Have you read a book that changed your life? Which book and how did it change your life?

A book that has changed my life.... some of you may have seen me give this answer before but the book that always on my nightstand and truthfully grounds me in utter simplicity when this crazy brain gets to wirecrossed to unmangle-tangle on my own is "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. There are more times than I can count when I have lifted my empty and dark lantern only to find that reading this book fills it with oil and lights it too. My first sponsor gave me this book a few weeks before he died, while I slouched on his couch I had asked him a question.

I asked "Chris, how in the world do you keep your house this clean? " A simple question right? I was desperately ill in the brain and could not even understand how the word 'tidy" was applied to life let alone a home .. actual cleanliness was alien to me... and in response to this query Chris responded "sobriety Mark... I'm f*^king sober" and he read me this very short passage from The Prophet... "Your house is your larger body" and them closed the book, handed it to me, told me to think about that statement, and then I left on my own to go to a meeting.

I understand what he meant by that now. Chris took his own life 2 weeks later. I have never put this book out of my figurative sight and for the most part my literal sight too.

I get grounded in this book and when life gets confusing and I need a clue.. I find it in those pages.

I will give you what many will automatically assume is a trite and "expected" answer, but for me, it's the truth. By 1998 my life was a shambles. I was nearing 40 and my abuse of alcohol and addiction to crack cocaine had cost me my family, my health, my home, my savings and retirement account, the respect of everyone who knew me, and very nearly my life.

I was homeless and in a hospital on a suicide watch when for some reason I agreed to go into a long term residential treatment facility. I was in residential treatment for 13 long months and when I came out, I got a job the first month, and I held that job for ten years. I have been clean and sober all of that time, and I have reunited with my family.

I have a home, a job, a retirement account, and a heart full of gratitude every day, because for some reason, I did not die or get sent to prison alongside of so many of my former associates. I was no better than them, and in many important ways, I'm still not. My recovery was not about the great things I did in order to deserve a better life.My recovery was about doing what I was taught.

As soon as I got to treatment, a counselor gave me a Bible. It was a little red pocket testament from the Gideon Society. They taught me to carry that Bible and read it, and to pray, and to sing, and they taught me to thank God every day that I didn't die before I got help.

I read that Bible through three times that first year, and I began to see how Jesus lived, and how he died. I began to see how I should live, and though I will never win any awards for being "Christian of the year", I will never lose the grateful heart that beats inside of me every day, and I will never again live a life abusing alcohol and addicted to drugs.My daughter is getting married in two weeks, and I'll be there. I will most likely have grandchildren in a few years.

So many of my former associates will never have what I have, and I ask myself all of the time, what did I do to deserve what they never had a chance to get. The answer to that question is "nothing at all". I deserve just what they have, a prison cell or a grave, but instead I have been given this great gift of a life full of blessings, and much of it is due to that little red pocket Bible.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is my best book that I read and influenced from this book , so much.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.