Books that ruined my life (but mostly in a good way)
Book hangover: a feeling of utter despair as you turn the last page of your new favorite book. Now what? How will life ever make sense again now that you’ve finished that absolutely perfect book? Nothing will ever compare!
We’re all familiar with that wonderful, torturous feeling of having a book hangover. It’s a delicate love-hate situation. Every once in a while, you have the luck of picking up a book that will forever change your life, either for better or worse. Here’s my list of books that ruined my life (but mostly in a good way).
Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
I’m going to start with the OG queen out there: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. My fellow period-drama, Colin Firth in a white shirt obsessed ladies and gentlemen out there, you know what I’m talking about. Mr. Darcy ruined me, okay. I strive to be a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet, all independent and don’t fuck with me, until that one man sees right through my bullshit and breaks down my walls, you know. Ugh. No man will ever compete.
The particular sadness of lemon scented cake by Aimee Bender
This book. Oh boy. It holds a special place in my heart. There is just so much in this book that spoke to me on a profound level. I’ve struggled with mental health my whole life, and going through something like that as a teenager with an underdeveloped brain which can’t process what’s happening to you is just horrible. But this book nailed it. I don’t even know if that was the intention of the writer, but I took so much from that book. How the main character viewed how fucked up our world was and what she could do to not let it destroy her. And the brother. He was the perfect personification of someone breaking under the weight of his own feelings and wanting to disappear into nothingness. Just, trust me. Read this book and you’ll either get it or you won’t and if you do get it, then I’m so sorry that you had to go through all of that.
The four-hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss
This book is basically the bible for digital nomads out there. It explores an alternative way of living in which you create passive income streams or automate your work in such a way that you only need to work four hours per week, and you can travel the world with your free time. I remember very well when I read this. It was as an audiobook during the summer of 2020, so mid-covid, and I was doing a lot of late-night bat research. I used to be an ecologist and surveying protected species such as bats was a big part of my job, but bat live at night, and I’m not very good at staying awake when I’m driving home in the early morning after a night shift, but then I discovered this book, and I just devoured it. I was so obsessed with this alternative lifestyle, and I wanted to know everything about.
Looking back on it now, that book gave me the courage to give up that same ecologist job and become a digital nomad and pursue a writing career, so that one had a huge impact on pretty much everything that has happened the past three years since I read it.