Josh crashed and burned AGAIN yesterday with his lack of a day 16 post. If he was even still in the running for victory, he certainly isn’t now.
For day 17, which I will complete because I rock and Josh sucks, I suppose I’ll talk about a book that changed my views on something.
I wish I could say I have a lot of time to read right now. Usually over the summer, I absorb countless books like my life depends on it. During the academic calendar, I just don’t have time for that. I wish I did.
That being said, I can think of a few books that have changed my views on something, no matter how small. I don’t think I can talk about just one. I guess I’ll jump around over multiple books like a crazy seahorse.
I don’t know why I just said that.
Cry, the Beloved Country This book made me change my opinion of Oprah. See, I used to think Oprah was pretty rad. In middle school when I was assigned this book and told that it was on Oprah’s book club list, I figured it would be a good book because Oprah said it was, and Oprah wouldn’t lie to me. Well news flash – Oprah lied to me. Three times in school I was subjected to reading this book. Three times. And all three times I cursed Oprah.
That’s right Oprah. You cry. You cry about how terrible this book is.
The Untouchables I cannot tell a lie, I was way too young for the material when I found this book on my parent’s shelf and decided to read it. I want to say I was 11 or 12 at the time. Frankly, this book is probably one of the reasons I’m messed up in the head and am so enamored by crime. Not that that’s a completely terrible thing to be interested in. Just saying this book made me really like crime. A lot. For no good reason.
Go Ask Alice I could read this book countless times. It really is one of my favorites. The book is written as a diary, and the character starts off as a pretty normal, shy, teenage girl. The book follows her for, if I remember correctly, two or three years. She gets highly addicted to drugs, including LSD and heroin. At the end she dies. Oops I ruined the ending for you. Oh well. The point of me talking about this is I would be willing to say that this book is what helped me form the opinion of hard drugs that I currently have. I mean she ends up a prostitute when she was like, 17. I don’t want to be a prostitute. That leads me to believe that heroin and LSD are not for me. I also don’t want to die.
To Kill a Mockingbird I call my neighbor Boo Radley. Obviously I wouldn’t be doing that if I hadn’t read this. He’s just so mysterious, man! He lives two houses down from me, and I always see him creeping around in his front yard wearing one of those surgical masks. I’ve never seen any other people come in or out of that house, and the blinds on all the windows are always drawn shut. He freaks me out. What a Boo Radley. And no, he never leaves me candy inside a tree stump. I might cry if he did that.
Twilight I read this literally right after it was released. Before the craze swept. I went all hipster on this book. I’ve not read the other books in the series, and I don’t really want to. How did Twilight change my views on anything, you may wonder? It made me lose my faith in humanity. That’s that.
The Jungle It would be all too easy to say Upton Sinclair is the reason I’m a vegetarian. He isn’t, because I made that lifestyle change two years before I read this, but that would be easy to say. That one scene in the meat packing plant definitely cemented my decision as a good one. I think this book deserves to be on my list of view-changers because it kind of disillusioned me towards the American dream. Not to say I think that all life in America sucks and we’re all going to live sad and terrible lives. All I’m saying is the book kind of hit me in that sort of a spot.
AP Stylebook From this excellent piece of literature, I’ve learned many things. My views on how to punctuate sentences was drastically altered. Thanks to this book I can hardly remember the postal abbreviations for states. No, but really. Is AR the abbreviation for Arizona or Arkansas? I know in AP it’s Ariz. and Ark. No idea about postal abbreviations. Hopefully I don’t have to mail anything to those states.
Okay, those are enough view-changing books. Read some of those. Do it. I dare you.
For me it would be Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
I haven’t read it, but I’ll have to check it out!
You can borrow my copy from Amanda. I think she is almost done reading it. It isn’t a long read.