Life changing books

 

While waiting for my husband to finish his ATM transactions, I sank into a chair in the bank's reception area. 

There was a magazine on a nearby table that had one of the TSR1 anchors on the cover. However, it wasn't a celebrity story. There were ten celebrities, all who told what book they had read that was life changing and why.

Hmmmmm

For me it was Grapes of Wrath. I was a junior in Miss Stembridge's class. That it was assigned was not a problem. I read a lot anyway even then.

As I read I realized for the first time how writing can say something directly AND indirectly. Later I would label such writing as symbolism. Although, as a writer, I never hit the greatness of Steinbeck, that would be presumptuous and arrogant, the book help open the path to my own writing.

I wondered what other writers had found in their reading history so I asked on a couple of writer sites that I follow on Facebook so I asked. The result was within seconds and dribbled in for the rest of yesterday.

A majority I'd read, some I'd never heard of. Some included the author and others gave reasons. The list below is partial in case you are looking for something to read.

Goosebumps the Haunted Mask

Are you there God? It’s Me Margaret

Look Back in Anger

Tao of Pooh

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Famous Last Words Timothy Finley

Where the Red Fern Grows

Crime and Punishment

The Golden Notebook

To Kill a Mockingbird

On the Road

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Beaches

Narrative of the Life of an American Slave

Drifters

The Alchemist

The World According to Garp

Women who run with the Wolves  

Breakfast of Champions

The Wealth and Destiny of Nations

The Slight Edge

Go Ask Alice

White Fang

The Kite Runner

Steppenwolf

Little Women

Black Beauty