There are two books for me, and both are from the same period in my life.
The first is a book I’ve mentioned dozens of times on here. It’s not a massive tome about the philosophical nature of the universe or anything like that. In fact, it’s just a simple, 213 page book about a young boy trying to live life on the dance floor, as opposed to sleepwalking through life. The book is Stephen Chbosky’s Perks of Being a Wallflower. When I was a sophomore in highschool, I could so easily relate to the struggles that Charlie, the protagonist faced. I too, was a quiet, introverted wallflower who struggled to cope with my own feelings of love, regret, and anticipation of growing up. I still read this book twice yearly, and it still makes me cry every time because there will always be parts of me in Charlie, and I will think back to those timid days I spent in early highschool trying to figure out who I was.
The second book is one that most Fluther members are probably familiar with, because it was a bestseller for a long time and was recently made into a movie. This book was The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold. I first read this one around the same time I read Perks. The girl I loved at the time and I read it together and had long discussions in the park over ice cream about the nature of life and death and love and whether we believed in Heaven or not. Times would quickly change, but The Lovely Bones was still probably the biggest influence for me in writing my own novel. Every time I read it now, I think back on those days when I’d lay back in the swings in the park with a girl I loved dearly but would never get to touch and talk about how, from upside down, the trees looked like they took root in the sky. I was a much different person in these times. More emotionally intuitive, and more connected with people… before I became fixated on seeking adventure and was more interested in finding love. I read these books whenever I want to remember what that was like.