Is there a seminal book or literary character you modeled yourself after?
Did Catcher In The Rye speak to you? How did To Kill A Mockingbird change you?
Or was it something more obscure?
What genres are your favorite now, as an adult?
Photo courtesy of Bengt Nyman
As much as I loved all the books mentioned, I would have to say Herman Hesse’s Demian really hit home for me at the time I read. While Emil Sinclair’s situation was so out there, I couldn’t help but connect to the character and feel that is is one of the top books to make me what I am today.
Back when I believed in heroism, Tolkien (Hobbit ++), because that is the kind of hero I wanted to be.
Discovering my sexuality, Donaldson (Thomas Covenant books), because of pain archiving.
Two decades of Cook (Dark company, etc), because of dark humor.
As an MRA, Orwell (1984), because that is the kind of world we are becoming.
The “his dark materials” series really hit home for me.
Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins.
Dune, Frank Herbert.
I’m with but Julie and Noah:
Still LIfe With Woodpecker (read it in my late teens, explains a LOT)
Lolita
The Poisonwood Bilbe (Barbara Kingsolver)
Dune! Absolutely! 😀 Very homophobic though.
Dune….
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
contemplating that helped me find peace in quite a few dark hours as a teen.
Seth Godin’s Linchpin. For those that have read it, you understand. For those who have not, prepare to be motivated to push forward with the ideas that have been brewing in your mind and soul. Be prepared to ask yourself the question, “why have I not done that?” Those who ship win. Thanks, Seth.
I think probably the first book that really changed my life would be Tad William’s Otherland series. As I read it I felt like the entire world was opening up for me. The cast of characters and the plot are so huge that it can get a bit confusing, but what was amazing was how many new ideas I was being presented with when I read it. I was around 11-12 at the time, and this was the first time I’d read a story and really absorbed the fact that it was being told by someone with a completely different… Read more »
“Hooking Up With Tila Tequila” ….hilarious and fun read….it also showed me the way to just tell people to go f*** themselves (at least in my head) and to just go ahead and live my life despite all the haters and emotional vampires in my life…[In real life, she’s had some weird and sad goings on….but the book is still great fun!]
My literary voice is somewhere between Ray Bradbury (jnsightful and addictive author) and Malcolm Gladwell (Non-fiction journalist, but a man I would still define as literary genre.) Bradbury taught me that truth and ideas are integral to society, and that any other attempts have deeply dangerous implications.
There are great books, but my life was changed by this little book called, “The Power of TED”.
It smells like it might be some little cult book or something but its not. It’s just a simple little book about how to stop speaking from the victim space and start speaking from the creator space. Simple but utterly life changing in huge ways.
http://ow.ly/a3GSb
For me there are two:
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, which gave me the strength I needed to survive the life I was living as a ten year old, and which opened up a world where wonder, agony, and triumph can all coexist.
And The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which lays bare the nightmare that our society becomes when people lose track of each others’ basic humanity and treat one another as commodities from which to extract the most profit. The most important book in American political history.
As much as I’m loathe to admit it (considering Card’s current politics), I absolutely loved Ender’s Game, particularly as I read it while I was still a kid. The bit I remember really hitting home with me is when Ender’s in the shuttle and the kids are picking on him and he’s just thinking – what did I do to you, why won’t you leave me alone?
Funny, I was just thinking of that one.
How frustrating is it that Ender’s Game (a book that probably touched the lives of a lot of lgbt nerd kids) was written by such a devoutly anti-lgbt man? Ugh.
People often understand their own deamons best of all. This happens often. Very often.
Really? I didn’t know that.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
A world of language and possibility opens up if you discover that book at the right age. I did.
R A Heinlein’s “I will fear no evil”, “Stranger in a strange land”,”Time enough for love” All read the first of many times in 4th grade….warped my little mind. Immortality/ethics/sex,body change/alternate religion……the biggest one being that women like sex just as much as guys….that took some time to truly believe. And that when kissing just focus on the kiss, not copping a feel, thinking about later on…exist for just that moment….that really helped later on.
It was the same here, I read “Stranger in a Strange Land” for the first time when I was in 7th grade and it definitely changed my life.
To this day I often wonder silently “What would Jubal Harshaw think?” and since he was the obvious mouthpiece for Heinlein this usually amounts to “What would Heinlein think?”
There was something about Heinlein’s characters that was unquestionably masculine, but in an open and accepting way. They could value individualism in all its forms, without regard to race, sex, or sexual orientation. It’s definitely something I strive for to this day.
Stranger in a Strange Land for me as well, it addressed being outside of a social group yet biologically of it, sex, relationships, law, government and religion in ways that make me question whatever the mainstream believes. The idea that people could be trained to recognise the truth (True Witness) and respected for it.
Had my 13 year old daughter read it…..She said it was very eye opening……she went on to read most of the rest of my Heinlein collection……but she’s read Stranger 4 times in the last year.
“The Principles of Social Competence” has touched the lives of men around the world: http://goo.gl/obiC