/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2303806]

ITT: books that were more significant to your development than the Bible

[Anonymous No.2303813]

wait is that that fuckin movie about that fuckin fag who gets plane crashed in alaska n shit? that shit sucked. was it as bad as i remember it? i used to live in a rural area and the shit about catching fish in a lake by stabbing them with a sharp stick, yeah, nah, that's not gonna happen.

[Anonymous No.2303815]

[Anonymous No.2303816]

> movie

book, whatever, same difference

[Anonymous No.2303818]

[Anonymous No.2303820]

>>2303806

[Anonymous No.2303827]

[Anonymous No.2303830]

I am a gigantic faggot, please rape my face.

[Anonymous No.2303833]

I can't think of any. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.2303834]

>>2303833
bible thumper

[Anonymous No.2303859]

I liked Hatchet, Narnia, Westing Game, and the Higgins books as a kid but I really breezed through the Jedi Apprentice series.

[Anonymous No.2304009]

>>2303859

I only read a few of those Jedi Apprentice but they were really quite good. For Young Adult books they had quite a nice dark atmosphere and a surprising amount of narrative tension for something in which you know what happens to the protagonists.

[Anonymous No.2304041]

>>2304009
Ya I remember having a fun summer going through like ten or fifteen of them from the library and then ordering more during the school year from those Scholastic Book order forms the teachers gave us until the series stopped being updated. I guess it finished without much warning. Lots of interesting dark plots throughout the series.

[Anonymous No.2304047]

Never read any of the Bible, so - all of them.

[Anonymous No.2304052]

>>2303859
westing game

[Anonymous No.2304054]

>>2303830
you are the man

[Anonymous No.2304157]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

[Anonymous No.2304162]

[Anonymous No.2304165]

the cat in the hat, johnny tremain, the outsiders, there's a boy in the girls' bathroom, and ulysses

[Anonymous No.2304167]

A shitload of New Age, conspiracy theory, and true crime books that essentially desensitized me before I ever really got into the internet and 4chan.

[D/Gen !ONuNxgYHI2 No.2304171]

[Anonymous No.2304209]

>>2304162
Wow, was thinking of posting this one. This series was the first time I pulled an all-nighter for recreational reading. If only I knew what sort of trend I was starting ...

[Anonymous No.2304221]

I choose this not because I identify with the protagonist or even absurdism, but because it was probably the first truly great book that I read that really got me interested in fiction and academia in general.

[Anonymous No.2304227]

The Koran, seen as I'm Muslim.

[Anonymous No.2304232]

[Anonymous No.2304234]

>>2304157

Ma nigga.

Also Outlaws of the Marsh.

[Anonymous No.2304239]

George's Marvellous Medicine

[Anonymous No.2304241]

[Anonymous No.2304745]

this.

[Anonymous No.2304747]

[Anonymous No.2304750]

YOU DON'T HAVE TO JUST LIKE BASEBALL

OR BALLET

YOU CAN BE IN BOTH

[Anonymous No.2304764]

Camus ruined my life.

[Anonymous No.2304777]

>>2304764
Elucidate

[None !r.2aDxSqco No.2304791]

Hatchet, definitely. Another one in a similar vein is Far North by Will Hobbs. I was crazy about the "teenagers surviving in the north against all odds" subset of fiction.

The Chronicles of Narnia were big in my early life. Not pertaining so much to my development as just being super awesome books. (inb4 christian allegory, racism, etc., that shit doesn't matter when you're 10.)

[Anonymous No.2304805]

Made me join the cub scouts.

[Anonymous No.2304809]

I read Cat's Cradle in the fifth grade. The story wasn't what had the impact though. Don't get me wrong, I fucking LOVE this book. But afterwards I realized that none of my friends would ever understand it. I couldn't talk to them about it. That was when I gave up trying to read "age appropriate" books. It was my first real grown-up read. The sad thing is, I'm almost 30 and I still have trouble finding people who get Vonnegut.

[Anonymous No.2304811]

Catcher in the Rye and Stephen King, even though no I recognize most of King's books as utter shit.

[Anonymous No.2304813]

most books that i read in 6th & 7th grade: the one about some family of immortals living in the woods; the one about a boy who goes to live in the catskills & adopts a hawk & develops all kinds of survival hacks; that one about a circus-train-load of monkeys getting lost in the woods in some early-20th-century rural american region, and a boy tries catching them in several different ways; and a whole host of redwall books

[Anonymous No.2304816]

[Anonymous No.2304826]

Protip: if you were born in the west the bible has shaped just about every aspect of your life whether you're christian or not.

[Anonymous No.2304827]

>>2304809
>have trouble finding people who get Vonnegut.

Everyone and their mother has read SH5. It's a rather straightforward read.

[Anonymous No.2304829]

>>2304826
protip: you don't have to have been born in the west. Your ignorant condescension is unmerited

[Anonymous No.2304835]

>>2304826
Protip: No one actually has read the bible, so no.

[None !r.2aDxSqco No.2304842]

>>2304835
Implying you have to read a book for it to be part of your life. Especially one as culturally massive as the Bible.

[Anonymous No.2304850]

>>2304842
>implying a book that wasn't accessible to anyone but a few scholars until the 19th century could have any effect on western culture

[Anonymous No.2304851]

it was this or some other unreasonably long Dr. Seuss book. I was too old for it at the time, I admit, but from there I restarted my reading ability, before it I hated / found reading to be a chore and not all that fun. jumped to some pulp 50's or 60's adventure books from the school library then the Harry Potter's that were out at the time and then whatever I had an interest in

[Anonymous No.2304852]

>>2304835
King James bible motherfucker!!

[None !r.2aDxSqco No.2304856]

>>2304850
It was also accessible to the people who used it as a main tool in ruling a big chunk of the world for a long time. Also shaping history and society in some pretty massive ways.

[Jesus Christ !KNs1o0VDv6 No.2304859]

[Anonymous No.2304870]

>>2304221
Camus and Kafka were my introduction to great lit. When I read it I was mind blown.

[Anonymous No.2304911]

This and On Liberty by Mill.

[Anonymous No.2304919]

john stuart mill cant have possibly had an impact on my life because ive never read him lol!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.2304921]

[Anonymous No.2304930]

[Anonymous No.2304965]

Harry Potter books up to Order of the Phoenix - My third grade teacher actually bought me a hardcover copy of OoP the day after it was released...fucking cried

Redwall books- full of badassery and woodland animals..i had read all of them by 5th grade

but the Earthsea trilogy holds a special place in my heart, picture related.

also OPs book was pretty awesome in 4th grade
sequel was subpar though

[Anonymous No.2305021]

>>2304919

[Anonymous No.2305070]

[Anonymous No.2305081]

a clockwork orange
still my favorite book of all time

[Anonymous No.2305092]

1984

helped me to see through the bullshit of the bible cult i'd been raised in

[Anonymous No.2305115]

Fucking Jews

Nah in all seriousness, the Dark materials trilogy. Made me think about life and death and existence and stuff in depth for probably the first time. Also the first of few love stories I've given a shit about.

Other honourable mentions: Matilda, The Velveteen Rabbit, the Horrible Histories and Horrible Science series' and various space/dinosaurs books because I fucking loved space and dinosaurs.

[Anonymous No.2305134]

The Bible was probably the least significant book to my development as a child.

[Anonymous No.2305148]

Not hard, considering I consciously avoided reading the bible.
And I apologize in advance for posting this to this board.

[Anonymous No.2305150]

>>2305115
I fucking loved The Twits as a child. Used to laugh so much it hurt listening to the audiobook before I went to sleep.

[Anonymous No.2305173]

>>2305150
It was a favourite of mine too. The illustrations just made the Roald Dahl books, I used to piss myself laughing at the end of the Enormous Crocodile when the elephant kicks fuck out of him and throws him into the sun

[Anonymous No.2305175]

>>2304835
You moron, it doesn't matter if you've read the Bible or not. It doesn't even matter if you were born in the West or not.

The Bible has shaped the world we live in more than any other piece of literature ever produced.

Just last month National Geographic's cover article was about how the Bible has shaped the English language. And since we're all speaking English, every one of you can be damn sure that the Bible has had a significant impact on your life.

>baaawwww but the bable is a stupid book for idiots and I'm too smart to have ever been affected by it in any way even though it's had a huge impact on my language, culture, and history bawwwwwww

grow up you edgy manchildren, fuck

[Anonymous No.2305183]

>>2304850
>implying a book that wasn't accessible to anyone but a few scholars until the 19th century could have any effect on western culture

You cannot be this fucking retarded, can you?

[Anonymous No.2305188]

wait are we saying that no-one read the bible until the 19th century

ahahahahahahahaha

you could be making a point about translation quality, i guess, or about religious observance in christianity, but those points would still be wrong and you also picked just about the dumbest way to make those points

[Anonymous No.2305186]

>>2305175
>Most important book
>Not The Republic
>Not Principia
>2011

[Anonymous No.2305197]

>>2305173
My favourite has to be the illustrations and descriptions of the various rotten foodstuffs in Mr Twit's beard. I think I probably did literally piss myself a few times to the lament of my poor mother.

R.I.P. Roald Dahl

[Anonymous No.2305203]

>>2305175
But this thread is about our own personal development, not cultural development.

The Bible is without a doubt the most culturally important book to the western world and more than any other book it's shaped our history. But that's not what this thread's about. So can we get back on topic? Post more awesome kids books, I'm nostalga-ing like a mad bastard.

The Bible is interesting as a piece of (revisionist) history and Revelations was entertaining, but it didn't have much of an effect on me personally, no matter how much it had on my surroundings.

[Anonymous No.2305241]

>>2305203
>But this thread is about our own personal development, not cultural development.

And our culture hasn't shaped our personal development?

>(revisionist) history
huh?

[Anonymous No.2305248]

E. T. A. Hoffmann, Der goldne Topf.

My mother used to read this to me when I was young. Nothing was as inspiring and imaginatively stimulating at that time. I have read all of his works by now, as well as numerous secondary literature.

[Anonymous No.2305255]

The Little Prince

[Anonymous No.2305262]

I don't believe that the OP was to be taken literally...
Anyways, mine was probably House of the Scorpion.

[Anonymous No.2305272]

> didn't have much of an effect on me personally, no matter how much it had on my surroundings

> implying milieu, socialisation and cultural environment (including political and economical) aren't the most important aspects of shaping ones behavior pattern or personality if you wish

still, you're right. This thread is about books we either read ourselves, or books which unintermediately affected us otherwise. There are incalculable amounts of implicit literary influences to our development (democratic theory, economic theory and religious writings being the most obvious ones), because our environment is to the core shaped by ideas arising from foreign minds.

[Anonymous No.2305288]

>>2305272
Yes, that's what I was getting at. We don't choose the culture we're born into, but the books that we choose to read as children can shape our views and beliefs, some of them more than others. I'm not saying that environment /doesn't/ because it clearly does, but we don't have any control over that.