Weekly Reader: You Got To Read This Book: 55 People Tell The Story of The Book That Changed Their Life Edited By Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks; Beautiful Affirmative Storied About The Importance of Reading
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Here at the Bookworm Reviews, I believe that the right person could be matched to the right book. Sometimes you are going along with your day. You have a question about your life or are so stressed that you need escape. You pick up a book and BOOM! You find parallels to your situation. You find characters that are struggling with situations similar to yours. You may even find a truth that fits and that you can use in your daily life. You consider it a favorite book that you keep coming back to again and again and find something new every time you read as well as a friend who always has your back. (The book that fits that in my life is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll which I reviewed in my inaugural review for this blog.)
Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup books and Gay Hendricks, president of the Hendricks Institute and author of several self-help books understood that power that books have to transform lives. They gathered many of the best writers, spokespersons, musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders to describe the books that changed their lives, helped them look at their world differently, and gave them solutions to their problems in their book You Got To Read This Book.
Many of these authors found fictional characters that related to them. Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of Deep End of the Ocean found herself in Francie Nolan, the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Both came from impoverished backgrounds, had troubled childhoods, and had imaginative spirits that allowed them to become writers. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captivated Mitchard so much that she reads it before she begins working on a new novel and when she adopted a daughter, she named her Francie Nolan.
Another person who found an answer through a fictional character was fifth grade teacher, Rafe Esquith. After Esquith won the Walt Disney Company's 1992 Teacher of the Year award, he felt like a failure because many of his students got involved in drugs and gang violence in middle and high school. Reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee helped Esquith understand through Atticus Finch what it means to be a good leader and role model for children. That he has to do what is right even if he doesn't see the positive results right away.
Self-help books are some of the books that are cited most often that helped people. Motivational speaker, Lisa Nichols found assistance reading Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey's book particularly the haunting “Begin With The Ending” exercise (where Covey invited the Reader to imagine they are at their own funeral) moved Nichols so much that she strove to change her life. She withdrew from habits that she didn't want to be remembered for (like hosting lingerie parties and writing steamy romance novels), cut abusive men from her life, and started a career that appealed to her talents for speaking.
In a true case of “physician heal thyself”, Covey himself has a chapter in which he cites two books: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher. Both books gave Covey the vision to choose how he dealt with life. Frankl's book was about his time in a concentration camp and how he chose to seek happiness even in the worst circumstances such as when the Nazis burned his manuscript, Frankl just decided to “rewrite it: make it better.” This attitude was the framework for Covey's 7 Habits in which the book explores how we react when things upset or detain us.
Of course these books don't offer quick solutions and many of the authors describe that the book was simply the catalyst and the first step to a life of self-improvement. Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming, acknowledges a biography of Mahatma Gandhi that inspired him to become more spiritual. He even later took a trip to India to see Gandhi's memorial and vow to change his life to fit his. However, McCourt did not live a subsequent exemplary life. Instead it was one of alcoholism, divorce, and self-loathing to the point where a doctor gave him a prescription to change his life or else. While McCourt reveals that his transformation was a long time, the biography of Gandhi was the inspiration that began this chain of events.
Some chapters recount not how much the person loved the book but how much they hated it and disagreed with the message. Holocaust survivor, Max Edelman selects surprisingly Mein Kampf for his chapter. He selected it because of how much it changed Germany and the world. Edelman analyzes Hitler's anti-Semitism argument by saying that he used one specific point to unite the Germans. Besides taking an analytic approach to Hitler's arguments, Edelman vowed to live a life of forgiveness and love especially in the face of his enemies such as Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Edelman said that Mein Kampf gave him the strength to become a counter example to Hitler's hateful words.
The most important thing that this book teaches the Reader is that the books don't change the person, the person does. This is particularly evident with Dr. Bernie Siegel, retired pediatrician and general surgeon who selected William Saroyan's The Human Comedy. He begins his chapter with “I don't believe that any book can change your life only you can. Look two people read the same book. One is inspired while the other is bored. It's the person-not the book-that creates the transformation. That power lies within each of us. That said I do believe that an author's insights when combined with the reader's inspiration and desire to change can lead to a new life for the reader.”
So in effect, it's not the book but it is the Readers that changed their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment