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Your Earliest Life Changing Book

bradly1101

bradly1101

Diamond Member
I read Be Here Now when I was about thirteen. Bridge Over Troubled Water was often playing from inside a credenza whose top opened to reveal a record changer and the electronics, its controls facing straight up, speakers in the cabinet. It produced faithful sound. Sometimes it was opera, sometimes Mozart horn concertos, or Jean-Pierre Rampal ripping one out. My mom was a professional coloratura soprano, I played French horn, my brother, the flute. Sometimes it was Monday Monday (the blonde chick always reminded me of Susan Dey). Mom was into all that eastern stuff, Buddhism, sage, ancient, light philosophies, if just being is a philosophy.

It was about a man who sought enlightenment, sometimes through LSD. He speaks of going to India to deepen his search and meet the holy men, the yogis. Encountering one sitting on a low stone, he told the yogi about his travels and attempts toward freeing his shackle, his mind.

The yogi asked for some LSD. He gave him a tab. He wanted more. He ended up giving the yogi eight tabs. He watched the yogi through his absorption of the drug. Nothing changed. The yogi just kept being his peaceful, humble self.

It made me kind of want to try LSD, thankfully it also explained how it's a hindrance, going only part way up a different stairway, unable to reach the landing it's pointed at. Freedom sometimes requires focus, altered focus is a different path.

Did you happen to learn about mind altering substances in a book, maybe Alice in Wonderland?
 
Life changing? I wouldn't go that far, but Siddhartha(Hesse), Will(Liddy), and Electric Koolaid Acid Test(Wolfe) were all influential.
 
First book I read was The Hobbit. I was kind of a gifted child. Grade 2 I was already spelling at at a grade 12 level.
 
lxskllr said:
Life changing? I wouldn't go that far, but Siddhartha(Hesse), Will(Liddy), and Electric Koolaid Acid Test(Wolfe) were all influential.
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Siddhartha came to mind but I didn't read that until high school.

Volcano! got me thinking about science and rocks.
 
Or did you learn about a foreseeable drugged up, fearful, observed society with fearful, insulated, totally bought leaders?
 
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IronWing said:
Siddhartha came to mind but I didn't read that until high school.

Volcano! got me thinking about science and rocks.
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That's about when I read it too. Pre high school I read tons of horror. I used to read lots. Sometimes the only reason kids could get Schoolastic books(remember that?) was because of me. I'd get so many books, It would boost it past the minimum order level, and I'd get to keep the box to carry them home :^D

The internet's really fucked my attention span, and I seldom make time for books anymore :^(
 
Mayne said:
First book I read was The Hobbit. I was kind of a gifted child. Grade 2 I was already spelling at at a grade 12 level.
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Wow! I liked books like that that let you in on another's imagination. My brother was into Tolkien, I was more into Frank Herbert and his Dune trilogy.
 
lxskllr said:
Life changing? I wouldn't go that far, but Siddhartha(Hesse), Will(Liddy), and Electric Koolaid Acid Test(Wolfe) were all influential.
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What? Where's On the Road or The Dharma Bums in that hippie-dippie reading list? Oh, and The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.
 
bradly1101 said:
Wow! I liked books like that that let you in on another's imagination. My brother was into Tolkien, I was more into Frank Herbert and his Dune trilogy.
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the dune trilogy didn't come for another ten years...thats some heavy stuff for a kid.
 
lxskllr said:
That's about when I read it too. Pre high school I read tons of horror. I used to read lots. Sometimes the only reason kids could get Schoolastic books(remember that?) was because of me. I'd get so many books, It would boost it past the minimum order level, and I'd get to keep the box to carry them home :^D

The internet's really fucked my attention span, and I seldom make time for books anymore :^(
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Now I usually only see kids looking at their phones, they could be reading books on them, but I doubt it. When you can do research with a click, why do you need the story behind the fact, or just a story when everything in the digital world is so captivating, like AT?
 
Mayne said:
the dune trilogy didn't come for another ten years...thats some heavy stuff for a kid.
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Yeah, but it was so cool!

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
 
lxskllr said:
I read those too, as well as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :^D

I wouldn't call Will by G Gordon Liddy a hippie-dippie book ;^)
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To round out my incongruous reading list I also used to subscribe to Soldier of Fortune, Hot Rod, Field & Stream, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, and Black Belt
 
bradly1101 said:
Yeah, but it was so cool!

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
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that is good stuff. Hebert for the win.

I have read every good sci-fi/fantasy over the last 30 years. I know it all.
 
lxskllr said:
I read those too, as well as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :^D
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Just doing, free from burden, informs being. Edit: I remember him watching the Zen-like crop-duster who could drop his biplane just over the trees in an impossibly short landing, the skillfulness.
 
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Carson Dyle said:
What? Where's On the Road or The Dharma Bums in that hippie-dippie reading list? Oh, and The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.
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Castaneda was so deep, edit: yet clear as a mountain stream.

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!
A man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it and then he looks and rejoices and laughs and then he sees and knows."
 
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I don't know the name of the book, but it was a book that taught me Objective-C back in like 2010. It was really the first time I ever went out and learned a new technology on my own and since that point I've pretty much looked at my software development skills more as a career than a job and I enjoy it a lot more now. I also can pick up technologies a lot more and I felt that was when I kind of transitioned from a more beginner/mid to a mid/senior developer as far as my skillset goes. And now my salary is more than double what it was in 2010.
 
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