Has a book ever changed you?

[Famous Mortimer]

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

Not at all. You do you.

On that note, honourable mention to The Hero With a Thousand Faces (or was it The Golden Bough? I always get them mixed up)

Golden Bough, I think. Hero With A Thousand Faces is about construction of stories, Golden Bough is the one about religion. But the one was inspired by the other.

[chveik]

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

i'm quite partial to some parts of the New Testament myself

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I read Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm at quite an early age.  They may have helped me grow up into a cynic, along with all the other cumulative shit of my fifty-two years.

[All Surrogate]

Speaking of Orwell, how could I have forgotten Nineteen Eighty-Four? A really frightening and effective book.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

i'm quite partial to some parts of the New Testament myself

The intolerant left break cover

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I read Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm at quite an early age.  They may have helped me grow up into a cynic, along with all the other cumulative shit of my fifty-two years.

Yep, snap

Once you finish those two you know that regardless of what happens in your own life things won't 'be alright' because of the social and power dynamics those books depict in such an intuitive and relatable way. You sense that they will be with you dragging everything down forever. In some ways they hurt me because I became so much more guarded, but in other dimensions I would probably be dead several times over if it weren't for them.

That said, I wouldn't offer those to most kids to read back-to-back.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What's seemingly quite depressing is a lot of children now seem to have their childish spirits drummed out of them by overly aspirational schooling and parenting telling them to 'think of your future' from an early age and forging a generation of people who want to be accountants rather than astronauts... compared to that having your child-like spirits ruined by social commentary that tells you the futility of it all is certainly preferable.

[Mr_Simnock]

there's a lot of posts in this thread which come across like alan partridge trying to impress someone at a party

[jobotic]

How do you think your posts come across?

"Stupid priests!"

[buttgammon]

I also couldn't imagine Alan Partridge reading or pretending to read any of the books in this thread. A book that changed him? Presumably Bouncing Back, which taught him a valuable lesson about the publishing industry.

Imagine liking stuff and connecting with it. That's saaaaaad.

[Astronaut Omens]

Yep, snap

Once you finish those two you know that regardless of what happens in your own life things won't 'be alright' because of the social and power dynamics those books depict in such an intuitive and relatable way. You sense that they will be with you dragging everything down forever. In some ways they hurt me because I became so much more guarded, but in other dimensions I would probably be dead several times over if it weren't for them.

That said, I wouldn't offer those to most kids to read back-to-back.

Which is exactly what my school did!