We all know that books influence our lives. They can be the self-help books that help with various parts of our life or how-to books that can help with anything that troubles us. Those For Dummies books have certainly helped me.
But what about other books that’s purpose is to teach you, entertain you or anything else; do they have an influence in everyday life? The answer would be yes.
Throughout my life (am I sure I’m not the only one who feels this way) books have taught me life lessons, helped me see the world around me in a new way, opened my mind to something I never knew or just let me know that I wasn’t alone.
One book I remember is still with me these years later and that book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was just a schoolgirl who had to read the Betty Smith’s novel for school. I remember looking at the cover and thinking this book has nothing to do with me. Oh no, another book for school that I do not want to be bothered with. I rather read something else like the Sweet Valley Series I loved.
After I read the first sentence I saw a piece of me in the father and mother. John and the mother (whatever her name was) were employed to clean schools. When in the empty schools, they would play out their dreams–dreams that saw them through the hard times, dreams that would never come true but dreams that were needed in their life to get through it.
My teachers always accused me of daydreaming and I was. I was weaving stories of a place where I far away from my everyday life, far from my desk and that school. My teachers made me feel like those daydreams were wrong. That me having dreams were wrong. They told me repeatedly that my dreams of writing were stupid and would never happen.
But that book told me differently and taught me that I wasn’t going to live my life without doing everything I could to make my dreams real. That I was worthy of a dream and worthy to make it come true. As we all do.
So every day, when I write that book influences me. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn changed me. I still have the book with its aged, urine-colored pages, dusty smell, and binding that cracks if I dare lift the ugly 80s cover. So I take it out every so often, stroke the cover and place it back so nothing happens to it.
There are many more books that influence me every day, books that have made me who I am and that list is too many to list. And every person has those books that have molded them into the person they are, so what book is it for you?
Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…
Mageela Troche 