What are some books that have impacted you the most?

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OMG Twisty how did I forget To Kill a Mockingbird? Changed my life.

Othello
Much Ado

King Lear
Twelfth Night

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 13 Mar 2023, 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, my favourite by far.

I think my favorite is Hamlet, but it’s really hard to pick a favorite because every play has something wonderful and true in it.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have always been an important part of my life and a central component to my inner fantasy world.

My ideal Brontë book would be the beginning of JE, the story of WH and Tenant, and the ending of Villette.

Maybe some imagery of Agnes Grey.

I adored The Professor too - I think it's very underrated.

Oh, and Shirley is so powerful I haven't been able to reread it for years. It's that intense.

Yeah it really is such a great book. One of my favorites from back in high school.

Tom Swift and His Giant Robot

At home and at school (2^nd grade—1961 or 1962) it was apparently apparent that I was frustrated by the reading options available to me. My parents had a parent-teacher conference and came home with "Tom Swift".

Ever since I have enjoyed science fiction and been grateful to my 2^nd grade teacher.

Oh, runner-up for mention here would be the dictionary...which started interesting me at about that same time. There are some interesting things in a dictionary.

Sometimes it’s less that a book is impacting me and more that it’s describing or illustrating my experience in a way that I couldn’t.

I think about Melanie from Gone With the Wind nearly every day, in one way or another.
I guess that means it had an impact on me.
I read it in 7th grade.

I read it when I was about that age too. Melanie was always my favorite character…by far.

My teacher brought in a giant cardboard box of donated paperbacks and we each had to choose one for a book report. Everyone chose the shortest books possible, generally young adult fiction from that time. I hauled out Gone With the Wind and clutched it tightly, assuming the all the other girls would want to take it from me. I knew absolutely nothing about the American Civil War but it only took me two or three days to finish reading and I aced my report. I've read it a few times since. I had the vinyl soundtrack in high school, but I have no idea where it went. I also watched the movie on DVD the day I got my dog, so that's special too.

Also - The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough - blew my mind around the same age.
I recently thought about that book and realised I didn't have my copy anymore.
That night I walked my dog late at night and stumbled on a copy lying on the sidewalk in the dark.
The next day I was in a thrift shop with my cart, looking at kitchen things, and I turned around for a moment.
When I went back to my cart, someone had put another copy of it in the cart.
They apologised and said it was the wrong cart, but they didn't want it so I bought it.
Now I have two.

(((Maggie))) ^

Ditto for To Kill a Mockingbird
And The Thorn Birds.
For a long fun read The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.
It’s a nice large book.
The mini series was awful.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

Apart from the Bible, Shakespeare:

Mysticism (found on my Grandpa's as a late teen - no idea of the editor, but a Penguin edition with writings from philosophy and the major world religions).

Analects of Confucius (my signature is one of his sayings - 'a gentleman is not a tool / vessel').

The poetry of Tao Yuanming aka Tao Qian. (I wonder if my undiagnosed autism chimed with his general vibe of withdrawal from society, becoming a hermit, living on a little farm in peace and quiet).

Dante - La Divina Commedia

Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

Dostoyevsky - Notes from the Underground (uncomfortable reading - too close to the bone).

Origen - Homilies and Commentary on the Song of Songs

Celine - Journey to the End of the Night

Laozi - Dao De Jing

Zhuangzi

Poetry of Gwenallt (l learnt Welsh in part so as to read his complete works, most of which are still untranslated. Waldo Williams is next in line after him).

Lewis Carroll - both Alice books (desert island books for sure)

Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future - Fr Seraphim Rose

A eclectic list, no doubt, but everything fits in somewhere.