The book which has made the biggest impact on your life.
Breakfast of Champions, the thing made me want to do something constructive after I read it, but I decided to just watch TV instead. Now that I am thinking about it I want to do something constructive again. But I think Webster is on....
"Excuse me sir, Did you wash your hands after you took that big heaping dump. You know that sign, that sign says ALL employees MUST wash their hands after using the restroom, What part of that do you not understand?"- Malcom X
"Would you care to lick my sweaty baulz after they have been dipped in the finest venerial juices and sauteed in my own ass-sweat, madam?"- Winston Churchill
a couple of books, namely "The Great Train Robbery"-Crichton "A Farewell To Arms"-Hemingway and "The Great Gatsby"-Fitzgerald because they were the first books i consciously wanted to make an effort to read, instead of just doing them for school projects.
my answer can be found somewhere in here: [url]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6757[/url]
Survivor by this Hawaiian guy and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, an extremely amazing book.
Palahniuk and Miike.
GODS!
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." Albert Einstein
Probably Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I feel a little bit renewed in kindness and love every time I read it.
Go ahead, laugh.
There is hope, but not for us.
"Victory Over Japan" by Ellen Gilchrist
[URL=http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y4/tragicfolly/Picture1039.jpg]There is still love in the MidWest.[/URL]
[B]You God damn better believe.[/B]
Fight Club.
FC got me back into reading hardcore. I started reading other books mentioned under the authors Chuck likes section. So I got my friends to start reading Chuck and then we all sorta suggested books to eah other all willy nilly like. Now because of this site, I recently wrote a story for the WW. It's 3000 words, and none to impressive, but at least I'm doing it again. It's weird how one little book did so much for me.
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/Lazlosdead/completeLazloSig.jpg[/IMG]
I’m going to go against my better judgment and say, To Kill a Mockingbird. I never got to read it at school, a decision that was entirely out of my hands because I attended a school that liked nothing better than to oppress young minds instead of liberating them. Yes, my fellow Cultists, there was some autocratic teachers who believed such literature was too challenging for children with IQs of around 30 (I made the IQ bit up, but I sure was dumb).
Instead, their preferred choice was to show us the movie adaptation and then tell us to write an A4 page about what we thought of the film. As a result, such great literarily works like said book - and many others like it - past me by as a child, and why I’m now trying my best to catch up. Which leads me to why I like TKAM. I read it properly about three years ago and I just feel in love with it. Each sentence just flowed effortlessly into each other like tributaries into the ocean. It make me laugh, cry, ask questions about racial equality and more importantly, made me want to better myself. To this day I’m still envious of Atticus’s wisdom, good judgement and integrity. And if I aspire to be at least a tenth of what that man was, then I’ll die with a right old smile on my withered lips (unless that is I die quite soon, then I would die with a smile on my masculine and virile lips).
[CENTER][url=http://stephengrahamjones.net/] [B]The Blue Monkeys are coming[/B][/url][/CENTER]
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Lazlosdead [/i]
[B]Fight Club.
FC got me back into reading hardcore. I started reading other books mentioned under the authors Chuck likes section. So I got my friends to start reading Chuck and then we all sorta suggested books to eah other all willy nilly like. [/B][/QUOTE]
This is very true with me also. And really, alot of the books already mentioned have had some degree of impact...though I can't say Michael Crichton is exactly earth-shattering...or even really readable...but I've got a small list nonetheless and in no particular order.
1. Jack and the Beanstalk (don't know who wrote it)
This is the first book I ever read. And at 2.25 years old. This book started it all.
2. Watership Down by Richard Adams. This book (and the movie) kicks [I]so[/I] much ass.
3. House of Leaves (you all know who wrote this). This book changed the definition of the word "book". I have to add that anyone who appreciated the format of this book will love Raymond Federman --he's been doin' it since waaaay back in the day.
4. The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky. This book turned me from nickel-dime home games to pay-for-college-tuition-with-your-earnings. Plus, it applies to daily life just as much as it does to poker.
5. Are you There God, It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. Just kidding.
6. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski. Anything by him is absolutely incredible. Love Is A Dog From Hell is a close second.
I'll think of more later....
Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss. First book I read on my own.
All the Pretty Horses -- by Cormac McCarthy. One, cause the book was incredible and diverse (half happy and funny, half really dark). Two, because Hollywood took everything I loved about that book and smashed it to pieces, poured gasoline on it, then backed over it with the car.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
"Dear Mr. Henshaw," by Portland (!!!) author Beverly Cleary ([url]www.beverlycleary.com[/url]). It still never ceases to amaze me about how much this book has shaped everything, and I truly do mean [I]everything[/I] about my life. I first read it in the third grade, and while I don't want to give too much of it away (in case anyone wants to go out and actually buy it, which I'd suggest), but the book is a series of letters, then journal entries, and then letters again, written by this kid named Leigh Botts (a boy) to his favorite writer, Mr. Henshaw.
Why did this have such a profound effect on my life? Like I said, I first read it in third grade, and back then ("back in the days...") I was still totally starstruck by the very idea of [I]writers[/I], you know? They weren't [I]people[/I], not like I was, not like my Mom and Dad were. They just weren't. They were something better, better than I was and better than they were. To my messed-up little kid head, writers were stars the way movie stars were and rock stars were. No joke, I had them all in the same category. And so here's this book about this kid, this kid that's my age, and he's actually [I]writing[/I] one of these demigods? How in the hell did he do that? I envied him, even though I knew he was just a fictional character and that the story wasn't "real." But still. He was just so [I]brave[/I], to be able to do something like that. I certainly couldn't do that, you know? I'd be afraid I'd say the wrong thing, or say something stupid, or that this writer, this one I admired more than any other, would figure I was some dumb little kid, and throw my letter into the trash. And yet, here was this Leigh Botts kid, and he was doing it.
His Dad was a truckdriver who never called him by his name ("Keep your nose clean, kid," was his way of saying, "I love you") and was never, ever home. He and his Mom lived in a little trailer park community in Bakersfield, California. But still. This kid, he was incredible. If he could write his favorite author and actually get his favorite author to write back, well, he figures it out. He could do frelling [I]anything[/I].
And I was in the third grade when I first read it. My Dad was there, he was alive, and he was my very best friend in the entire world. My Mom was her genius self, the same woman she's always been. I reread the book a bunch in fourth grade, and even though there was part of me (pressure from my peers) that said, "Oh, you're too old for it," I kept reading the book every now and again in fifth grade.
In the purest case of "life imitating art," it was after fifth grade was over that my Dad was killed by a man driving a truck (although [B]not[/B] an 18-wheeler), and I was bestowed with absentee-father issues very similiar to the ones Leigh Botts dealt with. Years later, years and years and lifetimes later, my writing followed suit to his, and besides writing stories about my life and whatever other usual stuff, I started doing nonfiction and journalism.
What I'm trying to say is, I started interviewing writers and other various culture creators. Go figure, huh? And in so many ways, those interviews, those lessons I've learned from them - while they'll never replace what was taken away from me when my Dad was killed, the stories (especially the published ones) have fulfilled me in a way that I know I've needed to keep going on when times have gotten tough.
"Dear Mr. Henshaw" is still one of my favorite books, and it's the one that's definitely had the deepest and biggest impact on my life. I kind of wish this thread had popped up a little bit earlier (like, maybe a month ago), because then if anyone read it based on my suggestion, and they were feeling a little... ah, how shall we say, hesistent about writing their favorite author a letter before the deadline was up and the chance was gone, well... Leigh Botts and his dog and his Dad and his Mom and his friends and his wonderful favorite writer, Dear Mr. Henshaw might have done the trick to inspire them to get up and do it.
Like it did for me so many years ago, and continues to today.
The Lord of The Rings by JRR Tolkien. I read it almost every year sometimes and I weep like a school girl each time.
Wanna have the pants scared off you in 90 seconds?
Watch 'Laundry Day', my new horror short:
.JPG "mugwump's picture")
"Old man and the sea" by hemingway.
I read it when I was like 10 or something, in one night. I cried when I finished it, the old man trying so hard and, in the end, just lugging back a skeleton.
I instanly realized what life was really about, and how life was going to be.
What?
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgees(sp?)
I never really read novels untill about three years ago. Its not that I couldn't, I just didn't. I was never encoraged.
Anyway, When I was 16 we HAD to read four books throughout the year and do detailed analysies on them. I was really into movies and at the time A Clockwork Orange: The Film was banned pretty much everywhere apart from The States. I saw the book in our school library and took it out. I was much less interested in the book than finding out what the film was like, but I found that I actually enjoyed reading. I finished the book in two days (that was a big thing for me then) and read Catcher In the Rye, Lord of the Flies, The Fellowship of the Ring and House of Leaves in the space of about six months.
None of those other books would be on my all time list, except Clockwork.
Like many of you Chuck also kicked reading back off for me. My reading kind of leveled off until I started hearing about the writer of Fight Club in 2002. I didn't feel compelled to read FC because I knew the story and he had so much stuff I didn't know anything about. I actually started with Invisible Monsters, and have only started the FC book in the last week, more of a compleatest thing.
[center][img]http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/940/flaggggghtlb8.gif[/img][/center]
For some reason, the thought of Dennis crying like a schoolgirl makes me laugh all guiltily.
Sorry...
There is hope, but not for us.
Books that have changed my life...
I'd go with [b]The Great Gatsby[/b] as one...it is such an amazingly constructed novel. It's called a "novel of selection" because each word was so delicately chosen, and it's true. I love this book, and I've read it several times. There's so much awesome imagery, so much awesome characterization, and there's no better icon in all of literature than that damned green light.
Also, [b]Fight Club[/b], because after a 2-3 year break from reading it got me back into reading, and I logged something like 12,000 pages worth in the last year. I did more reading in the last year than in the rest of my life combined, I would bet, and that's all because of FC.
Oddly enough, number 3 is [b]High Fidelity[/b]. This book sorta changed the way I saw relationships...probably for the worse...but I made a few dating decisions (which I've since taken back, for the most part,) on account of this book.
And there are most likely more, but that's all I've got for now.
"Do you have 846 pounds of zinc? I don't!" -- The Laz.
"I was almost Six On Tha Dot. What a mistake that would have been." -- Six On The Dot
"Blood on the moon", by James Ellroy
fight club
I would love to say Fight Club, because it was definitely a huge influence on me, but the first book that actually made me want to be a writer was (don't laugh) The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks. Its basically a dumbed-down version of the Lord of the Rings, but it was fun. I read it way back in seventh grade. Prior to that, I've read hundred of books that I still remember bits and pieces of, some of them impacting my writing today.
As far as books Ive read recently that're influences, I'd have to say:
Anything by Chuck (except Lullaby; didn't get it, wasn't blown away like I was with each of his other books);
"House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski (Un. Fucking. Believable.)
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" by Dave Eggers
"A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
"A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins
"Into Thin Air" and "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
"Hearts in Atlantis" and the Dark Tower books by Stephen King
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
"I Am Legend" by someone who's name escapes me at the moment
Theres a million more, but I've been on this website for the last 8 hours or so, so I'm going to call it quits. Maybe I'll add more later.
Ok, I'm not done yet. Before Fight Club came around, I spent the summer months reading anything I could get. I read the entire libraries of Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, Stephen King, John Grisham and so many others. Fight Club was the first book that kind of hit me in the gut--Books aren't just about telling a story. Its about life, and how you deal with it. Then came House of Leaves (funny thing is, I picked this book up and judged it by its cover; thats why I bought it without a single whisp of an idea about it) and a friend said that if I liked Fight Club, I might like Dave Eggers. It steamrolled from there.
A few more things: My favorite Dr. Suess book is 'Oh The Places You Can Go'. The story I read and hate the most is 'A Seperate Peace'; and I've tried on 2 seperate occasions to read 'American Psycho', but I can't get into it. My favorite Chuck books are (in no order) Survivor, Choke and Diary, although Fight Club remains dear to my heart.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by alex cassun [/i]
[B]Theres a million more....[/B][/QUOTE]
Wow, you must have like the thickest glasses and a head like Mekon to read that many books!
[CENTER][url=http://stephengrahamjones.net/] [B]The Blue Monkeys are coming[/B][/url][/CENTER]
I don't wear glasses (reading in the dark is bad for your eyes my ass!) and I'm not sure what a Mekon is, but I'm sure that's probably a pretty accurate statement.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by alex cassun [/i]
[B]I don't wear glasses (reading in the dark is bad for your eyes my ass!) and I'm not sure what a Mekon is, but I'm sure that's probably a pretty accurate statement. [/B][/QUOTE]
There you go Alex....
[CENTER][url=http://stephengrahamjones.net/] [B]The Blue Monkeys are coming[/B][/url][/CENTER]
you have no idea how close that actually is. green skin and everything (i grew up on a military base where they experiemented on a lot of shit, so I always make the joke that i can glow in the dark).
for a second I imagined a Mekon being a metal bowl you sit around in. it made me smile. I want one.
[QUOTE]FUNK IT WET; 6 DAYS[/QUOTE] -the prophesy in Maddie's orange juice squirts.
1984.
plastic....assholes.
The only books I really remember having an impact or something that changed something about me were these.
The first book I remember reading by myself and made me actually think about something other than the story...The Butter Battle Book.
The one that made me *really* love reading, even more than I already did... Matilda
The one that made me look for really really great books would be Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. More Invisible Monster because even though I read Fight Club first, I actually *looked* for more of chuck's books after IM. And since then I've been picky about what I read, not just the bestseller crap that sometimes has a good story, but hardly ever great writing.
Damn, I wish I would have saw this thread first cause now it sounds like I'm repeating myself.
CHE: A Revolutionary Life. It's the only book that has made me cry. Other good ones are Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Oh yeah, and Black Boy by Richard Wright is by far one of the best it's just so inspirational.
Damn, there is just so many to choose from.
1984
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fight Club
.JPE "owenwarland's picture")
Call me a little old fashioned (I shy away from most lit written after 1950), but I have to go with Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER. Reading it in college for the first time, I realized what real literature was all about.
And of course, H. A. Rey's classic CURIOUS GEORGE GETS A JOB. The only book I've ever read where a monkey gets stoned!
Fight Club
Invisible Monsters
Catcher In The Rye
On The Road
ArcherDylan27's diary....
I learned so many new words...
and so much about love....
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/Lazlosdead/completeLazloSig.jpg[/IMG]
Syrup by Max Barry.
After finding out he wrote his first novel while working at Hewlett Packard, I realized that one can dig for gold in the most unlikeliest of places. His book has inspired me to spend a majority of my time here at work alt-tabbing back and forth from fiction writing to graphic design. Shhh...
“If you can quit, probably you should.”
-Alexander Blackburn, then editor of Writer’s Forum in Colorado
Atlas Shrugged made the biggest impact on my life
Sexus opened my eyes
Broca's Brain made me ask questions
any of the adult books I read when I was 9ish.
Micheal Crichton, jurassic park, terminal man, congo
whoever wrote the Omen series
Peter Benchley, Jaws+all the other creature features of his
I had a mother who didn't think I should watch M rated movies.
So I'd get the book and read about all the intricate details of being gutted by extinct animals. Very detailed.
These really warped my fragile little brain
I really enjoyed chuck's stuff, american psycho, fear and loathing and trainspotting but they didn't affect me nearly as much
Fountainhead changed the way I thought about life.
Clockwork Orange changed the way I thought about morals.
Fountainhead definitely. People are so much more complex than we can possibly fathom and every deep down has an agenda. If you ever want to feel for a character like the person is you, you'll feel that way about Howard, I promise.
i would have to say 'the color purple', '1984', 'clockwork orange', 'fight club', and everything by chuck, but i've read so many books in my lifetime, i dont know which one influenced me the most...
The Isis Lights trilogy. I was a child, barely old enough to read on my own, so my mother had to read them to me [mostly]. Not because they're deep or anything. They're children's books. But they really got me interested in reading, which then had a cumulative effect on my having creative urges at all.
There was an other small book I don't remember the name of, but it contained my first exposure to the word "belch." I was young. I laughed really hard. It was fun.
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by tetsuo [/i]
[B]If you ever want to feel for a character like the person is you, you'll feel that way about Howard, I promise. [/B][/QUOTE]
For me it was more like: "if I ever wanted to feel for a character like the person is...only the way I wish I were...would I look to Howard."
No way could I ever be that strong.
I am not Howard, the ideal.
I strive. He gives me a goal.
A Clockwork Orange and 1984
Fancy a bit of the old ultra-violence?
[IMG]http://server5.uploadit.org/files/purge2600-manormachine_sig.jpg[/IMG]
Beowulf
It took me inside myself. It was the first time that a book did that to me.
That was back in 95. I remember that my friend Paul called me because he had learned I was reading it and said that that was fitting because I’d reminded him of the Beowulf character with my chivalry and passions.
Yeah, that made the biggest impact because it made me more comfortable with reading and reading is my life, plus stuff like food and energy and whatnot.
__________________________________
play hard, like it's work to be done.
You're right Prensa. Howard's conviction and determination make me extremely jealous. I loved the part that went like this:
Toohey: Tell me Howard, what do you think of me?
Howard: I don't think of you.
I almost cried right then, because i'll never be as damn cool as Howard. It hurts. It hurts real bad.
Sandman: Season Of Mist - Neil Gaiman. It showed me that comics could be used for so much more than just superhero drivel.
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick. Because there were so many twists and turns that you get the idea that Dick was playing with the reader's mind (if not his own).
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka. It threw out all conventional rules of storytelling, yet remained captivating in ways that people are still trying to achieve today.
"Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust, and friendship." - Ignignot the Mooninite
The Metamorphosis was the one where the guy turned into a huge bug right? I read it only because I had to for school. I could barely stand it, (I have a huge phobia of bugs) and I kept getting chills and started getting itchy and jumpy when reading it. I couldn't stop imagining a bug that size, or myself being a bug that size. I can barely think about it now. 
The strange thing is, I have a bug phobia too. But I love that book. Back in the early '90s, after I had dropped out of tech school, I kept seeing these shorts on MTV that had Aidan Quinn reciting passages from it. I thought, "Hey, that sounds cool," and I went out and bought a cheap paperback copy. And then I fell in love.
Reading for pleasure is so much better than reading for school. The only thing I was forced to read in high school that I liked was Macbeth. And the line, "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" from Julius Caeser. Yep, there is no point to this paragraph.
"Using a key to gouge expletives on another's vehicle is a sign of trust, and friendship." - Ignignot the Mooninite
I really would have to say that a book that had a lot of influence on my life would be, "A People's History of the United States 1492-Present" by: Howard Zinn.
I read it for a report in a U.S History class (one of those choose your own book typa reports). Anyways, I really liked the book. It had a lot of influence on what I thought of my country and it's history.
I also liked some fictional books like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. Oh and "Anthem" by Ayn Rand.
And I also liked the "Lord of the Flies", and the " The Catcher in the Rye". Yeah, and "Oliver Twist". And I read a bunch of books in the "Dune" series by Frank Herbert. They didn't have a huge effect on my life though.
Oh and I really liked "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal" by Thomas Harrison.... then the movies came out. I saw the Hannibal one, OMFG they butchered that book. I'd say that those two books had the biggest effect on my life,since I'll never fucking watch the Red Dragon version.
[COLOR=SeaGreen][FONT=Impact]Save the endangered tree octopus.[/FONT][/COLOR]
I am almost done reading 1984 after years of not getting around to reading it. Too scary since I can't tell the difference between the stuff in the book and the daily newspaper.
The book that changed my life would be Sidhartha by Herman Hesse. The whole concept of going forth and finding one's self is amazing and detailed in this book. It also turned me on to Buddhism.
The Dharma Bums- Kerouac
Jack Kerouac - On The Road