100 Things I Want To Tell My Children And Grandchildren, #35

Books Can Change Your Life

I’m probably doing something terribly illegal here, but when I saw the article in today’s New York Times, The Book That Changed My Life, I read every single one of the stories and was so glad.  I was also reminded of the book that changed my life, and I knew I wanted “Books Can Change Your Life” to be my #34 of the 100 Things I Want To Tell My Children And Grandchildren. 

The World’s Great Religions was one of those coffee table Time-Life books so popular during the 50’s, the size and heft of a bag of cement and chocked full of colorful pictures. It talked about the ten or so most highly practiced religions of the world, and as a six-year-old I remember thinking, “Where are the Baptists?” I had no idea that come Sunday morning everyone in the world didn’t put on their best garb, grab the covered dish out of the oven, and head over to their Methodist or Baptist Church for Sunday school then church.

But in the book there were dark-skinned women in iridescent saris, cows being worshiped, rooms full of prostrate praying men and no women, cathedrals draped in gold, men with curls instead of sideburns, and statues with many arms and one foot in the air as though dancing. Who were these people? And who were Allah, Buddha and Shiva? 

In addition to attending the Methodist Church in my little home town, when doing sleep-overs with friends I also went to their churches  - Baptist, Church of Christ, Pentecostal, and Christian. Not sure why, but my Catholic buddies were never allowed to bring me along and I really wanted to go. All that getting down on your knees and the pageantry seemed so glamorous and exciting. 

The common thread of all the services I attended was “We’re right, they’re wrong and they’ll go to hell for it, and you’ll go to hell if you’re not good, but even if you’re not good, but you’re sorry, you’ll be OK”. And there seemed to be a conspicuous lack of scientific proof for any of the various beliefs. 

Significantly due to The World’s Great Religions, I grew to believe that if 8-billion people couldn’t agree, it was beyond me to reconcile. So my religion is just this: Be nice and help others when you can.  

What book changed your life?

Click on "Read More" below for “The Book That Changed My Life” from the New York Times. 

The Book That Changed My Life, New York Times, January 19, 2020.

Middlemarch

George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” has changed my life, and changed me, in countless subtle ways. I first read it at 25, when an older and wiser friend told me that a woman we both cordially loathed was “just like Rosamond Vincy” in the novel. On first reading, I hated the book. But I trusted my friend’s judgment, so I tried again a few years later.

On the second reading I was hooked. My error the first time around was to read “Middlemarch” as one would a typical novel. But “Middlemarch” isn’t really about plot and dialogue. It’s all about character, as mediated through the wise and compassionate (but sharply astute) voice of the omniscient narrator. The book shows us that we cannot live without other people, and that we cannot live with other people unless we recognize their flaws and foibles in ourselves. And each of us makes the world a better place by honoring our duties to other people and being humble about our own importance in the grander scheme of things.

I go back to “Middlemarch” every year, and have done so for 25 years. Rereading the book makes me a better, kinder and less judgmental person. And there is nothing more important than that.

Heather MacIvor, Windsor, Ontario

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

As a lifelong reader will I choose Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”? Philip Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus”? Wonderful as these were, they were not life-transforming.

No, I must go back 55 years. I was 21, newly married, living in a strange city with a great first job, when I was horrified to find myself pregnant. My firm fired me — this was 1964 — but my immediate supervisor sent me off with a great book as a peace offering: “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child.

Bored, scared and friendless, I cringed the first time I reached into a chicken carcass to remove the giblets, but I bravely made my way through this cooking bible, concocting hollandaise, puff pastry, beef Wellington and the like.

My cooking today reflects an interest in somewhat healthier food. After all, one cannot live on boeuf bourguignon alone. But I learned so many techniques, and opened our family’s eyes or rather their taste buds to so many new foods, that my husband recently joked, “I don’t know which you would find more devastating, to never read another book or never read another recipe.”

Beth Krugman, New York

Go, Dog. Go!

“Go, Dog. Go!” — that epic by P.D. Eastman — has it all: Drama — where are those dogs going? Humor — dogs on scooters, flying helicopters and driving cars! Existential angst — why doesn’t he like her hat? It’s multicultural — blue dogs and red dogs and green dogs! It’s a love story — why yes, he does end up liking her hat!

From “Go, Dog. Go!” — my first book way back in prekindergarten — it was only a short skip to the poems of William Butler Yeats; “The Myth of Sisyphus,” by Albert Camus; the guerrilla ontology of Robert Anton Wilson; and the 10,000 mostly nonfiction books in my home library on Irish history, African-American history, my Pagan spiritual path, world religions and metaphysical matters, the Middle East, quantum physics, the Beatles and rock music, yadda yadda yadda.

O.K., maybe that wasn’t a short hop. But my love of reading — as a way to have adventures, explore life, lives and ideas, and satiate my curiosity about the world — began with dogs driving fast cars. I still reread “Go, Dog. Go!” to this day.

Rick de Yampert, Palm Coast, Fla.

The Color Purple

The day that I first picked up Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” I had no idea that it would fundamentally change my life. As a teenager, I had so many questions, feelings and beliefs competing for my attention, and I felt broken, alone … defective, if you will. I was adrift, trying to determine why I never found God in a church. Why I like people instead of a specific gender. 

And then I met a motley cast of characters just as lonely and hopeless as I felt.

The characters in Ms. Walker’s story spoke to me in ways I never imagined a work of fiction could. I felt my soul resonate at Shug’s words that God is all that ever was and will be, that we should notice the color purple in a field, and the idea that God lives inside of us. It eased my mind and let me know that there were kindred spirits in this world. I simply had to seek them out.

Wendy Gianfrancesco, Scottdale, Pa.

Atlas Shrugged

When I first read “Atlas Shrugged” for a high school assignment, I was so impressed with Ayn Rand’s philosophy of strength, independence and forging through life on one’s own that I reread the book a few more times in the next few years. The final time I was a young mother and as I read, I realized that there were no children in Rand’s cast of characters, no old people; no one was sick or disabled. Where were they? How were they supposed to manage on their own?

That’s when I became a Democrat, even a socialist. It finally dawned on me that total self-reliance is fine, as long as you’re young, healthy and strong. But no one gets through this life on her own. It takes a village to support a community, to raise and educate children, to care for the sick and elderly. Who wants to live in a world where the weak are thrust aside and forgotten? Rand’s philosophy could never be mine. Her words allowed me to crystallize my own thinking. I grew up.

Barbara Lipkin, Naperville, Ill.

On Beyond Zebra

At age 7 (I’m 70 now), I had my mind blown by Dr. Seuss’ “On Beyond Zebra.” Turning the page from the end of the regular alphabet to the 27th letter, “yuzz,” I was surprised, enchanted and immediately freed from the limits of penmanship and reading circles. Every new letter (“floob,” “zatz” and more!) was a delight and a possibility. Who knew you could break the rules like that?

It was satori in the second grade. I remembered that moment whenever I was raising my kids. And now, when I write, paint and play with my grandkids, I keep in mind that electrifying gift to be sure that I don’t put any obstacles in the way of exercising our imaginations.

Harold M. Heft, Princeton, N.J.

The Meditations

“The Meditations,” by Marcus Aurelius, is the only self-help book you will ever need. The Roman emperor’s thoughts to himself emphasize the fleeting nature of life and put everything into perspective. Should I take this job or that one, move to this city or that? In 100 years, will it matter?

The book forces us to contemplate our part in the today and our minuscule part in the future, and demands of us to consider what is truly important. If a Roman emperor had this humility, we can.

Vincent Delorenzo, London

The Feminine Mystique

When I was in college in 1965, a friend gave me a copy of “The Feminine Mystique,” by Betty Friedan. As a young girl growing up in the 1950s, I was of two minds: On the one hand, I loved school, especially math, loved competing in sports, wanted to make something of myself. On the other hand, I also fantasized about the romantic stories from books and movies and women’s magazines of love and marriage and homemaking. As a student at a women’s college, I was only just beginning to realize how much in conflict those two futures were.

The book laid it all out for me, put into words what I had only sensed. Whether the choices I made were different as a result of reading the book, I’ll never know, but I do know I understood better the choices available to me and the implications of those choices. I became a lifelong feminist.

Dorothy Brooks, Punta Gorda, Fla.

The Stranger

I was only 11 or 12. My mother belonged to a Great Books reading discussion group and handed me, without any preamble, a copy of “The Stranger,” Albert Camus’s existential musing about the meaninglessness and randomness of life. In promulgating this bleak and enervating perspective, Monsieur Camus was inarguably on to something. But, Mom, geez: 11 is too young for a kid to be let in on that!

Jerome Perzigian, New York

Catch-22

“Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller, changed my life, or, more accurately, my outlook on it. I was 13 in 1963, a little warmonger who gobbled up books about P.O.W. camp escapes and Air Force derring-do. Mistaking “Catch-22” for the latter category, I picked it up and was … puzzled. The humor was offbeat and circular. No one seemed at all interested in defeating the enemy. Illogic and cynicism — an alien emotion to me at that age — reigned. The officers in command were venal idiots indifferent to the fate of the men they sent into combat.

Somehow Joseph Heller managed to make this morality- and sanity-free spectacle funny and riveting. Yossarian was my first and greatest antihero. I wanted to be him. By the time I finished the book I was a different person, with a strange sense of humor that marked me as an oddball among my peers and a sensibility that would be perfectly attuned to the murderous absurdity of the Vietnam War just over the horizon. No book I’ve read since, and there have been thousands, has had such a profound effect on me.

Gerald Howard, Tuxedo Park, N.Y.

When Breath Becomes Air

Through heaving sobs, I managed to finish the last page of “When Breath Becomes Air,” by Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a devastating memoir detailing his lung cancer diagnosis. He learned to die with the same grace that he lived his life. Oh, the unfairness of it all!

In our death-averse American culture, I’m the first to put my hands up to my ears at the mention of death. I refuse to think about the reality of aging parents or the end of a cherished relationship. Dr. Kalanithi forces me to confront death in its most intimate form and grapple with my underlying anxiety about getting too attached to the things I love, knowing they will end. Now I ask: In a world built on planning and waiting for the future, am I living in the present? How do I love more deeply, even though it will hurt more when it’s over?

While I will never be comfortable with death, I no longer shy away from the fact it exists and that life has meaning, no matter how soon it is taken from us.

Asya Rozental, Boston

A Gentleman in Moscow

One book that changed my outlook on life was “A Gentleman in Moscow,” by Amor Towles. It made me realize how a beautiful, full life could be lived by virtue of the relationships one has, no matter how dire the circumstances. The main character, Count Alexander, while forcibly confined to the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, manages to find love and deep friendships that sustain him. He finds long-lasting romantic love with a beautiful actress, Anna, and paternal love with Nina (whom he meets when she is a child) and subsequently with her daughter, Sofia. He enjoys the enduring and loyal friendship of Mishka and some hotel staff.

This tightknit group forms what is, for the count, his entire world. He does not grieve. He makes the most out of every hour of every day. I believe that this book teaches us an invaluable lesson about how to live a full life and how to appreciate the good people around us.

Sue Kohl, Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Eloise

“Eloise,” by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight, changed the way I view family. My mom has been reading the series to me since I was 3 years old and now reads it to both me (now 9) and my little sister, Clover. I love how it’s about a girl growing up in New York, just like we are, who loves the city and her life. She’s funny, daring, and doesn’t always obey the rules. But in the end she shows everyone that she has a good heart. She wants everyone to smile and enjoy themselves.

Even though her mother isn’t around, her nanny is her family. It shows that family can be found and created even in a place as big as New York.

Daisy Brown, New York

Select One book? Impossible.

In the course of my 68 years I have been influenced by books as diverse and poignant as “The Little Prince” to the memoirs of Elie Wiesel. I have taken things large and small from each book, and each became as much a part of me as my own life experiences. Some have had great impact on how I have conducted my life or colored how I look at the world around me and the people I meet.

However, it would be impossible to select one book above all the others that helped form my worldview. They are all a part of who I am, how I feel and think. In the most uninspiring book, you sometimes find a nugget of wisdom that clarifies a moment decades later. But there will never be just one book, and there are so many yet to be written!

Debe S. Jones, Covington, La.

Recollections of a Picture Dealer

In the mid-1990s I was a literature professor. Although I had some notions of art connoisseurship (my uncle Sylvan was a renowned print dealer), I’d never imagined myself as a merchant. Then I read Ambroise Vollard’s “Recollections of a Picture Dealer” (1936). Vollard had gone to Paris to study law, and he ended up becoming perhaps the most influential art dealer of all time. He exhibited the work of many major painters and published several important prints and books.

Vollard shuns theory. His memoir is basically a rambling and highly entertaining collection of anecdotes — about artists, dealers, writers and collectors, famous and obscure. About vanity, magnanimity, stupidity and cunning. About Paris when it was still Paris. His portrayal of art dealing as a treasure hunt seduced me. The dealer roots out hidden masterpieces while avoiding fakes. He seeks overlooked artists whose work he can exhibit. And he hunts for the most elusive treasure of all: customers.

When I first read the book I was a university professor whose hobby was art and rare books. Several years later I’d become an art and rare book dealer whose hobby is teaching at a university. No regrets.

William Cole, Sitges, Spain

The Violent Bear It Away

I read Flannery O’Connor’s “The Violent Bear It Away” my freshman year in college. Her vision of God’s grace, present even at moments of tragedy or cruelty, so moved me that I wrote a senior thesis on the subject. The idea of grace that is usually invisible to our judgmental eyes stayed with me, and when I became a foster mother, it reminded me daily that I knew nothing of what was truly contained in the lives of the parents whose children I was trying to love into well-being. My compassion for those struggling parents was critical to my ability to honor their place in their children’s lives, to trust that they, too, were trying their best.

O’Connor was honest about the messiness of this endeavor, how grace can change us, or follow us unbidden; that, and her sense of humor, have kept “The Violent Bear It Away” and others of her stories as touchstones in my life.

Alison Daley Stevenson, Waldoboro, Me.

Look Homeward, Angel

“Look Homeward, Angel,” by Thomas Wolfe, remains the most brilliant expression of contemporary human alienation ever written. Reading it also made me fall in love with language. I had no idea writing could be so provocative yet both moving and musical. So keenly attuned to the world yet forever disconnected from other people, Wolfe mirrored my anguish, gave me words for it. My careers have all been inspired by that novel: politics, writing and development of a multiplayer online video game.

Jonathan Baron, Staunton, Va.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” by Richard Bach (1970), landed on my 12-year-old lap by chance, and it changed my life. In middle school, where bullies abound, pimples humiliate and friendships are elusive, Jonathan told me that “you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.”

At a time when everyone else strove to fit in, I strove to fit out. The more different I felt from the other girls, the more different I wanted to be. “We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill,” so I studied more, I read more, I practiced the piano more. I rejected the popular and snubbed the shallow trends of the ’70s. I wanted to be different. I was Jonathan.

Valeria Volin, Glastonbury, Conn.

Be Here Now

The year was 1971, and I was working in a bookstore in Beverly Hills, Calif. One day Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones, came into the store. I was 23 years old and a big fan. I boldly went up to him and suggested a popular title, “Notes to Myself,” by Hugh Prather. Catching my reading preference, Charlie picked up a book off the shelf and recommended it to me. It was “Be Here Now,” by Ram Dass.

It was destined to be my mantra and bible, and that of my roommates, for many years. It kept us living in the moment, away from anxiety about the future in the times of the turbulent ’70s, and taught us how the power of communal positive attitude can sway events, and that there are larger factors at work in the universe. It is still a guide for me today.

Philip Bruno, New York

Infinite Jest

In the autumn of 1988 I was a college sophomore studying abroad in Birmingham, England. I was lonely, homesick and questioning my decision when the phone rang. My parents were calling to tell me that one of my dearest high school friends had taken his own life. I was devastated, alone and furious that he could be so thoughtless, so selfish. I carried that anger for a decade.

In 1997, like so many others, I was slogging my way through David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece, “Infinite Jest,” and came across his burning high-rise analogy to clinical depression and suicide: “It’s not desiring the fall: It’s terror of the flames.”

It was the literary equivalent of a punch to the solar plexus — the anger, the grudge that I had been holding toward my lost friend was struck from me to be replaced with shame and sadness and compassion for what he must have experienced. I hope he can forgive me my thoughtlessness, my selfishness.

 “Infinite Jest” forever changed my view of addiction, depression and suicide. It made me a better, more empathetic human being.

Steve Sweere, Minneapolis

A Circle of Quiet

“A Circle of Quiet,” by Madeleine L’Engle, profoundly influenced the course of my life. Newly married in 1985, I picked the book up in my neighborhood bookstore, mostly because the beautiful cover caught my eye. L’Engle’s memoir describes her faith journey, her struggle for balance in her life, her love of family and the simple joys that enriched her spirit. This book introduced me to the then startling idea that God was alive in the commonplace, the quotidian events of life. With this book L’Engle sent me on a lifelong exploration of the spiritual dimensions of my life and instilled a reverence for stillness and simplicity.

Kathleen Potter, Bradford, Mass.

Walden

As a grade-school girl, I pulled Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” from the shelf of a small bookstore. A bit over my head for the most part, but not entirely. It was “The Ponds” that changed me. Thoreau’s power to observe, experience and articulate turned every droplet, glint and drone of water, light and life into a meditative epiphany.

His words imparted a new stillness and focus to the mind of a very bright young girl who struggled well into adulthood with varying degrees of social dysfunction. When she would withdraw, head tucked with shame and confusion, those moments spent in a boat with Thoreau provided a touchstone. She could commune with a fine and compassionate mind.

Like Thoreau’s water bugs and skaters navigating the pond, she learned to find her way, watch closely, move quietly, trust herself to find her place in the world.

Monica E. Gomez, El Paso

The Road

I read “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy, both before and after I became a parent. The experiences were starkly different. Sure, it’s a story filled with brutality, evil and depraved violence. But for me, reading it after I became a father, the book helped me realize the universality of all the fears I have as a parent — the anxiety of leaving my children in a world facing environmental catastrophe and my inadequacies in preparing them for the challenges of life. Weirdly, the story made me feel less alone.

I think about the father and son in the book, and I can call up McCarthy’s vivid scenes in my mind: the cold nights they spent huddled together next to the road; the sweet relief of finding refuge in an abandoned bunker filled with food and warmth; and the heartbreaking last scenes on the beach.

 “The Road” has a strange magic for me. Whenever I get to the end I am restored by the idea that we can, in fact, find people to trust, and although we are not always great parents, our children will see in us the thing that matters most — our devotion to them.

Joseph Loscudo, Naperville, Ill.

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

In 1964, when I was 14, my father handed me “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays,” by Albert Camus, and said, “You might enjoy this.” I read that life is absurd and tried to understand how Sisyphus was, at the end of the day, happy each time he pushed that rock up the hill because the struggle itself is enough.

To an adolescent in the mid-1960s with all its turmoil, Camus made so much sense to me — engagement and action in life are what gives it meaning. Throughout my life, in times of stress or grief, I open my $1.25 Vintage Book and look at the underlinings my young self made. Camus’s words bring me solace and perspective.

But there has been one special quote that has forever been my lodestar: “A determined soul will always manage.”

Leslie Morrison Faerstein, New York

Little Women

I called Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” my personal bible after I read it for the first time as an 11-year-old. An introvert with an active imagination, I read voraciously and wrote short stories and poems, dreaming of an illustrious career that would allow me to see the world. I quickly found a kindred spirit in Jo March, who, like me, loved to read and write, and, most inspiringly, dreamed of a life of adventure beyond what was expected of women at the time. She let nothing and no one, not restricting societal conventions nor the boy next door, stand in her way. As I struggled with bodily insecurities and finding my place in the world, I saw in Jo the confidence that I felt lacking in myself.

After my first tour of Orchard House, Alcott’s home where she wrote “Little Women,” I became a volunteer at their annual holiday program, where, by acting in skits alongside other girls my age, I found my voice. Additionally, I found a sisterhood of others who also grew up with “Little Women” as their guidebook, and following Alcott’s and Jo’s example, I became the “little woman” 11-year-old me hoped I would be.

Caroline Dunbar, Northampton, Mass.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

“Wherever You Go, There You Are,” by Jon Kabat-Zinn, utterly transformed my relationship with my own mind. To befriend your own mind is to own a piece of yourself that no one and nothing can take from you. Life is always complex, multilayered, blissful and filled with anguish by turns. When I came to understand at an experiential level the deep truth that my life was shaped more by my responses to events than by the events themselves, I was able to access a kind of inner wisdom, peace and happiness that is beyond external conditions. I have continued to meditate, study and explore these ideas in daily life for the past 20 years, but that first book was the catalyst that set the whole process in motion for me.

Susan Dreyer Leon, Springfield, Vt.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments

Long ago, when I was 21 years old, my father gave me a thick, dense-looking book. I had been a most inattentive and mediocre student — I am sure many of my teachers thought I, too, was thick and dense-looking. The book’s title was “Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments,” which was not only a terribly dull name but also suggested that the book was just an afterthought, and a very long one. But I read it, slowly, carefully, and it changed my life.

It was by Soren Kierkegaard, and among its purposes was pointing the reader inward, and insisting that nothing was of greater importance than individual existence — mine, yours. Kierkegaard was a solitary knight of faith who most eagerly wielded his sword before the puffed-up authorities in the church and academy.

The tedious title entirely belies the brilliance inside. On every page is evidence of a writer thinking wonderfully. The author was unknown outside his native Copenhagen; his book sold few copies and won no prizes. That was fine with him. Kierkegaard demonstrated that to change a world — or anyway my world — it was enough to sit alone in a room with a pen and paper, and think, and write.

Barth Landor, Chicago

Fast Food Nation

Something most people do every day is eat, so it’s hard to think of a subject — other than air or water — that affects everyone’s life more than food. The 2001 book “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser, caused a massive shift in my everyday habits as to what I eat, how I consider food ingredients and food production, and how I talk about food.

Before reading the book, I picked up breakfast from McDonald’s on my way to work most weekdays. Since reading the book, fast food became a rarity in my life. I prepare food at home more often, read labels more thoroughly, seek organic and local food whenever possible, and strive to put more effort into considering the effects my food choices have on the environment, people and other creatures.

Debra Bullock, Oak Park, Ill.

Johnny Got His Gun

I was no more than 10 years old in the mid-1950s when I read “Johnny Got His Gun,” by Dalton Trumbo. My mother had given it to me — the only time she ever gave or recommended a book to me. It’s the story of Joe Bonham, lying in his hospital bed in agony and despair with his arms, legs and face blown off by an artillery shell, remembering his life before the Great War. Reading it then I was heartbroken, terrified and angry, and now more than 60 years later, remembering those passages in the book, I still am.

My mother died 15 years ago, and I never asked her why she had given me that book. But it always seemed obvious. For my parents, the memories of World War II and the Holocaust were fresh, and there could be no thought of their son ever going to war. The antiwar message of Trumbo’s book is not subtle, and it pounded me like a sledgehammer. And whether it was his book and/or everything else I later learned and felt about war, the message took. I never did serve in the Army, and I never got a gun.

Michael Appel, Cambridge, Mass.

Scaredy Squirrel

In 2008, I was seriously considering selling my home and taking a motorcycle trip around the world. But I was struggling to answer the question of why. Why on earth would I desire to leave my friends, my home, my career for over a year of traveling alone? I had read an online article about health and safety in various parts of the world, and the article stated that you should probably be just fine, and then pithily added “unless you’re dumb enough to do it on a motorcycle.”

Then I came across “Scaredy Squirrel,” the first of these charming books by Mélanie Watt. I had bought one for a friend’s kid and decided I’d read it quickly one evening. And there was my answer: I needed to leave my nut tree. The book charmed me so much that I even put a sticker of Scaredy Squirrel on my motorcycle, and I spent 16 amazing months on the road.

That little squirrel tipped the scales just enough to motivate me to commit to the trip. If I ever get to meet him, I’m going to give him a hug.

Scott W. Parker, Edmonton, Alberta

Calling on Dragons

It was 1994. I was in the middle of third grade and being severely bullied. The teachers knew and turned a blind eye, and my parents didn’t believe me. The adults in my life had let me down. I was rapidly losing my ability to trust in anyone. But then the right book found me: Patricia C. Wrede’s “Calling on Dragons.”

The grown-ups in that book became my surrogate parents and best friends. Morwen the witch taught me to hold fast to my common sense and empathy, and Telemain the magician urged me to never give up my inquisitiveness or my love of words too big for a 9-year-old to wield with ease.

“Calling on Dragons” gave me back my trust in adults when things so easily could have gone the other way. I grew up to become a librarian — a path I can trace directly back to my year living inside of “Calling on Dragons.” The books we read between the ages of 8 and 12 change us in indelible ways. Sometimes they save us, too.

Kate Weber, Washington

Welcome to the Monkey House

My life took a turn at age 17 when I discovered Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House.” I had been raised in a strict fundamentalist household with a somber black-and-white perspective. Not only did Vonnegut throw open a window to varying shades of gray, but he also revealed brilliant colors with that wild and random prose of his. Suddenly, I was on a carnival ride of quirky characters and absurdity, finding myself somewhere between Taoism and slapstick. Vonnegut’s stories sent me off on more literary joy rides, to different authors and genres. I was happily and hopelessly hooked on the intoxication of the well-written word. Lucky me!

Kris Allen, Beulah, Colo.

The Little Engine That Could

“I think I can” think of a book that has influenced how I think and act and look at the world.

When I was a child in the 1940s, the United States was in a world war. It was a stressful time, and uncertainty about the future colored each day. One Christmas morning, I unwrapped the first book I was to own, “The Little Engine That Could.” “Santa” must have known that the book’s message of courage, perseverance and kindness was just what was needed to reassure a little girl that all would be right in the end.

I treasured the book, I read it to my primary grade students during my public school teaching career, and I still buy copies for the children in my circle of family and friends. I do not exaggerate when I say that this book is the reason that I have always loved to read. And, at this moment in time, its message could not be more relevant.

Gail Minthorn, Wilton, Conn.

Animal Farm

When I first read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” I was an eighth grader whose only knowledge of dictatorial government was the time my father made me cut the grass when I wanted to watch “Batman” on TV. “Animal Farm” gave me my first literary glimpse at human greed, cruelty and gullibility. I was aware that villains existed (I watched “Batman,” after all), but I was blissfully unaware of how an evil leader could manipulate an entire populace into believing he was their hero. George Orwell set me straight on that point.

A brilliant critique of totalitarianism masquerading as a “fairy story,” the novel chronicles a revolution launched by the animals of Manor Farm against its cruel owner, Mr. Jones. The beasts — committed to the concept that “all animals are equal” — struggle to create an equitable government only to find their ideals subverted by the ambitious pig Napoleon, who utters the novel’s famous catchphrase, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

As I read that line for the first time a chill went down my spine, and I have not looked at politics or government the same way since.

G. Wayne Dowdy, Memphis

Being Mortal

Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal” is perhaps the most profound and important book I have ever read. I read it at age 71 as my wife of 50 years was dying of cancer. Gawande, a brilliant writer as well as surgeon, begins with an obvious fact: Doctors are fixers and problem solvers; they want to save life or at least preserve it. The alternative: palliative care and hospice. When life is certain to end in the near term, comfort and dignity are more important than preserving life.

My wife and I embraced that idea as two courses of chemotherapy and surgery failed and ended all hope of her recovery. Gawande doesn’t so much recommend hospice as help us to understand why it’s a humane, life-asserting choice. The choice is, finally, ours.

“Being Mortal” is accessible, engaging, enlightening and important.

Les Cohen, Reno, Nev.

The Overstory

I read “The Overstory,” by Richard Powers, this past year and it changed the way I, at 62 years old, look at the natural world and the planet Earth, as well as its inhabitants. I will never look at a tree the same way again. The information I gleaned regarding the relationship between trees and the planet, their underground and “secret” life, will ever color the way I look at beautiful scenery or, in many cases, the devastation of the planet by human hands, or its natural devastation by nature’s hands.

I have gained a new respect for persons who make sacrifices and life changes, and who rage against the dying of the planet by educating and haranguing the rest of us about the thoughtlessness with which we treat Earth. I observe the trees in my yard, engaged in miraculous natural and chemical workings, and wonder what’s happening under the ground, in the secret life I know nothing of.

Jane Vereen, Sioux City, Iowa

An Unknown Woman

I wandered into a bookstore in Newburyport, Mass., on a “sick day” from work I hated in 1986. Poking through the stacks, I alighted on “An Unknown Woman,” by Alice Koller, a memoir of her winter spent on Cape Cod deconstructing her life and personality. What was hers and what had society imposed upon her? How did she want to go forward in her life, living consciously? Alone, walking the beaches with her dog, Logos, she dismantled herself and her previous life.

By the time I had finished the book, I resolved to quit my job, get my pilot’s license and backpack in Europe before I embarked on a new career as an air traffic controller. It was the beginning of consciousness for me at the age of 26. I can’t stop thinking about that seemingly random sliver of luck.

Elle Pea, Rockland, Me.

Peace Like a River

I read Leif Enger’s “Peace Like a River” shortly after my grandmother passed away. She was a tough Irish broad with a deep spirituality and a bossy bark befitting a mother of nine. It was hard to envision a world without a larger-than-life figure like her. Then I read the “Be Jubilant, My Feet” chapter in Enger’s novel. It gave me the most tangible, connected sense of heaven I have ever had. It allowed me to picture Gram in the new, joyous world beyond the beyond that she always believed in. And because of Enger’s words, now I believe in it, too.

Sara Carpi, Weston, Mass.

The Diary of Anne Frank

When I was 9 years old, I read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and instantly fell in love with Anne’s spirit and feisty nature; I felt that we were friends, somehow. I wept not only for her death, but also because my father’s side of the family had served in the German military in World War II. I felt that, in some way, my family had some responsibility for her death. I vowed in that moment, with the passion that only a 9-year-old girl can muster, that if I’d been there, I would have been different. I would have stood up for what was right and fair and good. I would not have been afraid to risk myself to save Anne, and others like her.

I am 50 years old now. In a world filled with racism, homophobia and misogyny, I still wonder if I am I doing everything I can to stand up for my beliefs. I do not know if I have done enough, if I will ever do enough. I do know, however, that it is Anne Frank’s face that I see before me as I attempt to do this work, every single day.

Kristina Dahl, Seattle

A Prayer for Owen Meany, Great Expectations

Often, it is the way books combine that affects us deeply. In a summer in my early 20s, I read for the first of many times John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” in quick succession. At the time, I found myself quite lost in life — jobless, homeless, lovelorn — as whatever bootstraps I believed that I had pulled myself up by became unraveled.

Both novels are in a way criticisms of a novelistic view of life with heroes and clear choices. Both explain that while we tell stories to make meaning of our lives, too much faith in those stories — especially in the way they assign credit and blame — leaves us prey to our fundamental ignorance. They show that there is much good luck and bad luck in every life, and that the former should teach us humility, while the latter teaches us compassion.

By fall I had found myself teaching in a public high school, where I remain, having learned something important from those novels about my chosen occupation’s requirements for hope and understanding.

Thomas Fabian, Watertown, Mass.

Charlotte’s Web (and More)

At 15, homeless, using heroin and in a gang, I was lost, enraged, futureless. One thing provided me a vision for another way to live — or die, as the case may be. Books. My refuge at the time was Los Angeles’s Central Library. At night I’d sleep in abandoned cars or shuttered buildings. During the day, I strolled by shelves of paper and ink. I read Ray Bradbury’s science fiction opuses alongside African-American authors like James Baldwin, Claude Brown and Malcolm X. I read E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” like 20 times. I became the weird homie who carried books to the ’hood under my arm.

Soon in jail cells or in juvenile hall, I wrote. Ramblings, mostly, but I did it. I’ve now been drug-free, crime-free and gang-free for 48 years. In that time, I’ve written 16 books, including my best-selling memoir, “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.” I’m a walking, breathing testament that in books one can be reimagined, newly flowered, reborn.

Luis J. Rodriguez, Los Angeles

Normal People

I recently broke up with a boyfriend of many years because we decided that we could no longer handle a long-distance relationship. Sally Rooney’s novel “Normal People” has helped me cope with this breakup by broadening my understanding of what it means to love another person. Before reading Rooney’s novel, I had always believed that we should make compromises and give up certain dreams to enable relationships with the people we love. Yet Marianne and Connell’s story taught me just the opposite: The best way of loving someone can also be by letting a person go. Enabling another person to pursue a dream without having to fit you into the picture can be the best and truest form of love.

In the end, sometimes we have to accept that the people whom we care about most and learn the most from are not those with whom we end up. Sometimes, we need to be apart from them to benefit from all the gifts they can give and lessons they can teach. Love can be rewarding even when there is no happy ending.

Jane Stewart, New York

Remembrance of Things Past

During the summer between my junior and senior years in college, working as a night clerk in a failing resort hotel, I made it through all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” inspired by a charismatic professor. These books not only opened up a world of wonder, peopled by a host of singular individuals, but also demonstrated for me, by Proust’s recreation of a life partially lived and partially imagined, that time and mortality can be transcended. Through memory, informed by creative intelligence and guided by the beacons of great works of art, Proust transmutes the banalities of everyday existence into dazzling beauty.

This example of how it is possible to view one’s own time on earth has sustained me through a long life of no great distinction and brought me, contentedly, to, as Proust puts it, “the perilous summit” of my 85 years.

Robert A. Picken, Port Washington, N.Y.