Sunday, February 28, 2010

Life-Changing?

I've been trying and trying to figure out the purpose of our latest blog assignment: Write about a book that changed your life and how you came across it. I can't figure out the importance of this in relation to our online book marketing class.

Part of the reason I'm trying so hard to discern the reasoning here is because I can't pick a single book that changed my life. My parents have said that I could read newspaper headlines and more when I was three. I've always read. My grandmother was a second-grade teacher and used to send me boxes and boxes of books and classroom learning material. I have no way to distinguish a before reading/after reading me. I'm probably over-thinking this.

I could post about Hesse's Siddhartha, which I read and loved, and then reread when I found it on a coffee table, inscribed with something like: "This book will change your life. Read it, then pass it along as I have done here." I still have that copy somewhere.

Or, there's my all-time favorite, A Prayer for Owen Meany, strongly recommended by a friend. I'd never read Irving before. It knocked me over, it rocked me. The friendship in Owen Meany was so powerful, and the prayer-like opening section proof of Irving's mastery, I fell in love.

Let's not forget the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I have read over and over again. Thank you Mr. Gray for reading The Hobbit to us in sixth grade. Speaking of teachers, Professor Wandling's love of romantic poets brought Romanticism to my life, and then Nietzsche, and finally Emerson.

How could I possibly pick a book that changed my life? No one book has changed my life, rather, it's the act of reading that continues to shape my perception of the world around me. As for the best of the best, those books have all come from strong recommendations of friends or teachers.

2 comments:

  1. Siddhartha is one of your favorite books?! I never knew. Mine too, though I fear it might not stand up to a re-reading now that I'm older and more cynical. But really, you kept the found copy?! Obviously the book's theme of renouncing attachments didn't really resonate with you.

    I like your conclusion here: that there's no one single life-changing book. Rather, it's the practice of reading - everything from cereal boxes to the quote-unquote Great Books - that changes you.

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  2. thanks!

    Yeah, Hesse is kind of like Kerouac for me. Both worked better for me at 20 than at 30.

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