What novel has had the most impact on your life?
Saturday, January 03, 2009
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18 comments:
I would have to go with:
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, By Christopher Moore
For real impact, I'd have to go with Louisa May Alcott - Rose in Bloom.
All the King's Men
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brother K (David James Duncan -- something of a modern rewrite of Brothers Karamazov)
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
It is not the most enjoyable to read due to it essentially being in King James English, but I can easily say that next to the Bible, it has definately had the most impact on my life.
Bunyan was arrested and thrown in jail for preaching without a license. He must have been a United Methodist. While in jail, he wrote the book as a Christian Allegory and it is pure wonder to read. It is amazing how practical it is to life in modern times. Especially the episode at Vanity Fair with Christian and Faithful.
Middlemarch, by George Eliot. It's available online here and at other sites. It can be read at any age teen and older, and I've found it speaks to me in a new way each time I read it.
"The Three Musketeers" by Alexander Dumas.
Must have read that book 20 times since 2nd grade.
Made me a total romantic.
The Temple of My Familiar - Alice Walker
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
"To Kill A Mockingbird"- Harper Lee.
If I can't manage entire sanctification in this lifetime, I hope to at least become as decent a man as Atticus Finch. He makes me proud to be southern.
Hmmm...Lamb is on the list, perhaps not at the very top. There's Tolkein, of course. And my most recent enthusiasms are Maya Angelou's Letter to My Daughter and Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church.
John Wilkes,
To Kill a Mockingbird is an excellent pick. It is definately my #2 for the same reason you mentioned.
Keith
The Fall by Albert Camus
It jolted my worldview when I was a teenager and brilliantly exposed the thin line between absurdity and meaning that, in my opinion, sooner or later has to be confronted.
I also understood it to offer a unique paradoxical criticism of atheism wherein if we accept that there is no God, then life reduces to absurdity and each of us becomes universally guilty for it's suffering.
"All Quiet on the Western Front" had a huge impact on me, mainly because I was the same age as the main character when I read it. Changed a lot of my thoughts on war and good guys vs bad guys.
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. I read it and never have thought of people with handicaps in the same way again. There were twins in the story who "acted" as the doctors and family said they should, but at night, they'd sneak away and solve quadratic equations and invent marvelous things...
When I meet someone with a handicap, I treat her or him as if the they are my peer, my equal instead of with fear or pity, because of this book.
Martian Chronicels- Ray Bradbury I never was much of a fiction fan, but Bradbury and Asimov could get me to read when I couldn't have cared less about other material.
a prayer for owen meany
The Brothers Karamazov
Ooops; I sent before I was ready...
Im Westen Nichts Neues - Remarque
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers - Goethe
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