The Book That Really Did Change My Life Essay -- How Education Has Chan

Periodically while surfing the internet I encounter a page entitled "Books That Changed My Life", with a list of books that purportedly changed the life of the author. I am always irritated by these pages, because I never see any evidence that the books had actually changed the life of the author. In fact, for most of these pages a more appropriate title would have been "Books that I really, really liked a lot." Occasionally, it might have been called "Books that influenced my thinking," but I'm reluctant to refer to that as having changed one's life. I suppose I am irritated because I have my own list of books, and each one of them had effected a concrete, specific change in my life. It's not very long--maybe three books--but even that fact is interesting, since it shows how difficult it is for a book to change a reader, and consequently when it happens it is something worth pondering. How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles ... ...you how valuable those sessions were to me. They gave me the opportunity to apply his techniques diligently, enough for them to become habits, and to writings that were good enough to stand up under that kind of scrutiny. Nowadays I don't always apply the techniques; most books simply aren't worth the effort. But when I stumble onto something worthwhile, a pencil will magically appear in my hand and I will begin analyzing it before I'm aware of what I'm doing.