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Have you ever read a book that changed your life?


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Yes. After I read Alfred Draper's The Amritsar Massacre about 20 years ago, my entire outlook about the Eastern & Western cultures changed and the outcome of that has remained to this day. The book made me realise that no matter now "small" the world becomes, certain basic cultural differences & prerogatives will remain in place, as they should. The book helped me to recognise and understand my own comfort zones and to cherish certain common grounds in people from my part of the world.

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first of all; I want to laugh at the fact that this thread comes up as "have you ever read a book":lol::lol::lol:

 

secondly; I'm not sure if i've ever read a book that's changed my life. i suppose if i hadn't read the harry potter books i wouldn't have gone to tesco at midnight twice, but i don't think that's what you mean somehow! :D I can't think of any...

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When I read And the Band Played On, I was astonished. The book chronicles the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the efforts to stop it. It also exposes a lot of government hypocrisy in their indifference to the loss of human life. I've read it a few more times, and I always find myself feeling surprised and angry.

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Well... the Bible, definitely... on a continuous basis.

 

Otherwise...

 

This might sound kind of strange, but I'm thinking of Lynn Kurland's romance novels. This wasn't an earth-shattering change, but a gentle slight one that I believe God used to show me other things.

 

Her heros are fantastic heros, not because she's given them fantastic abilities (they're only slightly better-than-average in the world they live in). They're fantastic because she portrays them to show how wonderful the love of a sometimes-grumpy, often-stubborn, very normal MAN... can be. AND she portrays quite well, in some of them, how much the strongest of men still need a woman to stand by them.

 

They changed my life in how I look at my husband and my own marriage. Now I am better able to see the romance and the love that's under my own husband's prickly exterior. Now I can see more easily how my husband's over-protectiveness is nothing more than the modern version of the protective instinct, prompted by a desperate love, that the knights of old felt when they'd do anything to protect their women. I love it in the books... why didn't I love it in modern life? Just because I don't perceive modern life as being as dangerous, doesn't change the fact that MY man is protective because he's not sure how he'd go on living without me.

 

It was just little tiny things like that, that helped me look at my husband in a new way, and that's really enhanced my marriage and made me appreciate the manly things that used to drive me nuts. :-)

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  • 3 months later...

Loads of them - for starters

 

Feel the Fear and do it anyway - Susan Jeffers

Conversations with God series - Neale Donald Walsch

Emissary of Light - James Twyman

Mystery of the Crystal Skulls - Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

A Course in Miracles

 

plus of course my own book !

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I read that one and yes it probably did change my life too in a way.

 

 

Me too, it changed the way i think and handle challenges i have read some good Buddhist books too

 

Wuthering Heights changed one of my friends lives, it made her realise she was not happy in her marriage and leave her marriage and embark on finding a passionate love!!!!

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I know it's a cliche but On The Road by Jack Kerouac affected me in a profound way -it gave me a far less serious take on life which I badly needed. After I read it I was insatiable, I ate up all the books I could get my hands on, one book leading to the other, links tenuous or not. My life is a happy dream now (with direction).

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I don't know why, but "Dune" by Frank Herbert changed mine.

 

It was the first book I chose for myself in the adult part of the library. I was thirteen. I stayed up late reading it, fascinated by his characters.

 

"Fear is the mind-killer".

 

I still love that book.

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  • 1 month later...
No, never.

I don't need books or anything else to tell me who I am, I changed thrue my actions and expiriances, life changes me, not people.

 

So all these life-changing experiences you have never involve other people, then? ;)

 

/sarcasm off.

 

^^^That was sarcastic.

 

^^^That wasn't though.

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on the road by jack kerouac

 

it changed me before it changed my life though

 

That is a wise statement. The book that set me on a path to changing my life, ended with me actually changing myself first, and it took a whole year to complete the path (but I also had other help).

 

No, never.

I don't need books or anything else to tell me who I am, I changed thrue my actions and expiriances, life changes me, not people.

 

Good for you. It doesn't work for everybody though:)

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So all these life-changing experiences you have never involve other people, then? ;)

 

Thank you, I do know when you're sarcastic, it's the rest you should point it out to.

 

It involved me, I suppose it also involved how I treated other people, but that's as far as people involvment goes.

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