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]

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.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

:P

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

[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.

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

Lol! I was thinking, type fast, type fast, the whole time. ;)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

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

Also - yay first!

[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.

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

It's the second in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and was my favorite science fiction book in middle school. It was also the first book my dad ever took away from me, which is why I say it changed my life -- up until he refused to let me re-read the other books in the series before I could explain That Hideous Strength (last book, same series, same author), I never realized how important the sub-text was in reading and thinking about reading. That was more or less what taught me to think critically about books while I was reading them, not super-quickly on-the-spot if my dad decided the book I was reading was complex enough to quiz me about it before letting me borrow another. (Which came in handy, when we hit high school and no more multiple choice on literature questions.) (Although I never have figured out That Hideous Strength.)

[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. :)

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

I still love The Secret Garden. :D

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

Me tooooo! :D

[kickthehobbit.livejournal.com]

And Anne of Green Gables... :3

[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...

[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.

[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.

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I liked it the first time through, but it's never been one of my favorites, I'm afraid. (Although I read it at an age when "girly" was suspect, especially in a book my mom gave me, so take that with a grain of salt.)

[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.

[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]

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

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

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

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I still remember how it felt to read Robots and Empire and find out that all of the books that I loved so much were *connected*!!

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

Bahahaah... yes, exactly.

[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. :-)

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I still haven't finished reading Robots and Empire? I keep trying, and I get distracted. Maybe it's the whole "no Lije Bailey" bit, I'm not sure.

... but then, I read Foundation and Earth pretty early on, to the same effect.

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

It's entirely the fault of The Dark Tower that I started reading Stephen King. And discovered Robert Browning, coincidentally. By extension, it gave me an A+ on my "Romantic Era English poets" class in college, because of my analysis of gender roles in 'Dark Tower' and EBB's "The Lost Bower."