Life Changing Books You Should Add To Your Bucket List
Books are well… They are pretty much a way of expression, a type of art. The characters, the plot, doesn’t matter if its young adult, sci-fi, horror, classic or romance the majority are complex and different.
Personally I’m a book worm and love to read. Since I have memory I’ve always had a book in my hands. While I’ve been growing up, many books have changed me as a person and influenced the one I am today. Whenever it was the plot, the writing style, the characters, the location, something from the following books have a very special place in my heart.
(This list does not have a specific order, meaning 1-4 highest to lowest. I love all of the following books so I’m not putting one book on top of the other, they are all unique and incredible in their own way).
Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The book is about Ari, a boy who keeps to himself, often self-doubts and has a brother in jail he knows nothing about and then there’s Dante, smart, poem loving and artistic boy. When they both meet and become friends, Dante slowly starts to break Ari’s shell which he has built for so long and starts to discover himself and the ways of the world.
From the beginning I knew this book was going to become one of my favorites. The way the plot unfolds around the characters and their decisions is just…. Incredible. I have no words to explain how amazing it was to read this book, and finish it seeing the world in a different way. It’s beautifully, poetically written, telling Ari and Dante’s story as they pass from being teenagers to becoming young adults and living through real life situations young people experience these days. The friendship between Ari and Dante is very deep and caring, not cliché or forced and simply out of the box. It’s those rare and special friendships that don’t involve words but actions.
(Image taken from Tumblr.)
Favorite Quote: “I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
Looking for Alaska – John Green
Miles Halter (whose nicknamed Pudge) is new to Culver Creek Boarding School and is thrown into a world of mystery, friendship, discoveries, mischief, love and lies everything that his life before wasn’t. Then there’s Alaska Young, smart, cunning and book loving Alaska is a human hurricane. Inexistent family, smoker and a drinker she intends to follow a self-destructive path. And somehow Pudge falls right into her orbit, leaving his heart open and changing him forever.
Philosophical and honest, this book brought out the tears in me. The way the author created and showed Alaska’s personality was very real. The way life and death is brought to light in this book is brutally honest and open, so if you’re seeking a book that is not the popular - nerd School cliché I definitely recommend this one.
Favorite Quote: “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
The Help – Kristen Stockett
A story set in the 60s in Jackson, Mississippi, this story is one to behold. Abileen Clark, a black maid who is raising a white child, can no longer hold back her bitterness against the way black people are treated. Minny Jackson, who seemingly never holds her bitterness back even though she tries to, starts working for a new person in town. Skeeter Phelan a white graduated woman who comes back home to find that her maid, Constantine, the person who really raised her has disappeared. Under strange circumstances, Abileen, Minnie and Skeeter start to work on a secret book that tells the crude story on how it really is to work as a maid in white homes.
The simple fact that this book exists is a blessing. I shed tears, laughed until my cheeks hurt and raged to the point of having to close the book to take a deep breath. It was a literal roller-coaster, and one that I would be willing to ride again. The situations treated in this book are all too real and it seems like nothing escaped the author’s hands. Loss and racism are just some of the many important issues touched in this book. So yeah, I consider this book very raw and honest, stunning yet heart breaking but most of all immersive and full of hope for a better society.
Favorite Quote: “Every morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”
The book starts with the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) capturing a young girl named Sophie from her orphanage in England. He takes her to his homeland because if he returns her to England he fears that she will tell everyone giants exist and encourage others to hunt him down. On the other hand if he leaves her in his cave the other giants will most probably eat her because unlike the BFG these giants eat humans. When Sophie finds out about these giants and their “hobbies” she makes it her goal to stop them and with the help of the BFG and another unlikely ally they might just be able to.
I grew up with this book, no kidding. It’s technically a children’s book but that does not mean it is bad. The bond that grows between the BFG and Sophie is absolutely precious, it’s similar to a father-daughter relationship, something that neither one of them had experienced before, yet they unknowingly have. It also keeps your imagination alive with weird yet fantastic sceneries, a giant ridding an elephant, dreams that can be mixed together to become your perfect one… All these details make the book alive with creativity and imaginativity suited for all ages.
Favorite Quote: “Dreams is full of mystery and magic . . . . Do not try to understand them.”
Something all these books have in common is that I picked them up (and I am grateful I did) and finished reading them as a different person, with a different perspective, with new eyes and that is not something every book can do. So maybe you have read these, maybe you haven’t. Maybe you feel that books have the power to change you, open your eyes to situations, to the world or maybe you don’t feel that way.
Hope you have an amazing day and thanks for reading my post! :)
