Which book/movie affected you the most?

[Jack Scorpion]

Book:
-Weisel's The Accident was pretty intense for me. Read that a lot. Not that I'm much of a saint/sufferer, mind you, but it meant something.
-White Fang still makes me sob every time I read it. I try and read it once a year to give myself that really good cry I always need.
-Dostoevsky's The Idiot pretty much made me want to move to Russia and become a Holy Fool in the Orthodox tradition. It also made me want to go to grad school.
-Dos Passos's everything makes me want to become a writer.

Movie:
-The Secret Lives of Dentists.

 

[Johnnysan]

The Man Who Planted Trees - Jean Giono

 

[staggerwing]

My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill both changed my life. I read the former when I was about 8 and learned self reliance. I read the latter for the first time when I was 20. I was living in my car at the time and down to less than $10 in my pocket. It completely turned my like around. It's also very golden age. Surprises me no one else mentioned it.

Just for pleasure, all of the books by James Herriot. Oh, and the Richard Bach books from back when he wrote about airplanes and flying, before he got wierd!

 

[warbird]

Oh, and the Richard Bach books from back when he wrote about airplanes and flying, before he got wierd!

An aerosopace professor of mine in college turned me on to Bach. The aircraft books were great.

So may books efftected me I'm not sure where to start, Farenheit 451 and Animal Farm early on. Certainly The Odyssey and Robinson Crusoe as well. Twain and Hemingway were great influences in my love of litetrature. Faulkner, enough said.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Helpful hint: Effect=noun, Affect=verb.

To expand a bit (and to hopefully help):

Effect. As a noun, means "result"; as a verb means, "to bring about," "to accomplish," (not to be confused with affect, which means "to influence").

As a noun, often loosely used in perfunctory writing about fashions, music, painting, and other arts: "A Southwestern effect"; "effects in pale green"; "very delicate effect"; "subtle effects"; "a charming effect was produced." - The Elements of Style; William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White.

Group: "Yes! We're all individuals!"

One man: "I'm not."

Group: "Shhhh!"

lol

.

This reminded me of Steve Martin's "Non-conformist's Oath."

S. M.: "Non-conformists, repeat after me! I promise to be different!"
Audience: "I promise to be different!"
S. M.: "I promise to be unique!"
Audience" "I promise to be unique!"
S. M.: I promise not to repeat things other people say!"
Audience: (Lots of mumbling and nervous laughter.)


The book that affected me most must have been, Twisted Tales from Shakespeare (1957) by Richard Armour. I've read it numerous times; borrowed it, bought it, lent it, lost it, bought another, reacquired it, given it as a gift, etc. The book proved to me that, even though you don't fully understand something (or understand it at all) in its original form, you can still have fun with it. Some very funny lines, plays on words and moderate to very bad puns throughout the book.

From Romeo and Juliet: Later that night, Romeo gives his friends the slip and climbs over the wall into the Capulets' orchard. ("Leaps the wall," the text says, but Shakespeare was inclined to exaggerate.) He has a wonderful chance to purloin some fruit, but passes it up when he sees Juliet standing on her bedroom balcony in her negligee, looking negligected. At sight of her, Romeo goes slightly daft, mumbling about putting her eyes in the sky and replacing them with stars, probably two of the smaller ones.

'O that I were a glove* upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!' he exclaims, getting more and more impractical."
*In view if Juliet's age, it would have to be a kid glove.


From Questions on Hamlet:

1. Have you noticed how, in Shakespeare's plays, when people said they saw a ghost they usually did? Were people more trustworthy in those days? Were ghosts?
2. How long can you discuss Rosencrantz without mentioning Guildenstern, and vice versa?
3. What did Queen Gertrude see in King Claudius?
4. Where did Polonius spend his time when he was not skulking behind an arras?
5. Consider the effect on Ophelia's future if she had known how to swim.
6. Which is the most horrible line in the play? Not counting, of course, "O, horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!" (I,v,80)
7. Would it give you comic relief to hold in your hands the skull of an old friend?
8. Don't you think Hamlet had rotten luck? In fact was there anything more rotten in the state of Denmark?
9. Deliberate on the King's request, "Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me," followed by the stage direction: "The king puts Laertes' hand into Hamlet's" (V, ii, 213) Isn't this a little gruesome?


The movie that affected me most was (and is) Somewhere in Time. What this man, Richard Collier, went through and gave up in the name of love.


Lee

 

[Diamondback]

Good point, Lee; I was referring to general usage. Not very often you see effect-verb in "common language" usage anymore...

 

[Fast]

Book/Movie

Book: Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Here's the package: Everybody's story is the epic. All of the good and most of the bad in this book goes there.

Film: Unforgiven by Clint Eastwood
Cowboy Noir!

Carpe Diem
Fast

 

[Spitfire]

Book: CATCH 22 - no doubt!
Movie: .....don't know.

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

Watership Down, the film. It both terrified me (gave me nightmares, even), and made me cry, but I loved it.

 

[Starius]

This is going to sound a bit odd, at least I think it is a unusual book by which to be so greatly influenced. But in middle school, I looked over at a friend of mine one day and he was reading "Sojourn" by R.A. Salvatore. I was intrigued by both the cover of the book and the title itself sounded exotic to me, so I borrowed it from him when he was finished. When I read it, I was instantly hooked and blown away by the story. I had never read anything like it before. It is THE book that got me into recreational reading and triggered my love for fantasy. It didn't even matter that it was the 3rd book in a trilogy! That didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book at all. I don't often read books repeatedly, but I have read Sojourn 3 or 4 times in my life.

Thinking of a movie that has greatly affected me isn't quite as easy.
But, I think I will mention Never Cry Wolf. This is probably the first movie that showed me that movies can be a beautiful thing, more than just simple entertainment.

 

[Smithy]

Watership Down, the film. It both terrified me (gave me nightmares, even), and made me cry, but I loved it.

We must be a similar age Fleur, I was the same, it terrified me especially that bit with the dog. I had a book of the film with stills from it which obviously gave me the willies as well. It certainly brought a tear to the eye as well.

 

[Fast]

To expand a bit (and to hopefully help):



From Questions on Hamlet:

1. Have you noticed how, in Shakespeare's plays, when people said they saw a ghost they usually did? Were people more trustworthy in those days? Were ghosts?
1a. yeah. no. no

2. How long can you discuss Rosencrantz without mentioning Guildenstern, and vice versa?
2a. As long as you need to, depending on the circumstances.

3. What did Queen Gertrude see in King Claudius?
3a. His brother and some future.

4. Where did Polonius spend his time when he was not skulking behind an arras?
4a. in the court giving advice to his children, as a father, and giving advice to the king, as he was prime minister.

5. Consider the effect on Ophelia's future if she had known how to swim.
5a. she dies, tangled in the reeds and gown

6. Which is the most horrible line in the play? Not counting, of course, "O, horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!" (I,v,80)
6a. The End

7. Would it give you comic relief to hold in your hands the skull of an old friend?
7a. Depends on the friend.

8. Don't you think Hamlet had rotten luck? In fact was there anything more rotten in the state of Denmark?
8a. No. Hamlet has rotten fate. Yes, his uncle.

9. Deliberate on the King's request, "Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me," followed by the stage direction: "The king puts Laertes' hand into Hamlet's" (V, ii, 213) Isn't this a little gruesome?
9a. Only if the notion of two men shaking hands offends you. A little germ-x afterwards usually works for me. My friend Adrian uses a wipe.

Lee

Movie: The wizard of oz
Book: Tao Te Ching

There's a description of the 20th century american hero in Chandler's The Simple Art of Murder that made a great impression as well.

Carpe Diem
Fast

 

[Mr. Lucky]

For me it was On the Road too. Read it at about the same age, fifteen or sixteen, that seems to be the age you´re most sensitive to that novel, I think.
Needless to say, I didn´t jump a train or do anything unusual, but the book´s given me another perspective and a certain feeling of wanderlust that´s lingering on till today.
Who knows, maybe someday I´ll take the plunge.

Regards, A.

Unfortunately, or, actually, QUITE fortunately, I read On The Road right after I was...asked to leave my first college in 1981. I hitched from Buffalo to Houston to see, what else, a young woman. When that went south (no pun intended) I hitched to New Orleans, spent a few weeks in The Quarter, stuck the thumb out again - New Orleans to Biloxi to Miami and then 95 right up to Kittery Point, Maine. I was 'out there' for about six months and the experiences I had... Thank God I was 19 at the time and just stupid enough to come out of the travels unscathed and with many a story. Oh, and The Sun Also Rises.

As for movies - a double feature at the Harvard Square Cinema around the same time - Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. I guess it's just seeing them on the big screen for the first time that had the most impact. To this day I am still in love with Ingrid Bergman.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Can't name just one...

Illusions - Richard Bach
Restoring the American Dream - Robert J. Ringer
Science of Mind - Ernest Holmes
Serenade to the Big Bird - Bert Stiles

 

[Spitfire]

"Goodbye Mickey Mouse"

Come to think about it. Another book that deffinately changed my life is a book my wife gave me as a birthdaypresent many years ago.
In my teens I had been very much into aviation, I had read tons of books on RAF, Battle of Britain etc. But then I grew up - I thought. Got other hobbies. Other (grown-up) interests
Untill that faithfull birthday, when I got Len Deightons brilliant book: Goodbye Mickey Mouse.

I had been reading some of his spystories - and liked them a lot, so obvious my wife thought, that another book by Mr. Deighton would make the perfect gift.
It was!
And it sure started a fire. From that day, I have been reading about WWII aviation ever since. But not only that, I began collecting RAF gear, A2 jackets, modelplanes and going to Duxford Airshows whenever I get the chance.
Talk about a book, that changed my life!

Sometimes my wife wonders if it was such a good idear after all.

 

[Smithy]

Don't worry Spitty, you're not the only one. My fianc?©e shakes her head at my collection of all things WWII RAF!

To be fair she's pretty fine about it, and she can tell the difference between a Spit and a Hurri now which really is rather good Although when a new package comes in the mail I usually get from her a pained "It's about planes isn't it?"!

 

[Spitfire]

My sweet wife can also tell the difference between a Spit and a Hurri - AND she can also tell the difference between the enginesound of the DC3 and all other aeroplanes comming over.:eusa_clap
Besides that, she believes I have a VIP direct pipeline to Amazon.uk.

 

[Kishtu]

Although when a new package comes in the mail I usually get from her a pained "It's about planes isn't it?"!

Evidently your fiancee and a certain Mr Bertram Wooster's missus (to wit, yrs truly) think alike... although he tends to look at packages that arrive for me and give a pained "it's more fabric isn't it?"

Movies never affected me that much, although "The Haunting" is still in my head as How A Scary Film Should Look, but other than that...

Books - Gavin Maxwell, the Ring of Bright Water trilogy. A man with real personal issues who found peace and then lost it in the Scottish Highlands. I read all three books, then his biography, three years ago in one fell swoop. Ruined my Christmas that year that he died two years before I was born and I'd never get to meet him. All I can say is, what a man. What a man.

Elizabeth Goudge, all the work thereof. As I've said in another place, such slight, gentle, essentially kind books. Very simple reading, but with such a flavour of the morals and ethics of the period in which they were written that I defy anyone to come away from one of them without a longing for times past.

And "The Duchess of Malfi" by John Webster, a weird choice I'm sure.... but a 15 year old goth read that as part of her English Lit studies and decided that history and literature made a good combination. And lo! here I am, 20 years on, a costume historian, a re-enactor, and a writer....

 

[Smithy]

Evidently your fiancee and a certain Mr Bertram Wooster's missus (to wit, yrs truly) think alike

Ah ha! Your Bertie's better half! Pleasure to meet you Kishtu, good to hear you're keeping an eye on him

 

[Ecuador Jim]

Books:
Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl
The Circle of Innovation - Tom Peters

Movies:
Maltese Falcon/Casablanca/Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Night of the Living Dead (only horror film that scared me as an adult)