In most of my Good Reads columns, I often select five or six books related to CityView’s theme for that month’s magazine. There are so many good books out there that it is easy to find books for a particular theme. Once in a while I come across a book that warrants its own article.
This month I found that book. Actually, I found it last year at a used book sale and the title grabbed me right away — You’ve GOT to Read This Book!: 55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life by Jack Canfield and Gay Hendricks.
When I started the book, I opened to the middle and read the essay by Max Edelman, a Holocaust survivor. Mr. Edelman was a teenager in Poland in the 1930s. The book that he felt completely changed his life was Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
Why would a Polish Jew — during the rise of Hitler, no less — find that this book, considered the bible of Nazism and anti-Semitism, would have such a life-changing effect on him?
In fact, he attributes what he learned from this book to saving his life when he was in the concentration camps during World War II. It was what he learned about the mindset of the Nazis that taught him how to stay alive during the horrors he experienced.
I then went on to read the other essays in the book. Most are only three or four pages long. In most cases, it’s not necessarily the book that the writer says changed their life, but the process they went through in reading the book and thinking about its shared lessons to be learned.
We read books at various times in our lives that touch us in different ways. This is most notable when we read a book at a younger age and come back and read it again when we are older. Our life experiences affect how a book touches us and what we take away from it.
Some of the essays refer to self-help books. Others are about novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Rafe Esquith, a 5th-grade teacher, had read Harper Lee’s book several times before finally deciding his students were ready to read it. When he re-read it again, he found that not only was the book about a lawyer defending a case he would not win, but about being a role model. He said that if he really wanted to be a great teacher, he would have to be the person he would want his students to be.
When EllyAnne Geisel wrote her essay about Gone With the Wind, she said it had always been her favorite book, but she had never thought about the author, Margaret Mitchell. Then one day, she was intrigued by the bio of Mitchell on the jacket cover of the book. Geisel proceeded to look her up in an old set of encyclopedias and found that Mitchell had much the same tenacity and drive that Scarlett demonstrated in GWTW. When Mitchell broke her ankle, her husband would bring her piles of library books to read during her convalescence. Finally, he brought her a typewriter and said if she wanted more to read, she would have to write it herself. That story inspired Geisel to seriously begin her own writing and become a published author.
This book inspired me not only to consider what book was most life-changing for me, but also to share it with others. Not just this book, but the experience of discovery and inspiration. Because I belong to five book clubs, this was a great opportunity for members to read a great book, think about what book they felt changed their lives, and share that with others. This could even result in great lists of books for the clubs to read.
So, I suggested to each book club that after reading and discussing the book, they each should take a few minutes to talk about the book they felt changed their life. It was also suggested that they pick one of the essays in You’ve GOT to Read This Book! and tell us about that. So far, all my groups have agreed enthusiastically, and when the first book club discussed it, we had an incredible experience. Some recalled books from elementary school and even had their original copy of the book. Another member talked about a poetry book that his teacher introduced to him, starting him on the path to becoming a college English professor.
Books can touch us in so many ways. You’ve GOT to Read This Book! can get us thinking about a book that inspired us to become who we are today.
Read CityView Magazine’s “The Faith Issue” April 2025 e-edition here.