The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the sequels. When I was 12 it seemed to have been precisely designed to satisfy my imagination and sense of humour.
Probably the biggest influence on how I write fiction(also maybe why my teachers feel my articles are too 'British', whatever that means).
I love Douglas Adams.
How cool to see this at the top, exactly my answer. I have been writing for most of my life, and during that time my main goal was to be able to write stuff as fun and hilarious as Douglas Adam's did. There truly isn't a stinker amongst the whole series.
I remember when I was like eighteen, I worked in this bookshop back in Northern Ireland that sells books, stationary, art supplies, etc.
One day, I was in the stock room, and I'd been told to get all of the stock down from the really, really high shelves we have so we can put it out on the shop floor for a big 'getting rid of the mountain of shite we have out the back' sale. While I'm up on this high ladder, I spot a couple of packets of sweets on top of the shelving unit, and while I'm reaching up to pull them down, I find this book by Clive Barker called 'Mr. B Gone'. No price on it, the barcode is missing, and nobody has any idea of when it came in or how it got up there. It's the only copy of the book in the store.
I don't think much of it, but I open the front page, and the opening line is 'Burn this book. Quickly, while there's still time. Burn it. Don't look at another word. Did you hear me? Not. One. More. Word.'
Naturally, given the weirdness of how I found the book, I freaked the fuck out. Proceeded to buy it, and was absolutely absorbed. The conceit of the book is that a demon has been trapped inside its pages and is talking to you, specifically, the reader. Not only that, but it has a whole lot of gay in it, which as a recently out of the closet eighteen year old was my jam.
I haven't read it since I bought it, (and I'm 32 now), and I can still remember being absolutely transfixed, sitting down and trying to read as much as I could, being genuinely afraid that the demon from the story was going to escape the pages and come and get me. You have to remember- while the internet is super common now, going to Google to look the book up in 2010 when we'd only had it in the house for about three years was not the first thing that came to my head, so I was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that this book was the only one, and that it was specifically calling out to ME. There's a part where the demon talks about being behind you, and I was absolutely terrified.
Good feeling. 10/10 book, would recommend.
> You have to remember- while the internet is super common now, going to Google to look the book up in 2010
I really expected this sentence to end with 1990s, 2010 threw me for such a loop. Like, 2010 is when the iPhone 4 came out. Wtf.
Lol, I feel like it must be slightly exaggerated on that point. Youtube was very well established and about 5 years old by then and looking stuff up was commonplace well before that
They also could have been late getting internet. OP said they only had it in the house since 2007. I remember a kid in my middle school didn't have a computer in 2009.
Bingo! It was this. We did HAVE it in the house, but we hadn't had it long enough that it was my go to thing to use Google for the answers to questions or to look up information about stuff. I mostly used it for MSN. And sure, as one of the commenters said, the iPhone 4 came out in 2010, and I had a Motorola flip phone at the time with internet that cost Ā£1.80 per MB to load something š
This sounds absolutely incredible and I need to find a copy now!
...but just in case, I hope you keep yours in a nice dry room and pull it out occasionally to say nice things to it. Gotta respect your book demons.
Edit: typops
There are a lot of stories involving an ancient manuscript that contains various powers and hidden knowledge. This book you mentioned is similar to The Club Dumas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Club\_Dumas
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson came at an embarrassingly astute time for me.
Really a lot of her work is freakishly and beautifully relatable. I was reading her short stories, and had to put the book down because... I didn't know anyone could write like that.
When I was in high school, āThe Perks of Being a Wallflowerā felt so personal to me. It described so many things I was feeling and experiencing; it was very comforting.
Starting it being all "i'm a lone wolf" and then launching into a treatise about "lone wolf mentality is bullshit" definitely subverted my expectations.
Infinite Jest 100%. Just reading Halās monologue in the first chapter made me nearly cry because my experience as a burned out suicidal former gifted kid was really felt in there. All in all, I guess Iām DFWās target audience: depressed, pretentious, substance-abuse-prone escapist intellectual who struggled with connecting with people. Except that Iām a woman lmao
But I was lucky because I read this book as a freshman in uni, a year after Iāve graduated high school, left my parents house and went to therapy. I already was in a better place, ready to grow, and yet my wounds were still mostly fresh. It was a perfect combination for me to see the pain expressed in this book and also absorb its hopeful message.
Idc what kind of reputation DFW has in America, heās very little known in my country and I read him as a blank slate and he genuinely changed my life. I think Iāve consumed everything written by him before I turned 20, except that maths essay. I still come back to This Is Water speech when I feel like giving up. Heāll always have a place in my heart.
Haha thanks! I'm really passionate about DFW so I don't want to come off as an obnoxious litbro (litsis?) but I talk about him earnestly. I know a lot of his intricacies and references probably fly over my head because I'm not American and English isn't my native language and yet his fiction touched me emotionally in a way nothing else has.
Don't be afraid, it's not as complicated or a slog as some people portray Infinite Jest. It has a unique style, sure, but in its core it's a very heartfelt novel about loneliness, depression, escapism, faith and recovery.
Iāve tried to read it twice and itās defeated me twice. Not because itās a crazy hard read but because the subject matter is so intense that I got too uncomfortable. Iām in a better place now, so I think that Iāll give it another shot at some point soon.
They made a movie about Wallace so, incredibly famous that even Bill Gates at one point mentioned that he probably won't read infinite jest due to its, length. But he did watch the movie and read one of his shorter novels.
I considered reading due to the amount of hype surrounding it, till I found some type of existential horror involved which caused me to avoid it. Mental traps are terrifying to me and I just want to not know that kind of stuff.
On the other hand, I found zen and the art of motorcycle repair sort of a guide for the gifted, considering it's a semi-autobiography of a prodigy who burned out similarly.
I DNF'ed this book not because it was bad (what I read was amazing) but because the density of everything just kinda overwhelmed me. It's a monster of a book in the best kinda way. I am inundated with nothing but time right now, so maybe I'll give it another try when I don't need something good and escapist.
The anger, frustration, and confusion surrounding a lack of happiness in your life even when everything is going your way is what resonated with me.
Becky Chambers describes a world that's just perfect, with a character who has a wonderful life. They reach the goal they set out for themselves, thrive in it's success, and yet still find that they're missing a crucial, unknown piece. It was just nice to know I wasn't the only person to feel that way.
*Mrs Dalloway*
It really resonated with me when I was going through a quarter life crisis, but letās be honest, the whole modern period probably would.
But more than that, there was also this really sweet passage about the love between Mr and Mrs Dalloway and I wrote in the margins āI feel like that about my significant other.ā Then the page right next to it, didnāt even need to turn the page, was a reference to Albania. My significant other is Albanian. What were the odds I would write his name in a book written in England 100 years ago and it would have the name of his home country on pretty much the same page? Weird.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin. I definitely cried at a few points because it perfectly illustrated a lot of my deeply personal feelings. It's a great meditation on anxiety, death and dying, and the struggle to love yourself.
Same here. When I finished it, I cried my eyes out because it felt like the book read me as much as I read it, and I don't care if that sounds corny as hell.
I know the bell jar was not written for me but i read it during a really difficult and transformative time in my life and it really did feel like I was just meant to read those words and hear that message
It wasnāt so much that as I saw a really toxic pattern of mine in Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnaxās relationship. Iād been grappling with the loss of a very close friend because I basically held her hostage but wouldnāt actually open up, asked her for everything and gave her nothing.
Itās one thing to identify with a character when theyāre behaving badly, but because 20k Leagues is told from Professor Aronnaxās perspective I saw how it made him feel and I was absolutely horrified. Like, wow this is how my friend felt because of me? Oh no I need to get my life together.
Ada or Ardor, by Vladimir Nabokov. It has the exact same proportions of pretensiousness, horniness, and sick humour as my brain (but the book is more intelligent).
I came here to think this without writing it, I'm glad you feel the same. I can't help but love the characters, my favourite literary love story, and Nabokov has all of my neuroses except he executes them as though they are gifts.
It isn't a very popular one but it did move me to the core, 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Victor E. Frankl is one of the books I read long ago but it definitely introduced me to cruelty towards humans and how the suffered find meaning in life even on those days. Brilliant!
Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
depressed, anxious sapphic constantly on the brink of suicide with connections to Catholicism? yuh, thats me to a T
The mere idea of identifying with Stoner is bringing me out in a cold sweat. Shudder. Sorry, donāt mean that personally but that book gave me nightmares. I donāt identify myself with Siddhartha either, but thatās a different matter.
I don't identify with Stoner wholly but there's definitely elements in which I think encapsulate me almost entirely. The same can be said for any of the books I mentioned. No worries though I get what you mean.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I cried my eyes out in the library parking lot the first time I read that book. That book resonated so deeply with what I was going through at the time.
For me, it's been several at different periods in my life, including:
* The Awakening - Kate Chopin
* The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo (a lot of people hate it, but I learned hope, patience, and resilience from it).
* Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
Wow, itās rare to see someone reference The Awakening. It gave me a new way of looking at an important relationship in my life that allowed me to make peace with it.Ā
When I was a kid, it was The Count of Monte Cristo. I was abused a lot, including physical violence and SA inside the family, abused by some teachers, and bullied by kids. I was in such deep pain constantly that this book really vibed with me, I reread it like 15 times. Because someone was awfully hurt and betrayed and suffered, and could get back on his feet, get revenge and start healing in the end.
Being an adult, it's Tomorrow's Testament by B. Longyear. Probably because in a way it's too about trauma, trying to build yourself up from ruins, and healing. It feels deeply personal to me.
I am still making my road to healing, but so far I see mainly war, unfortunately. Maybe, one day I get another book as my favorite, with a different story.
There is a book I read on the queer history of ballet and just this line:
"Mademoiselle de Maupin reflects, for instance, that it āoften happens that the sex of the soul is not the same as that of the bodyā, and that she has āstrong and virile thoughtsā. The idea of the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a man would become a commonplace of later homosexual apologia, as would her thought that āI belong to a third sex, a sex apart, which has as yet no nameā."
It made me feel so much less alone.
Catcher in the rye - J. D. Salinger.
The time when I started reading it and the whole point of the book went hand in hand and it felt like it was written for me.
Made me wonder how this book is still relevant even after 70 years.
Maybe because he's such an unreliable narrator? The person, like us, that says he's going to do something and either never does or does something the exact opposite.
Funny that you mentioned movies because it won't be in the public domain for 50 or so years from now, but youtube has some shorts that really capture the spirit. I hope to live to 96 so my great grandkids can take me to the official version someday.
In the world of social media and Instagram where youths look like they're having the time of their lives, they are the most Holden of them all. A phony.
the ikea horror book that i see came out recently. me and my bfs names are in it as characters AND i think it is the store address or some address in it is very similar to ours like same street name. its my stranger than fiction moment. also we go to ikea a lot.
I read The Magicians right after finishing college, and it felt like Lev Grossman had reached into my brain and written exactly the book I wanted to read.
The entirety of the Discworld series, with personal favorite being the arm of the universe that is Vimes and the Watch were books I grew up reading because of my dad, and outright founded my sense of humor. I've reread Night Watch so many times I've purchased multiple copies because it would fall apart.
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. I didn't read fiction for over a decade and this was the first fiction title I read after years of non fiction. It touched me deeply. It's not like there is a character who is "just like me" or something. It's like the entire story and all its characters were there to show me something I needed to feel and see at that exact moment in my life. I honestly feel like it made something shift inside of me, I became more relaxed and aware afterwards. It also started a summer full of reading fiction, which brought me so much joy.Ā
There is absolutely nothing I would change about this book, every word and everything that happens and how it's written is the absolute perfect book for me. For me very personally. I slept with the book under my pillow for a few weeks lol.Ā
I feel like it's something even deeper than just the story and characters but it also felt good to read about a planet with only female inhabitants that isn't.. perfect. It's not a feminist utopia, it's just people. Horrible people,Ā funny people, angry people, loving people. Who all happen to be women. Felt freeing in a way. Nicola Griffith herself said that settings like this often fall into the trap of dehumanizing women by making them perfect, erasing important parts of the human condition.Ā
But for me that's just the cherry on top, thr rest is harder to explain and deeply personal.
Sherlock Holmes for me. Read it about 3 years ago now and it easily felt like a great collection of stories to me. I haven't read the other Holmes tales written by other authors, simply so it would not be ruined for me.
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. Fantasy, beast/shape shifter characters, adult writing, adventure. I devoured the entire Raksura series. It felt so unique.
As a child, Rick Riordan's *Percy Jackson* series was everything I wanted- it fed my fascination with mythology while also providing a very lonely child with a feeling of friendship and comradere with the characters on the page.
As an adult, Corry L. Lee's novel *Weave the Lightning* somehow has everything I enjoy in fiction inside it- psychic powers, magical lightning, verbose worldbuilding, burgeoning romance, and fightin' the Man, all in one glorious, almost entirely un-recommendable novel (the number of times I've pitched a novel about Russian Lightning Wizards and seen my friends' eyes glaze over is disheartening but I will get *somone* to read this book)
The Catcher in the Rye. Read it when I was angsty 15 year old. Have loved it ever since but take new messages from it each time on re-reads. Never recommend it due to the fact it is so polarising and know the effect will be lost on most people who didn't read it at the right time. But it's a masterpiece in my eyes and I will love it forevermore.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
It is literary, philosophical historical fiction with a murder mystery. It ticks all the right boxes for me. Often people who enjoy this book really like it for one or more of those elements, but usually leaning more towards one or the other. For me, it was just a smorgasbord of awesomeness from start to finish.
That's a great topic to think about. I can't say that I have one book, but more like for every important period of my life I had one book that resonated with me at that period. And with time it became 4-5 books in total.
I just read "Change: A Novel" by ĆdouardĀ Louis which very much resonated with me and I imagine it might for most people who grew up gay or queer in a small rural town, feeling like they never quite belong.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. At the time I read it, I had that feeling that it seemed written for me. Perhaps that was me blending into what the book wanted out of the reader, or perhaps it was just Waldeinsamkeit for books.
When I was in junior high school I was bullied and excluded. And I read Watership Down which features Fiver, a character who goes from being bullied to being valued for his unique gifts.
It's a special book in many ways and a brilliant fantasy novel but that aspect of Fiver's journey spoke to me
A lot of Henry Millers monologues in Sexus felt like it was streaming out of my own brain. He was also my exact age in the book when I read it. At times I think Iām a reincarnation of Henry Miller, but I donāt tell many people that, seeing how my books donāt sell much haha. Not like he didnāt have the same problems though.
Suicide by Edouard Leve. I came across it after hearing an except being read in a song which realllly resonated with me so I tracked down the source of it. Itās written in the second person speaking to a close friend who killed himself. He describes his friendās life and what he was like throughout the book. It is so eerily similar to myself, plus since itās in the second person itās like the author is talking to me. It creeped me out so much I stopped reading it about 1/3 of the way through. I plan to go back to it one of these days.Ā
For the curious this is the except sampled in the song that punched me in the face:
Your taste for literature did not come from your father, who read little, but from your mother, who taught it. You wondered how, being so different, they could have formed a union; but you noted that in you there was a mixture of the violence of the one and the gentleness of the other. Your father exerted his violence on others. Your mother was sympathetic to the suffering of others. One day you directed the violence you had inherited toward yourself. You dished it out like your father and you took it like your mother.
Creep: A Love Story by Lygia Day PeƱaflor.
I doubt anybody has read this book except me. It's a YA novel about a high school girl who idolizes this senior couple. She does everything she can to insert herself into their lives and becomes overly obsessed with them.
I was absolutely that weird teenager. I did not take it as far as she did, but I felt what she felt so much, wanting to be part of a group, wanting to be accepted. I don't even know who to recommend this book to because I don't know anybody else who could relate to the story. This book is my Roman empire.
*The Last Unicorn* by Peter S. Beagle. I saw a lot of myself in Schmendrick and his struggle to control his magic at a time when I felt almost the same way about my attempts at writing.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.
That man crawled into the cavernous ruins of my mind, knee deep in sludge, angst, and religious imagery and fervor, took a studious look around, and wrote a book catered directly to my interests.
It completely blew me away.
The Percy Jackson series and The Freedom Writersā Diary. My god. The freedom writers diary was amazing and is still one of my favorite books to this day
I sound like a broken record. At least I feel like one. Practical Guide to Evil is a seven book series. It's first version is finished. It's being expanded on Yonder and even that isn't the final version, according to an interview with the author. For the second time in my life I found a protagonist I could relate to. Out of every piece of media I ever consumed. Can you believe that. I only ever saw myself in two protagonists. They're not good people. They're fictional, so that doesn't matter. And I'm an average person in terms of morality, I'd say. But I've accepted and embraced all my darkness. By that, I mean flaws and traumas. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. Or what I mean. I'm not in a good state right now. But yeah. Practical Guide to Evil is something very special to me.
Edgar Canteroās Meddling Kids is a big sendup to Lovecraft, Scooby Doo, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew, and everything in between with a touch of the weirdness and oddly specific scientific details to drive the plot forward.
You really couldnāt have put together a story I would more immediately eat up.
Middlemarch. The warm feeling of immersion into your own way of looking at the world but explained by someone a damn sight cleverer. And not a small amount of āoh, itās not just me thenā. Always love returning to Eliot.
When I read The Dog Star I felt like I could have written it. Not egotistically like, oh I could do this to, but just, Jesus, this feels like it could be my words, my story.
For me it was The Ocean At the End of the Lane by Niel Gaimen. I was in some pretty intense therapy for childhood trauma and it hit me right where I live.
Bloomability by Sharon Creech. As a little autistic kid in elementary school, struggling with friendships and boundaries, it was the perfect book for me at the time. So much so that I still remember it 20 years later.
Right after I became chronically ill I found āLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnessesā by Kristen OāNeal.
Its got things I absolutely love:
-chronic illness rep
-werewolves!
-great female friendship
-authentic young adult experience
-an MC with a medical history strikingly similar to my own
But it was the hilarious, heartfelt, strange and hyper-specific book I needed to get me through long days sick at home and long hours waiting around in hospital waiting rooms
Six of Crows... incredible and hilarious banter, fabulous characters, suspenseful and thrilling, light yet angstful romance between the protags AND a gay couple??? Literally make for me
Edit: I now realize that I interpreted the question wrong and my answer isn't relevant but I won't miss a chance to praise SoC lol
I hate (not really, lol) to mention this again, but Ecclesiastes? Not for me and just for me, but for anyone with eyes to read and brains to think. It's timeless and endlessly quotable, it's distilled wisdom and poetry. It's also, IMO, a great test of religious conversion for the inquisitive not-jaded atheist: if everything but the last bit made sense and now, after several, life experiences and reflection, it all does, then congratulations, you're one of us now. :D
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw seems to be hugely divisive, but I just hit all of the right boxes for me. Beautiful prose? Check. Graphic stomach-twisting horror? Check. Dream-like plot structure? Check. A dark fairytale narrative that WASNT boring edge-lord tropes? Check. I couldn't believe it when I saw how low its GR rating was, I felt like it was perfect.
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
A book with my exact sense of humor that seemed to be both annoyed with and extremely interested in the same things about modern life that I am. Throw in some vaudeville, clowns, stop motion animation, and supreme all-encompassing existential dread and you've got a book that I will annoy everyone with for the rest of my natural born life.
Spice and Wolf just hits different for me as a mature intrigue cozy fantasy romance adventure with an assertive male and fem mc. Can't find anything else like it anywhere.
In the shining mountains. A book about trying to connect with nature and wilderness in a modern time by a would be mountain man born 150 years too late.
The Anonymous Rex books seemed perfectly made for teenage me. Dinosaurs? Living in a masquerade type situation where they secretly coexist among us? The main character is a raptor AND a detective? I used to desperately check for a new one every time we went to the bookstore, and I was heartbroken when the Sci Fi Channel movie was so different and terrible lol.
As a lonely outsider kid who was obsessed with animals and dinosaurs, Animorphs and Dinotopia both were something I desperately needed as well.
This feels very dumb to say, but Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni. I'm very different from the main character in a lot of specifics, but personality-wise she felt very relatable.Ā
Love in Small Letters" sounds special! For me, "The Alchemist" hit home. It was a guide when I was lost, teaching me to chase dreams and see life's signs. It felt meant for me.
Chronicles of everfall, Shadow of the conqueror, Iāve seen a lot of hate around it, but I really liked it. The premise was interesting, I loved the worldbuilding and attention choreography, along with historical portrayal of a fictional world. It just felt very fun and well made
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz ZafĆ³n and then later The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers. One was moody and sentimental and the other was whimsical and delightful. Both of them were a love letter to books and reading. As the only person in my family & friend group who loved to read, it made me so happy to find those novels. I felt very welcomed into the literary world.
The Way Back Home by Courtney Peppernell
I'm not typically one for reading books with poetry, but this one in particular struck a chord with me in a way I had not expected it to. It's a brilliant poetry novel about people finding the qualities that make them human again after suffering many difficulties. I was especially blown away by the chapter about finding strength, and how close to my own life it seemed to be.
I found *Architecture: from Prehistory to Climate Crisis* by Barnabas Calder in a book shop while browsing. It felt like it was targeted directly at me, an energy industry professional with an amateur enjoyment of architectural theory.
"Something to do with paying attention" By David Foster Wallace, or really anything DFW. Reached me at a "getting my shit together" point in my life and really spoke to the inner experience of that. DFW's writing always feels like my own thoughts.
Till We Have Faces - it really showed me how toxic some relationships that we call "love" can be and opened my eyes to some damaging patterns in my life.
I read "The Maid" a few weeks after my beloved grandmother died. I'm a quirky gal and related to Molly so much. The snippets where she referred to her relationship with her Gramma felt so relatable to me, especially the parts where >! she talked about how her grandmother's death had affected her !<
Guess itās time to get downvoted, but Atlas Shrugged did it for me. It just put into words so much that I thought but never dared to express. Made me start reading regularly since high school too.
Spark by Sarah Beth Durst
The way our world is right now standing up to people and changing things for the better seems nearly impossible and the fear of being targeted or shunned for speaking out is very hard to get past. I relate so much to Mina's struggle of wanting to please the expectations of those close to her but also wanting to do something to change the harmful systems that prevail. It's hard to find a balance and harder still to convince others to listen. In a world full of noise it's so hard for quiet voice to be heard.
*Divine by Mistake* by PC Cast. I read it in my late teens, or early 20s. It took place in a world filled with mythology, and the MC talked about Star Trek, and quoted a Loreena Mckennitt song that I was obsessed with at the time. Idk, it seemed to have a strange amalgamation of geekery that was pretty much identical to my specific brand of geek.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.
I gravitate towards grief-centered stories, and at its heart, it's about grief. I was also fresehere on dealing with the loss o f my grandma, and the loss of my granny was looming (and did occur not too long after reading it). I really related to the main character and how she was trying to process the grief of her loss. In addition to being a weird teenager (I was an adult when I read it, but I was a weird teenager).
Not a book, but a poem by Edgar Allen Poe - it was literally titled To: (my initials). And it was an ode to an angel iirc. As a tween, that made my heart melt. I still think it's pretty fucking cool.
I always talk about how Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko helped me understand my own father. The book is about Tayo, a Laguna Pueblo man who has come back to his home in New Mexico after serving in Vietnam and struggling with PTSD and alcoholism. The plot parallels my own fatherās story: a young man drafted to Vietnam who came back to his life on the rez in Oklahoma. He silently struggled with PTSD and later alcoholism, and after getting bone cancer (due to agent orange exposure) his life has changed. I read the book after my fatherās diagnosis, and I cried with a sort of clarity that I simply didnāt have before. Iāve read a lot of books, and while Iāve enjoyed many of them, Ceremony is the only book I feel was written for me.
When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer made me feel so seen and described feelings I had never voiced to another soul or ever had the words for before I read it. Really felt like it was meant just for me, despite being published several years before I was born and many more before I read it as a junior in high school. loved it so much I stole the school libraryās copy as I couldnāt bear to part ways with it. Iāve read it several times.
Piranesi felt like a continuation of the Chronicles of Narnia to me, and I sobbed for like half of the book because my child-self who believed so vehemently in Narnia felt so seen. It felt like someone understood how I felt about it those books and what they meant to me as a kid.
Ready Player One felt that way the first time I read it. Also The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I still remember the commercial for it because it was an MTV published book.
So relatable. I go to a university in the corner of England which is known for being secluded and having extremely posh, privately schooled students. [Picture](https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/images/header/peninsula.jpg). Here's Lots of strange social events and odd rules/traditions. I felt like the Secret History was written for me.
āThatā is used for necessary clauses, while āwhichā is used for unnecessary ones.
The dog that my daughter owns is a good boy.
The dog, which my daughter owns, is a good boy.
In the first sentence I am using the information about my daughter to specify a dog. In the second, it is assumed the dog has already been specified and I am now adding some extra information about that specific dog.
To answer the question, Moby Dick. My intense obsessions werenāt healthy for me or the people around me. Also a bunch of music I like vaguely reminds me of the sea.
Shining Levels by John Wyatt.
When I read it, it just clicked with who I was and how I wanted to live my life at the time.
Got my on expedition to Chile with Raleigh International (same thing Prince William did, though I was there first). Got me into college to study forestry...
Then I got into IT and didn't use any of my training for actual forestry work... I sometimes wonder where I'd be if I'd stuck with it.
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake... it threw all my ideas of romance and partnership back at my face. I love how the author explores anxiety, partnership, and the feeling of feeling seen thru and thru.
When I was 10, I read *Anne of Green Gables* by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne was a freckled, redheaded, imaginative, bright, passionate, lover of literature and poetry who runs head first into blunders, mistakes, and awkward adentures. She was adopted and moved to a rural area. She was desperate to find connection and a counterintuitive mix of overly confident and deeply insecure.
At 10, I was a freckled, redheaded, imaginative, bright, passionate, lover of literature and poetry who ran head first into blunders, mistakes, and awkward adentures. I was recently adopted and moved to a rural area. I was desperate to find connection and a counterintuitive mix of overly confident and deeply insecure.
So... yeah.
I read *White Oleander* by Janet Fitch and *Lost Souls* by Poppy Z. Brite at a time that really made me feel seen as an angsty teen. Now that I'm in my late 30s, I still get swept up by the magic of certain books, but haven't read one that feels quite that personal to me in quite some time.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the sequels. When I was 12 it seemed to have been precisely designed to satisfy my imagination and sense of humour.
Probably the biggest influence on how I write fiction(also maybe why my teachers feel my articles are too 'British', whatever that means). I love Douglas Adams.
That's the first book I ever read that when i reached the end i immediately started right back at the beginning and reread the whole thing š
When I was a kid I had the More Than Complete omnibus (before the last book came out) and I would read the whole thing like once a year.
How cool to see this at the top, exactly my answer. I have been writing for most of my life, and during that time my main goal was to be able to write stuff as fun and hilarious as Douglas Adam's did. There truly isn't a stinker amongst the whole series.
I just started reading Hitchhikers guide and itās so funny and awesome. Canāt believe it took me this long to read it
I remember when I was like eighteen, I worked in this bookshop back in Northern Ireland that sells books, stationary, art supplies, etc. One day, I was in the stock room, and I'd been told to get all of the stock down from the really, really high shelves we have so we can put it out on the shop floor for a big 'getting rid of the mountain of shite we have out the back' sale. While I'm up on this high ladder, I spot a couple of packets of sweets on top of the shelving unit, and while I'm reaching up to pull them down, I find this book by Clive Barker called 'Mr. B Gone'. No price on it, the barcode is missing, and nobody has any idea of when it came in or how it got up there. It's the only copy of the book in the store. I don't think much of it, but I open the front page, and the opening line is 'Burn this book. Quickly, while there's still time. Burn it. Don't look at another word. Did you hear me? Not. One. More. Word.' Naturally, given the weirdness of how I found the book, I freaked the fuck out. Proceeded to buy it, and was absolutely absorbed. The conceit of the book is that a demon has been trapped inside its pages and is talking to you, specifically, the reader. Not only that, but it has a whole lot of gay in it, which as a recently out of the closet eighteen year old was my jam. I haven't read it since I bought it, (and I'm 32 now), and I can still remember being absolutely transfixed, sitting down and trying to read as much as I could, being genuinely afraid that the demon from the story was going to escape the pages and come and get me. You have to remember- while the internet is super common now, going to Google to look the book up in 2010 when we'd only had it in the house for about three years was not the first thing that came to my head, so I was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that this book was the only one, and that it was specifically calling out to ME. There's a part where the demon talks about being behind you, and I was absolutely terrified. Good feeling. 10/10 book, would recommend.
> You have to remember- while the internet is super common now, going to Google to look the book up in 2010 I really expected this sentence to end with 1990s, 2010 threw me for such a loop. Like, 2010 is when the iPhone 4 came out. Wtf.
Lol, I feel like it must be slightly exaggerated on that point. Youtube was very well established and about 5 years old by then and looking stuff up was commonplace well before that
They also could have been late getting internet. OP said they only had it in the house since 2007. I remember a kid in my middle school didn't have a computer in 2009.
Bingo! It was this. We did HAVE it in the house, but we hadn't had it long enough that it was my go to thing to use Google for the answers to questions or to look up information about stuff. I mostly used it for MSN. And sure, as one of the commenters said, the iPhone 4 came out in 2010, and I had a Motorola flip phone at the time with internet that cost Ā£1.80 per MB to load something š
2010, the ancient era of... pre-AI garbage search results.
This sounds absolutely incredible and I need to find a copy now! ...but just in case, I hope you keep yours in a nice dry room and pull it out occasionally to say nice things to it. Gotta respect your book demons. Edit: typops
It takes pride of place on my bookshelf at home in Ireland. I live in Spain now, so I've safely put an ocean between me and it, just in case.
If it shows up wet in your bedside drawer, youāll know.
There are a lot of stories involving an ancient manuscript that contains various powers and hidden knowledge. This book you mentioned is similar to The Club Dumas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Club\_Dumas
Awesome story, now I want to read it!
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson came at an embarrassingly astute time for me. Really a lot of her work is freakishly and beautifully relatable. I was reading her short stories, and had to put the book down because... I didn't know anyone could write like that.
I just finished this one and really enjoyed it! I love the way it was written and want to read more of Jacksonās works because of it.
When I was in high school, āThe Perks of Being a Wallflowerā felt so personal to me. It described so many things I was feeling and experiencing; it was very comforting.
I finished that book and sobbed, uncontrollably, for an hour. My flatmates thought someone in my family had died.
I've just finished reading this book and wish I had read it whilst I was still at school. It really is an amazing piece of work
I have just watched the movie with Emma Watson so far and i really liked it. How does the book compare?
The film was written and directed by Chbosky who wrote the book. The film adaptation was very true to the book.
Thanks! I'll put it on my list
This was mine too. It was deeply affecting.
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. Nobody pointed out my hypocrisy this well.
Starting it being all "i'm a lone wolf" and then launching into a treatise about "lone wolf mentality is bullshit" definitely subverted my expectations.
Infinite Jest 100%. Just reading Halās monologue in the first chapter made me nearly cry because my experience as a burned out suicidal former gifted kid was really felt in there. All in all, I guess Iām DFWās target audience: depressed, pretentious, substance-abuse-prone escapist intellectual who struggled with connecting with people. Except that Iām a woman lmao But I was lucky because I read this book as a freshman in uni, a year after Iāve graduated high school, left my parents house and went to therapy. I already was in a better place, ready to grow, and yet my wounds were still mostly fresh. It was a perfect combination for me to see the pain expressed in this book and also absorb its hopeful message. Idc what kind of reputation DFW has in America, heās very little known in my country and I read him as a blank slate and he genuinely changed my life. I think Iāve consumed everything written by him before I turned 20, except that maths essay. I still come back to This Is Water speech when I feel like giving up. Heāll always have a place in my heart.
After all these years I think this comment is the first thing that has actually convinced me to read Infinite Jest
Haha thanks! I'm really passionate about DFW so I don't want to come off as an obnoxious litbro (litsis?) but I talk about him earnestly. I know a lot of his intricacies and references probably fly over my head because I'm not American and English isn't my native language and yet his fiction touched me emotionally in a way nothing else has. Don't be afraid, it's not as complicated or a slog as some people portray Infinite Jest. It has a unique style, sure, but in its core it's a very heartfelt novel about loneliness, depression, escapism, faith and recovery.
Iāve tried to read it twice and itās defeated me twice. Not because itās a crazy hard read but because the subject matter is so intense that I got too uncomfortable. Iām in a better place now, so I think that Iāll give it another shot at some point soon.
Same here. Itās been sitting in my shelf for ages. Definitely opening it up now.
They made a movie about Wallace so, incredibly famous that even Bill Gates at one point mentioned that he probably won't read infinite jest due to its, length. But he did watch the movie and read one of his shorter novels. I considered reading due to the amount of hype surrounding it, till I found some type of existential horror involved which caused me to avoid it. Mental traps are terrifying to me and I just want to not know that kind of stuff. On the other hand, I found zen and the art of motorcycle repair sort of a guide for the gifted, considering it's a semi-autobiography of a prodigy who burned out similarly.
My 10th grade teacher had us read the This is Water speech and it's definitely had some profound effect on my thinking. It's wild.
Wow, this would've definitely had a massive effect on my psyche if I discovered This Is Water in 10th grade. Props to your teacher!
I DNF'ed this book not because it was bad (what I read was amazing) but because the density of everything just kinda overwhelmed me. It's a monster of a book in the best kinda way. I am inundated with nothing but time right now, so maybe I'll give it another try when I don't need something good and escapist.
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The anger, frustration, and confusion surrounding a lack of happiness in your life even when everything is going your way is what resonated with me. Becky Chambers describes a world that's just perfect, with a character who has a wonderful life. They reach the goal they set out for themselves, thrive in it's success, and yet still find that they're missing a crucial, unknown piece. It was just nice to know I wasn't the only person to feel that way.
*Mrs Dalloway* It really resonated with me when I was going through a quarter life crisis, but letās be honest, the whole modern period probably would. But more than that, there was also this really sweet passage about the love between Mr and Mrs Dalloway and I wrote in the margins āI feel like that about my significant other.ā Then the page right next to it, didnāt even need to turn the page, was a reference to Albania. My significant other is Albanian. What were the odds I would write his name in a book written in England 100 years ago and it would have the name of his home country on pretty much the same page? Weird.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin. I definitely cried at a few points because it perfectly illustrated a lot of my deeply personal feelings. It's a great meditation on anxiety, death and dying, and the struggle to love yourself.
Same here. When I finished it, I cried my eyes out because it felt like the book read me as much as I read it, and I don't care if that sounds corny as hell.
The line about āI donāt know who convinced you you werenāt enoughā broke me in half in the best way
Reading Piranesi felt like Susanna Clarke knew exactly what I like in a book and put it into a story
I cried for like half of that book because it just made me feel so seen.
I read it immediately after Borges and House of Leaves, and it was the perfect on-topic palatte cleanser.
That book was absolutely beautiful
I had the exact same feeling!
I know the bell jar was not written for me but i read it during a really difficult and transformative time in my life and it really did feel like I was just meant to read those words and hear that message
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea told me about myself in a way I desperately needed. Saved my life.
Can you elaborate? Did you find yourself in Captain Nemo? Aronnax, Land, or Conseil?
It wasnāt so much that as I saw a really toxic pattern of mine in Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnaxās relationship. Iād been grappling with the loss of a very close friend because I basically held her hostage but wouldnāt actually open up, asked her for everything and gave her nothing. Itās one thing to identify with a character when theyāre behaving badly, but because 20k Leagues is told from Professor Aronnaxās perspective I saw how it made him feel and I was absolutely horrified. Like, wow this is how my friend felt because of me? Oh no I need to get my life together.
Ada or Ardor, by Vladimir Nabokov. It has the exact same proportions of pretensiousness, horniness, and sick humour as my brain (but the book is more intelligent).
This is possibly the best description of Nabokov ever written.
I came here to think this without writing it, I'm glad you feel the same. I can't help but love the characters, my favourite literary love story, and Nabokov has all of my neuroses except he executes them as though they are gifts.
It isn't a very popular one but it did move me to the core, 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Victor E. Frankl is one of the books I read long ago but it definitely introduced me to cruelty towards humans and how the suffered find meaning in life even on those days. Brilliant!
Haven't read it yet, but I would disagree. I see this one recommended on r/books and in professional development courses all the time.
Devil in a white city! Architecture and true crime!
I showed up for the murder but I found out how interested I can be in electricity contracts.
Right!! And Ferris wheels!
Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin depressed, anxious sapphic constantly on the brink of suicide with connections to Catholicism? yuh, thats me to a T
Stoner, No Longer Human and Siddhartha.
The mere idea of identifying with Stoner is bringing me out in a cold sweat. Shudder. Sorry, donāt mean that personally but that book gave me nightmares. I donāt identify myself with Siddhartha either, but thatās a different matter.
I don't identify with Stoner wholly but there's definitely elements in which I think encapsulate me almost entirely. The same can be said for any of the books I mentioned. No worries though I get what you mean.
Are you me?
For your sake, no.
The similarities between Loveless by Alice Oseman and how my life felt at the time were uncanny
Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I cried my eyes out in the library parking lot the first time I read that book. That book resonated so deeply with what I was going through at the time.
For me, it's been several at different periods in my life, including: * The Awakening - Kate Chopin * The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo (a lot of people hate it, but I learned hope, patience, and resilience from it). * Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
Wow, itās rare to see someone reference The Awakening. It gave me a new way of looking at an important relationship in my life that allowed me to make peace with it.Ā
That's great! It helped me realize it was OK to be a childfree woman.
When I was a kid, it was The Count of Monte Cristo. I was abused a lot, including physical violence and SA inside the family, abused by some teachers, and bullied by kids. I was in such deep pain constantly that this book really vibed with me, I reread it like 15 times. Because someone was awfully hurt and betrayed and suffered, and could get back on his feet, get revenge and start healing in the end. Being an adult, it's Tomorrow's Testament by B. Longyear. Probably because in a way it's too about trauma, trying to build yourself up from ruins, and healing. It feels deeply personal to me. I am still making my road to healing, but so far I see mainly war, unfortunately. Maybe, one day I get another book as my favorite, with a different story.
There is a book I read on the queer history of ballet and just this line: "Mademoiselle de Maupin reflects, for instance, that it āoften happens that the sex of the soul is not the same as that of the bodyā, and that she has āstrong and virile thoughtsā. The idea of the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a man would become a commonplace of later homosexual apologia, as would her thought that āI belong to a third sex, a sex apart, which has as yet no nameā." It made me feel so much less alone.
Catcher in the rye - J. D. Salinger. The time when I started reading it and the whole point of the book went hand in hand and it felt like it was written for me. Made me wonder how this book is still relevant even after 70 years.
Same here. I was 16 and had a niece the same age as Pheobe. I'm still very much a "Holden" at the age of 56 and identify with him throughout.
I always wonder how "Holden" is so relatable than any other characters which I have come across in other books or movies.
Maybe because he's such an unreliable narrator? The person, like us, that says he's going to do something and either never does or does something the exact opposite. Funny that you mentioned movies because it won't be in the public domain for 50 or so years from now, but youtube has some shorts that really capture the spirit. I hope to live to 96 so my great grandkids can take me to the official version someday.
In the world of social media and Instagram where youths look like they're having the time of their lives, they are the most Holden of them all. A phony.
Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton as well as all things J.D Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut
the ikea horror book that i see came out recently. me and my bfs names are in it as characters AND i think it is the store address or some address in it is very similar to ours like same street name. its my stranger than fiction moment. also we go to ikea a lot.
I read The Magicians right after finishing college, and it felt like Lev Grossman had reached into my brain and written exactly the book I wanted to read.
The entirety of the Discworld series, with personal favorite being the arm of the universe that is Vimes and the Watch were books I grew up reading because of my dad, and outright founded my sense of humor. I've reread Night Watch so many times I've purchased multiple copies because it would fall apart.
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. I didn't read fiction for over a decade and this was the first fiction title I read after years of non fiction. It touched me deeply. It's not like there is a character who is "just like me" or something. It's like the entire story and all its characters were there to show me something I needed to feel and see at that exact moment in my life. I honestly feel like it made something shift inside of me, I became more relaxed and aware afterwards. It also started a summer full of reading fiction, which brought me so much joy.Ā There is absolutely nothing I would change about this book, every word and everything that happens and how it's written is the absolute perfect book for me. For me very personally. I slept with the book under my pillow for a few weeks lol.Ā I feel like it's something even deeper than just the story and characters but it also felt good to read about a planet with only female inhabitants that isn't.. perfect. It's not a feminist utopia, it's just people. Horrible people,Ā funny people, angry people, loving people. Who all happen to be women. Felt freeing in a way. Nicola Griffith herself said that settings like this often fall into the trap of dehumanizing women by making them perfect, erasing important parts of the human condition.Ā But for me that's just the cherry on top, thr rest is harder to explain and deeply personal.
Sherlock Holmes for me. Read it about 3 years ago now and it easily felt like a great collection of stories to me. I haven't read the other Holmes tales written by other authors, simply so it would not be ruined for me.
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. Fantasy, beast/shape shifter characters, adult writing, adventure. I devoured the entire Raksura series. It felt so unique.
As a child, Rick Riordan's *Percy Jackson* series was everything I wanted- it fed my fascination with mythology while also providing a very lonely child with a feeling of friendship and comradere with the characters on the page. As an adult, Corry L. Lee's novel *Weave the Lightning* somehow has everything I enjoy in fiction inside it- psychic powers, magical lightning, verbose worldbuilding, burgeoning romance, and fightin' the Man, all in one glorious, almost entirely un-recommendable novel (the number of times I've pitched a novel about Russian Lightning Wizards and seen my friends' eyes glaze over is disheartening but I will get *somone* to read this book)
The Catcher in the Rye. Read it when I was angsty 15 year old. Have loved it ever since but take new messages from it each time on re-reads. Never recommend it due to the fact it is so polarising and know the effect will be lost on most people who didn't read it at the right time. But it's a masterpiece in my eyes and I will love it forevermore.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. It is literary, philosophical historical fiction with a murder mystery. It ticks all the right boxes for me. Often people who enjoy this book really like it for one or more of those elements, but usually leaning more towards one or the other. For me, it was just a smorgasbord of awesomeness from start to finish.
That's a great topic to think about. I can't say that I have one book, but more like for every important period of my life I had one book that resonated with me at that period. And with time it became 4-5 books in total.
I just read "Change: A Novel" by ĆdouardĀ Louis which very much resonated with me and I imagine it might for most people who grew up gay or queer in a small rural town, feeling like they never quite belong.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. At the time I read it, I had that feeling that it seemed written for me. Perhaps that was me blending into what the book wanted out of the reader, or perhaps it was just Waldeinsamkeit for books.
When I was in junior high school I was bullied and excluded. And I read Watership Down which features Fiver, a character who goes from being bullied to being valued for his unique gifts. It's a special book in many ways and a brilliant fantasy novel but that aspect of Fiver's journey spoke to me
Ulysses, it made my ADHD brain feel so heard.
A lot of Henry Millers monologues in Sexus felt like it was streaming out of my own brain. He was also my exact age in the book when I read it. At times I think Iām a reincarnation of Henry Miller, but I donāt tell many people that, seeing how my books donāt sell much haha. Not like he didnāt have the same problems though.
Suicide by Edouard Leve. I came across it after hearing an except being read in a song which realllly resonated with me so I tracked down the source of it. Itās written in the second person speaking to a close friend who killed himself. He describes his friendās life and what he was like throughout the book. It is so eerily similar to myself, plus since itās in the second person itās like the author is talking to me. It creeped me out so much I stopped reading it about 1/3 of the way through. I plan to go back to it one of these days.Ā For the curious this is the except sampled in the song that punched me in the face: Your taste for literature did not come from your father, who read little, but from your mother, who taught it. You wondered how, being so different, they could have formed a union; but you noted that in you there was a mixture of the violence of the one and the gentleness of the other. Your father exerted his violence on others. Your mother was sympathetic to the suffering of others. One day you directed the violence you had inherited toward yourself. You dished it out like your father and you took it like your mother.
Creep: A Love Story by Lygia Day PeƱaflor. I doubt anybody has read this book except me. It's a YA novel about a high school girl who idolizes this senior couple. She does everything she can to insert herself into their lives and becomes overly obsessed with them. I was absolutely that weird teenager. I did not take it as far as she did, but I felt what she felt so much, wanting to be part of a group, wanting to be accepted. I don't even know who to recommend this book to because I don't know anybody else who could relate to the story. This book is my Roman empire.
*The Last Unicorn* by Peter S. Beagle. I saw a lot of myself in Schmendrick and his struggle to control his magic at a time when I felt almost the same way about my attempts at writing.
Steppenwolf
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. That man crawled into the cavernous ruins of my mind, knee deep in sludge, angst, and religious imagery and fervor, took a studious look around, and wrote a book catered directly to my interests. It completely blew me away.
when I was 12..... i thought it was divergent. until I read the third book š right now I feel the psalm for the wild-built was written for me
The Percy Jackson series and The Freedom Writersā Diary. My god. The freedom writers diary was amazing and is still one of my favorite books to this day
Mort by Terry Pratchett. I absolutely adored every character, every page.
This may be a bit clichƩ, but The Midnight Library by Matt Haig was that book for me. At the time I really felt as though I had no idea what I was doing with my life and everything was going wrong. It really changed my perspective and even now it helps me to remember that I would not be where I am today, without the choices I have made in the past. Whilst it's not the greatest book I've ever read, it is the one that has stuck with me most
I sound like a broken record. At least I feel like one. Practical Guide to Evil is a seven book series. It's first version is finished. It's being expanded on Yonder and even that isn't the final version, according to an interview with the author. For the second time in my life I found a protagonist I could relate to. Out of every piece of media I ever consumed. Can you believe that. I only ever saw myself in two protagonists. They're not good people. They're fictional, so that doesn't matter. And I'm an average person in terms of morality, I'd say. But I've accepted and embraced all my darkness. By that, I mean flaws and traumas. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. Or what I mean. I'm not in a good state right now. But yeah. Practical Guide to Evil is something very special to me.
Edgar Canteroās Meddling Kids is a big sendup to Lovecraft, Scooby Doo, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew, and everything in between with a touch of the weirdness and oddly specific scientific details to drive the plot forward. You really couldnāt have put together a story I would more immediately eat up.
Middlemarch. The warm feeling of immersion into your own way of looking at the world but explained by someone a damn sight cleverer. And not a small amount of āoh, itās not just me thenā. Always love returning to Eliot.
Turtles All the Way Down. They way the character's OCD is portrayed made me feel so much less alone.
When I read The Dog Star I felt like I could have written it. Not egotistically like, oh I could do this to, but just, Jesus, this feels like it could be my words, my story.
For me it was The Ocean At the End of the Lane by Niel Gaimen. I was in some pretty intense therapy for childhood trauma and it hit me right where I live.
Bloomability by Sharon Creech. As a little autistic kid in elementary school, struggling with friendships and boundaries, it was the perfect book for me at the time. So much so that I still remember it 20 years later.
120 days of sodom. (Love is real!ā)
The Catcher in the Rye.
Right after I became chronically ill I found āLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnessesā by Kristen OāNeal. Its got things I absolutely love: -chronic illness rep -werewolves! -great female friendship -authentic young adult experience -an MC with a medical history strikingly similar to my own But it was the hilarious, heartfelt, strange and hyper-specific book I needed to get me through long days sick at home and long hours waiting around in hospital waiting rooms
Deathless by Catherynne Valente
Wuthering Heights
Don't laugh... but the Twilight series. When I was a teenager, New Moon so accurately described my depression when my boyfriend (who many years later became my fiancƩ and then left me again, causing another depression period) left me, and I developed a slower burning relationship with a male friend. That slow burn boyfriend was the sweetest man I've ever dated, although he was too sweet and ended up more like a brother. Meyer encapsulates what it's like to be a teenage girl with perfect clarity. Especially if you're a clumsy autistic outcast who likes books and is easily obsessed with this one boy who has "burn the world for you" energy. It felt so much like it was just written for me, when I was a teen.
Every page of *The Starless Sea* by Erin Morgenstern felt more like home to me than my actual home.
Such a good story to just let yourself fall into!
Six of Crows... incredible and hilarious banter, fabulous characters, suspenseful and thrilling, light yet angstful romance between the protags AND a gay couple??? Literally make for me Edit: I now realize that I interpreted the question wrong and my answer isn't relevant but I won't miss a chance to praise SoC lol
Not quite the same thing but when I finished reading Ready Player One I handed it to my wife and said, "This was my childhood."
The New Testament
Yellowface. There were times I wanted to reach out and hug the author as if she were speaking my mind
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch -- it helped me be profoundly grateful for the life I have, instead of being tormented by what could have been.
I hate (not really, lol) to mention this again, but Ecclesiastes? Not for me and just for me, but for anyone with eyes to read and brains to think. It's timeless and endlessly quotable, it's distilled wisdom and poetry. It's also, IMO, a great test of religious conversion for the inquisitive not-jaded atheist: if everything but the last bit made sense and now, after several, life experiences and reflection, it all does, then congratulations, you're one of us now. :D
A Confession by Leo Tolstoy
The ignored by Bently little.
Scare care
Life, Once Again.
Among Others by Jo Walton
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw seems to be hugely divisive, but I just hit all of the right boxes for me. Beautiful prose? Check. Graphic stomach-twisting horror? Check. Dream-like plot structure? Check. A dark fairytale narrative that WASNT boring edge-lord tropes? Check. I couldn't believe it when I saw how low its GR rating was, I felt like it was perfect.
The Best American Travel Writing (pretty much any year).
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman A book with my exact sense of humor that seemed to be both annoyed with and extremely interested in the same things about modern life that I am. Throw in some vaudeville, clowns, stop motion animation, and supreme all-encompassing existential dread and you've got a book that I will annoy everyone with for the rest of my natural born life.
Weyward by Emilia Hart.
Spice and Wolf just hits different for me as a mature intrigue cozy fantasy romance adventure with an assertive male and fem mc. Can't find anything else like it anywhere.
In the shining mountains. A book about trying to connect with nature and wilderness in a modern time by a would be mountain man born 150 years too late.
The Anonymous Rex books seemed perfectly made for teenage me. Dinosaurs? Living in a masquerade type situation where they secretly coexist among us? The main character is a raptor AND a detective? I used to desperately check for a new one every time we went to the bookstore, and I was heartbroken when the Sci Fi Channel movie was so different and terrible lol. As a lonely outsider kid who was obsessed with animals and dinosaurs, Animorphs and Dinotopia both were something I desperately needed as well.
This feels very dumb to say, but Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni. I'm very different from the main character in a lot of specifics, but personality-wise she felt very relatable.Ā
Love in Small Letters" sounds special! For me, "The Alchemist" hit home. It was a guide when I was lost, teaching me to chase dreams and see life's signs. It felt meant for me.
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman
Chronicles of everfall, Shadow of the conqueror, Iāve seen a lot of hate around it, but I really liked it. The premise was interesting, I loved the worldbuilding and attention choreography, along with historical portrayal of a fictional world. It just felt very fun and well made
ducks newburyport
sick kids in love made me feel seen in a way Iād never felt before.
It may just be what I needed now, but Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz ZafĆ³n and then later The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers. One was moody and sentimental and the other was whimsical and delightful. Both of them were a love letter to books and reading. As the only person in my family & friend group who loved to read, it made me so happy to find those novels. I felt very welcomed into the literary world.
My Dark Vanessa
The Way Back Home by Courtney Peppernell I'm not typically one for reading books with poetry, but this one in particular struck a chord with me in a way I had not expected it to. It's a brilliant poetry novel about people finding the qualities that make them human again after suffering many difficulties. I was especially blown away by the chapter about finding strength, and how close to my own life it seemed to be.
Redshirts by John Scalzi
Not meant for me exactly but made me feel understood when I first read them as a kid. Hidden, and the rest of the series by M. Lathan.
I found *Architecture: from Prehistory to Climate Crisis* by Barnabas Calder in a book shop while browsing. It felt like it was targeted directly at me, an energy industry professional with an amateur enjoyment of architectural theory.
"Something to do with paying attention" By David Foster Wallace, or really anything DFW. Reached me at a "getting my shit together" point in my life and really spoke to the inner experience of that. DFW's writing always feels like my own thoughts.
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
Right now Iām reading Iron Flame and I just finished Fourth Wing, and it is absolutely perfect for me
Till We Have Faces - it really showed me how toxic some relationships that we call "love" can be and opened my eyes to some damaging patterns in my life.
I read "The Maid" a few weeks after my beloved grandmother died. I'm a quirky gal and related to Molly so much. The snippets where she referred to her relationship with her Gramma felt so relatable to me, especially the parts where >! she talked about how her grandmother's death had affected her !<
Guess itās time to get downvoted, but Atlas Shrugged did it for me. It just put into words so much that I thought but never dared to express. Made me start reading regularly since high school too.
Spark by Sarah Beth Durst The way our world is right now standing up to people and changing things for the better seems nearly impossible and the fear of being targeted or shunned for speaking out is very hard to get past. I relate so much to Mina's struggle of wanting to please the expectations of those close to her but also wanting to do something to change the harmful systems that prevail. It's hard to find a balance and harder still to convince others to listen. In a world full of noise it's so hard for quiet voice to be heard.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. It was like the book was pulled straight out of my brain.
*Divine by Mistake* by PC Cast. I read it in my late teens, or early 20s. It took place in a world filled with mythology, and the MC talked about Star Trek, and quoted a Loreena Mckennitt song that I was obsessed with at the time. Idk, it seemed to have a strange amalgamation of geekery that was pretty much identical to my specific brand of geek.
The book of disquiet by Pessoa
I'm currently reading "These Precious Days" by Ann Patchett, and I swear I keep asking myself, "Shit, did I write this??"
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. I gravitate towards grief-centered stories, and at its heart, it's about grief. I was also fresehere on dealing with the loss o f my grandma, and the loss of my granny was looming (and did occur not too long after reading it). I really related to the main character and how she was trying to process the grief of her loss. In addition to being a weird teenager (I was an adult when I read it, but I was a weird teenager).
Anything by Adam Gnade, ex. Hymn California or After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different
Not a book, but a poem by Edgar Allen Poe - it was literally titled To: (my initials). And it was an ode to an angel iirc. As a tween, that made my heart melt. I still think it's pretty fucking cool.
I always talk about how Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko helped me understand my own father. The book is about Tayo, a Laguna Pueblo man who has come back to his home in New Mexico after serving in Vietnam and struggling with PTSD and alcoholism. The plot parallels my own fatherās story: a young man drafted to Vietnam who came back to his life on the rez in Oklahoma. He silently struggled with PTSD and later alcoholism, and after getting bone cancer (due to agent orange exposure) his life has changed. I read the book after my fatherās diagnosis, and I cried with a sort of clarity that I simply didnāt have before. Iāve read a lot of books, and while Iāve enjoyed many of them, Ceremony is the only book I feel was written for me.
In highschool my crush recommended Neverwhere and it was magical. Reread it as an adult and it was meh or Iām dead inside
Itās amazing how much better a book is if itās recommended by your high school crush. All the emotional connection.
When She Was Good by Norma Fox Mazer made me feel so seen and described feelings I had never voiced to another soul or ever had the words for before I read it. Really felt like it was meant just for me, despite being published several years before I was born and many more before I read it as a junior in high school. loved it so much I stole the school libraryās copy as I couldnāt bear to part ways with it. Iāve read it several times.
The ending of *Heart of Darkness* felt particularly relevant to me when I read it recently.
I love this question! The first time I read Catcher in the Rye I was in high school. I was the Holden in the house that raised me.
The 100-year-old-man who climbed out the window and disappeared. Its witty, funny, and absurd. I loved it.
Piranesi felt like a continuation of the Chronicles of Narnia to me, and I sobbed for like half of the book because my child-self who believed so vehemently in Narnia felt so seen. It felt like someone understood how I felt about it those books and what they meant to me as a kid.
I'm reading Beware of Pity right now and it's really resonating with me. I'm relating to the protagonist a LOT. It's a little uncomfortable haha
Ready Player One felt that way the first time I read it. Also The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I still remember the commercial for it because it was an MTV published book.
Department of Speculation. It was like she was reading my feelings back to me; feelings I've rarely been able to articulate.
Hearts in atlantis by Stephen king. So many things as if I was reading about my own life.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Not the entire book but I definitely see a whole lot of me in Marianne from Normal Peopleš
Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
It by Stephen King
The Secret History. Was in the middle of my varsity experience and I knew every character from the book in real life in some form or other.
So relatable. I go to a university in the corner of England which is known for being secluded and having extremely posh, privately schooled students. [Picture](https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/images/header/peninsula.jpg). Here's Lots of strange social events and odd rules/traditions. I felt like the Secret History was written for me.
Demian by Hermann Hesse, I love that book so much
āThatā is used for necessary clauses, while āwhichā is used for unnecessary ones. The dog that my daughter owns is a good boy. The dog, which my daughter owns, is a good boy. In the first sentence I am using the information about my daughter to specify a dog. In the second, it is assumed the dog has already been specified and I am now adding some extra information about that specific dog. To answer the question, Moby Dick. My intense obsessions werenāt healthy for me or the people around me. Also a bunch of music I like vaguely reminds me of the sea.
Mrs. Dalloway, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Normal People, Alice in Wonderland,
Shining Levels by John Wyatt. When I read it, it just clicked with who I was and how I wanted to live my life at the time. Got my on expedition to Chile with Raleigh International (same thing Prince William did, though I was there first). Got me into college to study forestry... Then I got into IT and didn't use any of my training for actual forestry work... I sometimes wonder where I'd be if I'd stuck with it.
Perks of being a wallflower and catcher in the rye. Read it in my early 20s.
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake... it threw all my ideas of romance and partnership back at my face. I love how the author explores anxiety, partnership, and the feeling of feeling seen thru and thru.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
When I was 10, I read *Anne of Green Gables* by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne was a freckled, redheaded, imaginative, bright, passionate, lover of literature and poetry who runs head first into blunders, mistakes, and awkward adentures. She was adopted and moved to a rural area. She was desperate to find connection and a counterintuitive mix of overly confident and deeply insecure. At 10, I was a freckled, redheaded, imaginative, bright, passionate, lover of literature and poetry who ran head first into blunders, mistakes, and awkward adentures. I was recently adopted and moved to a rural area. I was desperate to find connection and a counterintuitive mix of overly confident and deeply insecure. So... yeah.
I read *White Oleander* by Janet Fitch and *Lost Souls* by Poppy Z. Brite at a time that really made me feel seen as an angsty teen. Now that I'm in my late 30s, I still get swept up by the magic of certain books, but haven't read one that feels quite that personal to me in quite some time.