No Longer Human and Notes from Underground.
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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I am not recommending you the book cause that book got triggering things mentioned, like a vivid sucide attempt and a couple of self harm stuff. I was in 7th or 8th gradeand i read this book by Preity Shenoy "Life is what you make it" and it left a mark on me... It might be cause of my age... The book was about mental health, how to tackle it all and the most important thing it does that it ends on a note where things weren't good but they weren't as bad as before and it resonated with me somehow. It made me awfully optimistic, it taught me something that was precious. I never feel mentally sick, yes obviously there were a llot of low times in my life but still in those i worked as hard as i could and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but i never felt too bad about it.
It was a weird book, or maybe it was the time when i read it...
Cain, by Jose Saramago, is probably the most influential book I've ever read. It completely turned my view of religious works (even when viewed as literature and not holy writ) on its head.
Other works that have had profound influence on me:
The Cave - Saramago
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Saramago
Something Happened - Joseph Heller
The Plague - Albert Camus
You would like The Temple of Iconocalsts
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Angélique: Marquise of the Angels by Anne Golon
in no particular order.
All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr
Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa
My Feudal Lord - Tehmina Durrani (accidentally read it, maybe I was too young for it. The horrors of the book stayed with me.)
The Ibis trilogy - Amitav Ghosh (It's such a complex and beautifully written series with very real emotions and historical references. Makes me think about our world even now.)
Works of history.
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Urofsky - Louis. D. Brandeis: A Life
Rakove - Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
Appleman - East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea
Fisher - Paul Revere's Ride
Murphy - Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas
Akbar - Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan
Massie - Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War
Hatchet by Gary Paulson is the novel and author that opened me up to a lifetime of reading.
Absolutely agree. Anytime I look back on what sparked my interest in reading it is this. It opened me to a wave of so many new interests.
I carried a weathered copy of The King of the Wind as a support book from grade three to six pretty much. It is an all time favorite and you're right - I'm not quite sure why this one stood out among all the horse books I read as a child. But I'll take a stab at it. Sham is a great horse protagonist, maybe in part because he is always an underdog and never has a famous career. His greatness is like a secret and that feels both relatable and vindicating when we know so many famous horses are descended from him. It probably also hit right in terms of being a serious story without being hard to read. I could read it before I was going to slog through Black Beauty or even The Black Stallion. But it wasn't about young girls inexplicably bonding with race horses (which I loved, don't get me wrong - I had a long go with the Thoroughbred series) and it had a richer world to get lost in.
Sham muscling in to mate with the prize mare instead of the puffed up stallion that was planned for it is such a gleeful moment of triumph. Kind of odd that this was the highlight of the book for a third grader, but there it is. You're rooting for him so hard, and this is one of the very few 'wins' he ever gets, and he does it on pure style. Do the famous racehorses come from that pairing? I can't remember now!
Catcher In The Rye, because it was probably the first book I had to read for school that I genuinely wanted to read. I think it may have been the book that started it all for me.
Toll the Hounds - Steven Erikson
Its a very sad book about how grief affects people and intertwines with love, and how we can move past it. I'd honestly recommend it to people even without prior series context
A common suggestion, but Lonesome Dove is the book I was most engrossed in.
In terms of ones that have had an impact on my life in general, Stoner by John Williams changed my perspective on how meaningful life is.
This Boy's Life - Wolff
Factotum - Bukowski
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Selby
Get in the Van - Rollins
Memnoch (the Devil) - Rice
Wow I think this is the first time I've seen Tobias Wolff mentioned here. Been a while since I read This Boys Life. Good book but for me I would pick In Pharoah's Army. The characters seemed more vivid but maybe less relatable than growing up with a single mother in a hardscrabble rural backwater.
For Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. I unapologetically love that book.
I recognized King of the Wind from the image in this post - a magical, amazing book. Thanks for reminding me!
Me too! Great book.
Me too! I dropped my copy in the bathtub when I was a kid and it’s all wrinkled.
Books I read as a kid that stuck with me...
The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea
The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop
The Girl Who Owned a City by O. T. Nelson
Downsiders by Neal Shusterman
Great horse protagonist books like Beyond Rope and Fence by David Grew and Blitz by Hetty Burlingame Beatty, and great animal protagonist books in general like Call of the Wild
Here I go recommending Garth Nix again, but I first read the Old Kingdom trilogy when I was about thirteen and it affected me so strongly I still re-read them regularly more than twenty years later. The way the books presented death as a natural progression of life - something to be saddened by but ultimately to be accepted - I think influenced me beyond what I really realised at the time. Also the concept that some things are bigger than you, but you can still make a difference - that's a message worth hearing.
This is an amazing series. It took me over a year to get my partner to read it (but that's a kids book...). I was pretty gloating when they loved it.
Dune - Frank Herbert, changed my view of the world when I was about 20, my uni professor had recommended it.
Read The Black Stallion (Walter Farley) at my grandparents when I was 8 or so, ended up falling in love and reading the whole series. I now own that original hardback along with the paperbacks I collected. It was by far my favorite series ever and I felt like I grew up riding every step on horseback with Alec.
May add more later, just on break atm so back to work.
Can you elaborate how Dune did change your view of the world?
Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
Tuck Everlasting, the Secret Life of Bees, A Monster Calls, the Great Gatsby, All the Bright Places, and Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant Watership Down by Richard Adams Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (and Hard Boiled Wonderland) Little, Big by John Crowley Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis All of the books by Edward Eager Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (and Poisonwood Bible)
There's so many!
It's a divisive trilogy but The Magicians by Lev Grossman. There were a couple of lines in those books that were lines I really needed to hear at that point in time.
“Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else.”
in particular was one that hit hard.
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiesson
All of them.
If you are a masterpiece, you do not question yourself which action of the master crafter madevyoub a masterpiece, you know:
It was all of them
I feel like a few things will really draw me in with a book and make it stand out, but I feel like one of the big intangibles that really matters is having a certain almost musical rhythm and flow to how it is written. And I don’t mean flowery language (hell, Dr Seuss manages excellent flow through silly, simple rhymes, and I was argue that this is a big reason why they have remained so popular). I mean that there is something about how it is written (the words, the transitions, the structure) that moves according to such a natural rhythm that it draws you into the story and out of yourself. Then, once you’ve been lulled into forgetting that you are reading at all, the story itself is free to impact you as if everything was actually really happening to you. Of course, now that I’m trying to think about it, I’m having a hard time coming up with a really good example of this. But yeah, if I can get caught up in the flow of the words and story, I’m going to get much more immersed and the book will end up sticking with me more.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Solidified my love for biological sciences (and post apocalyptic fiction)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque. There’s no glory in dying in a rich man’s war.
Blood Meridian by McCarthy. An unnerving look at the baseline of rough human beings.
I might need to look at some more positive stuff 😬
Think Again by Adam Grant is without doubt the most important non-fiction book on the planet.
Fiction: the count of Monte cristo.
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. It literally saved my life in my 20s by letting me know healing was possible
Siddhartha by Hesse. I annotated the f out of that book.
Everybody poops
I didn’t like Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro when we read it in class but after finishing the book, I bawled for about an hour thinking about it. I had to write an essay about it and it just hit me while writing it how much the plot had touched me without even realising it.
Under the whispering door - TJ Kline
I was just diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer 2 years ago and was not much of a reader. Since my diagnosis, I don't leave my house without at least 2 books in my backpack. I am at over 100 books this year!! But this one hit me hard. It deals with death in such a positive way.......easily my favorite book that I've ever read.
Slaughter House Five-Kurt Vonnegut. I read the book soon after my father unexpectedly passed away. It opened my mind to the concept of parallel dimensions and timelines. So even though he’s was gone from my world, he was existing in a parallel universe and this helped my grieving process.
Confederacy of Dunces.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. No, I didn't become some drug seeking journalist, but it turned me on to a different view of, well, everything. I was reading nothing but Stephen King and history books, fresh out of 12 years of catholic school, and this book broke the mental dam. I started reading Irvine Welsh, Kerouac, anything off the beaten path, compared to what I was used to reading and internalizing. It really opened my mind, and made me more of an accepting person, something the previous 12 years did not.
Gonzo journalism, it’s a life changer.
Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Had me fall back into love with reading after a long hiatus. I have always enjoyed sci-fi and there were so many cool concepts in that book that you really needed to use your imagination to appreciate them. When the Martian man is told to go hide in the bottom of the pool, while they are being invaded and he discovers he can astral project was one of the coolest scenes that I have ever read.
Mao's Last Dancer, I was 12 and it was my first autobiography. It showed me just how vastly different some kids grew up compared to me and that the world was far bigger than I ever realised.
For me, it's To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. At first, I started at a languid pace but slowly, I fell in love with the language and the characters of Scout and her brother Jem. It resonated with me. Honestly, I found it hard to read, but thanks to my sister who encouraged me, I got the spirit and read it twice. The book explores themes of racial prejudice and the persistence of outdated attitudes and beliefs in certain areas. The character of Atticus, for me, has been the most impactful in my life. It taught me how to look at things with a positive perspective and see good in others.
King of the Wind is such a wonderful read.
Surprised not to see "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fiodor Dostoevsky mentioned yet.
Outstanding take on the meaning of life, on bad and evil, religion, the human soul and psychology. And I will never forget the ending, an optimistic beacon to help me through the bad times, and to make me remain humble and kind during the good ones.
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, it was a truly memorable read. Ill cherish it forever, it had the vibe of A Thousand Years by Christinna Perri being played in the background.
I love Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. One of my favorite books ever. Released the same year I was born, when I was younger I felt that Bach wrote that book specifically for me. I've read it hundreds of times in the last 45ish years. I've given copies to each of my children, although they don't have the same feelings about the book as I did at 7-8 years old reading it for the first time by myself. That book started the foundation that I would build my life upon. I still have the original copy I was given, although it is not the copy I currently read.
Richard Bach also wrote Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah and as a young man, starting out in my career my very first professional mentor gave me a copy of this book and it changed the way that I viewed the world. I've only read this book dozens of times in the past 30 years, but it is still one of my favorites.
I think it's time for me to give each of these books another read.
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