Favorite reading

A few days ago, I added a new page to my blog called “Favorite Reading.” I brainstormed and came up with what has meant the most to me over the years and why (in no particular order). I’m sure I’ll be adding more and I want to add images of the book covers also. You can see I haven’t finished with my comments, but it’ll be a good record of what I enjoy reading and like to return to often.

The list thus far:
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl: He writes about the psychological effects of being in Auschwitz and on our natural desire to find meaning in life. This book reminds me that we have the power to shape our responses to what happens to us in life.

The Highly Sensitive Person – Elaine N. Aron, PhD: This was the first book that helped me recognize that I am not as unique as I feared. I am an HSP, a highly sensitive person; someone more reactive to stimuli than others. Along with 15-20% of all people, I can concentrate deeply, sense subtleties, and delve deeply. Sigh of relief.

Letters To a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke: “Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.” I almost felt he was talking directly to me when he said a writer is someone who can’t help but write.

Being Perfect – Anna Quindlen: As a perfectionist, I find this book to be useful in reminding me to explore new things and try to learn more about myself, even if I’m not the best. Do what makes YOU happy, not anybody else. I’m such the quintessential people pleaser.

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity – Julia Cameron: Just for the idea of morning pages alone this book is awesome. Great for getting in touch with your creative self.

When Things Fall Apart – Pema Chodron: Face fear, anger, and loss of control by letting go. Our continuing efforts to establish security for ourselves prevents our deep experience of the joy of living. Her book is about unpretentious openheartedness.

Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman: We share a birthday so I already feel a kinship to Walt, but I also love his openhearted love of nature.

The Feminine Face of God – Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins: This helped me define what is sacred in my life. The idea of feminine aspects of faith really speaks to me.

Journal of a Solitude – May Sarton: Kind of a meditation on striving to get to a calm mind. I identified with her depression and her writing.

Possession – A.S. Byatt: literary romance, mystery, poetry… what could be better?

Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy: I don’t know why I love such a tragic novel. I just do.

The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs – Elie Wiesel

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century, they write, detailing the rampant gendercide in the developing world, particularly in India and Pakistan. This is where we got the idea to raise money for a school in Cambodia.

Writings From the New Yorker 1927 – 1976 – E.B. White: Just so quaint and humorous.

The Power of One – Bryce Cortenay: Definitely in my top 5.

Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton: I didn’t know anything about apartheid before reading this book in high school English.

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe: I love Achebe. It was written just two years before Nigeria gained political independence and describes African life from within. Very compassionate and elegant.

Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser and Maggie, A Girl of the Streets – Stephen Crane: I LOVE rags to riches stories.

The Age of Innocence (or anything else) by Edith Wharton: So romantic and yet so disappointing.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

Charlotte’s Web – E. B. White: Respect for all living things; cycle of life and death. Plus it reminds me of my mother reading it to us at bedtime when we were young.

The King’s English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller – Betsy Burton: Behind the scenes of a bookstore in SLCity. So fun!

“The Waste Land” – T.S. Eliot: modern and medieval in one; spare in hope. I think I like it for some of it’s key lines.

Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov – Stacy Schiff: Mrs. Nabokov was a crucial presence by her husband’s side, editing and translating. Such a great love story.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – David Allen: My Bible.

Bird by Bird: Anne Lamott

Time Was Soft There – Jeremy Mercer

The Audacity to Win – David Plouffe

Anything by Elizabeth Berg, Jane Green, Jodi Picoult, Susan Vreeland, or Anita Shreve.

The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall – Ian Bremmer:

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier – Thad Carhart:

Lydia Cassat Reading the Morning Paper – Harriet Scott Chessman

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

Middlemarch – George Eliot

Lucy – Ellen Feldman

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman

The Wal-mart Effect – Charles Fishman:

84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff:

Call Me By My True Names – Thich Nhat Hanh

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism – Cornell West:

Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling – Ross King

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough

Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales – Oliver Sacks

The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery: This was my grandmother’s favorite book and I have her copy.

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman – Alice Steinbach

Down Came the Rain – Brooke Shields

Pillars of Hercules – Paul Thereaux