We have a lot to thank books for. “Books can be dangerous,” wrote writer and publisher of gift books, Helen Exley. “The best ones should be labelled ‘This could change your life’.” That is the theme of this year’s Book Week Scotland: the ways in which books quite literally have transformed our lives, sent us on new directions, altered our world views, coached us, soothed us or emboldened us. Scottish Book Trust, working in parallel with Scottish Adult Learners Week, aim, in this week, “to explore and celebrate books’ capacity to effect real, long-lasting change in people’s lives”. Already, inspired by that theme, people across Scotland have been sharing on social media their tales of the way books have triggered real change, under the hashtag #ThankBooks.

Among those thanking books are authors. Avid readers themselves, they know, for instance, how books can help us feel less alone. Poet Jackie Kay credits some of the books she read when she was a teenager with having that impact. Among them was Liz Lochhead’s first collection of poems, Memo For Spring, which she read at the age of 15. “That really changed me. It made me feel you can write in your own voice. You don’t have to write in someone else’s voice.” She had the same feeling, she observes, when she first read Glasgow urban speech in the poetry of Tom Leonard.

Also world-altering for her, having grown up an adopted black girl in a very white community, was Black-American writer Audre Lorde’s passionate and visionary collection of poetry, The Black Unicorn. “It made me feel,” she says, “other things were possible. Growing up I had felt quite isolated. I didn’t have that many black friends. I didn’t even come across many back people. But here, I discovered, there was company in the form of literature. It was my first introduction to literature as a friend, as a companion, as a mirror, as a way of looking at the world and yourself differently.”

Literature can also help heal. In dark times, books provide a solace. Matt Haig, author of Reasons To Stay Alive and The Humans, suffered a breakdown and battled with depression while he was in his early twenties. He now believes that reading and writing books saved his life, and that "in a world trying to increasingly isolate us from our environment and our true selves, books are our route to freedom, and to each other". He recalls that, during one of his most difficult periods, he reached a place so dark that he didn’t know “why people bothered to communicate at all”, where he saw “no point in words". At that point he picked up The Outsiders, a coming-of-age novel by S E Hinton. He did so “because I knew it very well, having read it many times as a teenager” . He remembers “it felt like turning an infinite pain into something finite and manageable. Both writing and reading help us reconnect with the world.’’

And books can awaken us to aspects of our own selves. Young adult novelist James Dawson, author of This Book Is Gay, believes that other people’s stories are crucial to how we begin to understand who we are. “We start to see ourselves in them. And I think as well a story will provide a safe space – instead of talking about your feelings it’s easier to talk about a book and I think that’s what a lot of books provide. A buffer zone for you to explore yourself or to explore an issue.” It was while researching This Book Is Gay that he had a revelation. When he was talking to trans women he began to realise that he “had far more in common with trans women than with gay men”. “The things that they were saying rang true for me. So really writing that book has changed my life. And also I get letters every day from people all around the world saying that book has helped them to come out, whether they are L, G, B or T.”

Sharing a love of literature with others can also be life-changing. Books provide connections and friendship. Laura Lam, whose works of speculative fiction include Pantomime and Shadowplay, says that they are the reason she moved from California to Scotland. When she was 15, a boy from Scotland messaged her. He had found a list of her favourite authors on her blog and took great exception to the fact she listed Terry Goodkind above Robin Hobb. They argued it out energetically online. She recalls that she was “excited because not a lot of my friends read sci-fi and fantasy”. They became good friends, and, she recalls, “I fell hopelessly in love with the boy – Craig – who came to visit me a year later but wasn't sure if it would work because of the distance.” It’s now 12 years on from their online meeting and they have been married for six years. Lam lives and writes in Scotland.

Book group advocate and writer Angela Miller also appreciates what the importance of talking about books with others. She had a stroke three years ago, aged 47, less than three months after her dad passed away after also following a stroke. While she was in hospital she had to learn to walk again, and though she went back to work in the civil service, she eventually took ill-health retirement. Six months ago she joined a reading group run by the disability support group ECAS, to get her “brain working again”. “The reading group,” she recalls, “has really helped my recovery, I've met new people and it's given me a sense of purpose. I've written about my journey in the Scottish Book Trust book Journeys and now I want to write a book about my own experiences.”

“Can a book really transform the way we feel? Can it lighten your mood, ensure a better night’s sleep, steal away loneliness?” asks Marc Lambert, CEO of the Scottish Book Trust. Again and again, the answer seems to be, “Yes”

Book Week Scotland events take place across the country from Monday. For details visit www.scottishbooktrust.com/book-week-scotland