Basically what the title says: Is there any fiction book you’ve ever read that has emotionally or intellectually connected with you so much it changed the way you viewed the world, changed the way you viewed yourself or changed the way you viewed life (your own or in general)?

If so…

  • What book was it?
  • Why did it connect so well with you?
  • How did it make you feel?
  • And how did it change you?

Just to emphasize, I’m solely asking about works of fiction here. So nothing like reading just an academic book on philosophy or a self-help book or something.

  • Sabeq23@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    "It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

    • Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
    • I reread it in a secondhand bookstore while tripping on LSD, and it dawned on me that the first paragraph (above) was something I needed to internalize.
    • I wept, having realized that I had to forgo the path of hateful vengeance which I had been spiraling down for years. I have not yet attained the grace necessary to forgive, but I have at least turned away from hate.
    • I didn’t murder a woman-beating rapist former friend of mine and go to prison.