Books that changed me for better.

Fiction will take you and turn you on your head. It will leave you in tears, or with a content heart or gasping for another page. Fiction also stretches its fingers to the depths of your mind and heart and sows a seed of something new. A lesson. A thought. A feeling. Something that changes your perception of life. That something will make you, will guide you. Fiction will become your teacher or an inspirational story that motivates you. It will be your drive, you motto. Stories or writings that will change the way you look at life. This is top 5 of my top ten novels that has taken me in its words and changed me with its stories. 

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

                                                                                                                                                                             

Ayn Rand single-handedly changed my perspective on life. Fountainhead showed me what it means to be a true man, a human being  who will not negotiate his principles because what are you when you forgo your principles? Atlas Shrugged liberated me on so many levels. It showed me it is okay to be selfish, rather selfish is the way to live. To remember that without the ‘I’ there is no self. For instance, the ‘I’ in ‘I love you’ is more important that the word love itself. To remember only I can grant myself true happiness. 

This is my favorite Ayn rand quote:

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

How much I adore this book. The Little Prince will teach you to never forget the child in you, to never erase the creativity and imagination as you grown up. The book will stay with you, I promise. You will carry it in your heart as a secret weapon against the world’s ugly.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Ah, this book. When I got through the last page I had this urge to hold the book close, to not let anything I had discovered between those pages fade. It will connect to your spiritual side and will give it a makeover.

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems of Rabindranath Tagore

I love this man. Period. His are the only works that has brought tears to my eyes not because of how sad the story was but just how beautiful his words are. There is in him a stillness of nature, and my personal love for nature is augmented by Tagore’s lyrics.

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.” 

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

Yes, you can argue that there are more amazing classics out there that should be in top five. Harry Potter has been such an integral part of my growing up that it refuses to make way for any book of any league out there. It has been a paramount source in molding my first principles of life. Simple lessons like how sometimes you need to make the harder choices or to accept your destiny and not back down even when death is facing you. 

  “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

What books feature in your top five?


Note:Pictures do not belong to me(except the first one).

Of escapism.

Copyrights belong to Audi Photography

When you are dangling from the edge, just about to tip over the ledge, what do you do to escape? Do you close your eyes and hope for the danger to pass? Or do you give yourself something to distract until help arrives?

Very so often, I’ve realized, when I’m thrown into a bad place, I seek escape through distraction. And talking to my best friend I found out we both have a similar choice of escapism.

 A book. Not a profound book. Not a classic novel. Just a book with a light story, with happiness and jokes, with silly problems and dramatic solutions. A book like Princess Diaries or the Mediator series in my case. Meg Cabot, really.

Others binge watch movies or TV shows. Escaping into another world. Just for a few hours each day, for that very much needed breathing space.

And then I ask. Is escapism good? Is it the way we survive? Our coping mechanism? Our way of looking after ourselves when we no longer can put up with reality and need some time off this world. I don’t know. But it makes me happy. It makes me light. It calms me down. In the end that is what should matter, right? What should it be: escaping or standing your ground and taking all the unnecessary hits? I’d rather escape so I can come back and stand my ground and swing back at the hits. Don't you agree?