Books that made an impact on me

 

Here I am hitting you with a blog post instead of doing my HW. Typical.

So the other day, yesterday really, I was watching this Youtube video by this guy Jack Edwards and in the video he was talking about the 10 books that changed his life. I like to think that I have read many books in my lifetime. Some have been enjoyable, made me laugh out loud. Some were super page-turny and I couldn't put them down. Some have been not so great and took me 5 months to read because I just couldn't get through it. But very few, even among the enjoyable ones, have really changed my life. So I have 7 or so here that I feel like reflecting on. Enjoy.

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho

I have read this book twice. Once when I was 13, and I did not understand why anyone thought this book was good. And then once again when I was 17, sitting in the back of a bus in India, when everyone else was asleep, while it was pouring rain outside. I quite literally read this book by phone flashlight.

The Alchemist is incredibly fantastical, a reason why I'm not surprised that I didn't like it the first time around. In concept, the book is too abstract to describe. But basically it's about a guy realizing his 'personal legend', aka. his dreams and acting upon them. I read this book the summer before senior year, while I was on a volunteering trip in India teaching kids English. I had met many young students who came from poor backgrounds trying their best to get an education to move upwards in their life. They were, in a sense, realizing their own personal legends. I myself was beginning to apply for colleges and was seriously thinking about what makes me happy and what I want to study in life. Through some series of coincidental events, I read this book at the exact time I think I was supposed to. I genuinely don't think that if I read this book again now, it would impact me in that same way, which is perhaps why I never picked it up again. But on that bus in India, it really made me reflect on how important it is to recognize and act upon our own personal legends.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

If you have watched my videos or had one conversation about books with me this summer, you will already know that I freaking love East of Eden. I first came across Steinbeck in my 10th grade english class, as many of you readers may remember. While I didn't exactly fall in love with Grapes of Wrath (cough, who writes a whole chapter about dust?), I found myself appreciating Steinbeck's writing style. Enough for me to later pick up two of his shorter works The Pearl and Of Mice and Men, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Feeling well versed in Steinbeck, I took the plunge and started reading East of Eden.

The basic gist is that there are two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and the story follows how the families are woven together over multiple generations. Every single character in this book is fleshed out and amazing. Say what you will about Steinbeck, but the man really has a way with words.

The book really dwells on this idea of what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. There are characters who you side with who aren't necessarily good, and there are characters who you hate who aren't necessarily bad. One character I found myself drawn towards was Cal Trask. Cal is what you would call a 'flawed good man', someone who is a good person but does some stuff that by characterization would put him in the bad guy category. Cal is complex and thus has complex relationships with the people around him. And it is Cal's characterization that made me think more deeply about the fact that people never fall into one category or another. In the age of social media, where cancel culture is on full rampage, it is very very easy to fall into the assumption that there are problematic people and then unproblematic people. It's very easy for people to say, oh she's problematic and needs to be cancelled and they're not, or vice versa. But following Cal's character development and his growth as a person made me seriously think about how problematic cancel culture itself can be. People are never just one thing. There is no such thing as a good guy or a bad guy. People are complex and have issues and do terrible things but then also do amazing things and helpful things. I know it's a very big order to place on the shoulders of East of Eden, but the book really made me consider what it means to be a 'good' person.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Another book I probably talked to you about at one point this summer. What left is there to say about this book? It's incredibly dark, deals with traumatic subject matter, and features the most graphic scenes I've ever read . I can almost certainly guarantee you that this is the saddest thing you will ever read, if you decide to do so. Certainly not for the faint of heart. This book should come with every trigger/content warning there is.

A Little Life follows a group of friends JB, Willem, Malcolm and Jude, and their life, post-college, living in NYC. The book begins to focus in on Jude once the reader realizes that there is more beneath the surface with him. To be honest, I didn't really know what to think after I finished this book. I hated it but I also loved it. I was shocked, yet I was moved. I wanted to throw the book away, yet I also wanted to share it with everyone I knew. This book consumed me. While reading it, I literally couldn't think of other things. The book was so shocking that at some points I needed to take a break from reading it and was only able to return to it a couple of days later. It was a cathartic experience and one that I won't forget for quite some time. I really felt like this book conveys the message that friends make life worth living. The friendship group featured in this book was one of the most emotional depictions of friendship I've read. The idea that when all else desert you, it's your friends that are left is a very moving thought.

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

For the longest time, when people asked me what my favorite book was I said Kokoro. It was like 80% because I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this book, and 20% because I wanted to seem more cultured. Sue me.

Kokoro is about the friendship between an unnamed young man and an older man referred to as Sensei. I wont say much more about the plot because you should read the book, but the story deals a lot with grief and guilt as well as friendship. This book is reflective and sad, not as sad as A Little Life, but definitely sad. The shocking parts shocked me. The moving parts moved me. I felt guilt when the characters felt guilt and I felt grief when the characters felt grief. Only a brilliant writer can make you do that.

Also there is this brilliant part in the book where our unnamed main protagonist graduates from college and he's looking at his diploma referring to it as a document that is 'significant yet meaningless', which I think is an incredibly real feeling to anyone who has graduated. Like, I just earned this, was it worth it?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I read this book during the spring of my junior year in college. I was taking some difficult coursework at the time, wasn't able to land an internship and was generally frustrated with everything (in a first world problem kind of a way). I had no time for casually reading a book, but I found myself on a plane and picked up this book that I had bought a few years before. I started the book while waiting at the gate for my flight and finished it on the 45 minute plane ride it takes to get from NJ to Pittsburgh. Oh my god. To think that this book was sitting on my shelf unread for a couple of years, honestly really bothers me.

It is hard to describe in words what this book means to me. It tells the story about a girl who goes to NY for her internship and then realizes that that is not what she wants to do in life, but doesn't know what to do because society says that at her age she must do and act a certain way, so she becomes disenchanted by life and the illusion of youth. I mean have you ever heard anything more relatable? Maybe it's just me.

There's this one brilliant part that every time I read it, I just can't help but relate.

'I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all.'

Anyone who has had ever had a crush but then lost it after knowing the person can understand this feeling and Sylvia Plath just articulates it so well. The Bell Jar is one of those books that captured the essence of what I was feeling at exact time I was reading it and for that I am always thankful.

Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

I have never read a more intimate description of what it's like to live with Depression in my entire life. This is the only non-fiction book on this list, and it's not because I don't like non-fiction, it's just that I haven't read that many SUPER impactful non-fiction books. Except for this one. This book made me go from 'Yeah, I know about depression and how important it is for people to be aware of mental illness' to 'I had no idea about Depression and what it's like to live with it and the significance of undergoing treatment for it until I read this book'.

I mean the very first sentence of the first chapter is 'Depression is the flaw in love.' I swear, Solomon really pulls from the depth of his soul when providing glimpses to the reader about what it is like to live with Depression and it honestly just blew my mind. This book made me question what it means to be happy and what it truly means to be sad. It made me question whether I was living my life being ignorant about my emotions by not properly stopping to take the time to assess myself. It made me think about how I would react if myself or someone close to me had depression. Would I be helpful? Would I be hurtful? And it makes you question these things, all while being incredibly beautiful. All I can say is, thank you to Andrew Solomon for opening my brain.

Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix

While other kids were reading Harry Potter and Percy Jackson in elementary school, I was reading every book Margaret Peterson Haddix had ever written. I like to think that her books were the ones that made me interested in reading. That, and being an only child who had no one to play with or talk to at home. As someone who doesn't like fantasy or sci-fi, I find it surprising that the books that made me fall in love with reading were all about weird and creepy dystopias. This one is no different.

Double Identity is about this girl named Bethany and before her 13th birthday she gets sent away from her parents to live with this aunt she never knew existed and then the story goes on from there. I've read this book at least 25 times. When I moved, I got rid of many of my children's/young adult books, but I kept this one because I couldn't bear to part with it. I genuinely do not understand what it is about this book that just made me love it so much or how it changed my perspective, but one of the characters in this book loves peaches and cream oatmeal and every time I see it or hear about it, I remember this book.

So those are some books that I consider relatively ~life changing~. Hope you enjoyed. If you did and you want more like these type of random lists (maybe I'll do all the books I disliked) let me know. If you didn't like this, thats okay too.