A good book not only brings a new world to you, it brings you into a new world. It allows you to see and to experience things that never actually happen to you, and to learn from events that take place only in the realm of imagination.
How have you been changed by a book?
All books change me. I am not able to delineate which ones have influenced me the most. I feel the same way about a book as I do about taking a significantly interesting trip to somewhere new or unusual. When I come home, or when I finish the book, as a result I am a different person with different thoughts and ideas. Reading a biography which gives me a more detailed picture of someone I heard about slightly as a young student influences me greatly.
The first flute/band method book I worked through gave me a taste of musical success and confirmed my love for music in general and the flute in particular. Learning/playing flute greatly shaped my life, giving me a reason to live, dictating what classes I took, taking up a lot of my time and money, etc. Unfortunately, it also gave me tendonitis. I don’t know if the later carpal tunnel syndrome (if it wasn’t that all along) was caused by it or if it was just that the combination was particularly painful.
Before that, the first book in the Boxcar Children series radically changed my life. This was the summer before third grade, and I still hadn’t really learned to read. I thought reading was a waste of time and always unpleasant. I was bored that day, though, and pick up that book. To my surprise, it was actually interesting and I could mostly understand it. I started actively seeking out books rather than avoiding them and soon became better at reading than my peers. When I could no longer play flute in college, I even switched over to becoming an English major.