A good book tends to do two things in unequal measure:
It makes you think.
It makes you feel.
It’s the latter I want to ask about today.
Tell us about a book that made you feel something. That affected you deeply.
Tell us what it is, by whom, and how-slash-why it affected you.
To pause for a moment and to define “affected” — I don’t mean something glib like, “It bored me.” Yes, that’s technically an effect, but not what I mean. I mean a book that cut deep. That made you feel griefstruck or giddy, that somehow birthed in you an emotion or effect not normally expected. A book that punches hard. A book that leaves scars or tattoos, big or small. That broke your heart, or maybe mended it.
I’ll hang up and wait for your call.
NO CARRIER
Harry Markov says:
“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. – This novel is inherently sad. It’s tragic and it has you face poverty and personal tragedy in HD. This book made me cry every time I sat to read and it’s why it took me around two months to read it. Perhaps I was in such a state to be more receptive, but honestly, it really messed me up.
“The Girl with No Hands & Other Stories” by Angela Slatter – I was screaming yes, yes, yes as I read it. I’m a big fan of fairy tales and what this woman did with these old tales was really impressive and empowering for the female characters were proactive rather than getting saved. I felt totally satisfied like a Chesire cat.
I think there are probably more books, but these are kind of the ones that have the most effect on me, recently.
October 22, 2012 — 1:13 AM
Hirsa says:
There will always be the scar left by George R.R. Martin, I’m afraid.
A Game of Thrones was the first time I had encountered an author who writes with such heartless intent. SPOILER IMMINENT. For the first part of the book, you follow Ned Stark, one of the protagonists, so when he is to be executed, you know deep down that someone will save him. Because, let’s be honest, why would an author kill off such a great character, let alone a main character?
Throughout that whole chapter I convinced myself that he would be saved at the last moment. Even after his head rolled, I told myself that Ned Stark could not possibly be dead, he was just too awesome.
Nope. As dead as dead can be.
Fair to say, that chapter will be forever remembered. It made me hate, it made my angry, it made me despair. It also succeeded in making me more cautious of what I can take for granted.
October 22, 2012 — 1:24 AM
Sparky says:
The Conan the Barbarian stories of Robert E Howard. Take your pick of them really.
I know they are pulp and he wrote them to pay bills but it hardly matters. Nothing makes me feel so alive as those tales. From the tombs of Stygia to the grey hills of Cimmeria I have tread in my dreams and on the page, the proud barbarian hero a constant companion, his sheer lust for life and unyielding determination always awe inspiring. It stirs something within me, a primal barbaric joy in facing another day. Try just reading the start of The Phoenix on the Sword without your heart lifting a bit.
October 22, 2012 — 1:57 AM
Alex Beecroft says:
It’s fair to say still the Lord of the Rings, for me. It taught me most of what I know about being a good person – that you don’t get to be the good guy just by the author making you the protagonist. If you want to be the good guy, you’ve got to act better than the bad guy. It also made me go study the Anglo-Saxons at university, and is probably responsible for putting me in a prepared mental state for my conversion to Christianity. Though to be fair, that was more a result of a poem written by a Saxon called Cynewulf. But I doubt if I’d have ever read his poetry if it hadn’t been for Tolkien.
October 22, 2012 — 2:39 AM
Pallav says:
Dangerous Parking by Stuart Browne.
It was a very enlivening experience to read this book. It gave me hope. I’ve read many books after that, but none came close to what it was like reading Dangerous Parking.
October 22, 2012 — 3:00 AM
Laura Libricz says:
Every year there seems to be one book or story that really leaves an impression. My tastes change from year to year, too. So, this year my favorites were the first three books of the Captian Alatriste series by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Set in Spain in the 17th century, the story shows a country losing her place in the world as a major player and follows the soldiers who try to defend her honor, for little or no recognition. (History repeats itself, they say?) For me, the main characters powered the books and I couldn’t wait to see what happened to them next. (And it didn’t hurt that they made a beautifully-filmed movie with Viggo Mortensen as Captain Alatriste.)
October 22, 2012 — 3:22 AM
Ryan Viergutz says:
I can’t pick one. I’ll pick two. 😛
One is Spin Control by Chris Moriarty. I can’t begin to say how huge of a transformation it was in me. These clone people called the Syndicates grow up with people who look just like themselves, same sex, same or similar names. Their romantic relationships are homosexual, and being able to /sympathize/ with a gay person completely altered my view on the subject.
Second, I’ll say Alastair Reynolds’s “House of Suns”, because it gave me that glorious sensation of anticipation about halfway through where, “O_O This is going to rule”, and it did, so immensely it ruled.
October 22, 2012 — 3:26 AM
stephen says:
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
This was the first book I read that dropped me into a genuine melancholia, and consequently made me think hard about attitudes to those who are different – my own in particular.
The book not only explores the relationships of the mentally disabled central character with a variety of people surrounding him, met in very different circumstances, but also the premise that intellect and emotion are very opposite forces of the mind and their battles disproportionately vicious.
When looked at superficially, there’s also a real “enjoy every moment of happiness you can” message – I remember thinking it was the way I wanted to be.
October 22, 2012 — 3:47 AM
Raechel Hudson says:
Recently, I read George Orwell’s 1984. It affected me profoundly. I was on a rollercoaster with the characters, feeling exactly what they felt, and then this inescapable sense of amazement and horror as I realised exactly what kind of world they lived in. I was very thoughtful and rather depressed the rest of the day.
For tearjerkers, I can’t go past Harry Potter. As mainstream as it is, it sticks most clearly in my mind for the need of a hanky. The Order of the Phoenix, The Half Blood Prince, The Deathly Hallows – all garunteed to make me cry no matter how many times I’ve read them.
October 22, 2012 — 5:05 AM
Lovy Jones says:
Green Mile by Stephen King.
I just cried and cried over that book. I still cry when I see the movie.
The cruelty of people, the sense of not belonging, I don’t know. It just gets me every time.
October 22, 2012 — 5:21 AM
M. Chapman says:
The entire “Invasion” cycle MTG books. The main “villain”, Yawgmoth, essentially turns people into monstrosities by improving off of the human body; making it stronger, more deadlier, etc. It really makes you think who really are the heroes in the book, as Yawgmoth passes himself off as a great healer and figure in Halcyon (the city where it takes place), yet he uses his remedies and “improvements” to seize power.
Yet even as he seizes power, he again manages to justify it by saying said leaders where ineffective and weak, not because he in fact was power hungry at all. The author writes him in as one would a heroe too, and one still wonders if Yawgmoth was truly evil or just horribly misunderstood, despite his hideous crimes.
October 22, 2012 — 6:28 AM
Chris Bauer says:
In 1991 I read “Boy’s Life” by Robert McCammon and was permanently altered by the experience. At the time I was finishing college and was engaged in various acts of douche-baggery (focusing on $ in my career, ignoring my parents back home and other examples of jackass thinking) without a care in the world. Reading “Boy’s Life” reminded me of the mysteries, wonders and challenges life is supposed to be about. I identified with almost each and every character in the book. I now read that book every 2-3 years when I need to banish the sometimes crushing banality of everyday life. I’ve made my children (ages 11 & 13) read it as well, to make sure they never grow beyond the simple appreciation and wonder of life. My original hardcover is battered, dog-eared and slowly falling to pieces and I’m sure I’ll need a new copy soon. Can’t be e-book, though. An electronic version would not be able to occupy the “shelf of honor” on my bookcase.
October 22, 2012 — 7:11 AM
Shiri Sondheimer says:
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. The bravery of those who continue to tell stories despite fear, pain, and loss both real and fictional, never ceases to astound.
October 22, 2012 — 7:16 AM
Mark Matthews says:
When I die, my life will flash before my eyes in these feelings that novels gave me.
As any red-blooded adventurous reading male, “On The Road” is the book I stuffed into my back pocket and took everywhere. I can still picture the orange paperback copy with the huge, glowing sun.
But in keeping with the genre inclinations of this blog, I’m going to choose ‘The Reapers Are The Angels” by Alden Bell. Les Miserables meets Huck Finn (female version) post zombie-apocalypse. It’s what ‘The Passage’ could have been had the author been willing to cut the fat.
October 22, 2012 — 7:30 AM
Maggie Carroll says:
Rainbow Mars, by Larry Niven; a collection of short stories about Hanville Svetz. It was the first time I’d ever seen a sci-fi mashup so complex, as Svetz travels to a Mars inhabited by the races of Bradbury, Burroughs, Lewis, Wells and Weinbaum. As well, it dipped into fantasy, with Svetz’s initial job collecting extinct beasts that no one actually knows is a roc (Ostritch), Quetzalcoatl (Snake), Moby Dick (Whale), etc. It really got my mind racing towards what is possible, improbable and impossible in fiction. Niven threw all my preconceptions upside down, and made me seriously rethink them.
October 22, 2012 — 8:44 AM
Patrick Regan says:
There’s a lot of them (I suspect any writer can point to a number of stories that hit them particularly hard), but one that always struck me was Stephen King’s “IT”. I read it just as I was getting out of college and going into the real world, and the way it spoke to leaving childhood and the magic of childhood behind for the next generation. It really gave me the drive to move on with what the next stage of my life turned out to be.
October 22, 2012 — 8:49 AM
annaliterally says:
“Travels” by Michael Crichton. It’s an interesting autobiography, focusing on different journeys throughout his life. Some physical, some personal, some spiritual. It’s one of those books that I reread every few years. It made me question everything.
I would even go far enough to say that it’s the reason I left Christianity and pursued Eastern philosophy.
Every time I loan out the book, I know I’ll never get it back. I just go out and get another copy for myself.
October 22, 2012 — 9:06 AM
Leslie says:
“Now Is Not Too Late” by Isabelle Holland. It’s a sort of coming of age story about a preteen who was adopted and unintentionally finds her birthmother. It was given to me when I was around the same age as the main character – and I was also adopted. I still own the book (I’m not sure where you’d find it now to purchase) and it always stuck with me. It gave me a strange kind of hope because my adoptive family was… bad. But I grew up and learned that there is nothing simple about finding birthparents – neither embarking on the journey or finishing it.
October 22, 2012 — 9:19 AM
Beth L. says:
“Wideacre” by Phillipa Gregory for sure. I come back to it about every year or so. This was the first story I ever read where I loved the characters, but they made awful decisions left and right and kept making things worse. Yet somehow you root for them, even though you’re pretty sure there’s no way this will end well.
“Drood” by Dan Simmons scared me to the point where I could not read it just before going to bed. That’s unusual for me.
October 22, 2012 — 9:23 AM
K.P. Dawson says:
The Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate. There were too many moments across all sixty some odd shot books to pick just one. They were my first obsession, and the books that introduced me to the concepts of war, fear, bravery, and the idea that winning doesn’t always mean a happy ever after. I think they shaped my reading preferences/tastes in a way that will affect the rest of my life.
Second choice: “Lady Knight” by Tamora Pierce for girl power reasons.
October 22, 2012 — 9:23 AM
K.P. Dawson says:
odd short*
October 22, 2012 — 9:24 AM
Tribi says:
I wrote my college entrance essays about Rudyard Kipling’s “The Light that Failed”. Which, in retrospect, they should have admitted me to an entirely different institution…
October 22, 2012 — 9:29 AM
Andy Decker says:
“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. It was very difficult to find hope in the story, but it is there. Should be required reading – not sure why, maybe just for the catharsis, and who doesn’t need a good catharsis every once in a while?
October 22, 2012 — 9:38 AM
Devin says:
I thought long and hard about this. Having read many books, many have made an impact. But one in particular stands out – Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. I read it at the age of 14, when I was trying to figure out who I was (I was also very keen on reading books in English, which is not my first language). Now, some (*ahem* 22) years later, it still gives me hope and guts to keep on keeping on, ignore the naysayers and do my own thing.
October 22, 2012 — 9:43 AM
Peta says:
“Before I Die” by Jenny Downham. I have never cried so much in my life…ever, over anything. But it was still incredibly funny and left me feeling optimistic and calm. It is one of those books I will never forget.
October 22, 2012 — 9:45 AM
Jesse says:
There have been a few books that have hit me where it hurts. Some of them I enjoyed, some of them I may have set on fire after reading.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery has to be on the top of the list though. It’s masterfully written and manages to break your heart and put it together at the same damn time.
It taught me to enjoy the beauty in simplicity and not to take things for granted because even in the stablest environments, life is fluid and things change. It also has the honor of being the only book to make me feel squishy inside by just thinking about it.
October 22, 2012 — 9:58 AM
Kevin Lyle Dillon says:
I just finished THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin. While it is a blood bath of goodness, there is still some genuine human suffering as the cast of characters both in the present and future try to cope with society falling apart. Also, it was just outright awesome. Each time I closed the book for the night, I’d run around the house, screaming THIS IS AWESOME!!
October 22, 2012 — 9:59 AM
David says:
“The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst. A short story rather than a book, but the single most moving thing I’ve ever read. Must admit, it’s probably been 15 years since I’ve read it.
The story deals with a pair of young brothers, and does an incredible job of illustrating their bond, as well as the childish ways we sometimes hurt those we love, and the unintended consequences that sometimes result.
If you had younger siblings that looked up to you and this one doesn’t jerk a tear you’re made of stone.
October 22, 2012 — 10:08 AM
Cat York says:
“Where the Red Fern Grows” and “Old Man in the Sea” made huge impacts on me as a kid. “Too Kill a Mockingbird”, “Huck Finn”, and “Catcher in the Rye” in my teens – basically – all the stuff I thought was going to be srsly boring in English class and then wasn’t … I recently read “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak and got the same punch in the gut, tear-spent, beautiful feeling from Zusak’s writing. I think that one is destined to be a future classic, imho.
October 22, 2012 — 10:08 AM
Josh Loomis says:
In addition to being my old fallback when people ask me what book inspired me to start writing, Heinlein’s ‘The Cat Who Walks Through Walls’ is also the one I remember really moving me for the first time. The final scene, where the hero is sitting in a corner with a gun in his hand, his wounded wife laying next to him confessing to the murder that started the whole story, and a near-dead kitten in his lap, is an image seared into my memory. His words, to the author, are just as indelible: “Anyone who’d kill a kitten is cruel, mean cruel. Whoever you are, I hate you. I despise you.”
October 22, 2012 — 10:08 AM
Rebecca Hellmann says:
I will always remember The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They actually did that to women back then and I found it horrifying.
October 22, 2012 — 10:08 AM
Cheri says:
The Grapes of Wrath, by Steinbeck. I don’t know how I never read it before a few months ago, but wow. Wow. That book made me feel hopeless, then angry, then hopeless and angry, and then sad….and still hopeless. And then the ending reached out and slapped me *hard* upside the head, made my eyes water, and screamed, “Hope, Damnit!”. I couldn’t speak for an hour after I finished it, lest I break into sobs. It took me unawares, it did. Dang. Now I’m choked up.
October 22, 2012 — 10:09 AM
Cat York says:
Shoot. “TO Kill a Mockingbird” not “Too” Where’s my coffee.
October 22, 2012 — 10:09 AM
renee says:
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is the one for me. To believe that you’re God’s instrument and everything in your life is to prepare you for your one, true purpose is a scary, but comforting idea. When I read this (usually once a year), it forces me to question my skepticism and look at people’s actions in a different light. It also helps me to realize that I may not always understand why I do what I do, but there is a pattern that may or may not be revealed to me someday. It speaks to my spiritual side.
October 22, 2012 — 10:12 AM
Christopher Wilde says:
There are so many… In a lot of ways, I’m a story golem, built from the disparate words of other writers. Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Z. Danielewski, Neil Gaiman, Caítlin R. Kiernan and so many more…
We had our first cool breezes this weekend, and though they still smell more of suntan oil and salt water, I can’t help but think of the carousels and lightning rods of Something Wicked This Way Comes. That book has always struck me as holding a lot more than it should. Bradbury in general has always felt like magic to me.
Also, The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. The tension between whether there WERE ghosts, or if it was all in Eleanor’s head, something that got completely lost in the most recent film… That ran right through me. Also, Theodora was the first clearly queer character I recall reading. It was a lot harder to find characters who strayed outside the lines back then.
October 22, 2012 — 10:17 AM
Christopher Wilde says:
@Rebecca,
The Yellow Wallpaper blew me away. I see echoes of it all over, in Neil Gaiman and China Miéville, like seismic ripples. It’s an incredibly powerful story that deserves a lot more attention than it seems to get.
October 22, 2012 — 10:21 AM
Ellie Di says:
This very well might be the most stereotypically girly answer I could possibly give, but it’s also the most true. “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert wrecked my SHIT when I finally read it last year, and it wrecked it AGAIN in a completely different way when I re-read it this year. The search for God, the ache to know yourself, and the clever writing style just undo me.
October 22, 2012 — 10:24 AM
Sydney Logan (@SydneyALogan) says:
I don’t read much YA, but I recently read The Fault in our Stars by John Green because my sister loves it (and my sister hates to read). When I finished it, I cried for hours.
Hazel knows she’s dying. It’s really just a question of when. At first, I thought she was rather flippant about the fact, but then I realized, it wasn’t that she didn’t care. It was that she’d accepted it, and it’s an acceptance I don’t think I can comprehend because I’ve never been faced with a terminal illness of my own. It’s an understanding that these are the cards she’s been dealt, and it sucks, but being upset or bitter doesn’t change the cards in her hand. So, instead, Hazel concentrates on the people she loves, and how she doesn’t want to be a grenade, and blow their worlds to bits when she’s gone. She’s so focused on others that she doesn’t consider her own heart, and her own world, being blown to bits instead.
I felt like I’d been gutted after reading it. I’ll never forget it.
October 22, 2012 — 10:37 AM
Dave Turner says:
The serious literary answer for literary people is either “The Road” or “Blood Meridian”, by Cormac McCarthy. But I’ll forgo the serious literary answer (which treads too close to the “makes you think” line that we’ve been asked to avoid) and reach into my left ventricle, where I find Eddings’ “Belgariad” series.
The Belgariad series was an absolute joy to a fifteen-year-old boy who slept with his Player’s Handbook under his pillow. Garion was Harry Potter before Rowling set foot in Hogwarts and I lapped it up. All of the tried and true features of what might now be considered YA fantasy were there: a dorky young man struggling to inherit a mighty gift; stern but loving mentors to guide and protect him; a love interest that simultaneously attracts and repels the hormonally-confused hero (to this day, I still loathe Ce’Nedra as a character); a rogue’s gallery of stout-hearted companions; and a globe-trotting adventure against an ancient evil.
I don’t often re-visit my nostalgic childhood reads for fear of ruining the spell. I wallowed in the Belgariad’s story, re-reading it a couple of times during my teens. I’d rather keep the warm glow I did (and do) feel about that world and those characters.
October 22, 2012 — 10:46 AM
Jason says:
Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, a book so haunting it reads more like a ghost story than fantasy. The book centres on two brothers who are emotionally lost, who find their purpose in a wooden woman (a mythago – myth image), created by the subconscious of the people who live around the mysterious Ryhope Wood. Their obsession leads them deep into the primeval woods, at war with each other.
Its premise sounds ridiculous, but the way it draws you into a mythical and epic past while keeping the emotion real still gets to me. I have read the book about 7 times, and now you’ve made me thumb it again in anticipation of another read.
October 22, 2012 — 10:57 AM
Alice says:
Anything by Ibsen. His stories make me yell at the characters: “NO! Wait a minute! Don’t do that!” And they do anyway and it is irrevocable and heartbreaking.
October 22, 2012 — 11:31 AM
stephen says:
In case anyone was interested in “The Yellow Wallpaper” – I’ve just noticed that it is free on the kindle from both Amazon UK and US.
October 22, 2012 — 11:53 AM
Dan Thompson says:
“The Mule”, which forms the second half of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation and Empire”. It was the first tragic love story I’d ever read as an adolescent, and it left a deep emotional imprint on my heart. Not everything has a happy ending, but that doesn’t keep it from being beautiful.
October 22, 2012 — 11:53 AM
Anninyn says:
There have been.. a lot. I get very emotionally involved in books, even bad ones. All of them left an imprint inside me.
But the major one was the Song of The Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce, mainly because it was the first time I read a book where the main character was a: female and b: just as complex and well-drawn as the male characters c: capable
I can’t even begin to express what that meant to me. A lot of books I read treated being female as this very narrow box that meant you were incapable of anything other than looking pretty, being scared of rodents and having babies. And along came Alanna, who had a life, a full life, broke out of her boundaries, lived by her own rules – AND managed to be worthy of love and loving. She didn’t have to sacrifice a single thing and at no point was being a woman treated as a bad thing,.
October 22, 2012 — 12:09 PM
Jessica Scott says:
Mockingjay. The whole Hunger Games series but in Mockingjay when Katniss yells at the cat at the end of the book that her sister wasn’t there, it just completely destroyed me. WeeksI kept thinking about the end of that series. Even now, years after having finally read it, I’m still moved by the power of that ending.
October 22, 2012 — 12:18 PM
Alex Washoe says:
“The Plague Dogs” by Richard Adams. “Next of King” by Roger Fouts. “The Uplift War” by David Brin.
October 22, 2012 — 12:30 PM
Alex Washoe says:
“The Plague Dogs” by Richard Adams. “Next of Kin” by Roger Fouts. “The Uplift War” by David Brin.
October 22, 2012 — 12:31 PM
Stephanie says:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The most horrible part in the movie made me bust out into tears. After her revenge on her attacker and seeing how the movie ended I had to read the books. All three of them were a roller coaster ride of emotions and I barely slept because I couldn’t put them down. I had to find out if Lisbeth won in the end. She went through hell though. Her entire life hell. But, the third book was a surprise and the ending made me say out loud, “About fucking time.” Not because of the pacing of the book but because after 20 some odd years of Lisbeth living through hell and trying to defend herself against her own government, she finally gets justice with the help of true friends. Well, her genius had something to do with it too. But, she wasn’t alone and that’s the point.
October 22, 2012 — 12:34 PM
Steve Buchheit says:
“American Gods” by Neil Gaiman. It was one of those books that left me with the “Holy crap, you can’t do that. You can do that?” feeling. You know, besides wanting to hurl it against a wall about 2/3rds the way in. But I finished it, and was glad I did.
October 22, 2012 — 12:35 PM
PASChaefer says:
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. The story of an outcast, someone on the outside looking in, who discovered magic was real only to let it become rote and prosaic. It let me identify so strongly with the protagonist that the end, which reaffirmed that magic could be magical, spoke directly to me and some of my secret hopes and fears.
October 22, 2012 — 12:40 PM