January 19, 2000    
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What book changed your life?

Each book is a treasure and should make you a more enlightend person for reading it. No one book has changed my life because I have taken advantage of what I have learned from all of them.

Lindsay, 21
VA

No one book has changed my life as such, however I would like to think that each book has helped me in its own way.

Nikki, 26
Kirkham ENGLAND

There have been several books that have touched me in a profound way, but I believe the one that actually changed my life was Mary Shelley's The Last Man. The novel is about the last man left alive after a plague destroys the earth's population. Partially a roman a clef on Mary Shelley's life (when she writes this novel, all those she loved have died including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron), the novel came to me at a time I was beginning my new life. I went through a severe state of depression and loneliness before I read The Last Man, and I was picking up the pieces when the book was handed to me. Through reading this book and researching Shelley's life (I ended up writing my thesis on the novel), I rediscovered who I am and why I'm here.

Amy, 23
Turner,
ME

Before a book can change a life, it must be first chosen and then read. Therefore most books are not personality-changing as much a personality-enhancing.

When I was l4 years old, the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS was published in the US. I had read THE HOBBIT with a great deal of delight at age 8--and had reread it since.

The notion that fantasy was written for adult audiences and was acceptable for adult audiences to read was very comforting and sustaining.

Further, the notion of a quest has been valuable baggage every since.

Jill, 59
Saylorsburg
, PA

I, ROBOT
made me relize that technology was not something that should be feared.

Doug
Lowell, MA

Many books have changed my life or at least the way I think. The first was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. For me the message was not about selfishness, but about codependency and the way to empower people. Because if you do for people they never learn for themselves. You help them, support them, let them do as much for themselves as they can.

Cindy, 41
Lowell,
MA

The Bible certainly formed a large portion of my life. My particular favorite book within the Bible is the Gospel according to John.

Laura, 34
Lowell
, MA

Ooh, I bet some people are going to say the Bible. Or maybe not. Anyway, a lot of books have changed my life in little ways and affected my viewpoints by letting me see different perspectives. Through the Ice by Robert Kornwise [and Piers Anthony] has, I guess, made me see that there are other people like me out there, if I can only find them. Or, at least, there was one person like me out there. And maybe there are more.

Karen, 20
Marshelltown/Ames,
IA

I don't know that any book has changed my life- I'd suppose that I would be responsible for doing that- but the book that changed my perspective on life would be "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon. It made me believe that we never really know what going on, because there are too many hidden worlds that we don't know about, and that there is a really cool underground mail system called W.A.S.T.E.

Shayna, 28
Somerville,
MA

I wouldn't say a single book changed my life. I would say my relationship to books has changed over the years. For a long time my interest was in books for the stories and ideas. But fiction was what held my attention. More recently non-fiction (mainly how-to books, as in how to grow plants, work with wood, etc.) have captured my attention. I'm interested in a book for what it can teach me to do. I think someday I will be interested in books that are true stories of historical events.

Tom,  32
Flagstaff,
AZ

The Bible

Janet, 42
E. Brunswick
, NJ

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. . .When I was 13 years old, going to Boston on a train to visit my brother. . . .it suggested all sorts of ways of thinking I had no idea even existed. . .It was a supremely liberating experience. .

Mothmc, 35
Pensacola,
FL

A book that had a profound affect on me (althought it probably had as much to do with the professor who used the book) was a political economic history of the development of capitalism on a world scale.  The book, "Global Rift", pretty much created a structure for me to think about the dynamics of money, power, resources, and global politics which is still with me today.

Felicia, 33
Somerville, MA

The main goal that changed my life is Catcher in the Rye, since that book really spoke to me. I can relate to Holden Claufield in that book.

Ernest, 29
Washington
, DC USA

I couldn't even begin to give you an estimate of how many books I've read in my life, much less choose one as having the most effect on my life.

Kristin, 20
IA  USA

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