the book that changed it all.

Sadly, and all cliche-like, Fight Club.

It was the first book that I actually read for myself, as opposed to reading for someone else, or for school. I heard from a friend, and bought it, and it... really opened my eyes to what books can be. Before you read something really riveting, you sort of think that everything out there is either a Tom Clancy book, Stephen King, or Les Miserables. They're interesting, but a bit of work to read. And then you find a book that's just... out there, and you read it from front to back and a half non stop.

If I become a writer, Fight Club will undoubtedly have been the catalyst for that.

never read vonnegut, but i love back to school with rodney dangerfield. he even gets vonnegut to ghost write his essay on vonnegut and throws him out saying you don't even understand what you've written. get outta here! yuck yuck yuck.

dean martin. love that. yes, dean martin. ha ha ha

Framstedt, I love that scene in Back to School. Fuckin classic!

The two books that changed my life, for the better I hope:

1) Obviously: Fight Club

2) Ishmael by Daniel Quinn; truly an awesome work

Fight Club got me back into reading. I was 17, it was end of spring, and I finally found a book that got me hooked. I finished it in 2 days and never realized before how deep you could get yourself when reading a book. I became an avid reader ever since.

ummmmmmm....you guessed it, fight club! choke and survivor are as good in my opinion. survivor is my fave book ive read so far.

of course chuck's writing has grealy influenced the way i've thought about myself and the way i lived..

but since i'm feeling nostalgic...

i actually have to answer this question for my university application (its a "special" program so we had to fill out supplementary application forms)...here is my answer, and i am almost certain that this is the reason why i got in. i'm pretty sure most of the pretenious applicants were like "oh the book that influenced me the most is dickens..blah blah"

Despite its notorious reputation, American Psycho has made a deep impression on my perception of the world we live in. I do not believe that American Psycho promotes murder nor does it promote misogyny. It is, however, a brilliant satirical social commentary on the dangers of conformity and the evils of materialism. Author Bret Easton Ellis scrutinizes the perversion of the American dream by presenting characters that suppress their individualities and all moral sense in exchange for material wealth in the “Me” decade (the eighties). Protagonist Patrick Bateman is an archetypal yuppie; he dresses in designer labels, dines at the trendiest restaurants and is financially established. However, the more he tries to be like his yuppie peers, the more faceless he becomes. In fact, Bateman vents out his frustrations with conformity by slipping into a homicidal trance—Patrick Bateman is the embodiment of yuppie angst. Not often can we find an author who is unafraid to express what s/he feels regardless of the controversies that it will bring. Surely Ellis presents us with intolerable materials, but it is common that we would find our life answers from the most uncomfortable sources. Although Ellis criticizes the eighties as a time of material overkill and moral recklessness, we are constantly reminded that our material fetishism and our insatiable greed are still selfishly pursued today. “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the world, and lose his own soul?” By reading this twentieth century fable, it is important that we do not repeat the same mistakes as our predecessors and allow greed to replace our moral standards. More importantly, Ellis has taught me to be weary of losing my individuality and be unafraid to express my opinions.

Catcher in The Goddamn Rye.

Oh man, so many books have done so many things for me. I've been a reader all my life, so maybe the beginning ABC books my parents taught me out of and then these "Why is the sky blue" books that had the main character with my same name. After that, some notable ones include:
-True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - I was always told it was a girly book after I read it, but I seriously loved it. Opened my doors to a few things, like the fact that girls could be cool.
-The Best Christams Pageant Ever - This one changed me not so much because I read it and was intrigued, but because my great aunt, Barbara Robinson, wrote it. Yes, kids, this was my introduction to the world of actual writing, not just reading.
-Many a book that I read in my AP English class. This includes Invisible Man, The Things They Carried, Poisonwood Bible, and Oedipus Rex. Although the literature was fantastic, it was the class itself that opened up my mind even further.
-Fight Club - I doubt if I would've found this place if I hadn't read Fight Club and I've gotten tons of new books from the lists that accumulate here.
-There really are so many more that have had dramatic impacts on my life, but 1) I can't remember them all and 2) they are too many to list.

either On the Road- Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson- The Rum Diary.

Mine's, as I've probably mentioned before (although nobody remembers), "Ready, Ok!" an earth-shatteringly dark comedy by Adam Cadre - it's his only book, so don't be surprised that you haven't heard of him.

Fight Club was cool, as were Chuck's other things... Fleming's Bond books were cool... Ellis' books were cool... but this book is the one that changed my world.

The opening lines of the novel are, "The day I turned sixteen years old I had no idea that in less than a year just about everyone that I'd ever known or cared about would be dead. Unburdened by this foreknowledge, it was a free and unclouded mind that I went down the DMV and failed my driver's test."

"Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day"
definately surmised all of the angst i had built up inside of me as a child.
but truthfully, i would have to say "A Farewell to Arms" or "Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes"

I can't really think of anything that has affected me, I know there are at least a couple, but I can't think of them...at least not until I see them again and remember. But anyway.

The most recent, and not technically "life"-changing thing I've gotten from a book is from Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. I absolutely love books like this and I'm also reading it because my grandpa is donating his body to science. But after reading some of it, a dead body in the ground in a "sealed" casket does nothing but rot. It's just throwing it away...so yeah, I want to donate my body to forensic science research (if you can be that picky where your body goes).

Yeah, there are others that have changed the way I see things, but this is the only specific example I can think of right now.

And...since probably nobody noticed anyway, I moved to a better, white-trash-free apartment in the past month and had to get rid of internet and cable. So yeah. I'm back....

And the peasants rejoice.

Congrats on the move PsychoKeety. Good to have you back.

Thanks. Yep. Our new living room/dining room is the size of our entire old apt. =D No more beer cans flying at our door by 50yr old infants. ::dances::

aesops fables.
instruction booklets for ninja gaiden and other nintendo games.
but for really real, fightclub and most of all, invisible monsters was the FIRST that i read of chucks with no clue of what was going on. it's not all the way my favorite, but that doesn't mean that it's not his best work. the swings and fucked up imagery that i saw while reading that was the greatest thing, leading me to enjoy reading... that, and some mother forkin easops fucking fables.

My First 1000 Spanish Words

Teh spics have linguals?

[QUOTE]pathetically teenaged enough, i ended up picking it up because the ethan embry character in cant hardly wait was going to see him...[/QUOTE]

dude, it is a victory for humanity that even ONE person got turned on to something as worthwhile as vonnegut by that movie. don't get me wrong, i found it hilarious, but it's still great that it led to more intellectual pursuits for you. don't be ashamed. be proud!

my book is prob. the anne of green gables series. i wouldn't say it changed my life b/c i was only about 5 or 6 years old when my mother started to read it to me. but i would call it a seminal work for me--for all its flaws, the character of anne is a truly great one, especially for little girls. she was my hero, and still kind of is. she taught me that girls can do anything, be anything, get through anything. i modeled myself after her character, and to this day i think she's helped me find empowerment as a woman. it sounds cheesy, but it's true.

I never really understood how anyone could really connect with a book the way I've heard they do. I enjoyed reading and had alot of books that I really liked but it never clicked. Survivor was the first book I ever really connected with on every level. It was the first book I ever re-read entirely with as much, if not more, enthusiasm as I had the first time I read it. There are alot of other books I could name that I find really fascinating and great(Perfume, House of Leaves which I'm in the middle of right now, Hubert Selby Jr. novels, Lolita, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, other books by Chuck) but none of those can really hold a candle to Survivor as far as I'm concerned.

i have the opposite problem. books are an addiction for me. i can't NOT connect with all but the most vacuous ones. i'm one of those ppl who reads like six books at once and then buys a seventh because she "just can't resist." i've never really had one favorite book that's head and shoulders above the rest like that because they're all so interesting and great to me in different ways. so in that way, you're lucky to have such a special relationship with just one book, rather than being book-promiscuous like me and most of your fellow cultists.

hahah, yay for book whores.

I'd like to congratulate angelanicole on making what I think is a primo thread. I really dig this one.

what you mean talking abotu literature instead of recounting vomit stories? lol.

the unbearable lightness of being
the book of laughter and forgetting
slowness
the joke

anything by milan kundera. i read th ejoke and my hair stood up on end.

Hey, Fram, can you give us anymore insight into what about those books make your hair stand on end?
Book thread, back at the top.

No book really changed it all, but in the last week or so, I have been ultra motivated to finally do something with my life. So that's neato. I think it had to do with being stuck on crutches and trapped in my house for almost a month. I realized how much that blows. So now I've got to do something. Hooray. This is good. I hope it lasts.

Watch out folks - one day I'm going to be a corporate whore just like frammy.

" i'm one of those ppl who reads like six books at once and then buys a seventh because she "just can't resist." " To be fair I did about the same thing for a long time (though with about three books instead of six), I just never connected, I had a to-read pile that was almost as big as I am, eventually I gave up and sold them all. I guess I was just looking for the connection. now I try and restrain myself to one book at the moment and whatever I'm going to read next. I'm sure it won't last.

zorba the greek, last temptation of christ, iliad, odyssey.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by jer [/i]
[B]I love Chuck's books but Trainspotting is the greatest novel of all time. [/B][/QUOTE]
I like this kid already. Maybe it's not the best novel imo, but it's damn good.

Cliche, cliche, cliche - Catcher In The Rye.

I read it first at my brother's urging and my teacher's fervrent demands I stay away from it.

It was the first book i ever read that admitted that the real world blew chunks, that school didn't prepare you for everything, that other people felt disconnected, that people were fake...but most of all, it was the first book where the lead character felt like i did.

call me crazy, but i think holden caufeild was one hopeful motherfucker.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by insomnomaniac [/i]
[B]my book is prob. the anne of green gables series. i wouldn't say it changed my life b/c i was only about 5 or 6 years old when my mother started to read it to me. but i would call it a seminal work for me--for all its flaws, the character of anne is a truly great one, especially for little girls. she was my hero, and still kind of is. she taught me that girls can do anything, be anything, get through anything. i modeled myself after her character, and to this day i think she's helped me find empowerment as a woman. it sounds cheesy, but it's true. [/B][/QUOTE]

Anne fucking rules. She is the only female lead character written by a woman writer that I've ever just completely loved and admired. I still want to be her when i grown up.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Rents [/i]
[B]-The Best Christams Pageant Ever - This one changed me not so much because I read it and was intrigued, but because my great aunt, Barbara Robinson, wrote it. Yes, kids, this was my introduction to the world of actual writing, not just reading. [/B][/QUOTE]

are you serious?? i loved this book...i think it was one of the first chapter books i ever read. i wanted to be a herdman because they were so bad-ass. didn't they make it into a movie, too?

One hunderd percent serious. And yeah, they made it into a movie. My aunt's in the movie buying a Christmas tree somewhere, but I have yet to locate her.

your great aunt's the coolest

Yeah, I think so too.

omg u rede pr0n how grose u weerdo