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sometimes there are always a series of books influenced us.among the books what you have read which book is the best ?what did you learn from the book?
The book of Gone with the Wind incluenced me so much that i cann't forget how Scarllet fought the adverse surroundings.aside from it the great love Scarllet showed to Ashley did also impress me deeply.
I think the book that most influenced me was "Narziss and Goldmund" by Hermann Hesse. It's strinking how little i knew about the human nature, anf then how all of the sudden it all made sense...
:)
The Analects by Confucius. So, I don't know, apt, I suppose.
F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby had such an impact on my life. The sudden tragedy and the unhappiness that Gatsby felt without his love and then dying alone, incredibly horrible. But it made me realize that money can in no way buy you happiness, but neither can poverty unfortunatly :-?
Bible.
The novel "Les Miserables", I finished the book in the 8th grade, it greatly impacted on me, it has changed my view of morality, it made me judge people differently, it lead me to adulthood.
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Definitely not a conventional view on morality and the self.
Quite simply I began to realise how easily one could consciously reinterpret the world upon its completion.
"The sound and the fury" by W. Faulkner was, definetely, the book that influenced me much. Thanks to it my way of understand literature changed, and, I think, it improved.
hm i ve never been really influenced by a book
more like this: every book leaves me in a different mood that can last up to say.....ten days.
let's see.... well: hazarski rechnik (which you woulden t have heard of), the island of the day before, then.......hm. ex ponto.
and that's all folks!
I must say that Walden by Thoreau is for sure on of these books by which a person can be influenced. All the books by Ayn Rand have also had an influence on me. This year I have been reading a lot of Victor Hugo and his books are simply ''incroyable''. I especially like his last novel, '93.
I don't think I've been the same person as I was before reading "Night", by Elie Wiesel. For those of you who don't know, the book chronicals the author's time as a 14 year old boy in Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald.
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
All of Tolkien's writings. One cannot remain unchanged after having read LOTR. There is something divine in it, almost like the bible.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath, and Portrait of a Lady - Henry James influenced me greatly.
"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".
Wild at Heart helped me so much... I am a completely diferent person.
And the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings
Especially by Confucius, Laozi,and Sakyamuni.
All the books by John Fowles:
"The Aristos"
"The Magus"
"The Collector"
"A Maggot"
Many Shakespeare's plays but especially:
"Othello"
"Hamlet"
"King John"
W. Somereset Maugham:
"Of Human Bondage"
Charles Dickens
"Great Expectations"
Agatha Christie
"The Mystery of King's Abbot" ("The Murder of Roger Ackroyd")
E.L. Doctorow
"Ragtime"
William Makepeace Thackeray,
"Vanity Fair"
John Updike
"Couples"
Lawrence Sterne
"The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman"
Other than the Bible, Jane Eyre, in particular Jane's independance and sense of her own identity were really important for me at the time I first read it.
the bible? are you people insane???
books-
the catcher in the rye
animal farm
the odyssey
Even though I'm not religious, let alone Christian, I can see what importance and influence the Bible as a text would have in a religious person's life. The Bible to a Christian is like the Complete Works of William Shakespeare to a lover of literature, at least that's how I think so.
It'd be okay to choose the Bible as a book that influenced one greatly, as opposed to the Bible as the greatest work of literature ever written?
Apparently it's a pretty good read, as well.
Thank you Munro! As a christian, the Bible is the number one book in my life and it is "a pretty good read." Song of Soloman is probably the most beautiful love poem I have ever read, and the book of Job is an amazing story of faithfullness no matter what happens. (I couldn't imagine going through what Job went through!)
The books that influenced me most were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and My Antonia by Willa Cather. And I can't forget The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein which was one of my favorites as a kid.[/u]
The Left Behind series influenced me greatly in all ways of life. I'm a Christian, but this series isn't just for religious readers. It has a lot of suspense and it took up my time, in a good way, for a while since there are, I think, 10 books in the series. I strongly recommend reading them. The first book in the series is called Left Behind and the authors are Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.;) :)