How Does a Book Change You?

How can a book transform a reader into a new person, as so many books I have read have done? It is palpable, this change, this growth, and you know somehow at the finish of a book that there has been some molecular change in you, and that you will never be the person you were before.

Of course, in some cases a book calls to some inner being and draws it out, setting you on a path you will follow for some time, if not all your life. Though not a book, the British series, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Richard Greene and Alan Wheatley , accomplished my transformation when I was about six or seven years old. I don't recall any interest in the Middle Ages before that, but once I reflected in the series something elemental and part of me, I was irrevocably changed. I quite literally never was the same again. Perhaps the series did not change me but simply pulled something out, something already part of my DNA. I don't know where that would have been born, but that's a topic for anther conversation.  Somehow the influence has continued to have an impact, not only in favorite subjects, but my personality, my values. I have gone on with my life with an everpresent WWRHD? way of dealing with the world.

That series, and books like Elizabeth Linington's The Proud Man, which tuned me in as did The Fighting Prince of Donegal, a Disney movie, turned my steps, already on the road, in a particular direction, i.e. Ireland. But so many other books have had more subtle, more, shall we say, visceral effects. The one that comes to mind most forcefully for me is a relatively recently read series, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. The first volume alone, The Game of Kings, left me stunned, breathless, blown away by the complexity of the main character, the emotional impact of his journey. How did it change me? It added what I might call a vivid new thread in the weave of my psyche. Just having met Lymond makes me a more richly complex person. Nor is this particular transformation complete. This book, this series will go on sculpting me anew.

I could probably more easily count the books that have not had at least some transformative impact on that weave that is the innermost me. The particular thread is different with each. Ruth Sims' The Phoenix, Brandy Purdy's The Confession of Piers Gaveston, Morgan Llywelyn's The Lion of Ireland are just three of the books where the sense of molecular shift was most pronounced. It is like having had these characters in my head and heart made me more than one person. The same goes for Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh novels, Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning, where it feels like several souls now crowd together within me. The Heaven Tree trilogy by Edith Pargeter, though not my favorite books, had moments in them that froze me for a time.

I wish I could articulate this with more precision, but perhaps you will help me? I would like to hear from you, either directly or, preferably, in the Comments to this post, whether you have had this sense of being jarred into a new reality by certain books, and how you might express what I have tried to.

And of course, I want to hear what books did this to you, why and how.