I have always loved to read. Beyond just a pastime, books have been my friends, an escape, solace. But there are 2 that have left lasting impressions above and beyond the others. As a child, it was King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. As an adult, it is The Good Soldiers by David Finkel.
I’ve enjoyed so many books over the years and most have stuck with me. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why these 2 surpassed the others because many books tell great stories, have great characters, and are beautifully written.
They’re obviously very different books but emotionally they are the same. They affected me so deeply and the memories are so rich, I feel I’ve actually lived them both.
The follow up to Good Soldiers, Thank You for Your Service, is more well known because it was made into a movie with Miles Teller. I have read it and it’s wonderful, but The Good Soldiers transported me to Iraq, put a rifle in my hand, and killed my friends.
I am looking for books like this. Any genre, any age group. Any book that is so ingrained you feel like it’s a part of your life story.
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Confederacy of Dunces.
Toll the Hounds - Steven Erikson
Its a very sad book about how grief affects people and intertwines with love, and how we can move past it. I’d honestly recommend it to people even without prior series context
Books I read as a kid that stuck with me…
The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea
The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop
The Girl Who Owned a City by O. T. Nelson
Downsiders by Neal Shusterman
Great horse protagonist books like Beyond Rope and Fence by David Grew and Blitz by Hetty Burlingame Beatty, and great animal protagonist books in general like Call of the Wild
I recognized King of the Wind from the image in this post - a magical, amazing book. Thanks for reminding me!
Me too! Great book.
Me too! I dropped my copy in the bathtub when I was a kid and it’s all wrinkled.
A common suggestion, but Lonesome Dove is the book I was most engrossed in.
In terms of ones that have had an impact on my life in general, Stoner by John Williams changed my perspective on how meaningful life is.
Here I go recommending Garth Nix again, but I first read the Old Kingdom trilogy when I was about thirteen and it affected me so strongly I still re-read them regularly more than twenty years later. The way the books presented death as a natural progression of life - something to be saddened by but ultimately to be accepted - I think influenced me beyond what I really realised at the time. Also the concept that some things are bigger than you, but you can still make a difference - that’s a message worth hearing.
This is an amazing series. It took me over a year to get my partner to read it (but that’s a kids book…). I was pretty gloating when they loved it.
Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
Cain, by Jose Saramago, is probably the most influential book I’ve ever read. It completely turned my view of religious works (even when viewed as literature and not holy writ) on its head.
Other works that have had profound influence on me:
The Cave - Saramago
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - Saramago
Something Happened - Joseph Heller
The Plague - Albert Camus
You would like The Temple of Iconocalsts
I am not recommending you the book cause that book got triggering things mentioned, like a vivid sucide attempt and a couple of self harm stuff. I was in 7th or 8th gradeand i read this book by Preity Shenoy “Life is what you make it” and it left a mark on me… It might be cause of my age… The book was about mental health, how to tackle it all and the most important thing it does that it ends on a note where things weren’t good but they weren’t as bad as before and it resonated with me somehow. It made me awfully optimistic, it taught me something that was precious. I never feel mentally sick, yes obviously there were a llot of low times in my life but still in those i worked as hard as i could and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t but i never felt too bad about it.
It was a weird book, or maybe it was the time when i read it…
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Angélique: Marquise of the Angels by Anne Golon
in no particular order.
Hatchet by Gary Paulson is the novel and author that opened me up to a lifetime of reading.
Absolutely agree. Anytime I look back on what sparked my interest in reading it is this. It opened me to a wave of so many new interests.
Catcher In The Rye, because it was probably the first book I had to read for school that I genuinely wanted to read. I think it may have been the book that started it all for me.
All the light we cannot see - Anthony Doerr
Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa
My Feudal Lord - Tehmina Durrani (accidentally read it, maybe I was too young for it. The horrors of the book stayed with me.)
The Ibis trilogy - Amitav Ghosh (It’s such a complex and beautifully written series with very real emotions and historical references. Makes me think about our world even now.)
Works of history.
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Urofsky - Louis. D. Brandeis: A Life
Rakove - Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
Appleman - East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea
Fisher - Paul Revere’s Ride
Murphy - Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas
Akbar - Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan
Massie - Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War
I carried a weathered copy of The King of the Wind as a support book from grade three to six pretty much. It is an all time favorite and you’re right - I’m not quite sure why this one stood out among all the horse books I read as a child. But I’ll take a stab at it. Sham is a great horse protagonist, maybe in part because he is always an underdog and never has a famous career. His greatness is like a secret and that feels both relatable and vindicating when we know so many famous horses are descended from him. It probably also hit right in terms of being a serious story without being hard to read. I could read it before I was going to slog through Black Beauty or even The Black Stallion. But it wasn’t about young girls inexplicably bonding with race horses (which I loved, don’t get me wrong - I had a long go with the Thoroughbred series) and it had a richer world to get lost in.
Sham muscling in to mate with the prize mare instead of the puffed up stallion that was planned for it is such a gleeful moment of triumph. Kind of odd that this was the highlight of the book for a third grader, but there it is. You’re rooting for him so hard, and this is one of the very few ‘wins’ he ever gets, and he does it on pure style. Do the famous racehorses come from that pairing? I can’t remember now!