"The Outsider" by Colin Wilson. It really gave me the feeling that it was about me, and it gave some insight of problems which I was facing at that time.
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"The Outsider" by Colin Wilson. It really gave me the feeling that it was about me, and it gave some insight of problems which I was facing at that time.
Other than the the Bible, there has been nothing that has been able to really grab me emotionally and overwhelm me on the same level Tennessee Williams did in A Streetcar Named Desire and most especially Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
As a little kid, when I read more than I do now (:oops:), the Boxcar Children series really meant a lot to me during some tough years in my life. And to this day, Sadiko and the Thousand Paper Crains remains the only piece of art (whether it be film, writing, music) that has made me cry (I was about ten years old). I suppose you could argue that meant it had an impact on me! ;)
I seem to be more impacted by movies. Mysteries, which I have devoured for so long, I guess have failed to have much true impact on my life.
The Christ-Centred Marriage - published by Freedom Ministries and written by whom, I-dont-know. :D
The effect this book has on me is really impressive.
You can double-check with my husband! ;)
Jack Kerouac's The Town and the City
Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
Don't know where to begin really but these spring to mind:
Moby-Dick, H. Melville
The court physician's visit (Per Olov Enquist)
Lord of the Rings (you know by whom)
Patrick O'Brians Aubrey-Maturin series
Dorothy Dunnett's historical novels
The house of sleep (Jonathan Coe)
Casanova (Andrew Miller)
Tragedies have somehow influenced me more than anything else...... not those dramatic ones... but those which have a sense of unfulfillment running throughout the book.
Madame Bovary
Tess
1984
Return Of the Native
We the living
are my all time favorites...
I was gretly influenced by The Biography of Walter Payton, the greatest football player who ever lived. It is a classic case of rags to riches and deserves a place among trhe world of biographies. ;) :P
Great influences to me
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (imagine a world without books and without freedom!)
Nikos Kazantsakis Zorbas-The Greek (A Book about Life and Death, Love and Hate, about everything that's important in life)
Ernest Hemingway The old man and the sea (the struggle against nature and against oneself)
A lot of books have meant something -or a lot- to me, but the one that really influenced and somehow changed my life is The Demons by Dostoevskij. Since then, i've read mostly Russian stuff, and most of all the atmosphere of this book made me choose to study Russian language and literature at University. If this is not influence... ;)
Above all else, of course the Bible. But if we're talking secular here...
Gone With the Wind and Night are also two book that influenced me greatly. Growing up I was taught more to respect the northern view of the American Civil War, but after GWtheW, I've come to respect the southern views too. Though neither side was really all wrong or right.
Night showed me brutality in man that I never realized existed. It also showed me the fragility of cultural groups. 9-11 impacted me just as much as any other American, but I think Night sort of prepared me to handle it.
The Catcher in the Rye is my favorite and really influenced me. I really identified with Holden Caulfield, and it helped me get through high school.
'Finnegans Wake' is an extreeeeemmmmmmeeeeely important book, for what novel can make you laugh out loud on nearly every page? And yet, the last page is perhaps the most eloquent peice of prosody in the English literature:
"I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous-endsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the"
Paris
1922-39
The Bible...other than that, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I don't think I'll ever forget reading that book.
the little prince by antoine de saint-exupery.
it changes my life every time i read it.
Oh Gawd....tough question but I would say anything by Truman Capote so....."A Capote Reader".