I've read too many books to count, and though I can usually recall a general plot summary after seeing the cover, there are a few books that have changed my life and that have stayed with me to be read and reread until they were dog-eared, food-stained, water-damaged, and all out destroyed. For some I know why I latched on and still have yet to let go, for others it is undetermined.
The first book I found that made a significant impact on my life was The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. The story is of a porcelain rabbit who is loved deeply but is too vain to love anyone but himself, until he goes on an unfortunate journey that shows him the tragedy of life and teaches him compassion. When I read this book at age eight it was the first book I ever cried while reading. I was angry at the author for the anguish she put the characters through, up until that point the saddest books I had read were the Boxcar Children -- and I purposely avoided the first book because it made me sad. However Edward Tulane left me with a sense of knowledge, of deeper meaning, and I spent days thinking about the book. Finally I read it again, unsatisfied with the conclusions I had come to and thinking there must have been something I had missed. Each time I read it I find new meaning, but it always ends the same.
Rules by Cynthia Lord first left me feeling unsure of myself, and even now it makes my faith in "finding cures" for illnesses that can't be treated with a pill sink a little lower. Yet I find myself drawn myself back to the book narrated by the older sister of a boy with severe autism. As a young child with an adjustment disorder and a three-year old sister who wouldn't speak a word this book simultaneously served to show me how lucky I was and how much trouble I was in for in the future. I wasn't as bad off as the autistic kid in the book, it wasn't that my sister couldn't talk, she just didn't want to. However I was also in or a life of therapy appointments and medications and odd looks for weird behaviors. All in all the ending was just as disheartening as the rest of the book, and yet I returned to the book over and over, perhaps looking for clues that I had missed the glimmer of hope for the autistic, and for me.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has always spoken to me, but The Great Gatsby is one book that I have read multiple times and always found new connotations and ways to think about things. I must admit that when I first read it I hated the book with a passion, and was not happy to be reading Gossip Girl: Roaring Twenties. However, after having read the entire thing and reflecting on Fitzgerald's true meaning I realized that I had read the book at face value, and had failed to read on the metaphorical level. When reading again I picked up on the socioeconomic commentary and found it to have an incredible message about the consumerism that plagued society, which is very relevant in today's society. I fell in love with the irony of a book written about "empty parties" which were mocking the lifestyles of the affluent, which people copied by having those exact same parties. Reading and rereading I find more and more comments on the human status, and the lifestyles that were all too prominent then and are again.
While there are many more that could be added to the list, these are three very prominent ones.
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