Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Somehow it was never required reading in my high school, but I read it the summer after college. Apart from it being witty, quirky, and creative, what struck me most, oddly enough, was the outlook on life among the aliens, the Trafalmadorians.
These Trafalmadorians were not stuck living in linear time like we are, so they see past present and future all at once. If you don't know the story, they also take the novel's protagonist out of linear time, and he bounces around, seeing past, future, and present in all different orders. There would be a character who is very successful and happy, and the Trafalmadorian or Billy Pilgrim would call her "poor so-and-so," referring to some terrible tragedy that would happen to the person later in life.
Being just out of college and still young, memories of the uber-popular, successful people in high school and college were still fresh in my mind. This book, plus probably many vodka drinks and other unnamed substances, helped me to look at these people with a "Trafalmadorian" perspective. Sure that person might be on top of the world in high school or college--someone who might be envied, or someone who puts others down. But those people will encounter hardship. Likewise, people who aren't very successful, or who are lonely or sad in the present will encounter success and happiness. We all get a dose of everything eventually. When this life is over, and we look back over our life outside of non-linear time, we will see the whole package, and the order and timing won't matter so much. So when negative things would happen, I would remind myself that I'm getting to experience all the positives and negatives, and this is just one little temporary experience.
The other thing I got out of the book was that Billy Pilgrim didn't really make many actual decisions or take any actions. He kind of just "went with the flow." I also read a little about Taoism back then, and those ideas kind of fit together for me. When a whole lot of stressful things were happening or threatening to happen, I would think that I should just take a deep breath, and be like Billy Pilgrim, and go with the flow or "the way." Flow around the rocks in the stream instead of crashing against them or swimming against the current. Of course I could never be as passive as Billy; I do make decisions and generally control my own life. But then the stuff out of my control comes along, I can just be Billy Pilgrim for a little while, and remind myself that I'll be in a different place soon.
I read it when it first came out. I was eleven years old. Until that point in time I knew nothing of the history of the Jews or the Holocaust.
After that I read every book by Uris. He was and remains my favorite author.
I was a book reviewer for the local newpaper for 15 years. My field of "expertise" was Israel and Jewish History.....all because of Leon Uris. I really, really miss that man. He died in 2003.
Leon Uris is a favorite author for me also. One of his contemporaries, Herman Wouk, is worth reading also.
Let's see - there are several books that come to mind - one you've already mentioned, which is The Lovely Bones. I read this after my grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away. It gave me great comfort. Amazing that a book that goes into such gut wrenching detail about the murder of a child could bring such comfort.
I'd have to say that the most influential books I've ever read (aside from the Bible) are the Narnia series by CS Lewis. CS Lewis is my all time favorite author, and I've read the Narnia books probably at least 10 times. Seriously. The thing about them is that they are timeless and give great insight into various truths no matter what stage of life you're in when you read them. So I read them several times as a kid, then again as an adult, and then I read them to my kids...and now I'm reading them to my grandkids.
Speaking of Israel - I read From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman after 9/11 and that opened up a lot more interest into the Middle East for me - interest not only about Israel (which I already had, having discovered Leon Uris as a teen), but more about the whole scope of that region. That book helped me see more of the HUMANITY of that troubled region rather than simply the politics or the radicals.
I have always been drawn to England and it's history, but when I read London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd, I knew I would simply have to visit London. This fabulous book gives such detail about so many places, that when I was riding all over London on the top of that red bus, I honestly felt like I was constantly recognizing old friends in all the place names and sites.
Inside the Third Reich gave me fascinating insight into that evil regime and the personal compromises that Speer and so many others made in order to rise in power. It gave me more of an understanding of the allure of power, politics and patriotism. It also helped me immediately recognize where the musical group name "Spandau Ballet" came from!
The Road Less Traveled, and People of the Lie by M Scott Peck both crystallized the concepts of boundaries, healthy relationships, and th intrusiveness of various forms of abuse - and helped me escape an abusive marriage as well as move past the trauma of being raised by a mother who is, unfortunately, mentally ill. I constantly refer back to those books as I move through and in various relationships in my life.
There are so many more wonderful books out there, but these are the ones that jump out at me when I think back on my favorite books.
Thanks KA.
It is interesting how different books speak to different folks. I like reading about this.
Somehow it was never required reading in my high school, but I read it the summer after college. Apart from it being witty, quirky, and creative, what struck me most, oddly enough, was the outlook on life among the aliens, the Trafalmadorians.
These Trafalmadorians were not stuck living in linear time like we are, so they see past present and future all at once. If you don't know the story, they also take the novel's protagonist out of linear time, and he bounces around, seeing past, future, and present in all different orders. There would be a character who is very successful and happy, and the Trafalmadorian or Billy Pilgrim would call her "poor so-and-so," referring to some terrible tragedy that would happen to the person later in life.
Being just out of college and still young, memories of the uber-popular, successful people in high school and college were still fresh in my mind. This book, plus probably many vodka drinks and other unnamed substances, helped me to look at these people with a "Trafalmadorian" perspective. Sure that person might be on top of the world in high school or college--someone who might be envied, or someone who puts others down. But those people will encounter hardship. Likewise, people who aren't very successful, or who are lonely or sad in the present will encounter success and happiness. We all get a dose of everything eventually. When this life is over, and we look back over our life outside of non-linear time, we will see the whole package, and the order and timing won't matter so much. So when negative things would happen, I would remind myself that I'm getting to experience all the positives and negatives, and this is just one little temporary experience.
The other thing I got out of the book was that Billy Pilgrim didn't really make many actual decisions or take any actions. He kind of just "went with the flow." I also read a little about Taoism back then, and those ideas kind of fit together for me. When a whole lot of stressful things were happening or threatening to happen, I would think that I should just take a deep breath, and be like Billy Pilgrim, and go with the flow or "the way." Flow around the rocks in the stream instead of crashing against them or swimming against the current. Of course I could never be as passive as Billy; I do make decisions and generally control my own life. But then the stuff out of my control comes along, I can just be Billy Pilgrim for a little while, and remind myself that I'll be in a different place soon.
Thanks for this! I don't remember Slaughterhouse Five very well. Your description has convinced me to reread it!
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving *love this one to pieces, probably my favorite story ever
The Cider House Rules by John Irving *a very important message
All profoundly moving and somehow life changing. BTW I don't love All Irvings work, its patchy - but Courtenay would have to be my top favorite author of all time.
My favorite novel of all time. I first read it when I was in high school, and it was a great awakening and insight into the phoniness and posturing that permeates modern society, and it helped me recognize it and know what to expect as an adult. It is a timeless message and a timeless book, I believe. Although JD Salinger's masterpiece is now a good 60 years old, it still holds up just as well as if it were written last year.
I also fully-empathized and identified with the novel's protagonist, young Holden Caufield. He is my favorite character from all of written fiction. Since I work around young people, at a community college, it's great to see one of them carrying the book around these days. I have heard that it has made a sort of comeback among teens over the past several years. (I am now in my early 40s). (The book was, and still is, amazingly, banned in certain schools).
I have probably read the book six or seven times, from start to finish. Once or twice a year I find myself going back to it a bit, just flipping to certain favorite parts for an hour or so. It never fails to make me laugh or at least smile in agreement.
Last edited by The_Southpaw; 09-12-2015 at 04:10 PM..
My favorite novel of all time. I first read it when I was in high school, and it was a great awakening and insight into the phoniness and posturing that permeates modern society, and it helped me recognize it and know what to expect as an adult. It is a timeless message and a timeless book, I believe. Although JD Salinger's masterpiece is now a good 50 years old, it still holds up just as well as if it were written last year.
I also fully-empathized and identified with the novel's protagonist, young Holden Caufield. He is my favorite character from all of written fiction. Since I work around young people, at a community college, it's great to see one of them carrying the book around these days. I have heard that it has made a sort of comeback among teens over the past several years. (I am now in my early 40s). (The book was, and still is, amazingly, banned in certain schools).
I have probably read the book six or seven times, from start to finish. Once or twice a year I find myself going back to it a bit, just flipping to certain favorite parts for an hour or so. It never fails to make me laugh or at least smile in agreement.
I have just remembered another book that made me adjust my thinking. The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner was an eye opener to me. Lerner uses the scholarship available to her at that time to explain how women became subservient to men in ancient cultures. She theorizes that there was more equality in a hunter-gatherer society, and that equality lessened as war and religious hierarchies became dominant.
I would like to see this work updated; I don't think hunter-gatherer societies were probably as egalitarian as she postulates, and there has been much, much more work in this area in the last 20 years or so. But as a work which helps us understand where women became property, pawns in family alliances, and even losers when it came to life or death of their newborns, it is very good.
I went ahead and read the next book too: The Creation of Feminine Consciousness. I don't think you need to feel marginalized or disenfranchised to understand how many women did suffer through centuries of just those things.
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky (sp.?). Certainly one of the great novels of world literature but I haven't read it in a very long time, except that I have come back to the famous Grand Inquisitor chapter in which Christ comes back to earth and is imprisoned by the church because of his belief in human freedom. (The church's argument is that radical freedom leads to too much suffering and people must be guided and controlled.)
3. Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. Reflections on his time in the Nazi concentration camps contain the famous conclusion that the last of all freedoms, when all other freedoms have been taken away, is our power to shape our own attitudes towards events.
4. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. Don't know how this happened but I read this only a few months ago, at age 71. I have already re-read it and it holds a strange fascination which I am still trying to analyze fully.
I have just remembered another book that made me adjust my thinking. The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner was an eye opener to me. Lerner uses the scholarship available to her at that time to explain how women became subservient to men in ancient cultures. She theorizes that there was more equality in a hunter-gatherer society, and that equality lessened as war and religious hierarchies became dominant.
I would like to see this work updated; I don't think hunter-gatherer societies were probably as egalitarian as she postulates, and there has been much, much more work in this area in the last 20 years or so. But as a work which helps us understand where women became property, pawns in family alliances, and even losers when it came to life or death of their newborns, it is very good.
I went ahead and read the next book too: The Creation of Feminine Consciousness. I don't think you need to feel marginalized or disenfranchised to understand how many women did suffer through centuries of just those things.
I'll have to check these out - sounds interesting!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
