You’ve Just GOTTA!
You’ve GOT to Read This Book!55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life
Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks
As an avid, compulsive, and addicted reader, I’ve always been a sucker for books on books. It’s crazy! Why can’t I just eliminate the middleman, and just read the book itself, instead of reading a book ABOUT other books? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because books on books also give you stories, stories about how books and writings have impacted other readers. And it’s a well-known fact that human beings love stories. I’m only human. Therefore deductive logic (or is it inductive? I’m so confused!) leads to the conclusion that I love books on books.
The great thing about this book is that most of the people who submitted stories on books that profoundly impacted their lives, are also writers. So it’s almost a double-whammy - when you read a story in this one that speaks to your soul, not only do you want to read the book suggested - you also want to seek out everything written by the author, and read THEIR stuff too. Yes, this book can get a compulsive reader into very deep “TBR List” trouble, if you know what I mean!
That being said, let me share a technique with you for “HOW” to read this book. I read it as I usually do - marking passages or book titles I wanted to read, with little post-it flags, and going through from cover-to-cover. Also making a “mental note” of the authors (of the stories in the book) I really liked and wanted to sample, too.
Who am I kidding? I had to be mental in the first place, to think a “mental note” would ever work for me!! So I’m gonna have to go through this one again, almost cover-to-cover to get what I want out of it. I’d like to prevent that from happening to you. So to save you that additional step, here’s what to do. Grab a notebook when you start this book. You don’t have to read it in a linear fashion, you can easily skip around because there is no continuity between the stories. So either start at the beginning, or pick a chapter to start with. Put the title of that chapter (the author’s name) at the top of a sheet of paper. As you read their bio and then the story about the book that influenced them, jot down any titles you might want to read (or reread). I also would put a couple memory-trigger words there, if there’s something about the book that especially piques your interest. THEN - as you finish the chapter by that author, and this is important, do not skip this step!! - rate in the top right-hand corner, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much you want to read the suggested books.
Believe me, even if the first few are 8 or 9 or even 10, you’ll realize very quickly that this book is chock-full of awesome suggestions. So by the time I was done, even with making my “mental” notes and all, I had no idea where to begin. What recommendation did I want to start first? There were so many good ones! I remember thinking (as I made my “mental notes,” har har), “Oooh this one sounds really good, I’d like to read that one very soon. It would really be applicable to where I am right now…”
And you got it - my mental notebook is blank. So, I’m stuck. I reread books more and more as I age, so I have no doubt that I’m going to read this one again. (And do it right, the next time.) However, there’s already a tottering stack of “To Be Read” books on my desk, right now, and many of them are library books thus they have “expiration” dates that I have to read them by! So back this one goes to the library, to await patiently the time when I can give it the attention and tlc it needs.
And I’m throwing away my mental notebook right now…