Has a book ever changed you?

[Thomas]

Inspired by the Has a film ever changed you? thread, a thread that changed me.

Though I should have done it 10 years ago as a student, I recently read The Plague by Albert Camus. The core philosophy of its protagonist remains buoyant in my brain, (sometimes) comforting me in episodes of personal anxiety and broader, more abstract depressive thoughts about heat death. There is no 'final victory' over life's plagues, but a 'never-ending fight against terror' in which we must 'strive to be healers', no matter the perceived inevitability of failure.

There was also a line in a Victorian novel I read eight years ago, which discordantly chimed with something in my brain and triggered a severe mental health crisis, the effects of which I'm still dealing with today - but that's a bit personal.

As a teenager I read the disgraced Complete Prose of the disgraced Woody Allen before I knew about his disgrace, and it informed my sensibilities about written humour. Ruined now, obvs. Most recently the lessons of Will Storr's The Science of Storytelling have helpfully embedded themselves, enabling me to appreciate stories (in all forms, from the short story to the documentary) with greater understanding.

Of the many books you voracious readers have enjoyed, which ones have shunted your neural pathways in a particularly notable way?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Read bruce sterling's heavy weather, which for some reason left me with a sense of total apocalyptic doom about the weather I can't shake

Current state of it isn't helping also




Hitchhikers made me feel that it was OK to not know everything, that figuring how to hold yourself in the breeze can be enough

[chveik]

deffo

Céline's Journey to the End of the Night made me acquire a certain misanthropic streak that i can't quite free myself of.

Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy introduced me to the world of thought.

Flaubert's Sentimental Education shaped my views on politics, friendship and love.

[buttgammon]

It's probably a bit cliched, but reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I was 17 was a massive experience. Bits of the book were totally lost on me - the sermon especially, and I wasn't exactly an expert on turn-of-the-century Irish politics as a teenager either - but I still think that book taught me so much about growing up and about art.

Flaubert's Sentimental Education shaped my views on politics, friendship and love.

This was another big one for me. I re-read it recently and found myself realising how much of a big impact it had the first time.

[AliasTheCat]

There were plenty of "Right of Passage" style books in my youth, but if I had to single one thing out it would be Borges' Labyrinths which I picked up around my 30th birthday. Each is an exquisite miniature labyrinth of its own that seems to bear constant re-reading. I would read one of his stories on the tube on the way to work, think about it all day and then re-read it on the way home.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I'm interested in the sentence from the Victorian novel, Thomas, and what it did to your health but not if you really meant that it was (too?) personal.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Ulysses and Raymond Williams' Culture and Society as a teenager without a doubt. At some point I had a bunch of chapters of Anti-Oedipus photocopied for me and that was my entry into modern philosophy. I thought Freud was total bullshit at the time so that helped, but as soon as I read Lacan's seminar on the Purloined Letter my opinion/interest in psychoanalysis 180'd.

If I'm totally honest the biggest influences on my thinking are negative: the great books by those I disagree with the most strongly, especially masters of interpretative and historicist theory like Ricoeur and Gadamer. I spend a lot of my reading of time studying works like Time and Narrative, I get more out of studying work I disagree with but I admire than I do pouring over stuff I find immediately persuasive. I have this ingrained bias that tells me the more I agree with something, the clearer it seems to me, the less I actually understand it. Which is something that I definitely acquired from Irish literature.

So its really Joyce. I don't think if anyone had provoked me to "the fuck is this dialectical identity of contraries bullshit? What on earth is so 'modern' about Vico and Aquinas?" I'd have stayed reading sci-fi and fantasy and been perfectly happy.

[Thomas]

I'm interested in the sentence from the Victorian novel, Thomas, and what it did to your health but not if you really meant that it was (too?) personal.

I know it was a ghoulishly tantalising thing to include in the opening post, but I'm afraid I'd rather not elaborate. And it had nothing to do with the content of the book, really; it was just a chance phrase that prompted an overdue implosion.

I'm impressed by everybody reading (and comprehending, and absorbing) the great tomes in their teenage years. There was I taking weeks to read Perks of Being a Wallflower, using a Freddo wrapper as a bookmark.

[Smeraldina Rima]

No problem, Thomas. Should have listened to you in the first place.

A lot of these make me want to know more about the changes and effective parts of the books.

A recent example I can think of is Middlemarch, which we read together on CaB, and which I thought had an important theme of people coming to the things that they believe and the people they admire through their negative reactions to contrasting backgrounds. The first line looks like a small key to this idea:

'Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.'

And I wrote this about the things being thrown into relief:

Most of the virtues that come to light are defined and exaggerated against relieving backgrounds, often of personal displeasure or irritation:

Dorothea seems to like Casaubon not only because she is set up to by nature but especially because Sir James upsets her at the right time. She then overrates the value of his precision because it opposes Mr Brooke's annoyingly vague mind. But later, at the melancholy side of the house, Casaubon 'has no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background' and there Celia overrates Sir James's common sense thanks to her own irritation at Casaubon: he 'talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning!' Dorothea thinks she dislikes 'exactly' men and enjoys Casaubon disagreeing with her, until it concerns something she is already passionate about at which point Casaubon and Sir James both come into new lights. In the twelfth chapter, Lydgate's expectation of a 'disagreeable routine' and his 'disbelief in Middlemarch charms made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond' which echoes the pattern at the beginning. The narrator also remarks that even the hypothetical greatest man who probably does not exist is vulnerable 'to unfavourable reflections... in various small mirrors'. Here the interesting thing to me was that the characters establish these precarious virtues through reactive displeasure, always reaching their ethics via aesthetic rebounds.

I think that this became a stronger if not a new lens through which I looked at things since then.

[Zetetic]

The Life and Adventures of the Trobadora Beatrice. Some stuff about purpose, finding value in flawed things, being a bit gentler about how old habits die hard, and a bit calmer about what to work towards. Harder to tease apart than "made me think this" or "made me take against this".

Makes me wonder about the The Golden Notebook[nb]I still enjoy that my partner read Lessig's introduction to this, which goes on a bit about hating that people were made to read (her) books under the conditions of them being considered important or relevant, found this oddly powerful and decided not to read any of the rest of it.[/nb] as a ... companion or something. Should possibly try re-reading them together.

Some stuff by Christopher Hill against an excess of theory in thinking about history, but also taking men's beliefs more seriously.

The Dark Philosophers by Gwyn Thomas has given me a greater sense of the place where I live. Something in the line of hearing Aylward talk about Aberfan. I don't know if that's enough?

[Astronaut Omens]

A recent example I can think of is Middlemarch, which we read together on CaB,

Good times!
Middlemarch would probably still be my go-to answer to this question.

As I get older I start to feel that it's not so much any one book that really changes you, its author like the leader of a cult you convert to, so much as the gradual accumulation of multiple viewpoints and esoteric bits of knowledge that you pick up over a lifetime's reading that's the more important transformative thing about books.

Probably with theoretical stuff I tend to get a lot more out of reading a few opposed points of view next to each other- a really good one was Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations paired with Ernest Gellner's book length attack on Wittgenstein, Words and Things. When I was a teenager I had the Penguin version of the Communist manifesto with AJP Taylor's hostile essay on it in the same book and I think it was the fact that they obviously couldn't both be right that really got me engaging with ideas.

[Famous Mortimer]

"John Dies At The End" made me into a vegetarian.

There's a bit where the two hyper-aware main characters look at a chicken sandwich and can tell the thoughts the chicken was having right before it was killed. I thought about this for a few days then realised I couldn't eat meat any more.

[Buelligan]

When I was very small, we had this book about a little rabbit with wings that lived in a wood.  It was a lovely wood.  Lots of other creatures lived very happily in it.  Then humans came with bulldozers.  The End.

[Twit 2]

Barry Bunny Gets Cunted by a JCB (now sadly out of print)

[Small Man Big Horse]

If This Is A Man / The Truce by Primo Levi had an enormous effect on me, to be honest while reading it I struggled with his response to the German's involved in the concentration camps and was full of anger, but it made me realise the best way to respond to such horrifying ordeals, even if I don't know I could replicate it if I suffered like he did.

Christine, The Dead Zone, other Stephen King books I read when 12 or 13 led to my being quite worried and disturbed by sex and how it might be very painful for quite a time, though by the time I eventually lost my virginity such thoughts were long gone.

Whatever Love Means by David Baddiel made me hate David Baddiel.

[JaDanketies]

"John Dies At The End" made me into a vegetarian.

written by a Cracked.com author? Is it worth the read?

The Dice Man,  I believe, helped cement the idea of the right thing to do being inherently unknowable for me.

[Famous Mortimer]

written by a Cracked.com author? Is it worth the read?

The Dice Man,  I believe, helped cement the idea of the right thing to do being inherently unknowable for me.

I really liked it (and the movie, too) so I'd recommend it, but YMMV and all that. Maybe see if your library has it.

[thundarrshirt]

As a teenager I read the disgraced Complete Prose of the disgraced Woody Allen before I knew about his disgrace, and it informed my sensibilities about written humour. Ruined now, obvs. Most recently the lessons of Will Storr's The Science of Storytelling have helpfully embedded themselves, enabling me to appreciate stories (in all forms, from the short story to the documentary) with greater understanding.

Similarly, reading Storr's poorly-titled Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us had a significant impact on my conception of the "self," shaking my received wisdom of there being a core true self that is being occluded by...other things, and instead suggesting that we're a constantly shifting and evolving bunch of stupid molecules. Ego death could've come from trying psychedelics a few years later, or actually reading some philosophy, but it came from this instead.

Oh and reading Tony Hawk's autbiography multiple times as a teenager put me off ever willingly getting on a half pipe to break all my bones.

[nw83]

A lot of the best books that I read in my early twenties, when I went through my first reading stage (before that I just read football autobiographies) - Good Morning, Midnight, Paris Spleen, Revolutionary Road, The Berlin Stories, The Remains of The Day - definitely influenced my personality. Mildly misanthropic, completely unable to take anything seriously because everything is a load of shite, so who cares (read: immature), completely unable to fit into any mildly corporate / hierarchical environment, pretentions of being a flaneur (the two weeks a year that I go on holiday). I blame the books.

When I'm feeling a bit down, remembering bits of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying does help (we're talking slightly 'down' here, nothing more)

Probably once a week, I think 'what's that bit in In Search Of Lost Time that describes exactly this kind of situation / that personality trait that this person I've just met has / this emotion I'm feeling?' and find it. Today it was the 'places are as fleeting as the years' quote about nostalgia as I'm feeling homesick.

[All Surrogate]

It's tricky to rank books on how much they've affected me, but I suspect The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin and The Way Things Work by David Macaulay are strong contenders. I read both when I was a child, and it's hard not to see an influence as I grew up.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/yes-yuo-can-Motivational-Notebook/dp/B08Z2RXXF2




_{(I am a tosser)}

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think I've closed anything and it's immediately turned into a different person, but i'd say some of Vonnegut made me think differently (often it's not really his most heralded books, I really quite like God Bless You Mr Rosewater and Player Piano).

Aside from that there are some bleak books I read quite some time ago that I think about relatively often. Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend and Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square are a couple (really should get around to reading my copies of 20,000 streets under the sky and slaves of solitude!).

[Ferris]

If This Is A Man / The Truce by Primo Levi

Yes, one of the first I thought of, and I had a very similar reaction to it.

The Motorcycle Diaries as a teenager changed the way I thought about the US and South America, and fairness and politics and all that type of thing. The Road changed the way I think about the environment.

[An tSaoi]

God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I know he ended up being a neoliberal hawk, and one of the quintessential professional atheist pricks, but I have to be grateful to him for this book. I had a very religious upbringing, and unlike a lot of other kids in my class, I actually believed it and took it to heart. Not in a positive way, but with a terrible sense of guilt and shame, and the feeling of being constantly watched by a disapproving presence. This book helped me out of it, or at least helped me to break down some of the mental/spiritual scaffolding that I had built around myself.

On that note, honourable mention to The Hero With a Thousand Faces (or was it The Golden Bough? I always get them mixed up), mainly for putting the New Testament on the same level as the other religions and mythologies. A real Emperor's New Clothes moment for me.

The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. This has become a bit of a clichéd self-help book (like The Art of War or that 48 Laws nonsense), beloved by Bill Clinton and asshole businessmen the world over, but it has some good stuff about not letting things you can't control poison your thoughts. It's amazing that a Roman Emperor from 20 centuries ago faced a lot of the same basic internal problems as anyone in the modern day. A lot of it has been turned into internet quotations set against a picture of a lake or some mountains, but when you set aside its trite popularity, it's a genuinely useful book. The word stoicism has been ruined to basically mean "Spock-like", so it's worthwhile reading something that operates under the original meaning.

Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. I was interested in Zen Buddhism for a while, but the supernatural elements put me off. This book is a bit more on the practical side (but not entirely). I'll never be part of any religion again, but there's real wisdom among the bullshit. He explains a lot of the world in an insightful way. It has good straightforward instructions about how to to zazen (meditation). I can't manage the pose without getting pins and needles in my legs, so I didn't keep it up, but it helped me get through a bad patch. And it's just a pleasant, relaxing read.

I suppose you can see my small personal progression through these books: escaping one faith, and then seeking out new philosophies, but not being able to get fully on-board, even though they helped a bit. The search continues.

[Kankurette]

I'm going to get the piss ripped out of me for this, but the Torah.

On a more general level, The Women's Room by Marilyn French had a huge effect on me when I read it as a student. By modern terms, it's problematic, like the depiction of black characters, but it changed the way I saw feminism and politics.

[chveik]

I'm going to get the piss ripped out of me for this, but the Torah.

no you won't, do you really think this place is a hotbed of antisemitism?

[Satchmo Distel]

Fear Of Freedom by Erich Fromm, although I might find it ridiculous now.

[Kankurette]

no you won't, do you really think this place is a hotbed of antisemitism?

No, I'd say the same if I was Christian and it was the Bible. It's a religion thing, not an antisemitism thing.

[madhair60]

funnybones

[Retinend]

Dorothea seems to like Casaubon not only because she is set up to by nature but especially because Sir James upsets her at the right time. She then overrates the value of his precision because it opposes Mr Brooke's annoyingly vague mind. But later, at the melancholy side of the house, Casaubon 'has no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background' and there Celia overrates Sir James's common sense thanks to her own irritation at Casaubon: he 'talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning!' Dorothea thinks she dislikes 'exactly' men and enjoys Casaubon disagreeing with her, until it concerns something she is already passionate about at which point Casaubon and Sir James both come into new lights. In the twelfth chapter, Lydgate's expectation of a 'disagreeable routine' and his 'disbelief in Middlemarch charms made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond' which echoes the pattern at the beginning. The narrator also remarks that even the hypothetical greatest man who probably does not exist is vulnerable 'to unfavourable reflections... in various small mirrors'. Here the interesting thing to me was that the characters establish these precarious virtues through reactive displeasure, always reaching their ethics via aesthetic rebounds.

I totally agree with all of this and would also say Middlemarch was a game-changer for me.

More than with Dostoyevsky, or Dickens, or even the brilliant Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann was the perfection of realism in fiction clearer to me when reading Middlemarch.

I think the great authors of realism such as the aforementioned will always be the greatest novelists, beyond the most inspired of the 20th century modernists, which is a high bar.

So bearing that in mind, I think 2666 by Roberto Bolaño would be my nomination for a book that really felt as if it had changed me. The book is similar to Middlemarch only in so far as it is very grand, sweeping and overwhelming in scope. A great, sweeping novel like Middlemarch or 2666 or [insert your preferred epic] really changes you when you finish it and you have contained all the complexity and the whole thing at once in your mind for a particular time. It's as close a person like me gets to a spiritual experience.

So for me the topic title is moot: all great literature changes you, positively, in this direction or another. That's like an article of faith.