I have a bit of an off-topic question for you all: Did a book ever ruin your life?
Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little, so let me rephrase: Did you ever read a book that had a giant effect on your life, only to realize later that this effect was basically a negative one? Maybe you read Ayn Rand in high school and became an insufferable junior Objectivist for a couple of years? Maybe you gobbled up conspiracy theory until it finally occurred to you that Reptilians aren’t the real problem with the world today? Maybe you read a book that inspired you to join a cult that you later had to extract yourself from painfully?
It doesn’t have to be this dramatic. I’m just wondering how many of you all have stories like these, and what these stories are.
I might have a little bit of an ulterior motive. But it’s a good one, honest!
Fluffy Spider
That sounds interesting I want to read them already. ♥️
Mrs Brisby risks her life countless of times to rescue her family and others and gets absolutely nothing but her son gets a parade and a statue for doing literally nothing. ?
I wouldn’t call it ruining my life so much as not realizing how screwed up it really is until you’re older and more empathetic, but in elementary school I saw the movie for “The Indian in the Cupboard,” and then read the book series. I was interested in it because what kid doesn’t enjoy a story about toys coming to life and actually interacting with the kid? It’s also where I first heard of the Iroquois, earlier than my actual history classes.
(Cw: Spoilers and casual cruelty)
The first book implies and the later books flat out reveal that Little Bear, Boone and every other plastic person Omri brings to life with the cupboard is actually a real person brought over to the present day in a form of involuntary time travel. There is even a part where Omri and his father travel to Little Bear’s time by inhabiting dolls that Little Bear’s wife made. Suddenly that changed how I felt about Omri keeping Little Bear captive in his room when he could have sent him back any time and despite Little Bear asking to go home!
Also in the movie, Omri kicks a hamster ball with his brother’s pet rat inside so hard it goes flying out of his room and down the stairs. And in both the book and movie, Omri and his friend Patrick have Little Bear and Boone watch an old west movie with settlers gunning down screaming natives. Boone actually cheers it on and fires his pistol in the air, leading a panicked Little Bear to shoot him with an arrow.
It didn’t make me lack empathy any more than I already did in order to not notice how cruel the characters were. Still, though, yikes.
movie spoiler…
… yeah… but still, Samuel L. Jackson’s death in Deep Blue Sea hadda be the most AWESOME WTF!?!?!? moment!!
@NicolaLuna
Reread a few of the Redwall books recently. Loved em as a kid. They… only sorta hold up. Some better than others (Redwall and Mossflower are decent, Martin the Warrior are really good if flawed, Mattimeo is exactly a tired sequel nobody asked for, and I have completely forgotten Legend of Luke). And not even mentioning the racism. Still, glad I read em again. Was fun revisiting what 10yo me was into. Speaking of, really need to run thru the Cpt Underpants books again (not even kidding, Pilkey has a new book out, and I’m irrationally hype ?)
@Uly: Holy F***! Piers Anthony a pedophile?!! Why did I not know this before? I was seriously thinking about checking out one of his books later this week.
ETA: I found further info on the subject at The AV Club and suffice it to say I am NOT going to read of Anthony’s books. Ever. At all.
Fruitloopsie,
Here’s a quick primer on the Christian symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/24865379
I’d have to agree with everyone else that it’s a far more effective kid’s fantasy adventure series than it is a gateway to Christianity though. Kids tend to be literal minded and not see symbolism in literature, even if it’s heavy handed. I was an advanced reader for my age growing up and I didn’t get it until maybe junior high age or so. Plus there are so many resurrection stories in religion, mythology, folk tales and fantasy that Aslan’s doesn’t seem particularly noteworthy.
@Fruitloopsie
Oh boy! You have some great reading in your future, if you’re into literary analysis (which I am). But just to start your thoughts down the track, [*spoiler alert* for anyone who hasn’t read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe] lets look at the biggie – Aslan the lion is quite literally Christ. He is betrayed by the actions of one of his followers and he willingly sacrifices himself to atone for that man’s sin and thereby save the world. He is humiliated (his mane is cut off) and taunted by his captors in the lead-up to his death. His body is tended to by the women after his death, but mysteriously then disappears and the stone table he was lying on cracks in half. We later find out that his body hadn’t disappeared, he had actually come back to life to join the final battle of Good and Evil.
If we look at other characters, the White Witch is pretty obviously Satan, tempting Edmund with sweetmeats and wanting to rule the world.
There are other elements, but it’s been over twenty years since I read it, so hopefully that’s given you enough to go on with. If you do try an analysis, just remember that no bow is too long to draw, since Lewis himself was quite explicit about the Christian allegory aspect of this series. As I believe was mentioned upthread, he deliberately wrote the Passion, or elements of it, into all books in the series (I must confess to only having read three of them, however, so I can’t do much more analysis).
ETA: scooped by WWTH! Ah well, hopefully what I’ve written isn’t too far out from the BBC’s version.
@fruitloopsie
I know right? To this day I consider it fan fiction I won’t recognize it a canon. I usually will give sequels a chance but most are what I expected or like this enough to make me want to throw copies out my window.
Another interesting three animal books Firebringer, The Sight and Fell.
@ David, yes give that K. Douglas one a try. I’d say “you won’t regret it” 😀 but you probably will.
@ Bananananana dakry,
That’s rather sad, it sounds like a pretty crappy book. The title sounds vaguely familiar too, probably something I skipped over at the library and should be glad I did.
That’s why I stopped reading L.A. Myers. As the series went on, his main character (Jackie) turned into a obnoxious Mary Sue. She was instantly talented at everything she tried, from music to swordplay to dancing, and of course every red-blooded male she encountered fell in love with her. At any one time, she usually had 2 or 3 competing suitors. The plots got to be tiresome and predictable.
Also, every book she has one near-rape. EVERY. DAMN. BOOK. There’s not a villain in the series who doesn’t want to rape her, nor a random bystander who isn’t eager to stop it. (Well, sometimes they have heart attacks and die instead, but either way, it’s entirely gratuitous.)
As far as Piers Anthony goes, in his defense – and this is some pretty pathetic defense, I’ll admit – there’s no allegations that he’s ever acted on his obvious inclinations. But boy howdy, he’s sure active in making sure we know that those are the natural and normal inclinations for human males and only civilization holds them back!
Closest I’ve had was that for years when asked what my favorite science fiction book was I’d say The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein.
I was much more aware of the stupidity of libertarianism when I finally reread it. Now I won’t say what my favorite science fiction book is until I read it again.
I can’t think of a book that I could blame for ruining my life . . . I have some books I wish I’d read more skeptically, but I’m talking about books I agreed with for the most part, that advanced me along a path I was already following:
Unintended Consequences by John Ross. The first half of the book is a wordy history of “the gun culture” in America, from the point of view of a gun nut far beyond my own powers of gun-nuttery. The second half is a bloated novel about Ross’s Mary Sue character, a pilot/skydiver/day trader/hot driver/militaria collector/world-class expert with shotgun, rifle, pistol, machine guns and anti-tank rifle/avid safari hunter/hard-bitten survivor of the anti-gun, anti-American dystopian hell that was rural Missouri circa 1995 (you probably remember.) Jo–I mean Henry Bowman is staying at a friend’s compound when he murders a group of high-zoot international gun thieves, only to discover that they’re really BATF agents planting evidence, so he and his friends launch a nationwide campaign of assassination of government officials.
I’ve been thinking lately about blogging or podcasting the experience of re-reading the book as a 40-year-old who regrets the part I played in the gun-rights movement, kind of like Libby Anne did with the Pearls’ parenting and marriage books over at Love, Joy, Feminism.
It’s one of those books that made a HUGE impact in “The Gun Culture” in the 1990s, but outside that bubble I don’t think most people know it exists.
Yeah – as a non-christian twelve-year-old, I didn’t pick up on the “obvious” stuff because it wasn’t actually obvious to me until he rubbed my face in it in the last paragraph of the last page of the last book. I didn’t appreciate Lewis stringing me along because he wanted to make me more receptive to his proselytizing, which is essentially what he admits to in the end.
Yep.
(edited because it ate the second quote)
@NicolaLuna I was gobsmacked when just 10 years ago – on an email group (I think a yahoogroups list) that was set up for teens, and others to ask questions about sexuality and get open and honest answers – a man replied to a question about how to perform anal sex with the same rubbish! When challenged on it by myself and others he doubled down and insisted it was true and he knew it because he said he was an emergency ward nurse and had seen the results of anal sex with his own eyes. When again challenged, he then admitted he was talking about small children who had been sexually assaulted. He still wouldn’t back down on his original assertion though. I left the group at that point.
Re Thomas Covenant and the author Stephen Donaldson… So I started reading the books as a young teen and stopped, horrified, after the rape scene. Way later Husband said I might wanna give them another go, because the rape just doesn’t disappear from the story, it’s actually dealt with. (This was still many years ago, but I was an adult). So I read the books again, kept reading after the rape. And the raped girl pops back into the plot at some point. She got pregnant from the rape and now has this daughter as a result. She’s convinced herself that she and Thomas are in this great relationship and that they’re soulmates and stuff. It’s clear that she was super-traumatized by the rape and this is just her way of psychologically desperately trying to deal with things. And at least back then when I read it, I thought the story actually handled it okay in the end.
Also, I really liked the fantasy world Donaldson created there, it felt fresh and original.
Eventually I gave up on the series because the prose kept getting more and more purple and the descriptions of scenery became more and more elaborate until I felt the books had become unreadable. Although I regretted that it had, because at that point the story had shifted so that Thomas’ girlfriend Linsey (at least I think that was her name) was the main character. I think she was interesting in part because she was a psychiatrist and head of an asylum, but seriously dedicated to helping mentally ill people. How often do you see that in pop culture? A woman in charge at an asylum tends to be painted evil.
BUUUUUT then I read Donaldson’s first book in his sci-fi “gap” series, which contains really graphic descriptions of rape and abuse of a woman, done by the series’ super evil villain, but I felt that Donaldson really wallowed in the abuse, and that disgusted me. No fucking way I’ll give that series a second chance.
Also read the first book in his fantasy series about a land where everyone does magic with mirrors. Don’t remember the name now, but anyway… I put that one down because it was clichéd and silly. The main character is this super hot chick who’s still completely unaware that she’s super hot, you know the type. She travels to this fantasyland and meets this clumsy awkward nice guy and it’s obvious from the start that they’re gonna end up together eventually. She also meets this sexy wizard whom she’s attracted to and it’s equally obvious that it’s gonna be revealed that he’s evil. Because everything is so cliché and the reader immediately grasps these things, the main character comes off as a moron for not seeing any of it.
So yeah, that’s all of my experiences with author Stephen Donaldson.
Speaking of not having any idea of how anal sex works, I have a vague memory of being quite young and overhearing my dad (or possibly one of his friends) tell a joke that went along the lines of “two gay men went to take a bath together; one left to grab towels and came back to find the bathroom walls covered in white stuff. The other man looks embarrassed and said that he had just farted.”
I was too young to know about anal sex or semen, so I assumed that this meant that gay people naturally secrete white stuff from their nether regions. Sometime after this, I started puberty and started producing vaginal discharge, which I was quite concerned was in fact my body’s way of saying “congratulations! You’re gay!”. (I turned out to be ace, actually, but I’m pretty sure that nothing my body produces is a signal of that orientation XD)
@Catalpa: Is it okay if I laugh at this? I mean I’m sorry you got such bad sex ed, but it is a bit funny…
Haha, it’s fine, I thought it was a funny story. I did later have a fairly comprehensive sex education, but I was too young to have really had much of that at the time. I was like, 10. They certainly hadn’t talked about gay people, or sex in general, it was more “your bodies are different in these ways, this is what you can expect when you get older”. I believe that my class had covered periods, but they never really talked about any other stuff the vagina produces.
And I had to wait until I was 20+ to learn about my zombiefying vagina goo!
Racism? Oh no. I didn’t pick up on it as a kid but it would be interesting to re-read.
I don’t blame you for leaving. There’s such a big difference between consensual anal sex and rape. The fact that people equate the 2 is ridiculous.
Thanks for replying. I remember watching a cartoon version of Narnia and the live action but it was when I was younger so I barely remember it.
Oh man all the bad sex ed people here got. Lol. Except the part of comparing rape to consensual anal sex not ‘lol’ at all.
I hear in Texas sex ed is really bad. Saying clits and female orgasms don’t exist and have to cover their vaginas so if they’re taking baths the water won’t go inside them.
One time a lady was talking about uteruses and this grown man asked what’s a uterus?
All these Doctor stories I heard are unreal like a lady didn’t know sex leads to pregnancy, a woman said she’s lesbian so she can’t get pregnant, etc.
I wish I was joking.
This is why sex Ed is extremely important.
Another tip from Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex:
In a pinch, a coca-cola douche can be used for birth control and plastic cling wrap can be used in place of a condom. One can only imagine how many ships of unwanted pregnancies that idiotic advice launched
Another book that kind of traumatized me as a teen- though, in a good way, if that makes any sense, was Rosemary’s Baby
Having been sent to Catholic Schools as a kid- not because my parents were deeply Catholic but because they were racist- I was extremely curious about books that had been banned by the church.
So, I read, Rosemary with, dare I say it, fiendish glee. Though eventually I was a bit disappointed; it turned out to be quite a bit tamer and less lurid than I expected, it did mark the first time when I really started questioning Catholicism. Because in putting all that hoo doo in a modern sentence, I thought, ‘Crap, these people ( priests and nuns) actually believe stuff like this can happen…this is looney. So that began me on my journey to rejecting all of that toxic tripe and dealing with the real world in a more frequent basis
Like some other commenters, I read the Xanth novels at a very young age and they had some fucked up sex stuff in them. I distinctly remember that in one book the main character (a woman) had been gang raped, but the gang rape was described in ways that made it seem kind of sexy. Also, it made her “sexy damaged” and her boyfriend had to save her from her past. It created a lot of weird ideas about sex and rape that it took me years to get over.
Also, not a book but my mom used to let me watch Melrose Place with her when I was in elementary school. I believed for years that adults were having sex all the time with different people. Like adulthood was basically about just having constant sex with new partners.
I can’t say that I was ruined by a book. I’ve never been very good at critical thinking and believed everything in (nonfiction) books was true until I reached an embarrassingly advanced age. That’s why I spend so much time reading here and at other blogs; I learn so much about stuff like that.
I also read a bunch of VC Andrews, starting in Jr. High. I knew they were trashy as hell and was always ashamed of myself for reading them. I graduated to Stephen King in High School.
Closest thing I can contribute is that I’ve never looked at advertising the same way after reading Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key. O_o
Katamount – Had to read Great Expectations in Jr. High and hated it so much, I never read any more “classics” until very recently! I read Wuthering Heights after seeing the movie on TCM because it was free on Kindle.
I love books. But… Conquest by Andrea Smith may ruined me for a while.
I used to work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in an area next to a large reservation so I worked with a lot of native american women. I became really interested in and considered myself really informed on native american culture. I read Conquest, a fascinating book about the intersection of sexism and colonialism with regards to native american women and it really resonated with me. I even recommended it to people.
…Then it came out the Andrea Smith was not actually Cherokee as she claimed to be; she was repeatedly asked by native american scholars to stop false identifying as such.
Now I’m squeamish talking about native american culture at all from an academic standpoint with any sort of authority (I am white), especially considering the history of white people claiming native american blood to establish their association with Pocahontas and the creation of the Pocahontas exception in the racial integrity act of 1924.
The whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
@ CNS
Firstly, glad to see your modified nym.
Secondly, you may find this interesting
https://youtu.be/dmP3gGj9yjM
It’s a rather excellent documentary about how indigenous culture has been viewed, and to an extent fabricated, by white folks.