@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

As a child: King's From A Buick 8. There was a scene where a man is walking around in the rain, with his long black coat billowing out behind him. To a young teen living a very constrained, small-town English life it evoked an sense of unknown freedom that I wanted to chase.

@bearnecessities I know of the Moomin books but didn't grow up around them. Clearly I need to read them!

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

As a young adult: Anna Politkovskaya — A Small Corner of Hell. I was still finding my feet in Russia and while I understood how repressive it was, my vague idea of of Chechnya was largely through Russia's lens. This flipped my understanding, and while horrifying in many ways, also provided hope that bravery and pursuit of truth in the face of that was possible there.

@aliide Oh! I love that your teen self had this.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

I can think of three books that I think are a big part of who I am.

The Discworld books influenced my ethics and morals quite a bit, while being at the same time being funny and witty.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain was the book I read in college and instead of going to university I ended up working as a kitchen hand. I did eventually tire of the work hours and bad pay, but it was in a kitchen I learned what work ethic looks like.

And of course, The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy taught me to always know where my towels is.

@aliide It's wonderful that you found this so young. It's such a gift to "reverse the lens" and learn there's more than one version of the the world.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon @afewbugs Pratchett’s Guards books. Sam Vimes taught me how to be a better man

@stojg I always just assumed that you always knew where your towel was.

I have a few friends with serious kitchen backgrounds and their work ethic is in each case ferocious.

I find the Discworld books are a bit like The Far Side comics, in that I usually do very well with people who like either one (and I'm guessing there may be a fair bit of overlap in those two groups, too).

@pdcawley @afewbugs Sam Vimes teaches all of us to be a better man, regardless of gender.

@ShaulaEvans especially when that region is still "part of Russia" after what Russia did to it. So coming in, having been too young to really have learned about Chechnya at the time, then realising the scale of Russian brutality there but also its ...banality? was hugely revelatory.

@ShaulaEvans @afewbugs oh, indeed. But as a bloke, Sam’s non-toxic masculinity (and his constant drive to Be Better) was, and remains deeply resonant and inspirational.

One can always be more Sam.

@ShaulaEvans @afewbugs I know you said “book” and I’ve already answered with a series, but my real answer is “the library.”

I even wrote a bloody song about it. https://youtu.be/PsYB4tyTCEQ

@ShaulaEvans @falcennial I was seventeen when The Light Fantastic came out and already a fantasy fan, so when someone lent me their copies of those first two books I was hooked.

The “reading order” debate for me is easily solved: in the order they came out, as they came out. I feel kind of sorry for anyone’s who didn’t get to experience them like that and I always hope that another generation will get to experience something similar with a different writer. It’s magical.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon Oh my, this is a very difficult question, as I was long a book aficionado.

I guess I would have to say a biography on Jane Goodall. It opened my eyes to the larger world, and showed that kindness can survive and thrive in the world. This was 19-20 years ago.

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon

One Minute Nonsense by Anthony de Mello.

I don't remember when but I do remember where.

Lifeline bookfest in Brisbane. I bought it for $1 and I still have it!

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon I’ve had a few… The Prophet, as a precocious 16 year old: I realised that other religious folks believed stuff as deeply as I did, so how did I know what was true? Silent Spring which was my beginning of understanding quite how fucked we are by the corporate world. Maybe the Hobbit when I was 10 and I had an epiphany about how literature could seriously hook me (again with Day of the Triffids). Been a reader since. So many books have shaped me

@ShaulaEvans Simone de Beauvoir - All Men are Mortal. Completely changed my outlook on life and death. I read it at 17. @bookstodon

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon
The Hobbit set a path for fantasy literature when I was a kid, but most profound change happened after reading When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. It was a starting point for pure spiritual rebirth and joy. ️

@ShaulaEvans @bookstodon I think the book that shaped me the most was Treading Lightly, KE Sveiby, T. Skuthorpe. I was a corporate Knowledge Manager at the time and read this book from a renowned KM professor: it was supposed to be about storytelling, a rather hot topic in KM at the time. The other author, the storyteller, is an aboriginal elder, and that's what changed me: his point of view on knowledge and human interaction with nature is what turned my life around #books

@ShaulaEvans

the Discworld series, of which Small Gods is the first one to have made my brain go "oh!"
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa and Outposts which made me realize that non-fiction could be an entertaining read.
Isabel Wilkerson's Caste because it gave me a different way of looking at how people interact with each other.
And Ursula Markham's How to Deal with Difficult People; it is a weird choice for a 13yo and deals with office life... but it helped me deal with my family a lot.