July 29, 2015 
Miriam 
I walked out at lunch time on this scorching, humid day in New York City, and immediately felt like I was in a tropical jungle—only this was the concrete kind. As I tried to get my errands done quickly so I could scurry back to the relative coolness of my portable air conditioner (my office windows are of a vintage that makes standard units impossible to install)
, I found myself thinking of literary jungle settings—Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Lily King’s Euphoria, Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, etc. In part, this had to do with the sliced mango stand I ran across on the corner of Broadway and 14th Street…but I digress.
Back in the office, while eating my chilled pea and mint soup, I happened upon this piece in Galleycat about Riverhead soliciting essays for a collection about “how Elizabeth Gilbert’s famous memoir [Eat Pray Love] served as inspiration for readers to go on life-changing adventures” and, having just been thinking about her recent novel, I had one of those moments where I felt the universe was trying to tell me something.
I decided that what it was telling me was not to pack up my bags and head for the Amazon (where Jane will be in a month or so, btw), but that I should do a blog post about what books have inspired us to do things. For instance, reading Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak in high school made me want to learn Russian in the worst way. And, so I took three years of this beautiful, complicated language while in college (I remember nothing, in case you’re wondering).
It’s a great exercise, in my opinion, to consider how books have influenced our actions. For those of us who are obsessed with literary works, it’s an exercise that can turn up some fascinating (and maybe disturbing) insights into our psyches. So, have books influenced actions for you? If so, what books…and what actions?
And why in the cold hells of Niffleheim is Jane heading off to a garden spot like the Amazon?! Hasn’t anyone around there ever seen CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON?
Palm Springs is just as scenic and only half as many monsters….
I’ve got the reverse situation: a real-life experience that’s inspired me to re-read a book from the past. My college roommate and best friend recently passed away in Atlanta and left a will naming me as his executor. Once I got over the shock (if, indeed, I have) I started thinking about the first book I’d read that had an executor as its main character: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I’d read the paperback a million years ago but now that I tend to read most things on my Kindle app on my phone, I ordered up the e-copy and have begun re-reading it as a kind of therapy to get me through this. It also helps that my best friend and I were big Pynchon fans, so it’s a way of remembering those times as well.
That’s lovely, Dave. I go back to books looking for comfort and meaning as well. I never thought of Pynchon as therapeutic but I love that he’s getting you through this.
Kevin, she is undaunted by the Creature.
Sat Nam! (Literally “Truth Name”–a Sikh greeting)
The big one is that I proposed to the man who became my husband because I’d gleamed from Sartre’s The Age of Reason that the uncommitted life is not worth living. Sartre was probably advocating the reverse of that, but I disliked his MC so much, I got the opposite idea.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal
Hands down, it’s got to be Richard Halliburton’s “Book of Marvels” — two volumes in one, written for ages 8-12, describing an imaginary journey around the world with one of the ultimate adventurers. I’ve had a wanderlust ever since I read the first chapter so many years ago.