Bookworms, by definition, read a lot of books, but there is usually one that truly lodges in their heart and head for a variety of reasons. ArtsHub asked several readers (including our editorial staffers) which book changed their lives and why. Some of the nominations are accepted masterpieces; others are surprises.
In this article:
Childhood memories
The book that most impacted children and adult author Hazel Edward’s early life was Enid Blyton’s The Land of Far Beyond. “This was my first experience with an allegorical story, which was a quest, and where the characters had the names of their attributes, for example Mr Doubt, and the giant’s pageboy called Fright. Even the places they travelled to matched their names. As an adult, when we orienteered on a real map with Mount Disappointment labelled, it reminded me of this book.”
Another childhood favourite is M J Leaver’s most beloved book: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis. The YA fantasy and science fiction author says, “I was a very early reader, and read this the first time when I was about five. Then reread it hundreds of times over the years. It let me imagine escaping my difficult life through a wardrobe in a room. Going to a wonderful place full of magic – where I had power to change the world. I didn’t get the Jesus thing until I was in a lit class in uni (also when I discovered the gap between literary analysis and reader response … heh).”
Adolescent reckonings
There are two calls for books by Ursula K Le Guin. fellow author Kate Couper Watson puts forward The Farthest Shore. “It changed me when I read it at around 13,” she tells ArtsHub, specifying a particular line as one of those moments “where a newly articulated concept feels like a truth you already know”.
“Do see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed.”
Meanwhile, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is Deborah Vanderwerp’s choice. “This book cemented my interest in politics, social structures and philosophy around money, wealth capitalism and socialism. I’ve read it over my lifetime from aged 15, until most recently a couple of years ago”, the counsellor and educator says.
We Will Not Cease by Archibald Baxter, about his experiences as a pacifist in WWI, is poet Jennifer Compton’s conscious-raising book. “The stripped back passion and clarity of narrative stunned me as a teenager… Then I was told by several reliable people who were in the know that the elegance of the prose stye was due to his wife, Millicent who was a highly educated woman… She more or less wrote it.”
Opening up possibilities
“Read it in my early 20s after backpacking in Morocco. Made me really feel the immensity of the universe and how insignificant I was within it. Sounds clichéd when I spell it out like that, but it changed me profoundly,” says novelist Katerina Cosgrove about The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.
Freelance writer Ruth Dawkins nominates the Collected Poems of Scotsman Norman MacCaig. “I was born on a tiny island in the north-west of Scotland, and his poetry was the first time I had ever seen ‘my’ island and the Gaelic language depicted in literature, so I guess it was the first time I realised that all places and all people are worthy of being written about, not just those in big cities. We studied his poetry in my high school English class and it was so validating – and in turn made me realise the importance of all kinds of diversity in literature, because as a child or young person it can make you feel so seen to know that your people or your place deserve those words and that attention.”
“The idea that someone could just leave society and subsist in the wild blew my mind … in a time well before reality TV,” says Amanda E Collins, author and public speaker, about My Side of the Mountain by Jean George.
Jan, who does not want her surname disclosed, recalls a transformative title. “A book that recently came to mind as having enabled me, when in my 20s, to see as I had not done before was John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. It explores the way we look at art. In particular, the way women appear in art. Berger unveils the role of the ‘male gaze’ in life as in art. ‘[A woman’s] own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another…’ Revelatory.”
Similarly, The Monkey’s Mask by Dorothy Porter is poet and playwright Emilie Collyer’s inspirational book: “Cause of what it made me realise poetry could do and be.”
Way of the Peaceful Warrior and No Ordinary Moments by Dan Millman, proffers editor and proofreader Kym Fullerton. “Read in my mid-20s when shared with me by a work colleague. I hardly read up to that point – not the case now. His books set me on a trajectory of self-improvement and spiritual growth.”
ArtsHub‘s own Managing Editor, Madeleine Swain’s most memorable book is not even in English! “When doing O Level French, my teacher (who is a dear and beloved friend to this day) introduced me to Jean Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles. It had an immediate and powerful effect on me, to the extent that I procured a couple of heads (a papier mâche one of a surgeon from a school Eisteddfod installation and a wig maker’s dummy), adapted them and installed them in my room (IYKYK). Like the book’s sibling protagonists Paul and Elisabeth, I was a devout player of ‘the game’ and now that I’m so very much older still find myself going there sometimes, especially during bad theatre…”
For Richard Watts, ArtsHub’s Performing Arts Editor, the life-changing book in question was Irish author Jamie O’Neill’s magnum opus, At Swim, Two Boys. “I bought this 2001 novel in a Dublin bookshop, having seen Earthfall’s dance-theatre adaptation of the book the night before at Dublin Fringe. That was on my first visit to Ireland in 2005.
“Since then I’ve been back to Ireland twice, in 2019 and 2022, and I’d go back again in a heartbeat – and it’s all thanks to O’Neill’s epic novel, which is simultaneously a primer on the Republic of Ireland’s bloody birth in the 1916 Easter Rising, towards which the novel builds, a paean to Irish literature with all its intertextual nods to Joyce and other writers, and an exquisite celebration of young queer love between the larrikin, working class Doyler and Jim, a shop-keeper’s shy son. Opening the pages of At Swim, Two Boys opened my eyes to Irish history, Irish culture and so much more – a journey I’m still joyfully exploring today.”
David Burton, ArtsHub’s feature writer, nominates A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. “I found it when I was in my early 20s and searching for meaning. I’m glad I stumbled onto this volume instead of the countless other places young men tend to go to find meaning and purpose.”
It has to be A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East by Tiziano Terzani says ArtsHub‘s Visual Arts editor, Gina Fairley: “I first read this book when I attended a reading in San Francisco with the author in 2001, as I was about to start my own Southeast Asian odyssey over the next decade – following 9/11. I didn’t know this at the time, so there is a wry twist in that I perhaps should have consulted a fortune teller myself. Warned off plane travel for a year, Terzani’s witty, charming novel is a wonderful tale of improvisation and earthy engagement with cultures both exotic and perilous at moments.
“It bridges old beliefs with new worlds and as a reader it encourages one to remember to look around you and to appreciate the gems of a simple way of life. I have returned to this book several times over the years since, and as our contemporary world shifts, it continues to throw up new readings and revelations.”
Classics for a reason
It’s not surprising that high-end literary books that stand the test of time are in the mix, like novelist Mandy Beaumont’s pick: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. “It uses the ‘unreliable narrator’ with such convincing power that the reader is left feeling this is an ‘erotic novel’, which for me, in the context of the book being about a grown man’s sexual ‘relationship’ with a 12-year-old girl, demonstrates Nabokov’s masterful skill as a writer,” Beaumont points out. “He uses and plays with language to excite and build meaning throughout. It is phenomenal writing. This book taught me how to excite, scare and move the reader through language and technique on themes that are often challenging.”
Read: Australian literary festivals in 2025
Linguistics nerd Robert Cerantonio’s choice is The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “It is much more than a history of the Soviet prison camps. Solzhenitsyn wrestles with what good and evil really are and how easily anyone can become either. He strips everything back to the question of who you are when everything else is taken from you. It is a work of stoic philosophy, not just theoretical, but grounded in brutal reality. In the worst of conditions, he finds that the only thing you truly control is your own soul, your choices, your ability to stay true to yourself. It is both haunting and hopeful and it stays with you long after you put it down. The chapter titled ‘The Ascent’ is still for me possibly the greatest piece of literature ever written.”
As for me, the book that led me on a path to being a voracious reader and to eventually work with words myself was Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I did not have horrible parents nor principals, but I remember reading this book nestled in the school library with the cries of kids outside at recess and being caught up in Matilda’s plight. Her obsessive escape into words mirrored my own desire to seek refuge, learning and adventure. It was the beginning of a life-long love.
