Fiction Books that Transformed your Life

[peanutspathtotruth]

4 hours ago, SirVladimir said:

@peanutspathtotruth This is such a unique book. Kinda cute and very emotional.

It really is!  

On 1/14/2021 at 6:30 PM, SirVladimir said:

Journeys Beyond Earth

Sneaky, but worked. I just got it, will give you a review 

[Guest SirVladimir]

@peanutspathtotruth Let me know if there is any trouble with the Kindle version. I have been selling mostly PDFs until now, which is a lot easier to format properly.

Regarding Flowers For Algernon, I assume you are reading the novel version? I have read it as the short story, and it has truly brought me to tears. The struggle was real; the commitment, the authenticity. Charlie is one of those characters that keep you awake in the middle of the night, for they have grown on you so much.

[Grateful Dead]

Dune

 

[peanutspathtotruth]

45 minutes ago, SirVladimir said:

@peanutspathtotruth Let me know if there is any trouble with the Kindle version. I have been selling mostly PDFs until now, which is a lot easier to format properly.

Will do!

45 minutes ago, SirVladimir said:

@peanutspathtotruth Regarding Flowers For Algernon, I assume you are reading the novel version? I have read it as the short story, and it has truly brought me to tears. The struggle was real; the commitment, the authenticity. Charlie is one of those characters that keep you awake in the middle of the night, for they have grown on you so much.

Yes I read the 300 page version if that is the novel version you mean, just finished it like 5 minutes ago. Brought me to tears several times, including now. What a gem. 

[Guest SirVladimir]

1 hour ago, peanutspathtotruth said:

Yes I read the 300 page version if that is the novel version you mean, just finished it like 5 minutes ago. Brought me to tears several times, including now. What a gem. 

I consider it the apex of literature. The floodgate of emotions this book opens is a prime example of what literature should do. I've always had a secret wish that Charlie would revert back to his genius one day, for he found flaws in the operation procedure and it would go well the next time. Charlie has always reminded me of a flower – of its magnificent blossom and then a slow decay. One day, its petals just wilt, and it fades away. I get emotional just by writing you this message.

Edited January 18, 2021 by SirVladimir

[mandyjw]

I love this thread. Most of the most transformational ones were read as a child. 

The Harry Potter series, didn't even understand how profoundly until recent years.

The Chronicles of Narnia, was Christian at the time and it resonated so much and really expanded my view of my own religion. 

Read as an adult, Moby Dick, it's an incredible book pertaining to enlightenment, hard to read, but read a little at a time and make sure you read it on your phone with the dictionary on your phone downloaded so you can just click on words you don't know. 

Also really enjoyed Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, also about enlightenment

Edited January 18, 2021 by mandyjw

[Guest SirVladimir]

4 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

The Harry Potter series, didn't even understand how profoundly until recent years.

That makes two of us

[Grateful Dead]

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

The Harry Potter series, didn't even understand how profoundly until recent years.

 

2 hours ago, SirVladimir said:

That makes two of us

I just listend to the audiobook last month ? was one hell of a ride .... and it's really hard to move on lol

the overall message I got from the books is: It's all about Love ❤

[peanutspathtotruth]

13 hours ago, SirVladimir said:

I consider it the apex of literature. The floodgate of emotions this book opens is a prime example of what literature should do. I've always had a secret wish that Charlie would revert back to his genius one day, for he found flaws in the operation procedure and it would go well the next time. Charlie has always reminded me of a flower – of its magnificent blossom and then a slow decay. One day, its petals just wilt, and it fades away. I get emotional just by writing you this message.

And you didn't read the long version? Maybe check it out  

This part from the end of the book was so intense. I think many here can relate that to some experiences...:

Is this a hallucination?
"Charlie, are you all right?"
Or the things described by the mystics?
I hear a voice but I don't want to answer him. It annoys me that he is there. I've got to ignore him. Be passive and let this - whatever it is - fill me with the light and absorb me into itself.
"What do you see, Charlie? What's the matter?"

*

Upward, moving like a leaf in an upcurrent of warm air. Speeding, the atoms of my body hurtling away from each other. I grow lighter, less dense, and larger... larger... exploding outward into the sun. I am an expanding universe swimming upward in a silent sea. Small at first, encompassing with my body, the room, the building, the city, the country, until I know that if I look down I will see my shadow blotting out the earth.
Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space.
And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below.
It annoys me. I want to shake it off. On the verge of blending with the universe I hear the whispers around the ridges of consciousness. And that ever-so-slight tug holds me to the finite and mortal world below.
Slowly, as waves recede, my expanding spirit shrinks back into earthly dimensions - not voluntarily, because I would prefer to lose myself, but I am pulled from below, back to myself, into myself, so that for just one moment I am on the couch again, fitting the fingers of my awareness into the glove of my flesh. And I know I can move this finger or wink that eye - if I want to. But I don't want to move. I will not move!
I wait, and leave myself open, passive, to whatever this experience means. Charlie doesn't want me to pierce the upper curtain of the mind. Charlie doesn't want to know what lies beyond.
Does he fear seeing God?
Or seeing nothing?
As I lie here waiting, the moment passes during which I am myself in myself, and again I lose all feeling of body or sensation. Charlie is drawing me down into myself. I stare inward in the center of my unseeing eye at the red spot that transforms itself into a multipetaled flower - the shimmering, swirling, luminescent flower that lies deep in the core of my unconscious. 
I am shrinking. Not in the sense of the atoms of my body becoming closer and more dense, but a fusion - as the atoms of my-self merge into microcosm. There will be great heat and unbearable light - the hell within hell - but I don't look at the light, only at the flower, unmultiplying, undividing itself back from the many toward one. And for an instant the shimmering flower turns into the golden disk twirling on a string, and then to the bubble of swirling rainbows, and finally I am back in the cave where everything is quiet and dark and I swim the wet labyrinth searching for one to receive me... embrace me... absorb me... into itself.
That I may begin.
In the core I see the light again, an opening in the darkest of caves, now tiny and far away - through the wrong end of a telescope - brilliant, blinding, shimmering, and once again the multipetaled flower (swirling lotus - that floats near the entrance of the unconscious). At the entrance of that cave I will find the answer, if I dare go back and plunge through it into the grotto of light and beyond.
Not yet!
I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. And as I start through the opening, I feel the pressure around me, propelling me in violent wavelike motions toward the mouth of the cave. 
It's too small! I can't get through!
And suddenly I am hurled against the walls, again and again, and forced through the opening where the light threatens to burst my eyes. Again, I know I will pierce the crust into that holy light. More than I can bear. Pain as I have never known, and coldness, and nausea, and the great buzzing over my head flapping like a thousand wings. I open my eyes, blinded by the intense light. And flail the air and tremble and scream.

*

I came out of it at the insistence of a hand shaking me roughly. Dr. Strauss.

[Guest SirVladimir]

@peanutspathtotruth 

Unbelieveably powerful.

[seeking_brilliance]

The Giver.  

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0544336267/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_94zbGb5NNS67W

We read it in gifted and talented class around 5th or 6th grade. Life changing. 

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by seeking_brilliance

[DocWatts]

15 hours ago, mandyjw said:

Read as an adult, Moby Dick, it's an incredible book pertaining to enlightenment, hard to read, but read a little at a time and make sure you read it on your phone with the dictionary on your phone downloaded so you can just click on words you don't know. 

I also love Moby Dick; although I think it's a mistake to try to introduce it to kids still in High School, as it takes some basic familiarity with literary novels to understand and appreciate it. Some knowledge of history also helps, as the book is chock full of historical and cultural references.

As to the book itself, it plays with so many interesting ideas such the self destructive nature of revenge, the harms of trying to anthropomorphize nature, the mysterious nature God.  And it even explores multiculturalism in a really progressive way for its era.

Something that's often overlooked is that the book is actually quite humorous and playful in parts as well:

“and tell him to paint me a sign, with-"no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;" might as well kill both birds at once.”

" With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”

Edited January 18, 2021 by DocWatts

[caveman]

The Little Prince

[JosephKnecht]

Trans-Formations - Joseph Knecht 

I might be biased on this one. 

[Guest SirVladimir]

20 minutes ago, JosephKnecht said:

Trans-Formations - Joseph Knecht 

I might be biased on this one. 

May I welcome you to the Club of Biased Authors! 

Edited January 18, 2021 by SirVladimir

[Hulia]

I read now "On looking. Eleven Walks with Exper Eyes" by Alexandra Horowitz. Great idea, wriiten in a good easy-to-follow language. 

She shows us a city from the perspectives of different people. How different the same things look for different observers.

"Alexandra Horowitz shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary—to practice, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, “the observation of trifles.” Structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes, mostly in her Manhattan neighborhood, On Looking features experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, the well-known artist Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. Horowitz also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, how they see it, and why most of us do not see the same things reveal the startling power of human attention and the cognitive aspects of what it means to be an expert observer."

 

[Hans]

On 16/01/2021 at 6:45 PM, xxxx said:

In real life ‘stories’, there seems to be a constant justification, along with a considerable bias, occurring out of some kind of personal investment that is heavily centred and dependent on the concept of self. An identity is being carved out, forcing the idea of the real human on you - pushing you to identify with the human limits - through preconceptions and practicality. 

The very reason your hairdresser had to check with the fictional element is because the real one is more realistic - if you know what I mean?

You know, I didn't get to ask her why this was important to her, but for some reason this got stuck in my head. Do you think it's about identifying with the human limits in the sense of being afraid to imagine, create, explore fantastical possiblities with your mind - or not afraid, but just content with the ordinary, human existence? Safety of the realism of life? Or would she say she just doesn't like stuff someone made up?

Although when you think about it, life is imagined as much as any book or movie. I was walking down the street one day and saw a builder's van on the front of a house. And then it hit me - someone imagined this builder there. Someone thought "I'd like this wall painted blue", ordered a contractor and that was the van in front of the house - someone's imagination.

Thanks

 

[reves]

The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King.

[Rayster]

The Alchemist. A very simple yet profound book for me.

[SgtPepper]

The Alchemist 

Siddhartha 

Of Mice and Men

Harry Potter