Are ye what ye read?

~inquiry

Authors important to me along the way:

Within you

- Wei Wu Wei
- G.I. Gurdjieff
- P.D. Ouspensky
- Robert Anton Wilson

Without you

- John Updike
- Joyce Carol Oates
- Hunter S. Thompson (especially "The Proud Highway")

A few books for good measure:

- Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi
- The Lankavatara Sutra

I know there were many more, but already forgotten (at least temporarily at time of writing this).

Not saying they're "truth", just that they helped organize/coalesce otherwise rather loosely ended conceptual threads for me along the way.

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~tetris wrote:

I can't say any particular books have shaped me. Maybe a long series of books made me think a certain way about certain things - e.g. GRR made me more forgiving with my family; King made me realise that too much of a good thing can be bad; Asimov taught me that the idea is longer lasting than the implementation; and recently Leckie taught me that habits are our most defining physical traits.

These aren't permanent written thoughts that I will take to my grave, my mind forever scarred by the lesson as I live completely to the ideals I am inspired by....

No. My mind wanders. These lessons stay in the back of my head, eking out little nuggets of wisdom here and there at a chronically declining rate determined by how long ago I happened to have read that book.

...I'm sad to say that I'm shaped more by the chaotically (dis-)ordered world around me, than by the inspiring narratives from the fictional worlds I love

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