What books have seriously changed your life and why?

(I've a feeling I ought to do my Sue Lawley bit at this point, and ban the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. But I suppose I'll let them in as long as you can tell an interesting story about why)

For me there's been a few. Chief among them would have to be Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140289208/sumptionorg-21). It was introduced to me by one of my lecturers, Susan Blackmore (http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/), in my final year of university, and has probably been the single thing that has changed my life more than any other. It provided me with a framework within which human consciousness (and beyond it life, the universe and, yes damn it, everything) could be grasped if not fully comprehended. Almost overnight my viewpoint shifted from one of wishy-washy New Age mysticism with a dash of astrology to one of strong atheistic rationalism. (Subsequent readings of Richard Dawkins helped a little as well.)

To a lesser degree, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0809058405/sumptionorg-21) by John Allen Paulos (and his subsequent book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/038548254X/sumptionorg-21)) taught me everything about numbers that 15 years of maths education didn't, and more importantly it showed me in a very entertaining way how people can be manipulated, how they make mistakes leading to misjudgements, and generally fail to grasp what's going on around them because of a lack of understanding of numbers. It's a book whose knowlege I put to use almost every time I pick up a newspaper or watch a news programme, for example one look at the front cover of today's Independent showed me that their graph, which appears designed to show a 300% rise in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere over the last 50 years, actually only shows a 20% rise.

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679747567/sumptionorg-21) by Edward Tenner taught me that, while my faith in the scientific method may be sound, I should never let this lull me into a similar faith in technology and human progress. It also made me realise there's a hell of a lot we don't know yet. Again, learnings I call upon all the time, and the main (or rather the only) reason why I am strongly against the introduction of genetically modified crops.

In terms of fiction, Viriconium Nights by M John Harrison (now published as part of the Viriconium collection (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1857989953/sumptionorg-21) by Fantasy Masterworks) changed my reading habits completely and, I am certain, for the better. Having ploughed through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in early childhood, then spent an adolescence sucking up reams of fantasy and sci-fi largely regardless of merits, I picked this book up almost by accident. I was seventeen, at Kings Cross station on my way to Amsterdam for a week of indulgence, my first holiday without parents. I read through the book's short stories as I lazed in tents, coffee shops and squats around Amsterdam, and somehow the timeless locationless city of the title came into phase with the Amsterdam I was inhabiting. But more than that: it was a rite of passage into more adult literature. Most of the stories had no obvious point, and seemed to end without reaching a conclusion, but despite that they were beautiful, and more compelling than most the fantasy pulp I was used to. They made me realise that real life is rarely made up of well-defined quests that struggle through hardship before ending in a happy ever after. They taught me that god is in the details.

Finally, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140235191/sumptionorg-21) by Angela Carter blew my brain wide open and made me realise that literature can be a mind-altering drug.

In my case, it is not so much a book, but a poem that changed my life. Philip Larkin's 'Aubade' is about the 'reality' of death, and the possibility that it is 'extinction' which we travel to, rather than eternal life. Larkin's poem terrified and unsettled me. Previously, I had affected a religious certainty that I was not within a million miles of feeling. This poem, with its lines such as ,' most things never happen -this one will', made me face up to the possibility that our fate is oblivion not Afterlife.

Larkin writes of how realisation of mortality, 'rages out in furnace-fear when we are caught without people or drink'. He makes the point that our attitude to death is irrelevant too, 'Courage is no good: it means not scaring others', and that 'death is no different whined at than withstood'. He convincingly describes our incredulity; 'the mind blanks at the glare' of the 'sure extinction that we travel to and shall be lost in always'. For Larkin, there is,'nothing more terrible, nothing more true'. This is 'the anaesthetic from which none come round'.

The fifth, and final verse, contains what are for me some of the most poignant and powerful words in the English language.

'Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.'


As I get older [43], Larkin's words seem to grow louder and louder.

Sheffield A-Z. I would be lost without it.

Thanks timo, from the verse you post and from your description it does indeed sound poignant and powerful. I've never considered myself very "good" with poetry (possibly because I rarely give it the time it needs to sink in) but the occasional one does move me immensely, and it sounds like that may be one of them.

A while ago I read some poems from Brian Patten's book Armada. I think he wrote it shortly after his parents had died, and it contains a lot of stuff he obviously felt he couldn't say when they were alive, plus a lot of stuff about death. Very dark and very touching, not the sort of stuff I had expected from a jolly "Liverpool poet", especially as most of my previous experience had been with his childrens' poems.

Armada
Long, long ago
when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now,
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child's armada.
A broken fortress of twigs,
the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines -
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond.
And you, mother, stood behind me,
impatient to be going,
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.
How closely the past shadows us.
In a hospital a mile or so from that pond
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,
reach out across forty years to touch once more
that pond's cool surface,
and it is your cool skin I'm touching;
for as on a pond a child's paper boat
was blown out of reach
by the smallest gust of wind,
so too have you been blown out of reach
by the smallest whisper of death,
and a childhood memory is sharpened,
and the heart burns as that armada burnt,
long, long ago.

J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World, which I first read when I was about 10, probably started me off on the path of downbeat science fiction surrealism that still pervades much of my thinking.

But if Larkin seems a bit heavy, there's always WB Yeats to retreat to. The Wild Swans at Coole is my favourite of his, if only for the purity and elegance of the opening verse:

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

This is the sort of poetry I like. It's accessible, beautiful, deceptively intricate, and transports you to a better place.

Greenback,
I must emphasise that I do not 'like' the message of Larkin's poem at all! It is definately not the kind of thing to read for pleasure, comfort, or to be, as you say, 'transported'. The kind of poetry that causes me pleasure is the work of John Clare, who offers a fairly 'authentic' view of English country life around the time of Enclosure. Larkin's poem did change my life, though, in a profound way. After I read it, in my early 20s, no longer could I deceive myself that I fully believed in an Afterlife.

timo, I read that last sentence as "fully believed in an Attercliffe"!

I understand what you mean, what i was trying to put across is that, like you, I find Larkin's poetry to be very dark, unsettling and slightly morbid. Still brilliant, though - High Windows is fantastic.

(Incidentally I used to live a stone's throw from Larkin's old residence in Hull, but unfortunately I have not been imbued with his poetic spirit)

Nelson Mandela's autobiograpy would be my choice.

Originally posted by Greenback
timo, I read that last sentence as "fully believed in an Attercliffe"!
Yes, timo has been experimenting with a reality disruption field around his posts recently. In the last day I have mis-read "ta ra" as "sun ra" and "Churchill" as "Burchill"

Greenback and Dan,
What is this? Do I have special powers, or something? Timo- Reality Disruption Field Kid, or Perception Distortion Man? Re the Attercliffe reference [LOL], I have always believed in an Attercliffe, but I have my doubts about an eternal Oughtibridge.

Brave new world-an almost perfect prediction of the way the worlds gone,unfortunatly.Soma,anyone?:(

Originally posted by Annoni_mouse
Soma,anyone?:(
Mmm, one cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.

Currently reading 1984....


:suspect: :suspect: :suspect:

Janet and John books ~ don't know where I'd be now without them
:thumbsup: ;) :thumbsup:

Originally posted by Don_Kiddick
Currently reading 1984....


:suspect: :suspect: :suspect:

Reading books like that will make you cynical:D

The Stand - Stephen King, made me realise how easily this world could be altered and how we would have to try and survive without basic utilities.
Lasher - Anne Rice, I bought it at a second hand bookstall and it basically introduced me to all her works.
Not a profound reading list I know, but it's the genre that I'm interested in.
Just read a biography of Oliver Reed, that I found fascinating and couldn't put down, I bought that at a second hand stall too.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Had me in tears and really made me think about the littler things in life that we worry about much less than the more profound things, yet make a much bigger difference to us. Not a "classic" but I loved it and it changed the way I think which I guess is the idea of this thread...

Years ago I read a book by 2 American Drs called,
Healing with Mind Power.
It taught me that my world could become more livable with auto suggestion.
it was explained how to put yourself into a self hypnotic trance and ask of your subconscious to make liife more bearable.
Just that you would get through the day and to enjoy it.
I was going through a particualy bad patch and this book got me though it.
I never lost the skill and still use it now.
The dentist---- I have fillings with no injection.
hospital visits like angiography I can stay calm.
All the pin pricks of life are smoothed

hazel.

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins.

It breaks all the rules, the end is at the beginning and the beginning is somewhere in the middle but it explains the meaning of meaning! I read it at 17 and have been twiddling my thumbs (Reference to Sissy in even Cowgirls get the Blues) ever since. Religion, life, philosophy, the word that rhymes with 'Orange'. Does anyone here know what I am talking about??

When I was about 19 I was in a real rut and fed up with my carreer. I was really very shy and promotion was always given to others. I read a book called How to get what you want out of life. Unfortunately I can't remember who wrote it. It was the most motivating book. I became a manager within 6 months of reading it.

The book that changed My life is called
The third Policeman. The Author is Flann O'Brien. I have read it about 15 times.

On the biography front, I often read biographies and get inspired or spot parallels with my life and think "I wonder if", but the one biography which fired me up most was Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton's Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/009917331X/qid=1118471474/sumptionorg-21) - I was astounded by the richness and variety of Richard Feynman's interests, and the unstoppable curiosity which led him to get to the bottom of everything that interested him. I was also amazed at how many absolutely wild and fascinating incidents could be packed into one life. After reading it, I determined to become more inquisitive myself, to try and explore life to the full, and also to try to be as stimulating a parent as Feynman's were, so that my kids would hopefully pick up some of the same zest for life.

Regarding self-help and management guru-type books, I've always been very wary of these but over the years I've picked up a number of useful tips which have, gradually, allowed me to make more of my life. I always take everything they say with a large pinch of salt though, and I think there are still a lot of charlatans in the self-help industry. (I think I remember reading about a novel a few years back, about a self-help author who was the most screwed-up person you could imagine. Then there was Francis Wheen's book last year, How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007140975/sumptionorg-21), which I also haven't read but which I believe lays into self-help quackery and really puts the boot in).

I read my self-help book probably 25/30 yr ago and it's still helping me.
hazel

Reading To Kill a Mockingbird aged 12 made me realise that it is always worth standing up for your beliefs regardless of how futile it seems. This is something that I have tried to live by ever since. I am now trying to pass this message to my son by giving him the name Atticus and reading him the book.