Books that made you see yourself or people around you in a different light, or books that changed your perspective on something, or in some way had a lasting impact on you. I wanna hear about those books that changed you.
I’ll recommend one, but with the caveat that this book is NOT for everyone and could be harmful for certain people reading it who aren’t in a good headspace.
Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill – this is a book about a young adult but it is not a young adult book by any means. It’s a harrowing and horrifying read that doesn’t have almost any pleasant moments in it whatsoever, but this book completely changed my relationship with my body, how I feel about myself, how I feel about other women, and how I feel about gender roles and performative femininity. Absolutely massive trigger warning for explicit discussions of eating disorders, but this book seriously put all my worst insecurities up to a mirror and showed me how stupid and frivolous they are. I read it for the first time at 22, and at 28, rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about this book.
Recommend me a book that changed your life!
by panini_bellini
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George orwell – down and out in paris and london. Made me way more empathic about the poor and homeless.
George orwell – Homage to Catalonia. Was key for me to understand that ‘liberal democracy’ is not the only option on the table, and that people in 1930’s spain were experimenting with a lot of alternatives.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity – by David Graeber, and David Wengrow. Continued the above conversation for me by understanding that since the dawn of time people have been experimenting with different forms of cooperation and that such facts of life as ‘some people are poor&homeless’ don’t have to be true.
Fruit From a Poisonous Tree by Mel Stamper
(It’s non-fiction)