn’t know the narrator could be lying to you until I read this. Sure Doug Sugano talked about “intentional fallacy” in class, but until this I didn’t really understand. And god I love Nabokov (Pale Fire is another favorite, but that’s because of a long night spent writing a paper about it and calling Jim Luton laughing our asses off)
4. The big sleep. R. Chandler. My first detective novel. Start with the best.
5. Song of the dodo. D. Quammen. Because I didn’t know I had an affinity for science till I read this. Everything made perfect sense and it made me go on a reading spree that lasted five years and covered everything from evolutionary epidemiology to quantum mechanics.
D-Day. S. Ambrose. Let me qualify this one by saying I read it when it first came out, not after Saving Private Ryan. A friend recommended it (actually the same friend who recommended Song of the dod – thanks Bill!). I realized that I could feel very deeply about things from the past, and at the same time be a cold blooded bitch about them. It’s a gift.
7. Sexual anarchy. E. Showalter. Literary criticism is actually fun. And the victorians were seriously fracked. I gave my papaerback copy away to a friend because I thought she’d like it, so my husband gave me two first editions, one american one british, for christmas one year.
8. The club Dumas. A. Perez-Reverte. Want to know why I picked this up at Murder by the Book? I liked the cover. Seriously. I bought this book because I liked the damn cover. And there was nothing on it! It’s dark and there’s the title. But I read it, and then went back and re-read it and then told everyone I knew about it, and then hunted down his other books. And it made me finally appreciate that Milton class from junior year.
9. The sun also rises. E. Hemmingway. I read this when I was 15 or 16 and we were travelling through europe. My mom wanted us to see the world. I read Hemmingway and became prematurely jaded.
10. My garden companion. J. Jobb. I owned this when I was in junior high and my copy got ruined walking home in the rain one day. I mean the damn thing just melted away. For years I searched for it, but I couldn’t rememebr the exact title. Then I found it in a bookstore in Ashland, OR. I love it because it reminds me of when working in a garden all day was all it took for me to be happy.
June 24, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Good post, good list.
I don’t know if I could say any books have “changed my LIFE,” per se, but several have definitely “changed my heart” and hence “changed my MIND.”
Two years ago I never would have said this, but I can say now with confidence the most riveting books I have read have been on Christianity.
It may sound cliche, but the most important read for me was the Bible. I didn’t read it thoroughly until I was 40. I did so with a companion book (by Dr Henrietta Mears called “What the Bible is All About”–highly recommended), and that made all the difference in the world. I couldn’t even begin to describe how it has changed my life. I am so happy (and relieved), to have my OWN perspective of God’s word now, rather than being dependent on others interpretations.
The next one is Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, followed closely by his Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. Mere Christianity is beyond reproach. Even the highest of IQ’s would have a very difficult time arguing its points.
On the secular side a few come to mind: East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Martin Eden, Autobiography of Malcolm X (this was also a riveting read for me many years ago), Crime and Punishment (still my favorite I think), and so many more.
June 25, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
Joe – great list! For someone who was so taken with “Out of the Silent Planet,” I have to admit I never read any of Lewis’ theology. And sadly, I also have to admit that I haven’t read East of Eden, although I’m a great fan of gahhhhh. East of Eden is by Steinbeck! Gaahhhh. I like Steinbeck too.
June 25, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
Yeah, confused Steinbeck and Hemingway. Time to go to bed.
June 25, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
Email me your address and I will send you a copy of Mere Christianity. Honestly. I’d buy it for anyone. But I caution you to ensure the floor beneath you is clear of debris before you start reading it, since your jaw will be resting there.
July 02, 2008 @ 7:57 pm
Argh.. I realized in my orig post I said no books had changed my life.. then I went on to say the Bible changed my life. Der. Ok so I meant to say no books OTHER THAN the Bible have actually changed my life.. but yes,.,. the Bible has.. of course.. definitely.. changed my life. Prior to reading it in full all I knew were passages from it. Ah I am tired, too. Ok bye..
July 02, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
I’m going to add one more – and take the teasing. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. After being in library school for years, and starting to lose hope of ever seeing the end, I’d forgotten about books that keep you up at night because you can’t bear to put them down, and you want to tell everyone you meet about them. I needed a reminder of why I wanted to be a librarian and Twilight delivered.
September 29, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
I was just browsing on here to get ideas for a paper I have to write about my favorite book. It’s The Bell Jar, by the way. But, Molly, I was just wondering, where do you go to school? I’m only a senior in HS, but I am getting ready for college and the real world (woo) and whatnot, and I want to be a librarian when I grow up. I usually just get a funny look when I say that to people, including adults. It’s nice to know that someone is on the same page as me.
Oh, and I feel the same way about Twilight. After spending two years in AP English classes, with night after night of intense reading of “the classics,” which are beautiful in there, own right of course, I needed something that could just keep me up all night because I was enjoying it so much that I didn’t want to put it down. Twilight definitely delivered.
January 25, 2009 @ 8:49 pm