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Thread: Most Important Books in your Life

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    Recognized Member Scotty_ffgamer's Avatar
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    Default Most Important Books in your Life

    This was just something I was thinking about in my own life, but I was also curious what answers I would get from other people. What books or short stories that you all have read have become important to you, whether it be by association with people and memories, by the stories told within the books, by the book helping you get through hard times? Are there any books that have become a big part of defining who you are? I have a few.

    There was a series I read as a kid called The Dark is Rising Sequence that has always meant a lot to me. I honestly cannot remember that much from the books, but it was a series that my uncle recommended to me that I fell in love with. Eventually drama appeared in my family, and that uncle stopped talking to the rest of us... and those books always bring back memories of when everyone in my family was around.

    Ender's Game - I just have always connected with Ender for some reason.

    The Road by Cormac McCarthy - This book just hit me on an emotional level. It was suggested to me by a good friend, and I associate it with that friend.

    5 Centimeters per Second graphic novel - Pretty much the same as above, but with a different friend. I connect a lot with practically all of the characters as well.

    Pendragon series - Followed for a long portion of my life until the series was done. This series originally got me into wanting to write novels.

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    Walden - Henry David Thoreau

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    Recognized Member Shorty's Avatar
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    Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead have definitely helped shape my world for the past ~14 years. I no longer have either of my original copies - I buy one or two new copies every year and give them out to people who I think should read them.

    Les Miserables. My copy was given to me by my best friend's father when I was twelve. I really looked up to him, and I connected with him on a more literary level than he and his own daughter did. He was a strong father figure to me amidst my parents' divorce and I like to think that I was the daughter he never had. The story itself is important to me, as is the copy I have.

    Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. The copy that I have is a signed copy by Palahniuk, and although it is secondhand and autographed to someone else, it was sought after and hunted down for me and I love it.

    Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis. My copy is falling apart and literally taped together from being read so many times.

    My original copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. When I first got this book when I was ten, it had to be beneath my pillow at night or I couldn't sleep.

    My pop-up copy of Alice in Wonderland. This is my favorite Alice copy and one of my favorite books in my library. I happened upon it purely by chance in an antique-y boutique store where it was just resting on a chair as if someone put it down and meant to come back for it. I can't wait to read it to my children some day.

    Johnny the Homicidal Maniac hardcover comic collection. yooooooooooooooouth

    A lot of my books are important to me for sentimental reasons.

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    The Secret Books of Paradys I-IV - by: Tannith Lee
    i've had this set of books several times throughout my life always in hardcover, i still have them...

    The Sprawl Trilogy - Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, & Count Zero - by: William Gibson
    these i got as a Christmas gift from my little brother, all hardcover first editions signed by William Gibson...

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    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

    The greatest literary invention by humanity thus far.

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    Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovachs and Tom Rosenstiel.

    I'm such a dullard.


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    The Hobbit was the first fantasy novel I had ever read or had read to me. I haven't read it in years, but it still sticks in my mind as the book that introduced me to the fantasy genre and to the idea that no matter how bad your life is there is always some poor soul fighting a dragon.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Locky View Post
    Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovachs and Tom Rosenstiel.

    I'm such a dullard.
    This actually reminds me of a couple of books I left off the list. Essentially, any of my teaching books by Kelly Gallagher (i.e. Write Like This). These were assigned/suggested to me by my favorite professor and they have really informed my ideas when it comes to teaching.

    On a different but sort of similar note, my book of ee cummings poetry, XAIPE, and also his play, Santa Claus: A Morality. Outside of the fact that I think ee cummings is a genius and my favorite poet, it was his poetry and this play that got me into more academic writing. I was going to do a big paper on ee cummings for my English Capstone, but I dropped my English major. I'm still planning on writing that paper just for fun though.

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    Grin

    Fiction:
    Summertime - J.M. Coetzee
    Life is Elsewhere - Milan Kundera
    Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
    Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
    Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
    Selected Poems - Andre Breton
    Selected Poems - Paul Eluard

    Non-Fiction:
    Max Ernst - Edward Quinn
    Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
    The Secret Life of Salvador Dali - Salvador Dali
    Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt

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    The Giver by Lois Lowry was probably one of the first books I read when I was a child that's message stuck with me for a while.

    I treasure the Eragon series because it's where my love for fantasy first took off, I've branched out into more in-depth and serious epics since then but it was my first and I still read through them every now and again.

    Malazan Book of the Fallen- an epic series by Steven Erikson that I just adore. Yes, I mean all of them. Especially House of Chains.

    Because I'm one hell of a butler.

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    Jack London - Martin Eden

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    The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
    Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

    They say that in life you will find a book that your whole perspective, that it will just blow your mind away. I'm still waiting for it. :/


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    breakfast of champions. i dont even remember the plot. there's just one particular set of paragraphs that haven't left my mind since I read them. i should read it again. for a favourite book it's weird that I don't remember any characters or story

    infinite jest was pretty amazing, another book i'm re-reading.

    finally, stephen king's IT just because it was the first book I read that didn't have pictures and it opened me up to the idea that books are actually worth my time

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    The Waves by Virginia Woolf
    Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
    Hard Times by Charles Dickens
    One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
    The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
    A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger

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    The Giver - One of the first chapter books I ever read and it was such an eyeopener. I didn't know it at the time, but it would be the first of many many dystopian novels. It was the first book to really knock me over and make me fall in love with reading.

    The Hobbit - One of the very first fantasy books I ever read. I still remember the feeling of awe that I felt. How I very much felt like Bilbo Baggins setting off on an adventure. I adored that book so god damn much. I didn't know that there could exist such magical worlds in books, it was unlike anything I had read previously. The Hobbit led me to The Lord of the Rings. Which led me to a fan forum in 2001, the very first forum I ever joined. Which led me to go hunting for other forums that might interest me. Which led me to EoFF. Which led me to my husband. So yeah, pretty life changing!

    The Sirens of Titan - Books had always entertained me and some helped shape my thinking but nothing really influenced my philosophy on life like Kurt Vonnegut. He changed the way I saw the world. And Sirens of Titan is my fav book from him.

    Little Women, The Baby Sitter's Club & Little House on the Prairie series - I seriously think these books ensured that I grew up knowing right from wrong. The Baby Sitters Club books in particular were all about morality tales. And I read like... 200 of those books. So all those issues of right and wrong and selfishness and kindness and being a good friend and daughter and sister, those dug deep into me and took root. Also, being a child of immigrant parents, I needed some way of understanding what it meant to be a "normal" American. It helped me transition from a home life that was rather unAmerican into school and social settings where I was honestly baffled at first. Also, these books literally taught me English.

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