books that changed my life

I was reading John's blog this morning and read his post on books that changed his life (sort of). I immediately thought of a book that most certainly changed my life profoundly. And then another. And another. So, I thought I would co-opt his idea and write my own list.

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
One summer while in college, I stayed in Spokane to work before taking off to spend the last month of summer in Berlin. Dale Soden, one of my professors and favorite people to this day, supplied me with books to read that summer. I had a job working at Mead High School on the grounds crew. In the mornings we would work diligently so we could find a hiding spot to read and work on our tans in the afternoon. I hung out behind a tall hedge and read that summer. Dale lent me Pirsig's classic book and I read it in a breath. It changed everything for me. I began thinking about the way I approached things differently. Through that book I understood that my way of thinking was not just a string of thoughts but that I had my own philosophy. I was so influenced by that book that I won't go back and read it in more than bits because I know it will never be the same as that first time lo those many years ago.

2. Selected Poems by Mark Strand.
This is another book that I discovered in college. I took a contemporary American poetry class from Laurie Lamon, another beloved professor and dear friend. Laurie had studied with Strand and so he naturally made his way into her course in a direct way. I remember the first poem I read of Strand's. Wow. Then I got this book of selected poems and I wrote my first and only fan letter to a poet. I couldn't get over the beauty of his language and the way in which he was able to capture images and put them on a flat page so effectively. It was as if he had figured out how to bottle beauty. My lifelong love of and connection with poetry began right then and there.

3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.
These books go together because they did roughly the same thing for me. Borges' story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in this volume revealed to me the world of "what if." Kundera's books have done the same, starting with this one, but more profoundly in the book Identity. I love hypothetical questions and largely live in a world of what ifs. What if this were possible? Or that? It sometimes is an unpleasant place, but largely that way of thinking has allowed me to develop my potential. Chicken or egg? I am not sure, but I know that I didn't realize this about myself until I read these books. It's as if Kundera and Borges had written in order to show me that it was ok to imagine the bizarre, unlikely, and obscure could be real.

That's enough for now, but there are more. I won't tag anyone directly, but you know who you are. What about YOU?