Green Room - Week 19 - Day 7

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

There's some great stuff to read over at the polls: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/774480.html so make sure you get your votes in!

***

I saw it on Facebook.

That's never an encouraging way to start off, but in this case, it's true. I did see it on Facebook. Not sure who posted it. Pretty sure it was more than one person. Maybe it was someone on Idol. I honestly can't remember.

But it's a meme that has been out there for awhile. I've seen it. I've scrolled past it.

For some reason though, this time it stuck in my head.

List 10 books that changed your life.

There are the obvious ones - the Tolkein, Asimov's Foundation series, I'm sure people would list a Gaiman book in there. Maybe a Stephen King or two. JK Rowling for those of the younger set.

It got me thinking though - which made me want to come to the one place where I can think out loud and publish some of my list. Maybe I'll get to 10. Maybe I'll list more. Maybe YOU can post about some of the books that changed you, and then the discussion will be so interesting that I'll totally forget about my list altogether!

I was wondering which Asimov or Heinlein book to talk about - because I really can't begin to list books that I was obsessed with growing up without talking about them. But really, they were the gateway to the book The Futurians by Damon Knight.

I loved this book. More accurately, I loved what this book was about - a group of writers coming together and forming this club. As a pre-teen, I started mixing milk and Coke because it was mentioned that it was a popular drink with them!

All of these different people, coming together because they loved writing! It was as if the Avengers were a writing group. I wanted to be a part of something like this.

Looking back - a lot of the motivation to start LJ Idol can be traced to that book.

The next one that pops out at me is from when I was about 16-17. A friend of mine lent me a book about Jim Morrison, which introduced me to Arthur Rimbaud and "A Season in Hell". If you want to show a completely inexperienced teenage boy something that is going to mess with his head, Rimbaud is the way to go. If you *really* want to throw him over the edge into going down mental rabbit holes about art and the dark sides of life, give him a copy of Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire.

Teenagers are morose and weird as it is - but that book, and the Bukowski I was shoveling into my head like it was coal feeding my mental engines - well, let's just say there's probably a reason why I was walking about in hospital slippers and barking at people! ;)

I'll think some more, and add them in the comments.

How about you? What are some of the books that made you the mess wonderful human being you are today?

Comments

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

First?

The Secret Garden and Perelandra come to mind.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

:P

I'd have been first if I hadn't gotten all wordy and stuff. :)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of Perelandra, but I love The Secret Garden. :)

Also - yay first!

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question, because it's different than "your ten favorite books," which I can never answer. It's a harder question, too. I'm going to start with one, and add more later.

The first that came to mind, and rightly so, was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

And I probably thought of it first, because when it was recommended to me, by someone I trusted very much, during a pivotal period in my life, he said, "Read this book. It will change your life."

Frankl's observations of human behavior while in the Nazi concentration camps, and the way he applies that to the lives of people in his psychiatric practice - the idea that someone can take everything away from you, except your ability to decide how you will respond. The idea that some inmates could become so cruel while some guards showed compassion. These were big ideas for me at a time when "the world hated me" or some similar complaint.

Anyway, I recommend it. I will ponder the other 9.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

We had to read Man's Search freshman year in high school. I'd probably get more out of it now because it went completely over my head back then.

[kandigurl.livejournal.com]

I have to list Harry Potter. I'll count the whole series as one book, but if it weren't for good ol' Harry P, I wouldn't have one of my best friends in the whole world, since we met via H_E.

Also, I must continue this trend of being cliche by listing Eat, Pray, Love...I read that book at a time when I really needed to read it, and then I flipped it back to the beginning and read it again, then once more for good measure.

And I think Yes Man by Danny Wallace deserves to be on the list, because it changed my mind about what's okay to write and what sort of voice can get published (there were several times when Wallace used phrases just like ones I enjoy throwing into my books, stuff like, "George pet the dog with a cigarette dangling from his mouth (George had the cigarette, not the dog, it would be odd to see a dog smoking.)" Anyway. Made me feel like I had a kindred spirit, writing-wise, even if he lives in an entirely different country.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Oh Lordy... I've seen that going around before, but it's still hard to choose! I'll go with the first ones that pop into my mind, since it's getting late and I need to get some sleep:

1. "To Ride Pegasus" by Anne McCaffrey. I think I was 11 or 12 when I first found Anne McCaffrey, and I just fell for this book, which got me interested in reading more Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and broadened my horizons.
2. "The Diary of Anne Frank". It brought a face to WWII that all the reading in History class just couldn't adequately do.

I'll have to give more thought to what books may have "changed my life." I prefer to read for fun and entertainment than anything else, and while I loved the Harry Potter novels, and the Anne of Green Gables series, and the Miles Vorkosigan series, I doubt any of them really changed my life in any particular fashion... hmm.

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

...heh.

There's a few, I guess, if I think about it.

Stories of Your Life, and Others by Ted Chiang comes immediately to mind, possibly because I'm re-reading it right now (for the zillionth time :) ).

Riddle-Master, by Patricia McKillip. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the world that's read it, though.

The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed both belong on the list (LeGuin, for those that are unfamiliar).

The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley...I dunno. There are a lot of books, some good and some bad.

I still find myself quoting Diving Into the Wreck more often than not, so it belongs on the list too—and Magic For Beginners, by Kelly Link, is what made me sit up in high school and go, "Whoa, so that's what a short story can do!"

I guess what I'm saying is I read too much. :)

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Riddle-Master is a great book, which I loved, though I don't count it as Important. Forgotten Beasts of Eld was my Important book by McKillip. :)

[zhent.livejournal.com]

This is a tough one...

Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein Because I so often feel like people don't grok me.

Robot's of Dawn - Asimov

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams

Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut because it was the first book I read that showed me that not everything was linear.

I know there are more, but it really requires thought...

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I've definitely spent some quality time with all of those books!

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking...

I could certainly name what my favorite book(s) were at a certain age, but I don't know if I could I was directly influenced by them. Like the Little House series, for example (I can't wait for Laura's unabridged autobiography to come out this fall, btw). It was probably my favorite childhood series, but did it influence me? Maybe in the sense that self-reliance is the backbone of the whole series? I think what probably attracted me was the lifestyle. and one thread that seems to go through my choice of reading material is still that.

I think in some way that's why I've always been attracted to travelogues/culture/NatGeo-type books: Show me a piece of your world. Show me there's a world out there that's vastly different from mine. Interestingly, that doesn't include fantasy...I was always more attracted to the real world.

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

omg YES the unabridged biography! I'm looking forward to it too. :3

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

I love when people come up with really interesting, literary lists for this type of thing, because mine are... not.

1. Stephen King. More Stephen King.
(The Dark Tower series, probably)

2. To Kill a Mockingbird

3. Go Ask Alice (it made me WANT to do drugs, which is hilarious, because it's completely fake, anti-drug propaganda)

4. Yeah, probably the Foundation Series by Asimov

5. Hitchhiker's "Trilogy"

6. Oh, god... probably those awful Dragonlance books

7. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I don't know... I read a ton as a kid but most of it kind of blended together into the swampy mess that is my brain. I still read a ton, and I couldn't even tell you half the books I read this year.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

How dare you slander the good name of Tasslehoff Burrfoot! ;)

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

The year I discovered Rimbaud was a very interesting year. (I was completely unhinged back then. *Completely.* I was pretty much feral. I sort of miss it, in a way - I felt no fear. I had a habit of disappearing, if I wanted to go someplace 300 miles away, I would just start off walking in that direction. For instance I decided I had to go to an Orthodox monastery immediately after I finished The Brothers Karamazov, so I just put the book down, got up, and went across two states because I knew there was a monastery in the Catskills. I don't know why, I'd do everything by instinct, even drastic things like that. I wasn't sure if I'd ever come back, but it turns out religion isn't for me ... I didn't have money, but I took what I needed, and I didn't care where I would sleep. I had freedom like that, in myself.)

Well, it sounds exciting, but it wasn't, really ... I was a dangerous person, it was no good.

Aside from Rimbaud ... Prisoner of the Caucasus by Vladimir Makanin always comes instantly to mind. This was published as The Loss: A Novella and Two Short Stories in English, I think. It tapped into something inside of me that I couldn't explain and which I would like to avoid psychoanalyzing. I heard about the book because someone I was in love with was looking through a collection of Russian literature and said, "Hey, that's Kavkazskij plennyj, I read that for my literature class..." and he summed up the plot in a way that was simple, beautiful, and perfect. Something like, "It's about how this soldier captures a Chechen soldier in his teens, and how he had to kill him, so he was on top of him and strangling him, and as he was strangling him he fell in love with him a little bit, but then he died ... " I wish I could remember exactly how he put it, because it was ... I don't know. Touching. Perfect to me. Back then I read thirstily, I'd search and search for the right book, as if I expected it to do something, complete something in me ... I thought that story would be the one. (Looking back on it - maybe that sentence eclipses the entire human condition in some way - what I felt was like an outburst of agape, what Dostoevsky means by "beauty will save the world" - but sure, I know it's a little weird to say you were desperate to read a short story about a prisoner of war being strangled to death.)

But that's not what happens in that story at all. He got it wrong. Although it was beautiful. If it was no good it wouldn't have been that bad. It was just slightly, slightly off. The next day, I tried to kill myself. I don't know why. It was because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever read (it still is), and it was because it was wrong ... It wasn't entirely because of the story, I had a hard life, but when I read it, I was ready. It was my first suicide attempt, I was young, less than twenty. Like I said, back then I was unhinged. I hit twenty-one or so and turned normal. Completely normal. 8) (Well, I was diagnosed with Asperger's as a child and my file at my therapist's lists a diagnosis of 'possible mild dysthymia.' A fate worse than death, to be certain.)

(Oh, can I say a video game? Pathologic - it's this Russian art game - completely dismantled me as a person and put me back together different. I wasn't the same after playing it. I'd talk more about it, but I'm already making a Tolstoy in your poor green room.)

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I'm not a gamer but "Russian art game - completely dismantled me as a person and put me back together different" sounds extremely interesting.

From what you've said about your life that was pretty much the perfect time to come across Rimbaud. (or the worst, since it pretty much confirmed YES! Keep doing this!" :D)

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

A Spell for Chameleon. the short story "Minority Report," the poem "Porphyria's Lover", of Leaves, High Fidelity, and Dhalgren, in that order.

And now you know the magic incantation. Let it never be repeated. :-)

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

Oh, House of Leaves left me shaken and uncertain of the world under my feet in the best possible way. I knew that horror and I don't always get along (especially in book form it tends to give me nightmares) but the moment I saw the insides of that book I knew I had to read it.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

I think this is such a revealing meme and did it with my flist a year or so back. I suck at tags, so I can't find it...It was an enlightening week. How certain titles just break you in half and remake you whole.

When I was eleven years old a librarian changed the course of my life. She handed me "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Shortly thereafter, I contracted rheumatic fever and through a horrible medical complication ended up in bed and missed the entire fourth grade year. I read. And read. And read. And the Narnia Chronicles became the doorway to a labyrinth I'm still wandering.

Exploration through the written word never gets old and never stops beckoning one to far-off horizons.

DH Lawrence - "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
Dion Fortune - "The Goat-Foot God"
Ayn Rand - "The Fountainhead"
Nick Cave - "And the Ass Saw the Angel"
Nikos Kazantsakis "The Last Temptation of Christ"
TS Eliot - "The Four Quartets"
AS Byatt - "Possession"
Cormac McCarthy - "Child of God"
Sarah Hall - "The Electric Michelangelo"

Just like that.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

"Nick Cave - "And the Ass Saw the Angel""

A friend let me borrow her copy years ago. It was one of those books that I couldn't get into at first - but I kept trying.

Sometimes you just aren't in the right mood. Once I finally read it I really enjoyed it.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

This is an awesome GR topic. :)

I've got two life-changing books that immediately spring to mind. The first is William Goldman's The Princess Bride. Yes, that Princess Bride. The one that got made into a movie. I stumbled into this book in middle school, and it changed the way I read - I really learned to think critically and approach literature on multiple levels because of this book. There are three distinct narratives - Wesley and Buttercup, the 'editor' as a child who fell in love with "the good parts version", and the editor as an adult trying to make Wesley and Buttercup's story work. The narrative structure was totally different from anything I'd read before. The humor suffused the entire thing and yet didn't take away from the impact of the really sad parts (like trying to relate to your kid through books you loved, and your kid is just really not into it). It's about growing up and figuring out that the world isn't fair. It's about the power of stories. It's about the Dread Pirate Roberts and names and pain and love and loss and did I mention stoires? I just can't say enough things about how awesome this book is (even more awesome than the movie, and of course I love the movie). I was always a reader (from age 3!) and had a lot of favorite books. But The Princess Bride got me into a frame of mind where I could approach books and dissect them, really stare into the guts of what worked and what didn't and why and the language and the structure and the story, while still appreciating it for what it was. I love that book so much, and though I'm sure I would have started dissecting stories instead of just devouring them at some point (even as a wee little lrig I was twisting fairy tale narratives and turning tropes inside out for fun), this was the book that got me started fully down that path.

The other life-changing book is, erm, something really different. It's a little square book called The Wish List by Barbara Ann Kipfer. It's basically an entire book that's just a big list of wishes with little check boxes next to some and blank lines to write in your own. The wishes range from the silly to the impossible to the mundane. I had dropped out of college after a suicide attempt and was working at a store in the mall which couldn't make up its mind whether it was New Age-y or science-y. I was doing ok, but not doing well, living with my dad and stepmother, feeling like a failure for having "wasted all that potential" and losing my scholarships just so I could, well, work in a mall. I opened the store one day and saw this little book sitting by the cash registers - clearly meant to be an impulse buy, must have come in a shipment the night before - and picked it up on my way to the back room. I'm flipping through it going "yeah, I'd like to do that. And that. Nah, not that one. That's dumb. And oh, I HAVE done that one." And I just started laughing. It was like I woke up, and remembered that it was ok to want things - and here was an entire book of things that I might or might not want! It was like magic. I was in therapy and taking antidepressants and blah blah, but the thing that helped me get back to good and figure out what the hell I was doing was that silly little book. I still have a copy of it. It's traveled through three states with me, and has wishes written in it in pen, pencil, marker, crayon, and whatever else I could scribble in. It's pretty ridiculous, and it changed my life (sometimes it just takes something small - like remembering that wishes are neat) and I love it. (And it occurs to me that the two books are really related after all. I can't see The Wish List sitting on my night stand without hearing "As youuuu wiiiiiish" in my head. Heh.)

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I never read The Princess Bride? I've always meant to, and just never got around to it. Of course, if I'd read that in addition to of Leaves, I suppose my writing would consist exclusively of footnotes and editorial comments ...

[vaudy.livejournal.com]

I've always been a reader, and I've read (and reread) lots of books, and I would never say that reading can't change you, because how can it not? When you're reading, you're living someone else's life with them and seeing the world--whichever world that might be--through their eyes, and how can that not change the way you see and think about your own world?

And yet I don't know that I can say any particular book changed my life in a perceptible way. Most books I read make me think about something, whether abstract or concrete, in a slightly different way, or perhaps help me to open up to new possibilities, but these are subtle things.

But I guess I can name two things. Sort of. First, the set of Childcraft books we had when I was a kid. Each volume was on a different topic, and I devoured them, over and over, especially the animal and plant ones, and the one about words and language, and the stories and fables one, which was my first introduction to mythology (more on that in a moment). These are the books that taught me to be curious about the world. They made me want to learn more.

The second is a collection of Greek mythology I got from the school library in roughly the fifth grade. I was already interested in mythology (see above), but this book, whose exact title I will never remember, was where my interest in mythology really started to flower, and reading mythology really influenced my outlook from a young age.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

OMG, I had forgotten how much time I spent with various mythology books in Middle School. I would just sit in the library and read for hours.

I started with Greek and Roman, but always ended up being drawn back to the Norse and Egyptian stuff. (But pretty much any mythology was fair game, and I devoured as much as I could get my hands on!)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Baby Animals - This is a cardboard-backed picture book I still have from when I was three years old that is in surprisingly good shape (sadly featuring the screaming dulled pastels of the late 60s/early 70s in which it was published). It was the first book I ever read - or, more accurately, memorized since there aren't that many sentences or different words in it.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? by Erma Bombeck - My first humor book, which I read at about age six or seven. Grandma had to help me with the references (Joey Bishop, Don Rickles, etc.) which she did mostly by having me watch Johnny Carson with her. Dave Barry followed when I got a little older. Humor is important.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume did for many a preteen girl what too many mothers and grandmothers DIDN'T want to do: Explain what a period is so when it came it wouldn't scare the shit out of us. I remember telling Mom and Grandma about it when I was nine (as you do about interesting reads), and their eyebrows went up like I'd just revealed the location of Dad's porno mag stash.

The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon - I'm fairly sure this is on nobody else's highbrow list. But it was one of the first long novels I read (I read a lot of what Grandma had in the 70s and 80s, stuck out in the country as I was), it was filled with tropes I didn't yet know but came to love, and it was romance/sex that I had not read before but have written many times since. Just look at the top of my LJ!

Lust for Life by Irving Stone - The fictionalized biography of Vincent Van Gogh. I'm not a particular Van Gogh-centric fan, but the book stuck with me because it was one of the few I was assigned to read in school that I ended up actually liking. Who knew a biography could be entertaining?

Almost anything by James Michener. Geography was a snoozefest for me in classes, but again, here we have someone who made the subject actually enjoyable through a mix of fact and fiction.

Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge - Surely there's been other books about Hatshepsut, but this is the one I stumbled across. It's a fictional account rather than a dry biography. It broaches the politics of the time, gender iniquity, personal travails, you name it.

Tie between The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers - Beat yourself in the head if you don't know Douglas Adams; I don't remember the first sci-fi novel I read, but this was definitely one of the quirkiest and funniest. Doug Naylor and Rob Grant (as Grant Naylor) run a razor-thin second both with their novel and the British TV series by the same name. Both feature despair and the futility of vast existence in ways that can only make you laugh or cry (mostly laugh).

Almost anything by Peter David - I am limited in reading this author only by my reading schedule or lack of interest in the individual franchise (since he novelizes some with which I'm not familiar or don't watch), under his name or a known pseudonym. He combines sci-fi and humor (and sometimes romance) well, and I used to look forward to his "Star Trek" novels the way you might a scotch at the end of a workday. (I remember being 20 and wanting to grow up to either have his or Dave Barry's writing career.)

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I love PAD's New Frontier novels. I'm not much into Star Trek novels as a whole, but those were really fun.

I'll admit, I was a bit "OMG" the first time puppetmaker40 showed up as a contestant. :)

There is a battered copy of Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers in a box of books that is waiting for me to get more bookshelves.

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

There are too many books to count starting with Curious George, who got in big trouble and the Man in the Yellow Hat loved him anyway all the way to Anne Frank, who was an ultimate survivor, even tho she did not...her diary and her dad did.

AW

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

A Diary of a Young Girl would have ended much differently if Curious George was involved.

[fodschwazzle.livejournal.com]

I am the Messenger by Mark Zusak- the first time I enjoyed a book so much that it nearly made me cry

Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde- the first time I really approached a book with a critical eye

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- the first time a single sentence filled me with wonder, and the first time I went full English professor in terms of thinking

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens- this was the third highest point value book in my 8th grade accelerated reading program. Winds of War by Herman Wouk and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy were the only higher targets. I'm glad I read this one, proving to myself that a dense classic could still be enjoyable.

The backs of video game cases in Blockbuster back when things could still be rented- it's functionally no different from the hundreds of thousands of kids watching YouTube videos about games they'll never play, except that there were no pictures--I had to imagine

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

I relate so hard to that last paragraph, I cannot even explain.

It's funny, as an adult, getting to play stuff after reading about it—how much your perception of what it would be like vs. what it is actually like differs. :)

[binaryorchid.livejournal.com]

There have been many books that fascinated and deeply impressed me.

The first book that comes to my mind is "1984" by George Orwell. I read it several times and it kind of left a lasting impression on me. I remember I also got a German translation and mused over how certain expressions/neologisms had been translated to German. (As I learned later, the fictional language used there is called "Newspeak" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newspeak_words)).
Maybe it was the humans, the machines and the fictional language which made me love this book so much.

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

Several people have already called out Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five so I'm adding myself to that list, it was the first time I found out narrative could do that.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein utterly exploded my world when I read it as a 16 year old small-town girl. There were so many ideas in there that had just never occurred to me before.

The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie - it was my first experience with anything like magical realism which was fascinating, but also he picked such exact and perfect words. I'm one of those people that will want to read out loud a beautiful turn of phrase to any willing listener, and I could have read large swaths of that book out loud.

I read a lot (one benefit of commuting by train) and have a multitude of favorite authors but these are the books I can point to that made me actively change something, even if just my perception of what books can do.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Horton Hears A Who by Dr. Suess- oh boy, did that raise questions the nuns could not answer...

A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving- I devoured anything he wrote... The questions this book raised! LOL

Pure pleasure in character development Stephen King. I first read Carrie when I was 13, it was on from there...

[kagomeshuko.livejournal.com]

Yay!!! Dr. Seuss!!!

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm adding 3 more to the list.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven - I read this because my mom and I were on a campaign to read all the children's award winning books. I think I was in 2nd grade. Keeping in mind I was from (at the time) a relatively small town in Louisiana, I'd never heard of Buddhism, and so this book was a glimpse into a bigger world. Plus, the cat is the star, so you know that's cool.

Next, I have to say Dr. Seuss, though I refuse to pick a single book. I became acquainted with his books while reading to my 8 year younger sister, and fell in love with playing with words, inventing them, twisting them, rhyming and rhythm and onomatopoeia.

On a completely different note, I was also raised in a very sexually repressed environment, to say the very least. Then one day I found my mom's friend's stash. So, if I'm honest, I must add Xaviera Hollander - The Happy Hooker to this list. Because... ::gulp:: eye opening. :)

[kagomeshuko.livejournal.com]

Yay! Dr. Seuss!!!

[kagomeshuko.livejournal.com]

Here are the ones that I put on Facebook.

1. The Bible 2. Flowers for Algernon 3. Possession (Byatt novel). 4. To Kill a Mockingbird 5. The Sound and the Fury 6. The Phantom Tollbooth 7. The Velveteen Rabbit 8.The Cat in the Hat 9. Fox in Socks 10. Dr. Seuss's ABCs.

No books have ever changed my life.

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

My life has always sucked.

It's always going to suck.

Nothing can change that. Ever.

[aimercat.livejournal.com]

Self-Management for Actors by Bonnie Gillespie
Acting is Everything by Judy Kerr
8 characters of comedy by Scott Sedita
The Secret