Has a work of FICTION ever changed your life....

If your book touched you it'll get to someone else, whether or not you get a letter. Guaranteed .

I've had a few in my day. It's easy to become the characters we read about. I particularly related to the character in Perks of Being a Wallflower. I had a similar personality to Charlie back when I was in school. I can read that book over and over despite knowing the ending. It's light reading (language-wise) and heavy reading (emotional impact) at the same time.

Most of them. I am what I read.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. She was young and I felt the frustration of the MC who lived in a world of stupid violence. This book influenced me to write my own book at the age of 14, people said it was quite good.

I wish I knew what happened to it.

It's a comic book but...
The Maxx.
I can't even begin to describe what a profound effect that series had on me. It was brutal and surreal and for me, completely subverted the whole super hero genre. It was beautiful and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Emotionally I would have to say The perks of being a wallflower. That book became such a crutch for me. There are a couple others like The Vampire Lestat and White Oleander.

Reading Stargirl undid some sort of knot inside me. I love the characters and I loved watching the aha lightbulbs flicker on above the heads of many of my 6th graders while I read it aloud to them last year.

My book certainly changed my life.

I think that the books that changed me most were Choke and American Gods. For whatever reason they just stuck with me and changed my idea on what writing could be. Reading these finally allowed my true voice to come out and play. I think it might have had something to do with these being the first dark twisted novels I'd read, but they definitely stuck with me. Also Neverwhere helped me follow along those same lines into wanting to do more fantasy.

After reading Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite my friends and I all went out and got wasted on chartreuse. Does that count?

The eye in the pyramid - book 1 in the Illuminatus trilogy - marked a move from reading fiction for pleasure, to reading fiction, then non-fiction to understand the world around me a little better.

It was the book that made the reader in me grow up.

I'd never read anything like it. The book changed my life in that I became aware that everything in the world might not be exactly as it seems, exactly as it's reported in a 60 second summary.

Now, years later, I still regard these books with fondness. I still wonder if there really is an Illuminatus out there trying to control everything, but I doubt if mankind could be controlled in such a unifying way as the human condition is far to chaotic to accurately predict every damn time.

So many books have changed my life in little ways: they've made me reflect on other point of views and, I think, made me a more understanding, accepting person, especially when I look at 15-yo me putting Jane Eyre down in disgust when she married him at the end. Life experience has helped too, but novels have played a large role throughout my life. Unlike movies, I really feel like I am the main character in a book.

I tend to prefer non-fiction to fiction, but when I gave it a bit more thought, I realized "Native Son" by Richard Wright and "Manchild in the Promised Land" by Claude Brown had a definite impact upon my thinking.

Written by JJ Abrams (of the upcoming Star Trek movie fame as well as Lost and several others), Regarding Henry both changed and saved my life. If it hadn't been for that story, even though it was told in movie form and not book, I'd've stayed where I was, working 'til I had a stroke or a nervous breakdown or a heart attack, and died. It made me realize - long before 9-11 and the Oklahoma City bombing - how short life is and how quickly it can change. I left the job that was killing me, wrote the novel that is now being shopped by my agent (who'd've ever thought I'd actually have an agent!), and eventually found a job I love.

Yeah. Regarding Henry.

Ol' Fashioned Girl said:

I left the job that was killing me, wrote the novel that is now being shopped by my agent (who'd've ever thought I'd actually have an agent!), and eventually found a job I love.

Yeah. Regarding Henry.

Click to expand...

Nice.

Oh, I'd forgotten Regarding Henry! Yes.

I had one of those upbringings, unfortunately including teachers, where too many people were cruel and unsupportive (alcoholism & violence). It may sound cliched, but I learned what the world was really more like from reading (mostly fiction and biographies).

I'm sure your work could help someone make sense of the world and not give up on their hopeful side Your sort of writing might be the only 'person' they can turn to!

By the way, there is a thread like this in The Absolute Write Book Club forum.

Mine are The Book Thief, Danny the Champion of the World, Invisible Monsters, and Breakfast of Champions.

d&f.

Yes,

the Movie Jaws is responsible for me not swimming in the Ocean anymore.

The "Mission Earth" series by L. Ron Hubbard is responsible for me seeing the potential beauty that resides in every woman.

Robert Heinlen's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Starship Troopers" helped form the bedrock of my philosophy

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series helped me see the mathematics in human behavior and increase my understanding of group and social psychology

Mel...