21. Educated.
I have never outright bawled my eyes out from reading a book over multiple occasions. This one made me really appreciate my parents as people, value how they raised me, and cherish that they encouraged me to think for myself and not blindly follow other’s rules.
– Allyoop_750
22. The Lorax.
– Cyburking
23. The Great Gatsby.
It continues to teach me how hope is a two-ended street. One side that pushes a person to achieve greatness and the other impairs the human’s sense of reality. To stay between the opposition is what I strive for, despite the difficulty that follows.
To live a life of tragedy is not inherently a complete loss – it’s a choice. One must understand the risks that come with standing defiant by their vision at all costs. It may be lonely and dark to take a unique path, but in the end, it will be worth everything. The decider comes down to whether one achieves it or falls short. That’s the gamble, and I hope I’m on the better half of it.
– sanaru02
24. Catch-22.
– Auroren
25. I mean… the Bible. I’m not religious, but it did change my perception of things.
– Joshua-S-B
26. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
– ElectronicTop0
27. Don Quixote, it shows that the world does not change…
– manohell
28. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis.
– beamane
29. The Bell Jar.
– booksoverppl
30. The Stormlight Archive. The characters suffer from many many issues, physically, mentally, and emotionally, but they push through because their entire world is at stake, everything they know, love, and cherish could just vanish in an instant if they don’t fight for the right to live. The quotes from the characters are also extremely good but there is just one sequence that just breaks me entirely.
“You still think I’m too optimistic, don’t you?” Shallan said.
“It’s not your fault,” Kaladin said. “I’d rather be like you. I’d rather not have lived the life I have. I would that the world was only full of people like you, Shallan Davar.”
“People who don’t understand pain.”
“Oh, all people understand pain,” Kaladin said. “That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s…”
“The sorrow,” Shallan said softly, “of watching a life crumble? Of struggling to grasp it and hold on, but feeling hope become stringy sinew and blood beneath your fingers as everything collapses?”
“Yes.”
“The sensation — it’s not sorrow, but something deeper — of being broken. Of being crushed so often, and so hatefully, that emotion becomes something you can only wish for. If only you could cry, because then you’d feel something. Instead, you feel nothing. Just.. haze and smoke inside. Like you’re already dead.”
He stopped in the chasm.
She turned and looked at him. “The crushing guilt,” she said, “of being powerless. Of wishing they’d hurt you instead of those around you, screaming and scrambling and hating as those you love are ruined, popped like a boil. And you have to watch their joy seeping away while you can’t do anything. They break the ones you love, and not you. And you plead. Can’t you just beat me instead?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Shallan nodded, holding his eyes. “Yes. It would be nice if nobody in the world knew of those things, Kaladin Stormblessed. I agree. With everything I have.”
He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.
Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.
It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.
– VideoZealousideal976
I would add Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan. It poetically puts a different perspective on the universe.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”