Did you ever read a novel that influenced your life in some way?
Did you ever read a novel that influenced your life in some way?
I have read novels all my life, from the time I learned how to read. My mother would take me to the children’s room at the main public library in our city and there I would read the “Freddy the Pig” stories.
I don’t know if George Orwell gave Walter Brooks the idea for the ‘Freddy’ series of 26 books, or if Orwell got the idea of talking farm animals from him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_the_Pig
Then, as I got a little older, and influenced by my older brother who was a science fiction fan (he even went to a Sci-Fi convention in Detroit or Chicago – I don’t remember which city) I cut my teeth on the great Sci-Fi authors of the time, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, but started out on that road by reading the Skylark and Lens series novels penned by Edward E. “Doc” Smith that were first published in the many Sci-Fi pulp magazines that my brother purchased and then I read the whole of those two series and his other novels.
When I reached grade 11 high school our English teacher required us to read and write a book report on Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which she wrote about 200 years ago. That novel captivated me. I was struck by the awesome if somewhat archaic use of the English language, the insightful characterizations and the descriptions of the way of life at that time.
Since then I must have read it 20 times. In my high school book report I wrote that I thought that both Lizzie and Darcy exhibited both pride and prejudice which ran counter to the attitude of the rest of the class (and the teacher which I could tell from the mark she gave me) who felt that each of those main characters exhibited only one of those traits. However, that was the novel that influenced me the most of all novels, since because of it I majored in English Literature at university. I have watched pretty well all of the films produced about the story, starting with the one acted by Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson up to the Bollywood version Bride and Prejudice (I did ignore Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and posted on TheNewsTalkers an article about the films:
http://thenewstalkers.com/buzz-of-the-orient/group_discuss/2769/pride-to-bride-the-pp-movies
and a quiz based on the story:
During my university English courses, and up until now my reading has been varied: authors such as Hemingway, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Daniel Silva are some of the examples.
Now it is up to you to tell us what (if any) novel has had the greatest influence on your life. But please do more than just name a book and author – tell us how it has influenced your life.
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Jack London's, Call of the Wild.
Never give up, no matter the headwinds that you face. Also, never forget your roots and always return to them. They are your anchor.
Not only the book influenced my life, but it was given to me by my grandparents for my birthday. They were very poor, as was most of the family but somehow they bought the book (used), and it was wrapped in butcher paper with string.
Both the book and my grandparents taught me some very important life values.
I still have the book and it is my most valued possession.
Black Beauty. As a farm kid growing up animals were a big part of my life. This book first introduced me to the idea that it's not ok to do ANY DAMN THING WE FEEL LIKE to animals. It gave me my first glimpse of empathy for creatures other than people.
A Wrinkle In Time. Kind of preachy but it taught me that kids can be brave and loyalty is most important when the chips are down.
Really lots of books influenced me. A smart, sensitive kid living in the country, my library was my lifeline to the ways that other people thought and felt.
TRUMP. SANDERS. CLINTON. CRUZ. ISRAEL. MUSLIMS. CHINA. WWIII, PUTIN. NUCLEAR WAR.
Now if THAT were the title of this article it would be of interest to most NT members.
TRUMP. SANDERS. CLINTON. CRUZ. ISRAEL. MUSLIMS. CHINA. WWIII, PUTIN. NUCLEAR WAR.
Now if THAT were the title of this article it would be of interest to most NT members.
Well, some of us have been getting bored with that stuff, so we've been seeding things about music. (Unfortunately videos too-- which I know you can't see).
However, I have recently come across an article which, while it is about some of the things you just mentioned (Israel, Arabs, Sanders-- OMG!!!, Clinton) I believe is highly significant-- a real change as to American politicians' stance re: the palestinian-Israeli conflict!
So check it out -- comments welcome (yes, even if I disagree. and even if you are a total idiot, I will not call you one! :^)
Bernie Sanders Smashes the Israel Status Quo
Did you disagree with my comment on that article?
you forgot whether or not God exists and if it's name is Thor , Odin, or PastaKing. . You also forgot "commie Obama".
Books that influenced my life ? I'm sure there were some but its been too long ago ...
Siddartha
Herman Hesse
"But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him. While his thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and veneration, this happened to him:
He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.
Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.
Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life."
The Dead
James Joyce
"...The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
Siddhartha - great choice John. I think I was somewhat influenced by that book myself. However, I never was too enthused about Joyce.
No book has ever influenced my life-- I prefer to get my information from crackpot sites on the Internet!
You may be in the right place Krish.
Rascal By Sterling North.
The story of a boy raising a baby racoon who of course eventually becomes a young adult and is too much for the boy to handle. In the end he takes Rascal in a canoe that he built himself to the side of lake deep in the wild to let him go. At first Rascal doesn't understand and stays in the canoe, but eventually it hears something in the woods and slowly leaves the canoe and slowly goes into the wild. I almost cried at the ending because he obviously loved the Rascal, but it taught a serious lesson that some animals belong in the wild, no matter how much it tears up your heart to let them go. To let them go to the life they are supposed to have.
How old were you when you read that, Randy?
About 12 or 13. Just the right timing for me. It had an enormous impact on me that taught me that sometimes doing the right thing is really going to hurt, but it's still the right thing to do and you have no choice.
Anything by Leon Uris, I read them all multiple times.
Upton Sinclair a few of his.
Anton Myrer. Once an Eagle was particularly impressing.
And there are always the classics.
A Bell for Adano, was suggested by a Teacher and turned into a particular favorite.
The Sinking of the Bismarck was another (non fiction)
A Night to Remember was read five times before I was 9 (non fiction)
Incredible Victory and Day of Infamy were a couple of others by Walter Lord.....
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 By John Toland
And then there is the Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 By Barbra Tuchmann.
I could go on and on.....
Are you telling us that all of those and many more influenced your life in some way?
Of course every thing you read effects your life in some way. It's a desirous thing, it's how we learn.
I agree with that NWM, but is there any single novel that had the greatest life-changing or life-directional effect on you? This is the challenge I posed with this article:
"Now it is up to you to tell us what (if any) novel has had the greatest influence on your life. But please do more than just name a book and author – tell us how it has influenced your life."
Mind you, I guess it's hard to do that if SO MANY qualify as being the greatest influence.
Well, I don't know maybe I'm a strange bird, I think reading is pleasurable but I don't read for pleasure. I take something from everything I read. and what I choose to read has a point. Something I'm trying to learn or understand.
So I can't say if any singular writing has had that much of an individual impact. At one point I was reading three books a week. Didn't everyone?
Maybe I'm just strange....
Okay, I understand that.
A Clockwork Orange. I love stories with ethical dilemmas, and I was just 16 when I read it. It really made me think about criminals, reform, insanity, human guinea pigs, etc. It's far more complex than most give it credit for.
Hi Buzz, Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite authors. When I was a kid my parents belonged to Book-of-the-Month Club. One that came from them was Martian Chronicles. I was about 9 or 10 the first time I read it and it made no sense to me. What were electric bees ?!? As a teen I read it again and started to get it. I read it a third time as a young adult and loved it !