It may seen weird, but one book that had a huge influence on me is Judy Blume's book Deenie. This was the book that made me fall in love with youth fiction. The story is pretty simple. The MC, Deenie, has grown up with the plan that she is going to be a teen model because she won a contest when she was a baby and ended up being in a bunch of magazine adds for baby food or something. When she's twelve, she gets diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. It's a condition that isn't a big deal unless you have other problems with walking or your muscles, but she has to wear a back brace until she's 17 to make sure it stays a minor problem, and that means being a teen model is out. This book showed me just how crazy the teenage mind is, and that their stories are fascinating to tell. Teenagers will think and do things that children and adults simply won't. Their responses to situations often make no sense to adults, yet they seem completely logical to the teenager. It is a time of intense change and learning, because as a teen, you're figuring out who you are, or deciding if who you have always been is what you want to be.
The watchmen was indeed insane. I cannot wait to see how they're going to pull it off as a movie, so many details in only 2 hours.... Another book that blew my mind and I thought would be un-filmable was Fight Club, but in the end the movie was great so...
80/20 Individual Bible Atonement - Ian McEwan (this guy knows how to live to the fullest and somehow manages to get that fullness into the written word) Jane Eyre (I know, I don't have enough estrogen to love this book, but it is so well done, how could you not love it?)
Jane Eyre is pretty good, although not on my list I think. Mine are... The Stand by Steven King The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins 1984 by George Orwell Black Boy by Richard Wright God-Emperor Of Dune by Frank Herbert
Roughly in order of reading... Momo and The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter Domens Rötter, Frostens Barn and Blå Tornet by Dénis Lindbohm (not translated into English) Rebirth by John Wyndham The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov Don't Bite The Sun by Tanith Lee The Earthsea trilogy and The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Kroeger-LeGuin The Orchid Cage by Herbert W. Franke Time out of Joint by Philip Dick The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind ... plus all the ones I've forgot to mention.
the devils teardrop - jeff deaver crandle and all - james patterson thats all i can think of now but there are plenty more im sure of it
Cosmopolus - Don Delillo. I was expecting a well written but flawed novella from a great postmodernism writer. I was strangely blown away, even though this is exactly what I got.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. I had just started going on meds for severe depression when my uncle sent this to me. Like all Murakami books, the story revolved around a single character and never changes the PoV. I like theses kind of books, and this was a long one compared to his others. ( Dance, Dance, Dance being an exception)
I bought that book months ago and I still haven't read it! This summer though. His book Pinball 1973 is the latest book that comes to blowing my mind.
As far as writing goes, Katherine Mansfield changed the way I write, think about writing, evaluate other people's writing, analyse writing....just everything....reading her work was the most mind-blowing thing for me. Also, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Again, changed the way I think about writing, humour, satire, violence....amazing novel. And The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. He writes sublimely, but always in a completly authoritative and factual way. Any doubts I ever had about the theory of evolution were absolutely demolished by that book. If you wanna read it, better be prepared to keep up with his intellect, but if you can its an extremely rewarding experience and is sure to change your views not only on evolution but on science, religion and most importantly, writing.
The Upanishads changed the way I looked at the world, and at religion. Pedro Calderon de la Barca's La Vita es Sueno changed the way I looked at 17th century drama.
"The Monster at the End of this Book." (Okay, so I was six when the book blew my mind. It still blew my mind!)
I have, and I'd say it's influenced my everyday life and thought more. The Upanishads changed the way I look at the world by presenting such a strikingly different way of seeing it compared to Christianity.
I have had a few that just completely consumed me and my thoughts. I would have to say the first is "Jurassic Park" By Michael Crichton. When i first read it i was consumed with it, it felt so real and i could think of little else for a long time. Second would be "The Pillars of the Earth" By Ken Follett. I got consumed by everything in the world, and grew attached to the characters. When i finished it i was upset that it was over.
I was reading this, and then I looked across the room at my bookcase and saw "The Pillars of the Earth" and "Night Over Water". I have no idea how they got there, and I had never heard of the author before this. But if it blew someones mind I think I may give it a whirl after I finish what I'm currently reading.
Definitley read Pillars of the Earth. It took me about 250 pages until i really got into it, but after that i was hooked and couldn't put it down.
Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. I still think that those were the best seven books I have ever read. I hated The Gunslinger the first time I read it, but in my own defense, I was 11. The weirdness, the dreamlike qualities, and the characters were all so real, in a really bizarro way. I couldn't read fiction again for at least two months. The Hobbit was the first real book that I ever read, and although fantasy has totally failed me as a genre, I love that book. I'm kicking myself for forgetting the author's name, and now I'm going to sound like an idiot because I love most of his books, but The Moon is a Harsh Mistress really changed the way I saw so many things in life. Weird, I know, but I'm a weird guy.
thanks. Totally slipped my mind for a couple of days. Weird, because he's up there with John Jakes, James Clavell, and F. Paul Wilson on my favorite authors list. I'll add that the North and South trilogy by Jakes totally changed my mind about American history. I'd never cared about Antebellum America in the least, nor the civil war all that much until I started reading his books.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch... It's a Russian novel about a guy who was placed in a work camp. It was amazing.
That book is great! My little brother used to make me read it to him over and over and over... I tried to think of a really intelligent, classic book that blew my mind when I read it, but honestly, I think the book that has had the most impact on me was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. When I read that book, I was in a really similar situation to the one she was in when she started it (just getting out of a really bad relationship, trying to get back on my feet, figure out who I was, etc), so it helped me a lot to be able to read about someone making it through what, for me, felt like something I could never move past. God, that sounds so depressing...but it's a very, very good read. I promise.
