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Chatterbox: Blab About Books
Books That Changed Your Life! (so far)
I know this...
I know this is a little silly, because, well, none of us are over twenty, but so far, which books do you feel had the greatest effect on the trajectory of your life or your mindset?
I have three.
Third grade. Harry Potter. Obviously. I mean, to quote someone, it "changed the topography of my mind" - it sort of formed my life at the foundation, you know? I can't even trace the way it changed my life, because it formed it.
Fourth grade and onward, but particularly sixth grade - the Tiffany Aching subset of Discworld. This one's less well-known, undeservedly so, but the protagonist and I have so much in common, and when I was nine and she was nine she was a hero in the ways I wanted to be a hero, a hero in the way I believed I could be a hero someday! We thought in similar ways, we had all the same insecurities, and I sobbed over the entirety of The Shepherd's Crown. And I mean,
Finally - and this should come as no surprize to anyone who has been around me for .2 seconds - ninth grade (so last year), Les Miserables. (can't include the accent because computers.) I mean, I really don't go a single day without thinking me, and it sort of. Raised my levels of idealism? Not that I wasn't more-or-less an idealist before, but this book just made it really really important to me that belief in the goodness of humanity and the world's capacity for change is hard on a day-to-day basis, but it isn't naive or pointless - in fact, it's necessary. Because the world is changing, the world has changed, and how are we supposed to change the world if we don't believe we can do it?
Plus, it's got a sick digression on the history of the Parisian sewer system, except now my friends make sewer jokes at me just because I enjoyed it.
What about the rest of you?
submitted by Katia
(September 26, 2015 - 11:42 am)
(September 26, 2015 - 11:42 am)
Oh. Wow. I love those books too!
(November 10, 2015 - 12:09 pm)
1; The Hunger Games It really made me think about A: what my parents were saying in the kitchen when I was in the other room B: the harsh reality of life (not that I am really that kind of person. I'm usually I'm more optimistic.
2; Harry Potter I just really loved it. Plus I read it when I was 5 (well I had it read to me) so it was really the first book I understood.
3; Percy Jackson (all of them) I really started a huge phase of Greek mythology, so finally I had somthing unique about me besides the fact that I did Kung Fu.
(November 9, 2015 - 5:21 pm)
[casually hides copy of The Subtle Knife behind my back] I love His Dark Materials, omg. But I guess that Narnia played the role in my life that HDM played in yours, not because I hated it exactly (I actually really loved LWW and the prequel as a kid), but because revisiting it was what gave me the opportunity to critically approach literature and the symbolism within, and look at stories both within and without the context of the author.
Allow me to add a few more:
- Romeo and Juliet, because a realization that I (and most of the people I'd ever talked to) were so woefully wrong about our interpretation of it, ALSO led to feelings about literary analysis. (tl;dr: Romeo and Juliet may have been ~silly teenagers~ but their deaths were not their fault and they weren't as Woefully Stupid as everyone seems to believe they were. like. iIt's obviously not a romance, but it's also not a moralizing story about Those Stupid Teens.)
- Fahrenheit 451 , and not even because I liked it. But it gave me thoughts about humans and books and the associated concepts.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray - my English teacher gave this to me at the end of ninth grade and it sort of changed the way I thought about books on a fundamental level.
(November 15, 2015 - 6:00 pm)
Harry Potter (duh)
ALL of they Percy Jackson books
Artemis Fowl
Warrior cats
Star Wars
(I know Star Wars is not a book but it still had that kind of lasting impact on me.)
(November 25, 2015 - 3:59 pm)