Transform Your Life for Less Than the Cost of a Cup of Coffee
When I was younger I didn’t have a lot of money. But I always had enough to afford a book. I could always ride my bike to the used book store and find something interesting, something potentially life-changing, for a dollar or two.
There are many ways to spend money on transformative experiences: travel, college, spiritual retreats. But for sheer cost-to-impact ratio, nothing beats a book.
A good book is the best bargain in transforming one’s life.
But don’t take my word for it. Check out how books have changed the lives of some of the best writers in America:
“Every book that I’ve loved has changed my life in one way or another and keeps on changing it. So I’ll have to limit myself to a small sampling. I must certainly thank Shakespeare, Les Miserables, War and Peace, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the poetry of Paul Eluard.”
“That Wolfe novel, Of Time and the River, put into me an everlasting awareness of life’s gallant rhythms.”
“Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi was the book that really changed my life. It didn’t make me want to be a riverboat pilot; it made me want to be a writer. It even gave a kind of fugitive permission. Mark Twain could make poetry out of the prosaic midsection of America where I was growing up. From Mark Twain I learned that humor is anger sent to finishing school.”
“It was the book, The Yearling, and its effect on me, that directed my reading from then on. After I had met Jody Baxter, I didn’t want to hang out with Nan and Bert Bobbsey ever again. I don’t worry today about children addicted to Goosebumps. I was addicted to Bobbseys. But only until the right book – the book that felt real – came along. You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you’re lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It’s the same with books.”
“Cormier’s books didn’t show me a world that was previously unknown to me. They opened the doors on that world that was known, but hidden, and asked questions about it, said, let’s get some light in here and look at what we’ve got, then draw your own conclusions.”
No Frigate Like a Book
Reading requires no passport, no high school transcripts, no letters of recommendation. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can walk into a used book store and walk out minutes later with an object that will change your life forever.
Emily Dickinson says it even more eloquently:
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
What book has had the biggest impact on your life? Maybe it’s the Bible, or a work of philosophy, or a novel that stirred your soul or brought you to tears.
What did that book cost? Less than ten dollars, I’d bet. Maybe less than five. Maybe you borrowed it from a friend or from the library and it didn’t cost you anything.
And how much has that book transformed your life? Can its impact even be measured?
