“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound us,” he wrote. “If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? That is my belief.”Kafka was expressing, in the most extreme form, a favourite idea of literary people: books form us. Some said they chose their professions through books read in childhood. Mark Radcliffe, a BBC broadcaster, says that book changed his life – changed it twice, in fact.

Source: National Post September 19, 2016 17:15 UTC