how reading has changed my life as an emerging author, most people approach me and say, ldquo how awesome! what inspired you to write a novel? rdquo my first answer is ldquo because i love to read. Reading through a national geographic magazine, i imagined myself in a hundred different worlds: floating down the amazon river in a canoe, wearing a seal skin parka huddled in an alaskan igloo, or riding a bicycle with an umbrella straw hat down a thailand street market. Even as a young adult, picking up an isabelle allende novel, i could delve into a romantic adventure and really feel like i was apart of the story. It didn rsquo t matter if i was only sitting in my living room, or lying on my bed, or swinging on my porch swing.

After traveling the globe myself and living with different beautiful people, i asked myself: what about my stories? i want to share my incredible life experiences with the world! so i opened up my laptop and went to work. I stayed up late to accompany the stars to reflect on my friend rsquo s stories and put them into words. I had a clear mental image of each friend, and i wrote down their traits to create fictional characters. I thought about their beliefs, their religions and how i would write in their perspective. After months of writing long hours, the flowered war of 2012 began to fall together. While i was putting the pieces of the puzzle together, i always had a good friend review my work.

My russian american friend helen had great ldquo outside eyes rdquo to help me see my own work from an outside perspective. She even had great suggestions on how to end my novel! when i finished writing all the chapters, i sent my work to an editor and friend in india. Thanks to modern technology, within a few months i had a solid novel in my hands. So how has reading changed my life? reading inspired me to become an author and to share my multicultural story with people around the world. Thanks to the internet, my family around the country, my friends in india, my friends throughout south america and my husband rsquo s family in mexico can all read my novel! through the writing process, i always had questions.

So what did i do? i read more! it is quite an amazing truth to know that there is a book written on almost any subject. If you would like to learn more about her multicultural novel, the flowered war of 2012, please visit: w.floweredwar.com o r contact kelly carlos by email at [email protected] united way of the mid willamette valley improves lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities, and investing resources around three building blocks of a good life: education, financial stability, and health. To find out more about united way visit howard jacobson i'm not sure that any book has ever truly changed my life in the sense of dramatically altering its course, but i can think of one that determined it, and that's palgrave's golden treasury of the best songs and lyrical poems in the english language. It was from palgrave that i learned that literature had a sound, that language mattered more than story, that rhythm haunted the imagination, and that love and grief and loneliness interested me more than any other subject. zo heller a couple of novels that i read in my teens middlemarch by george eliot and our mutual friend by charles dickens made me want to be a writer. But the only book i can think of that effected a large and immediately felt change was my secret life, the sex diary of a victorian gentleman author unknown. My mum had a go then, but found nabokov's baroque style irritatingly impenetrable.

I simply waited till i had the opportunity to whip the distinctive yellow dustwrapper off lolita and rejacket it with the catherine cookson novel i was reading. I hadn't realised you could use language in such a rich and elegant way, and i was amazed at the subject matter. I realised that literature could be outrageous and mind stretching and utterly extraordinary. anthony horowitz it would have to be dr no by ian fleming.

Essay on My Innovative Classroom

I was about 12, trapped in the weird and miserable bubble of prep school life where my experience of sexual desire and violence edging on sadism was largely restricted to my french teacher. By the time you've wondered what parts of a world view should be instinct or intellect, asked yourself if all perspective isn't just a product of bias and dogma, and then worked out that, in any event, the viewpoint you ended up with is no longer in service, nobody can blame you for seeking strong drink. This was roughly my position when i came upon lila robert pirsig's follow up to the 1974 classic zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Pirsig continues his philosophical exploration in the form of a yacht journey down the hudson river, accompanied by an easy woman though her virtue is also open to argument. Written in everyday language, with searing disrespect for academia, this meandering holiday was a life changer for me, both as a novel and a thesis.

Or is she? antonia fraser i was crazy about history from the age of four and a half when i read to myself our island story. But i had no precise idea of how to direct this passion until i came across my parents' copy of eminent victorians by lytton strachey, at the age of 14. I was deeply excited by reading strachey, especially the essay on cardinal manning. What the convent library did contain was the official two volume life of manning just the kind of victorian number strachey had written to debunk. Immediately i began to compare the two versions with critical zest, beginning to form my own third one: here it is, i thought, the life for me. kamila shamsie i don't remember who wrote the book that changed my life. But i remember vividly finding a musty old hardback novel called all dogs go to heaven on my grandfather's bookshelf.

Can Money Buy Happiness Paper

And i remember weeping copiously as i read the book, weeping for my pet dog who had recently died. I also recall my best friend, asad, coming over and, in response to my you must read this it's set in dog heaven , saying, why don't we write a book set in dog heaven? so we did. william fiennes i first read moby dick on a bicycle trip round southern greece.