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If you tend toward books (and if you don't at least somewhat, the odds of you being an LJ devotee to whatever degree are pretty slim), then it's a good bet that you've got a number of books that really resonated with you, often to the extent of informing your development as a person and your view of the world. These are not always classics of literature. Often they are, viewed objectively, really deeply awful books. That's not the point. The point is that they were the right (or wrong, nothing says they had to have a positive influence) thing for you to read at the right time, and they stayed with you in a meaningful way.
The number of these varies, but most people if queried can come up with three of them. One or more of them were likely encountered between the ages of 11 and 13, and may have been the first "grown up" book you read. Beyond that, I can't think of any set pattern, and even those may just be a coincidental cluster of data points. Nonetheless, I'm newly fascinated by this question and I wish to ask it here.
Help me out then, my friends. Name your top three core texts. If you wish to include age when encountered, positive or negative influence, general summary of the text, or type of influence it exerted on you, that would be likewise awesome. I wanna know about YOU! And books! Humor me. :)
The number of these varies, but most people if queried can come up with three of them. One or more of them were likely encountered between the ages of 11 and 13, and may have been the first "grown up" book you read. Beyond that, I can't think of any set pattern, and even those may just be a coincidental cluster of data points. Nonetheless, I'm newly fascinated by this question and I wish to ask it here.
Help me out then, my friends. Name your top three core texts. If you wish to include age when encountered, positive or negative influence, general summary of the text, or type of influence it exerted on you, that would be likewise awesome. I wanna know about YOU! And books! Humor me. :)
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Date: 2010-02-21 04:31 pm (UTC)From:1) Starship Troopers. I read it at 13, which was the PERFECT age to read this book. Other books had talked about some of the things in it, but ST was the only book to put everything in one package. It changed the way I thought about being a citizen. I never wanted to join the military because of it, but it did help me to realize that citizenship was a participatory experience.
2) A Prayer For Owen Meany. It was the first book I read that actually SHOOK me, to the core, at the end. I tend to re-read it every year or two, and I still think that if you can finish the book's last 50 pages without crying, you're not human.
3) Believe it or not, Catcher in the Rye. I hated reading it, but I'm glad I did; it was my first experience with the Unreliable Narrator, and it was the first book where I could both identify with the main character and at the same time hated his guts. It helped me to see that you don't have to like a book to take something away from it. Which helped me to get through all of those Hemmingway books later on.