WordPress via Facebook was weird on Thursday, so if couldn’t read my lost post – I totally stuck to my schedule, I swear! – it’s up now. Sorry about that!
Today I’ve been thinking about a conversation that I had at a party last night. I was invited to a Clue party complete with a mystery and costumes! It was great and many thanks to the girls who hosted last night. Towards the end of the night, a new friend asked what was our most life changing book. Immediately, I knew mine: The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr. Why? It taught me about grace, friendship, sorrow, loss, and redemption . . . and that I can care about characters that happen to be farm animals more than some other human characters.
The guy who asked the question said his was hard to narrow down, that at different times it’s been a lot of different books. He makes a good point. Jane Eyre, has been massively important to me, so has The Time Traveler’s Wife, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, The Golden Compass, The Martian Chronicles, Girlchild, The Night Circus, The Magicians, The Madwoman in the Attic, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Okay for Now. I could go on. Books are amazing and I feel like a meet a life changing one every day.
What about you? What books have changed your life today?
(Still reading Wolf Hall. 200 pages left! Yes!)
lcarslibrarian 
A Wrinkle in Time. I read it in fourth grade (insisting that my dad sat next to me during the scary brain parts) and loved that the awkward girl got to save the day. Awkward girls weren’t a big part of my reading before that, and it was a bit of a watershed moment for me.
Awkward girls are so great!
Hmm, usually when people ask me this I have a half dozen non-fics to list off… usually fiction books don’t cross my mind.
But overall, probably the Little House series had the most influence on my life – I really wanted to be a pioneer/prairie girl. Yet, I’m not sure they were life-changing, in the same sense as other books have been. I also think Singularity by William Sleator, and Ender’s Game were pretty huge for me as well as a teen.
Post college fiction reading, probably the most moving fiction book I’ve read has been Of Human Bondage a couple summers ago.
Ooh! I want to hear what your non-fiction ones are. I’m always looking for more nonfiction to read. 🙂
The Happiness Project (Gretchin Rubin) – Love her writing style, love the topic. One of those authors I felt as though we would be friends in real life if I knew her.
Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster) – read at 22, somehow had made it through Gordon (and the previous growing up Christian years) without absorbing what (or how to practice) the spiritual disciplines were. Still astonishes me.
Men of Ideas (Lewis Coser) – The lightbulb moment of “ideas can change the world, and it’s people that have these ideas, and people get ideas by collaborating, and collaboration can be fostered in certain environments” Really got me interested in sociology too.
Animal Vegetable Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver). I really liked this at 21, but a friend is re-reading it now and said it’s not as good the second time around, the genre is getting old. (Local eating etc). At the time I read it, I had just finished doing volunteer farming and was super into that whole local/slow food movement.
20 Years at Hull House (Jane Addams) – Jane’s my hero! Wish I could have met her.
I have been wanting to read The Happiness Project (especially since it started some Slate blogs before their meteoric decline!). Now I have more motivation to finish it!