1 post tagged “life changing”

This book taught me how to press through my own mind and find my voice as a writer.

Everyone should read this.  It's fantastic.  I read this, and went, "Oh, shit.  This is it.  This is what I want to do."  If I ever write anything half as good as this, I'll die happy.


This book just ripped me apart from the first page, as both a reader and a writer.

After I finished this book, I couldn't breathe.  I had to lay down on my bed and cry and just ache because of how beautiful it is.  This is why Hemmingway's the shit, yo.


Another one that ripped me open--but in a good way.

And again, once I finished this, I couldn't breathe.  I just thought, "How?  How did she write this?  How can something this amazing exist?"

This book changed my life not only as a writer, but personally, too. I was going through a terrible time in my life, feeling so powerless, and through this book, I started to see the absurdities of life as something I couldn't change--just letting go of that need to control things I couldn't have any hope to control was life changing in and of itself.  This book is what helped me identify my own ideas about life--there is no meaning except the meaning that we give it, we always have a choice even if each choice is imperfect, the idea that you can just decide to have, "nothing to do with injustice and compromise."  When Rieux told the priest, "I shall refuse until my death to love this world in which children are tortured," I actually began to cry.  It's Rieux's compassion and humanity that differentiate him from the other characters, and his refusal to let go of that, even in the face of chaos and death, makes him heroic, though he is, of course, an absurd hero, as Camus' heroes must be.  It's hard to believe that a book about the bubonic plague actually gave me faith in life and humanity, but it did.

I'm not a very deep person, really, so it's hard for me to find the words, but this books is the closest thing I've ever found that represents the way I go through life--in the face of meaningless tragedy and absurdity, cling to your humanity and realize that the power you have is the power of your choices.  Even if someone holds a gun to your head, you've got a choice--just not a good one.

And, OK, so that's more than five books that changed my life, but come on.  I'm a writer.  What do you expect?  I could go on all day like this.