Life-Changing Books
Sep. 30th, 2017 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse On social media the other day, I came across someone asking their friends a sort of ubiquitous question, which is: "What book changed your life?"
I've been thinking about that, as you do, over the last few days. There are a lot of books I've loved throughout my life, but life-changing? That's a pretty tall order, don't you think? A short story made me gay. Or rather, "A World Well Lost" by Theodore Sturgeon made me consider the fact that maybe gay was another possibility and then, you know, nature did the rest. But, a life-changing book?
Today, I decided my answer would be Beard on Bread by James Beard. I can say for a fact that after reading that book, my life profoundly changed. Before I read Beard on Bread, all my yeast breads sucked so much that my family used to call them "Lyda's lead bread." That book was magical. I don't even know that it had anything all that profound to say, but once I read it, I totally understood how yeast was supposed to work (and how to tell if it wasn't working.)
So there you go. My life-changer. How about you? Do you have a book that changed your life?
I've been thinking about that, as you do, over the last few days. There are a lot of books I've loved throughout my life, but life-changing? That's a pretty tall order, don't you think? A short story made me gay. Or rather, "A World Well Lost" by Theodore Sturgeon made me consider the fact that maybe gay was another possibility and then, you know, nature did the rest. But, a life-changing book?
Today, I decided my answer would be Beard on Bread by James Beard. I can say for a fact that after reading that book, my life profoundly changed. Before I read Beard on Bread, all my yeast breads sucked so much that my family used to call them "Lyda's lead bread." That book was magical. I don't even know that it had anything all that profound to say, but once I read it, I totally understood how yeast was supposed to work (and how to tell if it wasn't working.)
So there you go. My life-changer. How about you? Do you have a book that changed your life?
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Date: 2017-10-01 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-02 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-02 02:46 pm (UTC)Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say that I discovered science fiction the way you did. For me, a movie got me into science fiction (Star Wars) and from there, after having exhausted the LaCrosse North Branch Library's Star Wars related fiction, I started reading short stories... so that's a long way 'round.