I am avid reader, and have experienced many things from the books that I have read. Some have only slightly changed the way I see and do things, others, not at all, but then there are those special ones that really shift your paradigms. Maybe you could call those the life changing ones. What are yours, and how did it/they alter the way you think? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Not a big reader of books, but an eye opener would be "Tornado Down". It shows you just what kind of people our troops are dealing with in the middle east.
I met my Ex at the library that I always went to so that changed my liferather abruptly. I should have known that things weren't going to go well for she was in the fiction area where the crime novels were located while I was in the reference section looking up things.:shrug:
Hmm..........can't think of many, although Gravity, Bag of Bones, etc, I enjoyed alot, and then Brave New World I s'pose you could call an "eye-opener"
most recently norweigen wood. or more specifically one line from it "dont feel sorry for yourself,only assholes do that" but there have been a great many books that have changed the way i think
I've read several books lately on spirituality and find them interesting, but recently I added a new one to my Kindle Fire. I've enjoyed the book so far. I have a lot of free time to read at night, and this book has filled that time quite nicely. It was a choice I made based on its reviews. Well worth the money, I believe. "Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender" by David R. Hawkins The book aims at emotions and feelings, how to explore them, and how to grow from them. I haven't finished reading the whole thing, but I pick it up for an hour or two every night. I'm about half way through the book. It's insightful, in my opinion.
1984 Islandia The Ghost in the Machine The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Catch 22 Cat's Cradle Green Grass Running Water Lots more, but those titles float to the surface of my mind at the moment.
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Stranger In A Strange Land, A Confederacy Of Dunces, Lord Of The Rings
Orwell's 1984 changed me. The term wasn't invented in the 90's, but after reading 1984, I felt ... woke*. *which, if I grok it, is tantamount to "taking the red pill".
I have quite a few. To pick one at random, I'll mention Carl Sagan's The Demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. I think I already had skeptical tendencies before reading that, but it helped open my eyes to just how much nonsense lots of people believe, and just how little skill a lot of people have at critical thinking. It's still as relevant today as when it was first published.
I've read a lot of classic novels and enjoyed them and I'm sure I get something out of everything I read but I don't really think of most of them as being "eye opening" as my eye's were already opened. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Like many people, I've read 1984, Animal Farm, The Trial. There are some subjects (non-fiction) that impact the way I view the world. Some of those subjects were studied in college, grad school and in some detail. Other subjects that are just as impactful are those that I have studied on my own after the formal schooling years. Understanding (to a degree) the Big Bang and the rest of cosmology, quantum physics, probability play a large part in how I view the world. I'm also interested in how our brain works. The one book that I can think of that explained something that I had little information on before reading the book was Daniel Tammet's book "Embracing the Wide Sky". It explained how his brain works and he is a high functioning savant. Most savants are of the "idiot-savant" variety (think Rainman) and therefore aren't capable of explaining how their brains work. He also made himself available to neuroscience researchers so the data in the book is quite good. Just because much of the information in the book wasn't really known until this book, and certainly not to me, I'd have to say this was the best book that I've read in terms of really learning something completely new (to me).
