What was the last book that changed your life?

[GayKitten]

Hi all! Yesterday, I was talking with Mommy about what our personal criteria for rating books are -- y'know, like "this book was a solid 4/5" which is......exactly what I opened with saying to her 😅

Anyway, my personal take is that "a 5/5 book should change my life, or significantly alter the way I look at/experience the world". NO BIG DEAL, RIGHT?!

Since lockdown in 2020, I've spent more recreational time reading than ever before -- and I realized that, since then, there have been quite a few of those life-altering, 5-out-of-5 books. (Maybe it's just that reading stuff once you're in your 30s and beyond just....hits different? 🤔 )

So, I was just curious:

What was the last book that changed your life? 

And followups:

• And what impact has it had?
• Have you read it multiple times at different points in your life? How has its impact/effect on you changed over time?
• Do you think others should definitely read it, or do you think it was just a very personally profound experience?

And if you feel so inclined......

Give us your best pitch for why we should add it to our reading list! ❤️ 

[GayKitten]

For me, the most recent life-changer was this introduction to haiku, with poetry in translation spanning ~200 years!

An Introduction to Haiku, by Harold G. Henderson

(I love my super-pretty paperback edition soooo much  the cover art is of a persimmon tree, a very relevant fruit to the last poet covered, Shiki ❤️ )

Beyond simply giving me an overview of what haiku-translated-into-English looks like (and why it is not beholden to the 5-7-5 syllables of Japanese, whose poetic structures are vastly different in form than English), it......opened my eyes to the infinitely unfolding possibilities woven into the utterly vivid images of the poems.

Two things that really stood out to me:

• Learning about kireji (wikipedia [sfw]) started to make me more aware of my own natural surroundings -- learning about the telltale signs of seasons, the locality and timings implied by plants and animal behaviors, and all the non-Western symbolism traditionally associated with many of them.........they have all helped me love my own backyard, my hometown, the woods and the birds and the wind and everything, so much more.
   
• Haiku are a perfect balance between utterly vivid, super-clear imagery......and deeply ambiguous overtones. They are meant to stir up your own memories, and have you fill in the blanks where they exist. For example, if a poem is about observing a bird at dusk, the reader is invited to imagine what the observer is thinking and feeling -- and you are supposed to draw from your own thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences to, in a sense, complete the poem.

Between these two super-cool poetry concepts that are new to me, and the INCREDIBLE and BEAUTIFUL (and often HEARTBREAKING) poetry in the anthology......and how relatively easy it is to memorize such a short poem, and keep thinking about it for a long time......I feel like my perception of the world, and the type of poetic beauty my soul is attuned to, has been transformed forever.

I've even begun writing my own haiku. Over the past 6 weeks or so, I've written and revised ~20-30 of them. A handful of them might even be decent! 😛 

 

So, my pitch for this book:

These are small poems that you can read in a few seconds, and remember/think about anytime -- and learning about them helps you see and appreciate more details about nature and your everyday surroundings! ❤️❤️❤️ 

[Green Dream]

Wow, that's a tall order!  I'm going to have to think on that one a while.  I will be adding your book to my tbr list 📚 as you have pitched it very well. ⭐

[Little kaiya]

For me it's an older book but one I read a couple of times a year since I first read it when it came out in 1985. Tge book in question, Ender's Game. It is a book that is very anthematic for a lit of gifted children. It has a lot of applicable themes and layers in terms of the isolation and pressure applied that goes far beyond biologic age. 

The movie was TERRIBLE as it stripped away everything that made the book great. The book itself, for me, it felt like home and being seen.

[GayKitten]

7 hours ago, Green Dream said:

Wow, that's a tall order!  I'm going to have to think on that one a while.  I will be adding your book to my tbr list 📚 as you have pitched it very well. ⭐

Awwww thank you @Green Dream!!! Please do let me know if you end up diving into it (or into other haiku stuff) -- I'm so curious to hear how you like it!!! ❤️ (and also EAGERLY anticipating your own book-answer! )

[GayKitten]

7 hours ago, Little kaiya said:

For me it's an older book but one I read a couple of times a year since I first read it when it came out in 1985. Tge book in question, Ender's Game. It is a book that is very anthematic for a lit of gifted children. It has a lot of applicable themes and layers in terms of the isolation and pressure applied that goes far beyond biologic age. 

The movie was TERRIBLE as it stripped away everything that made the book great. The book itself, for me, it felt like home and being seen.

Oooooooo GOOD ANSWER @Little kaiya!!! Since lockdown, sci-fi has DEFINITELY been the thing I've been reading most -- and growing up, Ender's Game was SOOOOO important and formative for me as a young teenager (and I LOOOVED Speaker For The Dead as a late-teen, but I've been........more apprehensive to revisit that because of the, uh, very charged themes in it.)

Ender's Game was certainly the first book that married a dark coming-of-age story, an overtly philosophical novel, a GRIPPING and beautifully-told action story (and I LOVE the zoom-out to reveal the truly epic scale), probably the first can-obviously-be-taken-as queer lit I read.......to say nothing of it being one of the last pleasant memories I have of my older brother, who encouraged me to read it (and many other life-changing sci-fi novels as a teenager......he had his own selfish reasons, but I can't deny that his recommendations were *solid*).

Plus -- funny aside -- as a middle-school teacher, the ONLY time I straight-up SHOUTED at a student (for a non-safety reason) was because he spoiled the ending for someone. And I was FURIOUS that a) the AMAZING reveal was ruined, not only for the kiddo but for EVERYONE else in earshot, and b) because it was something that could never be undone. After I calmed down and apologized, that's exactly what I told them: spoiling a story for someone is a permanent mistake you can never take back, and it has a lot of gravity to it. I still think about that kiddo and that day, and I hope it ended up imparting the correct lesson, even if imperfectly presented (though I am ALWAYS proud of owning my mistakes and apologizing to kiddos/teenagers).

Thank you for sharing Kaiya!!! ❤️❤️❤️ I've honestly been holding off on rereading it myself, just because.....I've read SO MUCH sci-fi in the past 4 years, I feel like the experience is going to be COMPLETELY different......and I wanna savor it and make it special. So waiting for that right moment to crack it open. (But first I gotta find the right mass-market paperback edition with the same cover my brother's had......that's part of my process too, hehe.  )

[Green Dream]

Still can't think of any 5 star, life-altering reads so here are "a few books" that have stuck with since reading them.

Anna Karenina - Just read the first and last paragraphs; those are the most poignant - people and families are really no different across space and time, and that includes myself.  (Don't worry about the muddle in the middle.)

Fahrenheit 451 - Life is almost imitating art and that's really scary!

Evgeni Onegin - Love for the antihero/heroine and the richness of storytelling via poetry...this work got me into Russian lit.

Most works by Edith Wharton - love her flow and description of the Gilded Age; how opulent but stifling!

Reading Lol**a in Teran, Maus, and Persepolis- All made me realize how lucky I am to living in a time and place where I have the luxury of freedom of choice.

A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books - It's okay to have a book addiction and look at all these other books worth reading!

Think I'll stop here and get back to my pile o' books.

[GayKitten]

On 4/15/2024 at 6:38 PM, Green Dream said:

Still can't think of any 5 star, life-altering reads so here are "a few books" that have stuck with since reading them.

Anna Karenina - Just read the first and last paragraphs; those are the most poignant - people and families are really no different across space and time, and that includes myself.  (Don't worry about the muddle in the middle.)

Fahrenheit 451 - Life is almost imitating art and that's really scary!

Evgeni Onegin - Love for the antihero/heroine and the richness of storytelling via poetry...this work got me into Russian lit.

Most works by Edith Wharton - love her flow and description of the Gilded Age; how opulent but stifling!

Reading Lol**a in Teran, Maus, and Persepolis- All made me realize how lucky I am to living in a time and place where I have the luxury of freedom of choice.

A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books - It's okay to have a book addiction and look at all these other books worth reading!

Think I'll stop here and get back to my pile o' books.

OOOOOOOO great answers, thank you so much for sharing!!! I have followups to these  so GET READY FOR MY TRUSTY OL' BULLET POINT LIST 😛 

• OMG LOL "Don't worry about the muddle in the middle" is just SUCH a funny and poignant thing to say about soooo many books! I am def stealing this for myself ok alsooooooo so I 100% always mix this up with Jane Eyre, and I have read neither of them. Which one is this, what's the gist of it, and what makes it such an enduring and beautiful classic?
• I JUST PICKED UP A COPY OF FAHRENHEIT 451!!!! I've had other Bradbury novels and short story collections on my to-read list for a looooong time now, but......I still have the itch to skip this one right to the top, hehe! (Also, surprisingly hard to find a cute and intact paperback copy of this anymore! Kiddos REALLY destroyed them in gradeschool, I guess, hehehe)
• OOOOOOO I AM NOT FAMILIAR WITH THIS WORK!!! Who is the author??? I recently read my first entree into Russian lit (A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.........utterly brutal, but one of the best and most beautifully terse books I've ready in my life ❤️ ) so am very curious what other threads to explore, before I try tackling Tolstoy and Lermentov and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov and........... 😅
• Ohhhh I didn't know Edith Wharton's work was set during the Gilded Age! She's another author I.......sadly missed out on (despite having an English lit degree 🤦‍♀️). If there's one novel or short story collection you'd recommend I start with, what should I look for??  
• ahhhhhhhhh I just.........can't say enough good things about Maus. My family has a copy signed by Art Spiegelman. I........often burst out crying when I randomly think of/remember scenes from it. I think it is still unsurpassed as a work of literature by another other comic/comix/graphic novel/graphic format. It is uniquely the best of its kind. (I also think a lot about the time I saw Art Spiegelman speak when I was in college, and he was talking about "neo-sincerity" as a response/movement against the persistent irony of postmodernism.........and indeed, I think neo-sincerity is the only cure for the fatalism and nihilism that has been ascendant my entire adult life.)
• ooooo I don't know about A Reading Diary either!!! tell me about it and how it is feeding our TOTALLY GOOD AND WORTHWHILE book addiction

Thank you again for sharing, I can't wait to hear more about them!!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️ 

[sunniebee]

For me, hands down it's "Demian" by Hermann Hesse! This book latched itself onto my brain ever since I first read it and it's been my favorite book since. It's a bit hard to explain/pitch, but essentially it's about a boy who is growing up and going through the experience of finding himself and figuring out who he is. I read it for the first time in high school and didn't really resonate much with it (despite the fact that it's still good even if you can't outwardly relate to it), but I reread it a little bit ago in college and I finally started to experience sort of what the character was going through. It touches on a lot of things that I feel many teens and young adults kinda go through in their lives (pretending to be someone you're not, learning about sexuality and potentially feeling guilty for it, disobeying your parents for the first time, falling in love, etc) in a really profound way. 

If I can persuade you of how good the writing is, here's a great line from it: “Once more I was trying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period of devastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil from myself.”

I will say there are quite a bit of religious themes, but there's a lot of ways to read into it. I quite enjoyed the religious parts even though I'm not religious myself and in a way the author almost criticizes some elements of religion (again, depending on how you read it). Still, it's worth a read if you like that kind of stuff!

[GayKitten]

2 hours ago, sunniebee said:

For me, hands down it's "Demian" by Hermann Hesse!

OMG great recommendation, thank you for sharing it!!! Me and everyone in my family LOOOOOOVES Siddhartha, and I've been.....a bit overwhelmed and paralyzed by options for moving onto his other books. (Very startling to suddenly NOT having him retell the story of Gautama, which he does.....so so well. The metaphor of the river is just......sublime.)

I've also REALLY gotten into more religious-leaning lit in the past few years, so this might be the right time for me to pick Hesse back up again! Out of all his other books, would Demian be your recommendation for a non-Siddartha starting book too?? ❤️ 

Thank you again!!! Can't wait to hear what else you find in your readings, please do keep sharing!!!  

[GayKitten]

@Green Dream btw I saw a collection of Edith Wharton short stories and novellas as the bookstore the other day, aaaaaaand on your recommendation I picked it up!! I love short story collections, they give me such a great overview of an author’s different talents and stylistic flourishes. When I finally start reading it (my current reading list is LOOOOONG 😅) I’ll let you know how I enjoy it!! Thank you again for the recommendation! 🥰🥰

[Green Dream]

Sorry for the delay; long week at work!  Those stuffies don't pay for themselves, sadly.
 

Wharton's short stories are great and a good place to start, but totally understand if it doesn't jump to the top of the list.  The Age of Innocence is probably my favorite and the film adaptation is gorgeous, even after all these years.  (Interesting side note, Scorsese said it is his most violent film - even above The Godfather series!  There's no physical violence in the afore mentioned work but rather societal tension and control that seems to stifle the soul.)  House of Mirth is also good but the film was better; it didn't hurt that Gillian Anderson played the lead!  The book version is okay but the main character has no backbone or understanding of how the world works...there were many times I just wanted to throw the book across the room.

Evegeni Onegin was written by Alexander Pushkin, one of - if not the - most highly regarded poets in Russia.  His works seem to transcend politics and class divide.  Well worth the read when you have the time.  The opera of this work is heavenly and the English film version (not operatic) is a must for anyone with a melancholy longing for the Byronic era.

It is so cool you got to see Art Spiegelman speak in person!  That one scene in Maus, I think at the beginning when the mom comes in to talk with her son but he was just not having it that day because of things going on in his life, the way she leaves...that part has stuck with me and may have changed how I interact with much older people than myself.  <--going to need to reflect if that was the cause for change or just part of it, as if so, that would most certainly then be a 5 ⭐ book that was life changing.

Alberto Manguel (Reading Diary) eloquently describes everything wonderful about books and reading.  And the interviews he's done at his home(s) are a book hoarder's wet dream!

 

Anna Karenina is the one with the multi-people love chain: guy loves girl who loves other guy who loves other gal who's married to an older man.  Anna's stuck in a loveless marriage but loves her children.  Question is, does she love her children more than this young man in love with her?  In the end, she let's a train decide.

Jane Eyre has a much happier ending than Anna Karenina, both the work and character.  Jane's a gal just trying to make a life for herself without family support.  Takes a job as a governess, eventually meets her charge's caretaker, who ends up showing her there's more to life than work, and you don't have to be beautiful and rich to get there.

So, yep, muddle in the middle - steal away! 😉

[sunniebee]

On 4/20/2024 at 5:12 AM, GayKitten said:

Out of all his other books, would Demian be your recommendation for a non-Siddartha starting book too?? ❤️ 

I haven't actually read Siddhartha, but I've heard so so many good things!! I do know that it is very very different from Demian and a few of his other works that involve school or growing up in some way, so I'm not too sure how good of a transition it is from Siddhartha but I still recommend it! I've been slowly working through his books myself so I've only read Demian and Beneath the Wheel, but I think I'll make Siddhartha my next pick! Thank you haha 😁

[lilpincess]

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It works on so many levels. Before this book, I didn't have an overall favorite book- my favorite depended on genre and mood. But this book is everything to me. Reading it was like coming home. It makes me laugh and cry and it's cozy, and it's where I go when I'm having a bad day (or week or month or year lol). I am ecstatic that the sequel comes out soon. I also got to meet the author, and of all the authors I've met, he is my absolute favorite. 

[lilpincess]

On 4/12/2024 at 8:31 AM, Little kaiya said:

For me it's an older book but one I read a couple of times a year since I first read it when it came out in 1985. Tge book in question, Ender's Game. It is a book that is very anthematic for a lit of gifted children. It has a lot of applicable themes and layers in terms of the isolation and pressure applied that goes far beyond biologic age. 

The movie was TERRIBLE as it stripped away everything that made the book great. The book itself, for me, it felt like home and being seen.

That movie was a TRAVESTY!

[lilpincess]

On 4/19/2024 at 3:12 PM, GayKitten said:

OOOOOOOO great answers, thank you so much for sharing!!! I have followups to these  so GET READY FOR MY TRUSTY OL' BULLET POINT LIST 😛 

• OMG LOL "Don't worry about the muddle in the middle" is just SUCH a funny and poignant thing to say about soooo many books! I am def stealing this for myself ok alsooooooo so I 100% always mix this up with Jane Eyre, and I have read neither of them. Which one is this, what's the gist of it, and what makes it such an enduring and beautiful classic?
• I JUST PICKED UP A COPY OF FAHRENHEIT 451!!!! I've had other Bradbury novels and short story collections on my to-read list for a looooong time now, but......I still have the itch to skip this one right to the top, hehe! (Also, surprisingly hard to find a cute and intact paperback copy of this anymore! Kiddos REALLY destroyed them in gradeschool, I guess, hehehe)
• OOOOOOO I AM NOT FAMILIAR WITH THIS WORK!!! Who is the author??? I recently read my first entree into Russian lit (A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.........utterly brutal, but one of the best and most beautifully terse books I've ready in my life ❤️ ) so am very curious what other threads to explore, before I try tackling Tolstoy and Lermentov and Dostoyevsky and Chekhov and........... 😅
• Ohhhh I didn't know Edith Wharton's work was set during the Gilded Age! She's another author I.......sadly missed out on (despite having an English lit degree 🤦‍♀️). If there's one novel or short story collection you'd recommend I start with, what should I look for??  
• ahhhhhhhhh I just.........can't say enough good things about Maus. My family has a copy signed by Art Spiegelman. I........often burst out crying when I randomly think of/remember scenes from it. I think it is still unsurpassed as a work of literature by another other comic/comix/graphic novel/graphic format. It is uniquely the best of its kind. (I also think a lot about the time I saw Art Spiegelman speak when I was in college, and he was talking about "neo-sincerity" as a response/movement against the persistent irony of postmodernism.........and indeed, I think neo-sincerity is the only cure for the fatalism and nihilism that has been ascendant my entire adult life.)
• ooooo I don't know about A Reading Diary either!!! tell me about it and how it is feeding our TOTALLY GOOD AND WORTHWHILE book addiction

Thank you again for sharing, I can't wait to hear more about them!!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️ 

I love the "don't worry about the muddle in the middle" too!

[lilpincess]

On 4/24/2024 at 10:58 PM, Green Dream said:

Sorry for the delay; long week at work!  Those stuffies don't pay for themselves, sadly.
 

Wharton's short stories are great and a good place to start, but totally understand if it doesn't jump to the top of the list.  The Age of Innocence is probably my favorite and the film adaptation is gorgeous, even after all these years.  (Interesting side note, Scorsese said it is his most violent film - even above The Godfather series!  There's no physical violence in the afore mentioned work but rather societal tension and control that seems to stifle the soul.)  House of Mirth is also good but the film was better; it didn't hurt that Gillian Anderson played the lead!  The book version is okay but the main character has no backbone or understanding of how the world works...there were many times I just wanted to throw the book across the room.

Evegeni Onegin was written by Alexander Pushkin, one of - if not the - most highly regarded poets in Russia.  His works seem to transcend politics and class divide.  Well worth the read when you have the time.  The opera of this work is heavenly and the English film version (not operatic) is a must for anyone with a melancholy longing for the Byronic era.

It is so cool you got to see Art Spiegelman speak in person!  That one scene in Maus, I think at the beginning when the mom comes in to talk with her son but he was just not having it that day because of things going on in his life, the way she leaves...that part has stuck with me and may have changed how I interact with much older people than myself.  <--going to need to reflect if that was the cause for change or just part of it, as if so, that would most certainly then be a 5 ⭐ book that was life changing.

Alberto Manguel (Reading Diary) eloquently describes everything wonderful about books and reading.  And the interviews he's done at his home(s) are a book hoarder's wet dream!

 

Anna Karenina is the one with the multi-people love chain: guy loves girl who loves other guy who loves other gal who's married to an older man.  Anna's stuck in a loveless marriage but loves her children.  Question is, does she love her children more than this young man in love with her?  In the end, she let's a train decide.

Jane Eyre has a much happier ending than Anna Karenina, both the work and character.  Jane's a gal just trying to make a life for herself without family support.  Takes a job as a governess, eventually meets her charge's caretaker, who ends up showing her there's more to life than work, and you don't have to be beautiful and rich to get there.

So, yep, muddle in the middle - steal away! 😉

Love Edith Wharton!

[Green Dream]

2 hours ago, lilpincess said:

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It works on so many levels. Before this book, I didn't have an overall favorite book- my favorite depended on genre and mood. But this book is everything to me. Reading it was like coming home. It makes me laugh and cry and it's cozy, and it's where I go when I'm having a bad day (or week or month or year lol). I am ecstatic that the sequel comes out soon. I also got to meet the author, and of all the authors I've met, he is my absolute favorite. 

Going to add this one to my TBR list!

[lilpincess]

45 minutes ago, Green Dream said:

Going to add this one to my TBR list!

I haven’t read every book of his (yet), but I’ve read almost all of it, and i have loved everything I’ve read! But House in the Cerulean Sea is my favorite

[Little kaiya]

2 hours ago, lilpincess said:

That movie was a TRAVESTY!

The movie missed everything that made the book good. I understand what makes the book good doesn't make for good cinematic returns but ugh . . . They should have just left it as a book.