which book influenced you greatly?

[mayneverhave]

There are a few books that have inspired and influenced me greatly, but I would say the one key work is not a novel, but a poem.

E.E. Cumming's

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l

iness

I read that my freshman year of highschool. Before that, literature seemed two-dimensional, like everything written followed the same cookie-cutter format. Reading the poem, I realized that different ways of writing were out there, and that style could be fully utilized in writing. It was one of the contributing factors to my aspiring to be a writer.

[water song]

Thank you so much .You enable us to share our ideas and benefit from each other

[Janine]

Women In Love ~ D.H.Lawrence

I read this fine book when I was about 28 yrs old, and again this past year. On first reading, I was really excited about it. I felt my eyes had been opened to many truths about human beings and life. This novel transported me into deeper recesses of the human mind, giving me a greater understanding of relationships and how we all function, especially the complex interaction between man and woman. The book shows human beings as they really are, striving for ultimate personal truths, but not always finding what they are longing for. It also demonstrated how people react to each other, which is not always logical or predictable. This book made me think in entirely new realms and question many values in life.

[Remarkable]

The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

I read this book some months before(I had only read Dubliners from Joyce) and I found it very useful in every aspect.It is,in the end,a religious manifesto,an aesthetic one,a political one and also an intellectual calling.It made me think about what we consider unthinkable and also realise that morality (of what kind it doesn't matter;it might be sexual,mental,spiritual or political) in not just one dimensional.Joyce is a man that in the beggining of last ceuntry thought like a global thinker does today.

[Virgil]

Good Lord, I can't even imagine how many novels influenced me. Here's a sampling:

The Illiad, Homer
The Aeneid, Virgil
The Divine Comedy
Shakespeare, All of it. Period.
Don Quixote (still reading it, but it is magnificent)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Great Expectations, Dickens
The Death Of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov, Doestevsky
The Beast In The Jungle, James
Heart of Darkness, Conrad
Lord Jim Conrad
Nostromo, Conrad
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
To The Lighthouse, Woolf
The Sound And The Fury, Faulkner
Light In August, Faulkner
Sons and Lovers, Lawrence
The Rainbow, Lawrence
Women In Love, Lawrence

[LadyWentworth]

Shakespeare, All of it. Period.

I am the same with that!

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
Ragtime - E.L. Soctorow
Persuasion - Austen

Probably some others that I can't think of right now because I never really realized that they did influence my life that much.

[Janine]

Les Miserables.....and so many others....

[Hira]

Lots.

Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. I put them first coz these were the ones who brought me closer to books in the first place.
Silmarillion.
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
1984.
Animal Farm.
Oliver Twist.
Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Les Miserables.
The Age of Innocence.
The Great Gatsby.
Women in Love.
Sons and Lovers.
The Rainbow.
Kahlil Gibran's Works.
The Waves.
Mrs. Dalloway.
Anna Karenina.