h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am trying to think of a list of books I have read that have changed the way I think/behave or feel about certain subjects.

So I'm asked the Forumites..

Which books have changed the way that you think, challenged your assumptions?

Which books have changed the way that you behaved?

I love the experience of closing a book knowing that I'm a different person to the one that opened the book.

Which books gave you that?

'The Lord of the Rings' for general book taste, and it also influenced my writing style.

'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' which challenged the way I think.

I don't know if it really changed my fundamental character, but reading Douglas Adams' Salmon of Doubt did two things: it lead me to discover hootoo, which has completely changed my life, and it converted me to the Mac - now I just have to save up enough funds to get one!

I read Robert Heinlein's 'Time Enough for Love' when I was 11 or 12. That one gave me some interesting ideas about sex and relationships, which I pretty promptly put into practice. It also gave me a vision of what kind of human being I wanted to develop myself into (I wanted to be a female version of Lazarus Long) so I started learning just enough of all sorts of practical things to manage on my owm without having to call in professionals every time I need to do something. That bit has been invaluable.

The Hitchhiker's series was the next big eye-opener. I totally got off on the part about learning to fly--just jump, get distracted, and then don't hit the ground. An excellent way of leading an adventurous (if not overly practical)life.

I read Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' when I was around 30. That one kinda freed me from the idea that other people have some inherent 'right' to my time, my effort, and my life, just because they're needier than I am. That concept has been undergoing some adjustment over the last couple of years as I've been building a bit of compassion for people who are in awful situations beyond their control. I still have little patience for those who insist on functioning as a victim rather than making the changes in themselves that'll make their lives better.

Where to start....

The letters of Lady Wortley Montague (1689-1762): I first read this in an abridged form (it is 5 volumes) when I was about 15 and it fired my interest in travel, especially travel by ladies of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. I am always amazed that so many women travelled all over the world, many of them alone, and many of them the first Europeans to visit the wilds of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Lady Wortley Montague was the wife of the Ambassador to Constantinople (1718-1719). It was Lady Mary who brought the practive of immunization with Cow Pox against Smallpox back to Europe, introduced the then Princess of Wales who had her own children immunized, thus establishing that the process was "safe".

"A peculiar transfer with a needle (inoculation) was in use among the Circassians and Georgians. This so-called Greek method became generally known in Constantinople towards the end of the seventeenth century, and was introduced into England by Lady Wortley Montague wife of the English ambassador, who had had her own son successfully vaccinated in 1717." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10122a.htm

Lady Mary was also the first widely-read female travel documentarian.

Many years after reading the abridged version, I was thrilled to find a copy of the 5 volumed in an edition printed in 1817... That, in turn, started my collection of travel books, most in original editions, of ladies' travel and other early travel, and books on the fur trade in North America.

"The Diviners" and "The Stone Angel" by Margret Laurence: I read both of these in High School and have reread the Diviners many, many times.

"Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam Mcbratney http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/076360013X/104-2077271-1796764?v=glance
I LOVE this book and the beautiful illustrations!

"The Littlest Angel": I had a lovely edition of this book which is unexplainably out of print... I love the story of how the little angel, an annoyance to all the big angels and who is clumsy and awkward, gives his only posessions (a box of objects that were precious to him in life) to the baby Jesus.... So sweet.

"Cat Heaven" by Cynthia Rylant http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0590100548/qid=1119576514/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-2077271-1796764?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I love the idea that cats have their own special Heaven...

The cats in Cat Heaven are so loved and spoiled
God lets them all lie on his bed...
He walks in his garden with a good black book*
and a kitty asleep on his head.

Then when a cat needs to, she may simply ponder
and watch the blue world deep and wide....
she will watch the old house where she once lived and wandered,
and the people who loved her inside.

*drawn as a book on gardening, in the book

I have a number of other books which mean a lot to me. As I think of them I'll add them.

I'd better put my list down now..

Whiplash. Was the one I was thinking of.

It's a book about the medical proffession creating illness using whiplash injuries as an example. I borrowed it from a library but will buy it as soon as I can.

Snake Oil. By John Diamond, in which he deconstructes alturnative medicine

I was wondering if we could just discuss the books here, rather than the concepts in the books. If you get what I mean? Because I really don't want to get into an argument about Ayn Rand, or at least if I do I want to do it in another thread.

Though it did get me thinking about what made me a socialist... (and if you give my mother the wool she might make you one too).. and I don't think it was a book at all. Though Das Capital obviously gave me a set of tool that if I choose I could use to analyse the world with.

Not that I choose to loose them, but sometimes they do give you intresting results.

It also got me thinking about 'argument books', you know books that put an argument across.

I find that if I already in agreement with the book I become very passionatly convinced about the argument concerned. If I disgreed with the argument concerned then I simply get very passionatly against it.

Proffessionally I don't use books to get new ideas, I tend to use journal articles. A journal article is smaller so the reader can analyse it in more detail. A book can be so big you can't tear the arugment apart in detail. At least not if you are reading it on the Bus on the way to work.

Books aren't much use for finding out the latest medical knowledge anyway, by the time they are published they are likely to go out of date.

I am wondering if my lack of ability to analyse arguments presented in book form is because I don't have an Arts degree. As most Historical arguments are presented in the form of a book then I would presume that historians would find it easier to debate on that scale.



Oh and The Story of O changed me. I found the fact that I found some of it to be rather, ahem, interesting in a way I hadn't expected challenged my beliefs about myself and my sexuality.



Other books that changed the way I think are 'How to read a paper' which outlines the basic prinicples behind evidenced based medicine. And ECGs made easy; which, er, taught me how to read an ECG.



Eats Shoots and Leaves taught me that I wanted to learn to spell and master English properly.

Erratum.

RE Das Capital

'not that I chose to loose them'

Should read 'not that I choose to act on the results these arguments give me the whole time' but they do give you an interesting way of looking at thigns.

Part of why I became a socialist was 'The Ragged-trousered Philanthropists', a wonderful book full of passion and humour

A book that conveyed to me a sense of love of home and place (an emotion I have trouble understanding myself) is 'Sunset Song' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, a novel about a vanishing way of life, that of Scottish lowland crofters around the time of WWI

'God Bless You Mr Rosewater' by Kurt Vonnegut, about compassion and the nature of sanity

'A Canticle for Leibowitz', black humour about humanities self-destructive behaviour

oops
Wasn't trying to start an argument/debate thing, Z. I've read *loads* of books that have changed me in one way or another. Those three prompted gigantic changes in the way I approached pretty much everything, is all.

"The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet" by Benjammin Hoff. When I realised that the wierd way my mind worked wasn't just me being mad, and in fact some clever chinese chaps had had the same problems 2000 odd years ago. Naturally they'd thought about substantially more than I had and saved me several lifetimes of contemplation . On the same theme, "Tao Te Ching" by Lao Tze - Jonathan Starr's translation (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/158542269X) is the best I've found, and he also provides the original chinese so you can make your own interpretation.

Obviously Hitch-Hikers - the whole five part trilogy.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Again - discovering I'm not the only person who's record collection is a metaphor for his life was very comforting.

I think all of these books gave me the confidence to go out there and be ME a little more than I had up until then, for which I am truly grateful.

"Canticle for Leibowitz" and "Martian Chronicals" were two of the sci-fi books which were my favorite.

PC...

If you like "High Fidelity", you might like (nay... will LOVE) the film (sorry, its a documentary not a book) "Vinyl" by Alan Zweig....
http://www.soundunseen.com/2001/films/vinyl.html

It looks at the obsession of a number of collectors of vinyl. One of the collectors is the brother of a friend of mine who (horror of horrors!!!!!) decided to divest himself or his vast collection and rather than feel the pain of selling it or giving it away THREW IT IN A DUMPSTER.... I cried when I saw that bit... especially since I would happily have climbed into the dumpster to save them.

Could never do that
It was a real struggle when I moved from London to Cardiff getting all my books and vinyls into a Transit van
had to abandon some of my furniture

Don't laugh.

"The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail"

I SAID don't laugh.

Yes, the whole conspiracy theory is a load of bull, and yes, it was a primary source for a pathetic rip-off by Dan Brown which wouldn't be so pathetic if he came out and admitted it was a work of fiction. But I was 22 and pre-Internet, and buried halfway through the book were some things which are pretty widely known about Christianity, but absolutely not discussed in any forum in the US other than online. And it blew my mind. I found myself saying "Is this right?!", and double-checking every Bible verse cited. That book was my Oolon Colluphid (that about wraps it up for god, then) and began a research path that made me the amateur Bible scholar I am today.

"The Hobbit"

I said, DON'T LAUGH.

I was given a copy as a gift when I was about 10, so imagine my amusement when I found it assigned reading in my 9th grade English class. I read it about 30 times until I was in 7th grade, at which point I finally got access to a library that had the LotR trilogy. I've been on a steady diet of fantasy ever since. I'll be opening Pratchett's "Carpe Jugulum" as soon as I sign off here. When I'm finished I'll be setting it down on top of the nightstand next to the huge sword in the corner.

I don't think that any books have changed my life, but many many books have shaped it. There are so many books that I remember from my childhood that made me think differently that there are too many to mention!

I think the ones that stand out most to me is one I read a year or so ago, and one I read in the last couple of months.

The first was called 'Erotic Surrender', which I read at a time I was having difficulty accepting certain things about myself. It gave me the courage to accept myself as I really was, not as I wanted to be. It's made me very happy to stop fighting myself.

Recently I read 'Surrendered Single' which is essentially a way of dealing with relationships with men so that you can attract one and marry him, but I have been using some of the techniques in other areas of my life. I'm not really interested in marriage, but I'd heard of the Surrendered Wives lifestyle and wanted to check this out as well. I don't want this to sound weird, but I've had less arguments with my dad as I'm more aware of the times I'm just arguing to 'win'. I'm treating it as practise.

Hmmmmm..... there are loads of books that I feel almost wedded to, I've read them so many times -- but I don't know that I'd say any of them changed my life.

The books that have had the biggest impact on the life I live right now are actually a pretty random bunch:

Jack the Bodiless, by Julian May
Stotan, by Chris Crutcher
Last Chance Saloon, by Marian Keyes
The Rule of Benedict for Beginners, by Wil Derkse

For me, I really feel like a good chunk of what is involved in a book really reaching out and affecting my life isn't so much the book itself, but the timing of the book in my life, how some piece of it matches up exactly with what I need at that moment, just then.

This is a difficult one... I assume that you mean books which had a real effect rather than Changed a reader, ?

I would go for,

To Kill a Mockingbird

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever - and sequels

Birdsong

Shadow of the Wind

Novo

The Piano Tuner- Daniel Mason
This book I just enjoy a lot. It makes me sad, happy, educates me, challenges me...and yet on the face of it doesn't look all that wonderful.
***
To Kill A Mocking Bird- Harper Lee
I first read this book when I was 6 and since then I have read it around twice a year since. I get something new out of it every time.
***
Rachel's Holiday-Marian Keyes
Given to me reasonably recently, I read this book when I feel as if I'm spiralling down in something bad. It shows me what I could be like, whilst maintaining humour and a sense of normality...so I don't completely fall off the end just reading it.
***
Prozac Nation-Elizabeth Wurtzel
This is a bit deceptive. This book hasn't changed me because it's good or anything. It's made me feel better about the way I am because it reminds me that however much I moan and whine...I don't do it as much as Wurtzel does and I'm doing better than her. Mean I know but it's an impact on me...
***
A Room With A View-EM Forster
First read this at the age of 9 and it still gives me something. The story really isn't all that exciting, nothing of great importance happens and yet in a strange way it reminds me every time of the beauty of human life and surrounding. It's the book I carry around everywhere with me to whip out in moments of panic and crisis.
***
The Man Who Lost His Language-Sheila Hale
This is about John Hale after he had his stroke and the efforts he and his family went to afterwards to conquer his resulting asphasia. It's educated me, opened up a new avenue of interest and shown me the strength that goes on around us every day without us realising it.
Mikey this one will be in the mail to you soon

Kat

The works of Poppy Z Brite changed me a little bit in that I discovered that it *is* possible for a straight male to enjoy homoerotic fiction.

The works of Kim Newman/Jack Yeovil changed my tastes in fantasy. Before then it had all been shiny high fantasy but he introduced me to a world that was dark, bloody and brutal.

A big (and above all unbiased) book on the English Civil War changed my approach to history. Now I devour any source I can find on a subject I'm interested in rather than assuming that what one person says is the be all and end all.

- "Metaphors we live by" and "Philosophy in the flesh" by Lakoff and Johnson

- "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" and "Lila - an enquiry into morals" by Robert M. Pirsig

- "Hare brain, tortoise mind" by Guy Claxton

- "A timeless way of building" by Christopher Alexander

- "The pawns of null-A" by A. E. van Vogt

- "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes

- "The quantum self" and "The quantum society" by Danah Zohar

- "Quantum psychology" and "Illuminatus!" by Robert Anton Wilson

- The artistic output of Terry Winograd, Richard Feynman, Piers Anthony, William Butler Yeats, James O. Coplien, Richard P. Gabriel, Gary Gygax. Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Julian May, Christopher Alexander, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp,...

But now I'm getting carried away. I just love this sort of thing.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"