30 Day Book Challenge – day 19: A book that changed my mind about a particular subject
I find this challenge unanswerable. I can’t recall having my mind changed by reading anything. Opened, expanded, developed – yes, too many times to count – but actually changed, no. Though there are some changes that might come close.
For instance I’ve read books that persuaded me that a topic I thought uninteresting was in fact fascinating. I’ve read a history of a hat-making firm (whose name I’ve forgotten) and another one about engineering company Stothert & Pitt and been gripped by the details of their businesses. I also love specialist magazines on subjects I’m not normally concerned with – ones for hobbyists in model railways, chess, birdwatching – most subjects open up a window on other people’s interests and on the richness of life and culture. 
Other books have made me look at something in a different way. One of these is The Passover Plot by Hugh J Schonfield. This book looks at the life, death and resurrection of Christ from the point of view that he was a man who engineered the events described in the Bible, but was too badly injured to survive. There’s a lot more to the author’s thesis than this and I have to admit I’ve forgotten a good deal of it, but it was interesting to see how a story I knew very well could be reinterpreted in a completely different way from the traditional one.
Learning completely new things from books is a given. In my reading I’ve delved into areas of history and science that I didn’t even know existed.
But I still don’t feel that any of these has changed my mind.
Cover art from Goodreads.
e a m harris 