Monday, 3 March 2014

Ten Books that Changed my Life


These are 10 books that profoundly impacted my life. I list them pretty much in the order that I read them. Every book I have ever read has impacted me, but this is a list of the ones that probably had the BIGGEST impacts on my life.

1.      The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho was read to me by my Mum when I was still quite young. It taught me empathy and made me realise that the world is much bigger than just my little life.

2.      The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis helped me understand the concept of substitutional sacrifice a little better.

3.      A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews helped me survive my first and worst semester of public school back in grade nine. I don’t know quite how to describe how it helped me I just know that it did.

4.      Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I think I read this the summer my Dad died, or maybe it was the year after, but I know it helped me mourn.

5.      Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I still remember reading this in grade eleven. I was home alone with the dog because mom had gone to work. We were sitting on the couch and I imagined that the big lonely empty house was the ocean and my dog was the tiger. This book helped me deal with a lot of the loneliness I felt when Mum started working.

6.      Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I know he has a bad reputation for his book Love Wins, and it has been so long since I read Velvet Elvis, so I don’t even know what I would think about it now. All I can tell you is that when I read this book, in grade eleven or twelve, I was on the brink of disbelief and this book somehow convinced me to stick with my faith small though it was.

7.      A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'engle. I think I read this book the year after I graduated high school and it helped me be comfortable with my adult love of children’s books and made me realise the importance of the imagination even in the adult world.  

8.      The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. This is one of those books where I can’t explain why it affected me the way it did, all I know is that I picked it up during the year after high school. At the time I had told everyone that I would never go to university. When I put this book down I thought to myself “That was beautiful. Literature is amazing. I want to spend the next four years of my life discussing books with people.” I applied to Trent a short time later, TRUE STORY.  

9.      1 John (in the Bible). In my first year of university I read the entire New Testament and this is the only book in it that did not anger or confuse me but encouraged, inspired, and interested me.

10.  Paper Towns by John Green helped me realise that more than stories and characters what I am interested in writing is ideas imbedded in stories.

 

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