What books/stories have made a difference in your life?

lilgreengal

lilgreengal

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And why - be it in terms of sharing insight, changing a perspective, being a catalyst for enlightenment, inspiration to make you want to be better, or sheer, unadulterated fun relief etc?

if relevant, include the age-range/life stage that the particular book appealed to you as well?

Would love to hear some reading recommendations. =) Been re-reading South Of the Border, West of the Sun, by Murakami, and The Alchemist by Coelho. Old strings that resonate.
 
East of Eden by John Steinbeck, opened me to the realization of having a choice in our suffering.
 
My eye opener was "what type am i?" by renee baron. It's what got me here.

I remember glancing at a book I wish I would have got called 'if you're going to eat at the fridge pull up a chair'. It had some really interesting stuff in it.
 
I would say Umberto Eco's Foulcault's pendulum. I've read it five or six times and every time I get something new and insightful out of it. You can read it in so many ways. He's a professor of semiotics and a historian.
Here's a good plot summary by a reader at goodreads.com:

Willrad
Imagine three sarcastic, over-educated editors who work at a vanity publisher. Owing to their occupation, they naturally end up reading an abundance of books about ridiculously grand conspiracy theories and occult societies - the Freemasons, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati (Bavarian and otherwise), and so on. So they start to play a sort of free-association game: Let's connect all these things, using the same half-mad logic as the authors of these books, into one grand design. Thus The Plan is born.

But they're too good at it. The Plan starts to get away from them. After so long immersed in the dream-logic of conspiracy theories you can form seemingly-natural (and ominous) connections between any pair of things. So when strange and ominous things do happen, when the pieces seem to start falling into place, is it just coincidence? Are the things they thought they were making up real?

The story of The Buddha as a child of seven in a theater was very powerful.

Another one would be Tao Te King, Stephen Mitchell translation
which seems to be posted online here: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html
The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.

The latest one is the gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, which can be read in this link:
http://www.gnosis.org/library/hymnpearl.htm
 
The Zahir by Paulo Coelho (when I was younger), the article The Beckoning Fair Ones by Elizabeth Hand and, more recently, sound novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni (specially the last episode).
 
thank you all for sharing. I think I'll go down to the bookstore sometime this weekend to browse some of your titles. Books have always been a sort of salve and enlightenment.

Had heard about Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture for a while, but never got down to reading it. Searched for it just today, and not done with it yet, but some points have hit home. Perhaps it may lend light to someone here too: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ The download links to the video and the text transcript are available there.

happy friday!
 
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the best books I've read; it recently gave me a gentle push in a direction I had been trying to go for a while. Related is the Tao Te Ching , though it was considerably more difficult for me to understand, and I ought to read it again for clarity. Crime and Punishment helped me ascend a hill I'd been trudging through for a few years. The Canterbury Tales has been great for amusement - sometimes I can't but laugh at how silly we humans are.

There are others, but they mostly fall under or expand ideas contained in the above.
 
Sun Tzu's "Art of War"
Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"
Alexandre Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo"
 
There's a good number of them... I'll just list a few for now - "Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century", "Call of the Wild", and "Faust".
 
These are books I have been reading again and again since I was a child.

The Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes version Foreword by C.J. Jung. Always offers a different perspective, insight, or food for thought.

Edith Hamilton's translations of Greek mythology. I love to get lost in these wonderful stories.

American Indian Myths and Legends. A wonderful collection of the art of storytelling and teaching through storytelling.
 
Definitely The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs… I discovered that book in high school and I keep going back to it… actually, I love almost everything he ever wrote. Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut… I like some of JG Ballard's more 'out there' stuff-- and definitely Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges-- totally mind-bending and it leaves you wondering how he DID that. I haven't really read anything else that has really pulled me in like that for a long time.
 
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig
The Namesake - Lahiri (I'm Indian-American)
 
The Sea-Wolf - Jack London
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
The Falling Girl - Dino Buzzatti
The Spiral - Italo Calvino
Tumbling - Kermit Moyer
Lust - Susan Minot
The Prophet from Jupiter - Tony Earley
B. Traven Is Alive and Well in Cuernavaca - Rudolfo Anaya
So Much Water So Close to Home - Raymond Carver
The Man Who Knew Belle Starr - Richard Bausch
The Year of Getting to Know Us - Ethan Canin (ignore the POS film that dominates google results)
You're Ugly, Too - Lorrie Moore

I could keep going. Literature and good stories are the reason to rise and set, and live on through the night.
 
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Marquis de Sades Juliette has done so much for me, together with discussions about his philosphy with one of the researchers at my university. I relate to Juliette: even though people fuck her up, she stands tall. She even gains strength from being abused, and then she fucks them up herself. The whole concept of being a victim depends on you allowing yourself to be a victim. If you don't let yourself become one, then your'e in control to do what ever you want with your life. Aknowledge your position, yes you're in the gutter, then get up. To me, it's a feminist story where women are as evil and intelligent as men, and that means alot coming from an author from the 1800th century. I wrote and essays defending Sade, since he is considered a degenerate, dangerous pervert in Sweden. Turned out to be rather unpopular.... :noidea:
 
Long story short, I developed an aversion to reading for pleasure. However, a well-read friend of mine (INTJ) endeavors to sway me otherwise. I have only read two (non-academic) books in the last five years, both at his suggestion. I was pleasantly surprised, and hope to make a habit of recreational reading. Books were as follows:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra- Friedrich Nietzsche
Dream Story/Traumnovelle- Arthur Schnitzler
 
Whiskers said:
Long story short, I developed an aversion to reading for pleasure. However, a well-read friend of mine (INTJ) endeavors to sway me otherwise. I have only read two (non-academic) books in the last five years, both at his suggestion. I was pleasantly surprised, and hope to make a habit of recreational reading. Books were as follows:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra- Friedrich Nietzsche
Dream Story/Traumnovelle- Arthur Schnitzler
Click to expand...

Oh noez, Nietzsche! : P

I'm personally not a big fan... I do really like some of his ideas, but he has such a negative outlook (he damages his own work... imo).
 
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The Jungle - That probably started me down the path I'm taking at the moment - politically, ethically, etc. It's a "classic" so read it and you'll see what I'm talking about!
 
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