The Taoh of Winnie the Pooh was a wonderful book that helped me ground myself when I deployed. It simplified the philosophy in a way that allowed me to find quick comparisons when I was adopting habits I no longer wanted to hold.
Are you being Owl? He seems to know it all, but does he really?
Are you being Rabbit? Are you trying to control your garden, only to see it ruined time and time again?
Eeyore sees the world only with pessimism, and pessimism is all he will retain.
Sometimes I’ll give it as a gift to those who are feeling more lost than usual.
I cant say it changed my life but when I was a kid I was given a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth not long after it was published. I loved it. I can't tell you how many times I reread that book. The illustrations were also fantastic.
Oct 5, 2022·edited Oct 5, 2022Liked by Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When you're young, sometimes communism seems to be an attractive idea. Thing is, it always manages to end up with gulags, persecuted dissidents, show trials and summary executions. Secret police, the works. "The Gulag Archipelago" by the same author makes things clear, but it's a big ol' book. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" can be read in a few hours; it's easily digestable. Maybe even the better work for its brevity.
Not sure it meets that standard, but profoundly interesting was Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear." Its setting is ice age Europe when modern humans (us) were interacting with neanderthals. Almost reads as fantasy/sci fi yet we know now (by DNA) they and us did interbreed.
Horrible move made of it but that doesn't mean a good one couldn't be. An HBO mini series would be better especially since there are a series of follow up books.
Lots of books have changed my life. I guess I'm lucky like that.
When I was in high school, Stephen King's The Green Mile kicked off a two-year binge where I read almost everything he'd written to that point. (In the 15 years since then, he's probably published at least 25 more books.) The Shining was a major influence for a while, though it's eclipsed by the Kubrick film a bit.
After being assigned James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade English, I developed a fascination with Joyce and his work that shaped my undergrad and graduate college career. Calling Ulysses your favorite novel is a bit like saying Citizen Kane is your favorite movie -- kind of a boring, safe pick -- but its reputation is definitely deserved.
After college, Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater reshaped my idea of what fiction could be. Joyce inspired an appreciation for dense, difficult fiction; Roth reminded me that smart novels can still be accessible (and funny as hell).
A few books on politics and media have blown my brain open. In college, it was The Autobiography of Malcolm X; more recently, Matt Taibbi's Hate, Inc. and Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal have given me a critical framework for understanding the moment we're in.
I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was in high school and it influenced me to this day. Not on the massive abuse of drugs that went on but seeing your own life as an art form. In any case, that's what I took from it.
A Helen Keller bio when I was maybe 11? She was so heroic! As was her teacher. Animal farm.. my 6th grade teacher had it on his borrow shelf. Fantastic! I find it hilarious that people on both sides of the political aisle are claiming this book right now… Back to social work .. To Kill a Mockingbird… I wound up in a life, a career of social work with people with IDD and MH.. Boo Radley so misunderstood…
And Carrie ! Stephen King opening the door to horror! And such otherworldly writing ! Read everything he’s written after that…
This Book Will Change Your Life by AM Holmes .. it didn’t but I got the point a great writer…
I did love Blackout …candid and illuminating and the disease affecting so many of my family members…
I think there have been many changes to my life through reading books, but I can point to a couple at critical points of my life. When I was 10, I picked up J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and read it by myself. My mother had read it to me when I was much younger, but the Rankin/Bass animated Hobbit had just come out, and it sent me to the book, which I read and found absolutely superior, and then I pulled down off the shelf my mother's copies of The Lord of the Rings. Not long after that, I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons, and I followed a lifelong love of imagination, mythology, fantasy, poetry and other worlds (real and imaginary).
After 9/11, I read David McCullough's John Adams biography, and it really helped my feelings of patriotism and sense of justice coalesce (him being a founding father, the second president, and behind the Declaration of Independence, but also the lawyer who represented the British officers in so called the Boston Massacre). I was a young lawyer, working for the government, and decades later I still am.
When my children were young, we read together the collected A.A. Milne's collected Winnie-the Pooh stories. They were touching, and funny (I remember barely being able to read through laughter and tears (of mirth) Pooh's experience with his head stuck in the honey jar) and these were perfect moments of love and enjoyment with my children. Honorable mentions also The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit (again) and all the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Recently, reading Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough reinforced my feeling of being without a political tribe. I grew up in a millieu, where it was assumed the Rosenbergs were innocent, Alger Hiss wrongly accused, the radicals of the 70's were just misunderstood and acted rashly, but had their hearts in the right place, and that the Black Panthers were okay. Slowly, the foundations of these nice progressive left assumptions have crumbled for me, not "pilling" me in any direction, just not being able to be on any team any more, and sometimes not even able to talk to my family about things, but Days of Rage clarified a lot of things (some stuff that was happening near and around where I grew up, oblivious at the time) and showed that facts matter, truth matters, and that finding a way to make America continue to work was really important to me.
I could bore you with more, but those are some pretty critical ones so far. Who knows what comes next, but I hope to pick up and read more, even as the multiplicity of media has slowed my reading to a crawl.
this naked mind by annie grace.... this book truly helped me get sober and haven't had a drink in five years now! life of pi by yann martel, a little life by hanya yanagihara, summerland by michael chabon, and of course, the harry potter saga!
Dorothy Allison's Two or Three Things I know for Sure...“Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.” Then I went dormant for 22 years, until Meghan Daum's "The Problem with Everything"
The Alienist and Angel of Darkness were the first 2 novels I remember being completely absorbed by. Not too high brow, I realize. But it was the beginning of a deep and satisfying relationship with Crime Fiction as a genre. Also- Dave Eggers’ “Heartbreaking work......”
I have no idea if it holds up but it blew me away at the time.
Non fiction- Sam Harris “End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation”.
Read them both in the mid 2000s. Deeply influential at the time.
There are so many books I have loved over the years!
The Outlander series, Mrs. Mike, Charlotte's web, Pilgrim's Progress ( my mom read that to us when we were little, for some reason), and all the Ross MacDonald books I read when I was too young.
I think the Four Agreements, a self help book, was life changing because it really helped me through some bad times.
1. An essay I wrote in HS about "The Lord of the Flies" gave me the boost I needed back then (and should've heeded)...My teacher read some of it aloud to the class and then pointed out to me my strengths (writer) on my SCT scores (English)...
2. Spent most of my downtime reading Stephen King back then, too, and I still think he is a master at 3rd Person Omniscient POV narration.
3. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is the one novel that I have promised to myself to reread.
During my freshman year in high school, I would spend the half hour before school started reading the Time Life True Crime books series in the library. I was a depressed, not social kid and I loved to read. For some reason, I picked one up one morning and got hooked. They weren’t high brow or particularly challenging, and don’t reflect my level of reading now, but it laid the ground work for my fascination with criminal investigations and that was certainly life changing in that it has led me to an extremely satisfying and successful career.
Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Read it in high school, and it changed my life (taught me to not attach meaning to every little interaction). Read it again in college with the hopes of changing it back (didn’t happen, but gave me new perspective). I’ve related to each main character differently each time I read it.
So, Louise Perry's book (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, discussed in prior Smoke Ems) came in the mail this week and I'm draining my fine-point pen underlining everything. When are we going to discuss her pugnaciously specific viewpoint? I wonder if she'd do your podcast? She's definitely on the knife's edge of provocateur:
"Marilyn was scraped out again and again by back street abortionists because she died almost a decade before the Pill was made available to unmarried women in all American states."
or here...
"Hefner bought the crypt next door to Monroe's in the Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery...'spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up'...the long dead Monroe had no say in the matter."
but then she starts talking about evolutionary biology and how it's been sort of tossed away by liberal feminist (shorthand for 'blame the patriarchy').
I'm into it, but it's kind of brusque. It pairs well with Blonde. Though I have to watch Blonde in 5 minute periods. So very difficult to watch the little Norma Jeane and her mother. But it's mesmerizing for sure!
I don't know about life changing and I'm sure I'm forgetting many, but Philip's earlier mention of "Phantom Tollbooth" helped sparked a few memories. I devoured every Dr. Doolittle I could find; loved the adventures and just the thought of talking to animals. And I'm old enough to have been spared having to watch the movies, which don't match my mental image of the books. Also: "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea".
Ooooo, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I read it in high school and just remember it flipping my brain. Totally thought about civilization differently after this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
As an adolescent: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Absurdist humor, I didn't know it existed and books could be so outlandish, hilarious, and meaningful.
Also as an adolescent but reread multiple times as an adult: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Objectivist philosophy has the most overlap with my beliefs and actions.
As an adult: When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. When even your Nobel prize can't protect your ideas from failing at a globally catastrophic level. I have a well developed suspicion of institutional behavior, especially in finance. This mindset (further expanded by reading Nassim Taleb's Antifragile) affected my entire working career including why I was fired from my first job.
A little book called "Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget," by a talented young author named Sarah Hepola. Maybe you've heard of her.
I read a lot, and there are other books that have influenced me tremendously. But I say this about your work in all honesty, Sarah. xo
The Cather in the Rye.
Kids today need to read this... for obvious reasons. Mental health being primary. We have an epidemic of Holden Caufields... and many swaths of rye.
The Taoh of Winnie the Pooh was a wonderful book that helped me ground myself when I deployed. It simplified the philosophy in a way that allowed me to find quick comparisons when I was adopting habits I no longer wanted to hold.
Are you being Owl? He seems to know it all, but does he really?
Are you being Rabbit? Are you trying to control your garden, only to see it ruined time and time again?
Eeyore sees the world only with pessimism, and pessimism is all he will retain.
Sometimes I’ll give it as a gift to those who are feeling more lost than usual.
I cant say it changed my life but when I was a kid I was given a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth not long after it was published. I loved it. I can't tell you how many times I reread that book. The illustrations were also fantastic.
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When you're young, sometimes communism seems to be an attractive idea. Thing is, it always manages to end up with gulags, persecuted dissidents, show trials and summary executions. Secret police, the works. "The Gulag Archipelago" by the same author makes things clear, but it's a big ol' book. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" can be read in a few hours; it's easily digestable. Maybe even the better work for its brevity.
Changed my life?
Not sure it meets that standard, but profoundly interesting was Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear." Its setting is ice age Europe when modern humans (us) were interacting with neanderthals. Almost reads as fantasy/sci fi yet we know now (by DNA) they and us did interbreed.
Horrible move made of it but that doesn't mean a good one couldn't be. An HBO mini series would be better especially since there are a series of follow up books.
Lots of books have changed my life. I guess I'm lucky like that.
When I was in high school, Stephen King's The Green Mile kicked off a two-year binge where I read almost everything he'd written to that point. (In the 15 years since then, he's probably published at least 25 more books.) The Shining was a major influence for a while, though it's eclipsed by the Kubrick film a bit.
After being assigned James Joyce's Dubliners in 12th grade English, I developed a fascination with Joyce and his work that shaped my undergrad and graduate college career. Calling Ulysses your favorite novel is a bit like saying Citizen Kane is your favorite movie -- kind of a boring, safe pick -- but its reputation is definitely deserved.
After college, Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater reshaped my idea of what fiction could be. Joyce inspired an appreciation for dense, difficult fiction; Roth reminded me that smart novels can still be accessible (and funny as hell).
A few books on politics and media have blown my brain open. In college, it was The Autobiography of Malcolm X; more recently, Matt Taibbi's Hate, Inc. and Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal have given me a critical framework for understanding the moment we're in.
I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was in high school and it influenced me to this day. Not on the massive abuse of drugs that went on but seeing your own life as an art form. In any case, that's what I took from it.
A Helen Keller bio when I was maybe 11? She was so heroic! As was her teacher. Animal farm.. my 6th grade teacher had it on his borrow shelf. Fantastic! I find it hilarious that people on both sides of the political aisle are claiming this book right now… Back to social work .. To Kill a Mockingbird… I wound up in a life, a career of social work with people with IDD and MH.. Boo Radley so misunderstood…
And Carrie ! Stephen King opening the door to horror! And such otherworldly writing ! Read everything he’s written after that…
This Book Will Change Your Life by AM Holmes .. it didn’t but I got the point a great writer…
I did love Blackout …candid and illuminating and the disease affecting so many of my family members…
Edie: An American Biography by Jean Stein and George Plimpton. Showed me the power of voices unadorned by prose.
Stephen King is such a wonderful writer, it would make sense he would inspire you.
I read all his books and he’s a remarkably good speaker.
I think there have been many changes to my life through reading books, but I can point to a couple at critical points of my life. When I was 10, I picked up J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and read it by myself. My mother had read it to me when I was much younger, but the Rankin/Bass animated Hobbit had just come out, and it sent me to the book, which I read and found absolutely superior, and then I pulled down off the shelf my mother's copies of The Lord of the Rings. Not long after that, I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons, and I followed a lifelong love of imagination, mythology, fantasy, poetry and other worlds (real and imaginary).
After 9/11, I read David McCullough's John Adams biography, and it really helped my feelings of patriotism and sense of justice coalesce (him being a founding father, the second president, and behind the Declaration of Independence, but also the lawyer who represented the British officers in so called the Boston Massacre). I was a young lawyer, working for the government, and decades later I still am.
When my children were young, we read together the collected A.A. Milne's collected Winnie-the Pooh stories. They were touching, and funny (I remember barely being able to read through laughter and tears (of mirth) Pooh's experience with his head stuck in the honey jar) and these were perfect moments of love and enjoyment with my children. Honorable mentions also The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit (again) and all the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Recently, reading Days of Rage by Bryan Burrough reinforced my feeling of being without a political tribe. I grew up in a millieu, where it was assumed the Rosenbergs were innocent, Alger Hiss wrongly accused, the radicals of the 70's were just misunderstood and acted rashly, but had their hearts in the right place, and that the Black Panthers were okay. Slowly, the foundations of these nice progressive left assumptions have crumbled for me, not "pilling" me in any direction, just not being able to be on any team any more, and sometimes not even able to talk to my family about things, but Days of Rage clarified a lot of things (some stuff that was happening near and around where I grew up, oblivious at the time) and showed that facts matter, truth matters, and that finding a way to make America continue to work was really important to me.
I could bore you with more, but those are some pretty critical ones so far. Who knows what comes next, but I hope to pick up and read more, even as the multiplicity of media has slowed my reading to a crawl.
Thanks for another great discussion point!
this naked mind by annie grace.... this book truly helped me get sober and haven't had a drink in five years now! life of pi by yann martel, a little life by hanya yanagihara, summerland by michael chabon, and of course, the harry potter saga!
Dorothy Allison's Two or Three Things I know for Sure...“Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.” Then I went dormant for 22 years, until Meghan Daum's "The Problem with Everything"
The Alienist and Angel of Darkness were the first 2 novels I remember being completely absorbed by. Not too high brow, I realize. But it was the beginning of a deep and satisfying relationship with Crime Fiction as a genre. Also- Dave Eggers’ “Heartbreaking work......”
I have no idea if it holds up but it blew me away at the time.
Non fiction- Sam Harris “End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation”.
Read them both in the mid 2000s. Deeply influential at the time.
There are so many books I have loved over the years!
The Outlander series, Mrs. Mike, Charlotte's web, Pilgrim's Progress ( my mom read that to us when we were little, for some reason), and all the Ross MacDonald books I read when I was too young.
I think the Four Agreements, a self help book, was life changing because it really helped me through some bad times.
definitely will try "Bad Behavior".
agree "Different Seasons".
didn't realize I had already read it after enjoying the "Stand By Me" movie.
The Dead Zone was an excellent book and the movie with Christopher Walker was great too.
1. An essay I wrote in HS about "The Lord of the Flies" gave me the boost I needed back then (and should've heeded)...My teacher read some of it aloud to the class and then pointed out to me my strengths (writer) on my SCT scores (English)...
2. Spent most of my downtime reading Stephen King back then, too, and I still think he is a master at 3rd Person Omniscient POV narration.
3. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" is the one novel that I have promised to myself to reread.
When Panic Attacks by David Burns. My introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy as I burnt out in residency.
During my freshman year in high school, I would spend the half hour before school started reading the Time Life True Crime books series in the library. I was a depressed, not social kid and I loved to read. For some reason, I picked one up one morning and got hooked. They weren’t high brow or particularly challenging, and don’t reflect my level of reading now, but it laid the ground work for my fascination with criminal investigations and that was certainly life changing in that it has led me to an extremely satisfying and successful career.
Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Read it in high school, and it changed my life (taught me to not attach meaning to every little interaction). Read it again in college with the hopes of changing it back (didn’t happen, but gave me new perspective). I’ve related to each main character differently each time I read it.
Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress impacted me both religiously and politically.
So, Louise Perry's book (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, discussed in prior Smoke Ems) came in the mail this week and I'm draining my fine-point pen underlining everything. When are we going to discuss her pugnaciously specific viewpoint? I wonder if she'd do your podcast? She's definitely on the knife's edge of provocateur:
"Marilyn was scraped out again and again by back street abortionists because she died almost a decade before the Pill was made available to unmarried women in all American states."
or here...
"Hefner bought the crypt next door to Monroe's in the Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery...'spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up'...the long dead Monroe had no say in the matter."
but then she starts talking about evolutionary biology and how it's been sort of tossed away by liberal feminist (shorthand for 'blame the patriarchy').
I'm into it, but it's kind of brusque. It pairs well with Blonde. Though I have to watch Blonde in 5 minute periods. So very difficult to watch the little Norma Jeane and her mother. But it's mesmerizing for sure!
P.S. I'm currently reading "Cult Classic' by Sloan Chrisley. It's a delight to discover a really good new (to me), young (to me--I'm 57)) writer...
I don't know about life changing and I'm sure I'm forgetting many, but Philip's earlier mention of "Phantom Tollbooth" helped sparked a few memories. I devoured every Dr. Doolittle I could find; loved the adventures and just the thought of talking to animals. And I'm old enough to have been spared having to watch the movies, which don't match my mental image of the books. Also: "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea".
Great topic.
Ooooo, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I read it in high school and just remember it flipping my brain. Totally thought about civilization differently after this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
Three books changed my life:
As an adolescent: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Absurdist humor, I didn't know it existed and books could be so outlandish, hilarious, and meaningful.
Also as an adolescent but reread multiple times as an adult: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Objectivist philosophy has the most overlap with my beliefs and actions.
As an adult: When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. When even your Nobel prize can't protect your ideas from failing at a globally catastrophic level. I have a well developed suspicion of institutional behavior, especially in finance. This mindset (further expanded by reading Nassim Taleb's Antifragile) affected my entire working career including why I was fired from my first job.
...and I'd love to hear more about your book choices on the next pod, Sarah and Nancy! I love Gaitskill, though I have yet to read The Mare.