Your Most Influential/Favorite Book
- Thread starter Angie
- Start date
I discovered recently how powerful The Giving Tree is. My interpretation of it is simply a parents desire to give of themselves everything that they can to their child. Whether or not it's an indictment of overly-giving parents building ill-equipped children, who knows... I just know it's tough to get through reading it to my son.
Adding another one- With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge (WWII in the Pacific). Absolutely brutal. Kind of makes you wish you didn't belong to the human race at times.
Regarding Stephen King, for me it is IT. I don't think I've ever read another book that made me more nostalgic for childhood, which is strange when it's a horror novel.
I just have a little pocket version of the Tao te ching, and I lent my I ching to a friend of mine who I thought could use it more than me, and I essentially knew I was gifting it. I don't think the translation itself is terribly important just how much personal reflection you put into each section and what meaning you personally find in it. I should also mention the I ching isn't real in sequential order, you flip coins and it suggest a hexagram the hexagram then corresponds to passages that you read and offer you advice on how to be a "superior man"
http://ichingonline.net/index.php heres an example.
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Reading it right now. I thought the prologue was about as good as it gets, but I am a third the way through it and I keep wondering when it is going to really get going. My buddy already lent me The Girl Who Played With Fire as well.
I hate to be so negative all the time, but I didn't get what the big deal was about The Hunger Games. The concept itself is very interesting, but I thought the novels themselves were very poorly written.
Please be gentle.
Please be gentle.
+ The Gospel of Matthew
+ Four Laws that Drive the Universe - Atkins
+ Beyond the Observatory - Shapely.
+ The Shy Stegasaurus of Cricket Creek - Lampman
+ Jesus of Nazareth - Pope Benedict.
+ How the Irish Saved Civilization - Cahill.
+ Shout, The Beatles Generation - Norman.
+ Four Laws that Drive the Universe - Atkins
+ Beyond the Observatory - Shapely.
+ The Shy Stegasaurus of Cricket Creek - Lampman
+ Jesus of Nazareth - Pope Benedict.
+ How the Irish Saved Civilization - Cahill.
+ Shout, The Beatles Generation - Norman.
I read the last two after my wife dragged me to the movie and I think that's a fair critique. They are easy reading to breeze through and it's a good concept, but it's pretty flat writing and there are lots of plotholes and generally poor story decisions. But that's kind of par for the course for most YA lit series, isn't it?
Just not a big fan of him..... not sure why he is such a big deal.
I HATED Titanic as well. The only good thing about that movie was Kate Winslet's boobies.... and you can see those just about anywhere.
Not influential, just my favorites:
It, Stephen King - I slept with my 9 iron in my bed a few nights while reading this...in college
The Machine, Joe Posnanski - I'm a Cincy kid who group up with the Big Red Machine and this brought back so many wonderful memories of watching them in person that year.
It, Stephen King - I slept with my 9 iron in my bed a few nights while reading this...in college
The Machine, Joe Posnanski - I'm a Cincy kid who group up with the Big Red Machine and this brought back so many wonderful memories of watching them in person that year.
I get the Titanic thing, but that's over 15 years ago now and he's done quality stuff since then. Not saying I would go see a movie just because he's in it, but it's not as if movies like Catch Me If You Can or Inception are good in spite of him.
A few mentions of Stephen King's IT so far. I have to admit, that is the scariest book I've ever read. But Stephen King is a master at that ****. Among his short stories, my two favorites are "The Raft" and "The Mist." Both of them are scary as **** too. His writing is so descriptive that you are basically transported there.
This Mist was one of the few King stories that translated to a pretty decent movie, Green Mile and Shawshank not withstanding. I thought it was pretty scary, even after having already read it.
I think it's probably Luhrmann who made that decision - DiCaprio really sort of came into his own as a "star" in Romeo + Juliet, also directed by him. He'd had other big roles, critically-acclaimed roles, but that was his "heartthrob" role.
I think that's fair. I enjoyed the books, but not at all because of the writing. Luckily, it was written passably enough that it wasn't a huge detractor from the idea - unlike the Fifty Shades of Grey series. I get what the author of those was going for, but you can get better writing on Literotica.
Quite a few folks nowadays would benefit from reading "Harrison Bergeron" if they have not (as well as just about anything else Vonnegut wrote).
