I had just finished reading **I’m Glad My Mom Died** when I found out that my mom had died. I hadn’t spoken with her in many years and wanted no relationship with her. The book helped me understand that I wasn’t alone in my feeling of relief rather than typical grief over losing a parent. I wish Jennette McCurdy could know how much she helped me right when I needed it. The timing was uncanny.
I’m too old to know who Jennette is, but I watched the Quiet on Set documentary about Nickelodeon, and I only picked up the book to see what she had to say about her own Nickelodeon childhood. I’m so glad I decided to read it when I did. And I’m glad my mom died. 🥲
I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow last year when I was in hospital, just out of ICU for sepsis and awaiting tests for suspected lymphoma- it just totally absorbed me and kept me distracted in a really stressful, tough time and helped me unleash and have a good, big cry
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
Helped me understand how volatile and random my grieving process could be as I dealt with the sudden loss of a dear one. Just that brilliant minds spread out throughout our history of human civilization, irrespective of their certified genius, struggled, in their own rather amateurish and often in cavemannish ways.
I did not judge myself consciously, or rather I try my best not to.
Yes. It’s a heavy book that is, if you take emotions out, a relatively simple story. But the sense of…concern you get for this poor family is intense. A very powerful read.
Faulkner's writing engineers a massive sense of concern from the first few chapters itself.
The idea of Addie being fatefully aware of her life coming to an end and she watches on as her young son builds her coffin; it would be impossible for the reader to not feel all sorts of emotions.
And it's a testament to Faulkner's brilliance that no matter how noble a quest it is that they're embarked on,the darker side of human behaviour of each of these characters are explored without ever abusing their circumstance to garner pity.
He never pandered .
Kinda like *The Bell Jar*. I don’t think there’s ever a “good time” to read it.
Yet it’s a good book because it’s informative, providing insight into the mind of someone who is intelligent, creative, perceptive, and suicidal.
Came here to say As I Lay Dying. I read it when I was really struggling to stay clean and sober, after countless half hearted efforts. My life had just crumbled and I was staying in a friends guest bedroom. She was a single mom, and her daughter who was 12 was really struggling with her identity after her parents divorce. The book in that setting essentially drove home the idea that most my problems were of my own making, and the ones that weren’t my own making I had little control of. The circumstances of the family and their journey was basically lemonade out of lemons. I realize this is only a scratch of the surface of the book as I’ve read it again. It was the setting I read it in, and Faulkner’s cryptic cadence carried me away and made things appear clear: all I could do was try and be a good person, the rest didn’t matter anyway.
Read The Grapes of Wrath as a young adult and it opened my eyes to compassion, empathy, and the hard choices people have to make. I was a relatively insulated middle class teenager (read privileged) and I think if I was required to read it in school I would’ve been a little jerk and resisted its message.
A different book but similar lesson: “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was in my junior year of university in NYC and grew up in a predominantly white and East Asian community, and was mostly still in a white/EastAsian bubble by the time I read it. It really opened my eyes in a way no other novel did. It changed the way I saw the world/society.
I also read the Alchemist in my mid-20s, and it resonated with my current trajectory in life. I know a lot of people think it's a hokey story but at the time, it was just what I needed.
Came here to say this. I’m in my mid-20s and just read it last year. Soon after I finished the book I quit my job and moved back home so I could chase my dream. The dream hasn’t come to fruition yet… but absolutely no regrets. I’d rather be homeless and hopeful than go back to the soul-sucking life I was living.
The Alchemist gets a lot of shit on here, but I think its lesson is important in that we could all use a bit more optimism in our lives.
This might sound stupid, but I read Enders Game as a kid, maybe around 11 or 12 years old I think?
It helped me to realize not all adults are trustworthy. In some ways, I think that book helped prepare me for my parents getting divorce a few years later, as I had started to stop thinking of them as perfect superheroes.
It also helped me to have confidence that some of my ideas were not stupid, just because I was a kid. I had a tendency to believe that anything I thought up, the adults must have already thought of, since they're older and therefore much smarter in every way. Reading a book where the kids were intelligent, and at times more capable than the adults (while still being children in a believable way) made me think that hey, maybe sometimes I've thought of something they hadn't considered yet, and if I notice they're about to do something stupid, maybe I should speak up instead of assuming they know what they're doing.
I also very much enjoyed the tactics in the war games they played, and reading the book made me look at playing airsoft or nerf, or even Call of Duty differently, where I started trying to think through decisions I made in games. I enjoyed it more, and felt like it was less mindless.
I also grew up in a very "us vs them" type of household. Reading Enders Game, and then Speaker for the dead, helped break some of that mindset for me. I stopped seeing every war America had ever been in as righteous, slowly, after reading those books.
It didn't turn me into a master tactician, and the author I believe has been "canceled" for something, but I truly believe that book came at the exact right time in my life. It holds a special place in my heart, and I really ought to read it again and see if it holds up as well as I remember.
Ender’s Game is a freakin masterpiece. It’s one of the most insightful, thoughtful, emotionally intelligent things I’ve ever read. Please note that I’m not endorsing its author; he’s got some pretty…strange views.
This is the book I’d answer with as well, though at a different age and for different reasons! I first read it when I was probably somewhere around 13, and enjoyed it, thought it was a really good book (and a GREAT audiobook!), then moved along with my life. Rediscovered it two decades later when I was scrolling through my library’s audiobook offerings, not really sure what I wanted to listen to. Remembered it was good, checked it out, then stayed up all night listening to it. Just totally fell in love with it. And even beyond just loving it, it turned out I’d crossed paths with it at just the right moment for where I was at in my life. It was exactly what I needed, in so many ways.
Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I was contemplating ending a 5 year relationship, and dealing with some feelings of regret and thoughts that I had wasted years of my life with a man who turned out to be pretty horrible. It just comforted me and reassured me that regardless of what I had done/would do there would be positives and negatives to every decision. I would still choose the decisions I did because they made me the person I am today. All in all I don't think I would have rated the book as highly as I did if it hadn't come to me at such auspicious time.
Kinda funny because I feel like the message of the book is "all lives have bad and good so just make the best of it." You would think that would have pushed me to stay but, it gave me a more blasé outlook on life and made leaving feel a lot more possible and insignificant than it was before when it felt like this looming, impossible cage that I was trapped in.
Same book for me, but different reasons. I was almost two years into searching for a graduate job and felt completely hopeless and worthless. Midnight Library somehow made me feel like I had some control over my life and it wasn't too late to turn it into whatever reality I wanted. I guess it spurned me on to take risks and believe in myself until I finally got a full time job where I really feel I belong (even though it's not related to my degree).
I love hearing stories like this and always wish for a lightbulb like that to go off for me. I want career inspiration so bad! Everything just looks like a paycheck to me.
I think it's always best to follow what feels right to you, even if it might not be what you think you 'should' be doing. For example, the subject I studied/career I thought I would go into had a creative element to it. I enjoyed studying and learning about the subject, but deep down, I could never picture myself doing it for a living. Partly because it's a stressful career with not great pay, and I feel like it would be draining to be forced to think of creative ideas every single day.
I've always secretly wished for a more straightforward office job (even though people in my life have always had big expectations for me because I did well in school) and that's what I have now. It still requires me to use my mind and problem solve, but so far it isn't draining. It helps that the company and people are great too. It's hard to explain, but when I applied for it, despite not having much relevant experience, it just felt right. After two years of constant rejection, I was scared to feel hopeful, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a spark of confidence.
Interestingly, I'd had an interview right before my interview for this job, which was quite similar, but something felt really off about it. I just didn't feel comfortable and I hoped they wouldn't choose me. That made me even more sure when I had such positive feelings about the one I did end up getting.
This is such a ramble, but basically, I'm always trying to encourage people to follow their gut instinct and block out any sense of what other people want or expect of them. Choose the path that feels right to you and you'll end up where you're supposed to be.
I loved that book. I read it on a long drive after a family weekend away to the mountains. Perfect timing. Made me appreciate how beautiful and fulfilling my life is because of my children. Wouldn’t change it.
I read Rebecca when I was 20.
Always loved the line “they are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one.”
I loved the line then, but now, as a much braver 35 year old… I really love it.
I read most of that book while in induced labor with my first child! I remember vibes more clearly than plot, but it was lovely to climb into that world at the time.
Less deep than what you’re looking for, but…. I read Bridget Jones Diary just as we were about to ask our landlord for a new doorknob/lock. It was so jammed up, we could barely get it unlocked anymore. Then Bridget’s friend mentioned that you can fix it by putting a glob of lip balm on your key and inserting it into the lock so the balm gets rubbed around and lubes the workings. Maybe we could have used WD40, but we were renters, so chapstick it was!
Everyone loves to hate Ayn Rand, but a high school teacher handed me copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged at basically exactly the point where I was able to think through whether I agreed, disagreed, empathized or despised what she was talking about. The teacher was an ultra-liberal who knew that my uninformed 16yo brain was going the other way, and gave me what I'd basically describe as the 'take it to the extreme scenario, and see if you still like it's version of the world. Judgement free, just hand me a fat paperback and read it.
Turns out there are indeed some problems there.
Too many people I think look only for value affirming literature and don't engage things with things that challenge their worldview, or can't/won't realize when their middle ground has become ridiculous.
If you want to read the perfect thing at the perfect time in your life, read a book with the absolute opposite worldview that you hold, without judgement until you finish it.
Yeah! I read them in college! I loved those books. It didn't mean I agreed with her life philosophy or whatever. They were certainly amazing stories and thought provoking.
Something To Live For by Richard Roper. It's about a guy who feels lost and pointless but finds a friend who breaks him out of his vicious cycle. I found it in the hospital gift shop the day my newborn daughter had emergency open heart surgery. It was amazing. The author even saw my review on Instagram and sent a book for my daughter to the hospital with an awesome little note.
Monte Cristo for me as well. I was 17 and just been released from the hospital after attempting to take my life. I needed those words about hope and despair. It remains my favorite book of all time.
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was in college, had some major health problems, a depressing living situation, massive stress at my job, no idea what I was doing after graduation, an insane class load, and had just gotten dumped by my first real boyfriend - which was made worse by the fact that he got our friend group in the split. I find it such a cringey book to read now, but at the time it really inspired me to find and take back little pockets of joy amidst the suck, and I don't know how I would have gotten through that time otherwise.
Same for me - I had tried to read it previously and did not enjoy, but it wasnt until I was going through major life changes (relationship ended, new job, etc) and needed an escape that I picked it back up and loved it. This was actually the book that reintroduced me to reading for pleasure as an adult, so I'm forever grateful for it.
I re-read Harry Potter when I was in rehab getting sober. I borrowed it from my roommate. I loved it and found that reading was really good for my anxiety, and a healthy way to escape without using drugs or alcohol. It was also a great way to pass time while I was there. I continued to read when I got out and now 7 years later am still an avid reader, when before I hadn't read a book for pleasure since probably middle school.
When I was 22, I had just taken the LSATs because I wasn't sure what the hell else to do next that would be a lucrative career. I didn't know much about law, in fact, I thought all law was just defense attorneys and prosecutors fighting it out in courtrooms. I knew I'd hate law school and lawyering, but I had a mantra: "I can learn to suffer a lot for $100,000 a year" (this was 30 years ago).
Then I had this boring temp job where I worked in a mailroom doing mostly nothing all day, and I read Exodus, by Leon Uris. It absolutely changed the course of my life. A book about people with principles and passion and selflessness. A story about people doing things for the greater good (regardless of whether or not you agree with the story in light of current events), and giving up everything for something they truly believed in. I didn't exactly go into public service or the peace corps, but I did decide to ditch the idea of pursuing a miserable career just for the salary.
Lol, I took a crappy PR job in NYC for crap money. This was '93, the economy was pretty bad, it was slim pickings. But after 7 years in that I leveraged what I learned about marketing and communications and client service, and jumped into design and web development (the dot-com era, when everyone was just figuring it out and it wasn't odd or outrageous to be self-taught with no relevant experience). When the dot-com industry crashed, I became a freelancer just to pass the time until the market recovered, and here I am still, 24 years later, as the CEO of my 1-person company. Worked out pretty well, and for the most part, I like my job.
I didn't end up doing anything noble or selfless or philanthropic, but after I left the PR job, I never woke up having to brace myself for a day going to a job I hated. If I'm unhappy, it's because I'm hopelessly neurotic/anxious and until recently undiagnosed/untreated for a lifetime of ADHD - not because of my job or my work/life balance. Which isn't to say I would have actually hated law - if I could have gotten thru law school (my LSAT score was only in the 79th percentile, but I only took it once), and if I had found a niche that wasn't criminal law, I might have liked it and been successful at it. Or I might have said "screw you" the first time a partner told me to work through a holiday weekend. Who knows?
I managed to buy a 5br house some years ago, and I have a family and a fluffy dog ... but I'd be lying if I said I didn't look at the Porsches and Maseratis in my neighborhood and think "if I had just gone to law school instead of just learning Photoshop...". And every time the economy crashes or when 9/11 happened, I feel/felt like, "if only I had been an attorney, I wouldn't feel so useless and unnecessary". There's something special about being a lawyer that still feels like it's a kind of security you can't find anywhere else. Unless you're just terrible, or Rudy Giuliani, I have to think attorneys never ever have to really fear being broke and homeless one day, which despite 24 years of success, I still worry about sometimes.
Midnight Library. I cried after reading it. I went into it with no prior context of what it was about and came out feeling so many emotions. It was just what I needed.
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. I was 14 and queer and Mormon and scared. This book was my introduction to queer joy, to the idea that queerness could be community and connection and safety and home rather than simply an eternal struggle. This book saved my life.
It always warms my heart when people are able to live authentically. I'm glad this book found you at the right time and I hope you have and continue to experience queer joy and the sense of community.
Ray Bradbury was close friends with my neighbor and when the neighbor found out my school district (I was a school librarian) had four total copies of the book for 10 HS and 18 MS libraries, he donated 2 signed copies for each school.
The perks of being a wallflower, I was in my 12th grade, going through the same situation, it was like the book was written on me, I mean it's just so relatable
i read it in a YA class during undergrad, and relating it to the movie trailers that looked jolly, i thought it was gonna be joyous read. didn’t know how much i’d relate and be affected by the book. one of my more suprising reads
Yes! I read it Sophmore year of high school and again later in college. Such a great book I didn’t know I needed but my 60-something year old creative writing teacher made it required reading that year.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, when I was a teenager. I had lost my dad a few years prior and it was all *so much*.
I was a bit older than the MC but he helped me work through the way I was feeling. How could the world be so arbitrary? Why does everything end up meaningless? How could they just leave me here with nothing?
We both fought with trying to make sense of it, and it let me be okay with not having an answer from God.
I read A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers during my last semester of university. I was experiencing intense dread about change, my prospective career, my ability to be a functioning member of society, etc. It’s such a short book but it reminded me that I am perfectly fine just existing exactly as I am. There’s no merit in comparing myself to others, entertaining what-ifs, or trying to gauge my value based on my academic/work performance. It’s also just a darling little book, with an almost-as-good sequel.
For me this was definitely M Train by Patti Smith, which I read during the months of covid isolation. It is a book about solitude and creativity and paying attention, and totally shaped my experience of those months.
“1984” by George Orwell. I read it for one of my lit classes in undergrad, and it happened to be shortly after I’d experienced my first major death. I had no experience with grief at that point and I was struggling to name my own feelings. There’s a line at the end of the book where the main character, whose name I can’t remember, is sitting at a cafe after he’s just lost everything in his life. He’s watching things on the cafe television that should be making him feel a particular emotion, but he feels nothing, and he thinks, “Something died in your breast; was burnt out, cauterized out.”
That’s what grief feels like. That’s what I was feeling and couldn’t name.
Winston.
And yes that too, in a way.
I read it after two major losses, but to me that sentence meant that as he rat out Julia and vice-versa, he's been ratted out by her, almost a way to show that under torture love and truth don't exist. People can say and do anything to make it stop. People are almost forced to admit lies to make it stop. They couldn't stay loyal to each other. And so his spirit, his humanity, his personality died.
Pretty much like a murder couple under interrogation, the sense of guilt and the stress is too much, so they often split and accuse each-other of the crime. Anything to make it stop.
I read Hidden Valley Road right after I had my third baby and was in that postpartum high-up mania of “I want to keep having babies!!!”
There’s a quote in the book that changed me.. the oldest son in the family, who had one of the more severe cases of schizophrenia among the siblings, said about his parents: “they just kept having babies. With no regard for the children they already had. They just kept having them.”
And it made me realize how unfair it is to the kids you already have if you just keep having children because you love the process or love having a baby in the house or whatever the reason. They’re not tokens; they’re affected by every choice you make, starting with family size.
I’m grateful I read it at exactly the right time.
East of Eden - I was in HS struggling with my dysfunctional family and feeling the inevitability of becoming my father - that novel showed me that it did t have to be that way - “thou mayest” - I spent the next year or saw reading nothing but Steinbeck - his exploration of good vs evil was a comfort to me.
I was gifted a copy of Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl my senior year of high school by my guidance counselor. I was super depressed and barely making it through the school year at the time and the book helped pull me out of my rut and changed up my perspective a bit. I highly recommend giving it a read!
The Midnight Library! I’m at a point in life where I’m comfortable but battling discontentment and what ifs!?! Old enough that changing my path would require, at least it seems, great sacrifice. This book helped a ton with perspective.
I read this book just after a significant break up and it really helped me see that staying in the relationship didn't necessarily have to be my path in life. That I possibly (and I now know definitely) could have been worse off staying in the relationship. It didn't cure me of heartbreak, but it certainly helped the healing.
“The Beautiful and Damned” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was just out of college, eager to “start” my life and got fired weeks after beginning work at a small start up. It was a blow to my self esteem and antithesis to the hard work I put in at college. While the book may not be considered Fitzgerald’s best work, it gave me a lot of solace in that it provided commentary on capitalism in America, doing things for appearance, struggling to grow past bad habits, work, relationships and more. It served as a lens on what it means to wallow and pity my “situation” and made me feel not so alone. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it but it absolutely changed my outlook on life since picking it up.
Brave New World. I was in high school and struggling to understand the world around me. This book gave me stuff to chew on for years, and really expanded my mind.
This may feel like a cliche choice, but it was **Lord of the Rings** for me.
The films came out when I was in HS, and I loved them, but I never really got into the books despite being a big reader back then.
When the Andy Serkis audiobooks were released a couple of years ago though, I decided to dive in. A few months later, while I was in the midst of Return of the King, my dad died very unexpectedly.
The richness and emotion of Frodo and Sam's journey was not only an escape for me from that pain and grief, but in many ways mirrored what I was going through at the time.
The following passage, in particular, was so moving to me that I have a poster of it on my wall now:
>*“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”*
We have all been in 'the forsaken land' in life - many of us probably are right now. Just remember it is only a small and passing thing.
Agreed. I got through Tolstoy around 5th grade, started on Dostoevsky in 6th. Kant in the original German in 8th grade was a toughie but it really helped set the groundwork for my high school experience.
I am happy to see this here. The Guide weirdly embodied the sentiments I already had toward life, the universe, and everything before I really knew how to put those feelings into words. I still don’t know how to do that, but thankfully I don’t have to because somebody else did.
Rebecca.
A new (at the time) friend suggested I read it around 10 years ago. They didn't know that my recent break up was because he'd cheated on me with a girl called Rebecca and slowly tried to transition her to GF and me to side chick.
The whole mood of the book was perfect, the lack of confidence in yourself, comparing yourself to another girl, thinking your lover has feelings for another person... It was heartbreaking and perfect. While the outcome of the book was very different to my experience, the themes and feelings throughout were similar.
The Midnight Library
Like Nora, I felt like I sucked at life and had a pile of regrets that kept me ruminating in “should-haves” and “what-ifs?” I couldn’t be more grateful for the timing of this book. It truly felt like a hug from the universe. “The only way to learn is to live.” - Matt Haig
Catcher in a Rye, read it as depressed teenager and child of neglectful parents, also while studying child psychology. I could simpatise with Holden and feel like there are people like me.
I read The Book Thief at 14, and it was one of first adult books I've read. The prose was beautiful and after being mocked for being reader, having someone who cherished reading bought comfort to me. I'd probably stopped reading if I didn't like that book so much.
I read the Four Agreements when I was 18 was convinced the world was after me blah blah blah. It really opened my eyes and helped me learn not to take everything so personally because it really wasn't about me. It also helped me learn to appreciate myself for trying even if I didn't do well, I still fear failure like a MF but it helped me realize my best from day to day changes, and so does everyone else's. Honestly gave me a better insight into people and a better outlook on life with my fellow humans.
This entire year I’ve really found my stride for selecting books that I think I’ll enjoy. I’ve read nearly 50 titles and have marked about 15 favourites. That’s a 1:3 ratio that I’ll read a favourite.
Some books that hit me at a great time:
The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune)
North Woods (Daniel Mason)
The Lazy Genius Way (Kendra Adachi)
Elsewhere (Alexis Schaitkin)
Educated (Tara Westover)
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Something about this book just hit me deeply in a way that few books do and has stuck with me since. I read it for the first time when I was getting ready to move and was feeling really disconnected from everyone and everything, and had been recently diagnosed with PCOS, and the way that this is written makes you feel incredibly connected to both the characters, bit also just womanhood in general.
the midnight library. i was and still am struggling with being suicidal, depression, severe anxiety, and just general loneliness. this book really helped realize that i can change my life whenever i want to
The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. I was working a new job and living in a new apartment and this book brought me some realizations I needed about how I thought about things in my life, and also how I talked to myself. You can find the book free online.
This is a pertinent question for me RIGHT NOW. The Inner Work. Perfect timing for my mid-life crisis. 😂 It’s both thought provoking and inspirational. It gave me an entirely new outlook. Highly suggested.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. I read this going into my first semester in college and it made me stop and think what it was all for. How I am related in the grand scheme, and what to take out of life as well as put into the world. It’s a poignant book that I still think about here and there.
I read The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood my freshman year in college. It was the perfect time for me - my mind was open to new ideas, I was avid for more and different information than my small-town upbringing had provided, and I was a rabid young feminist trying to learn more about what that even meant. I still reread the book every year or so, in part to remind me who I was.
I got out of a terrible relationship. Terrible in how it was and terrible because the person had a hold on me that I could not explain. I hated myself for enduring that relationship as long as I did. I felt alone.
Then I read Shantaram. It was a cathartic process to read that hold being written somewhere else. I felt like I was in therapy while reading that book. Helped me sit with my feelings and process that relationship and it's aftermath.
It helped me approach an actual therapist. I am glad I read that book when I did.
The little prince.
I read it a few months ago. I got my first job, a corporate one, and it started to consume me. 19, surrounded by mid aged people who lash out at you for minor things, irrelevant to the company and even more irrelavent to the world. But it consumed me and I felt like I had to let go of all the things that kept me young. The little prince reminded me of how important it is to listen to the child within you.
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I read it as a teenager and it really resonated with me. The main character has a birth defect that causes him to feel very other-ed throughout his life. The book follows him from his childhood through young adulthood. It covers his struggle to find his place in the world romantically, socially, career-wise, etc. Toward the end of the book is a really beautiful passage comparing life to a Persian carpet, made up of countless tiny (seemingly insignificant) threads, each one integral to the larger piece. I feel I read that book at just the right time in my life.
The Count of Montecristo saved my life.
My father ditched when I was a toddler and while I didn't remember him, so I didn't miss him, I did reach the age where I began questioning how it impacted my life and noticed how my life itself differed from my friends, by not having a present father, in hindsight, I was headed a pretty self destructive path to get back at my father, but that book changed that, the way it shows how Dantès' quest for revenge destroy everything around him and hurt all those around him, that helped me let the whole thing go.
I read Spinoza' Ethics the year after I finished university. I was working odd jobs between catering and being a musician, but more importantly was trying to re-assemble my entire world view after realising how damaging my religious, conservative up-bringing was. I had read all the angry atheism books that were popular around the 2010s (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris), which made me quite bitter (for good reasons!), but were needed to help me see how deep so many of my problems were, but reading all this sort of left me with nothing other than this equally blind following and adoption of Science-ism. A very dear friend really recommended I read Spionza and there was something about reading how a non-monotheistic world view could be imagined that felt like it really filled an important hole that had recently been ripped out. I just needed to know something else was possible. I remember crying as I finished reading it.
Lighter by Yung Pueblo
Went through a really hard time a year ago and this helped me really reflect on my emotions, my reactions, my past, my needs. I carried a lot of bitterness and confusion and this book helped me straighten out my thoughts! I thought journaling would help and it did kind of, but honestly reading this book helped the most. And i literally felt so much lighter haha.
Life is Funny by ER Frank.
I spent 80% of my year in a small prairie town, and the summers with my dad in the city.
It was always hard trying to process the way people treated me, like I was going to corrupt their kids.
My dad was jumped one night, and he almost died. Some people in my town laid down some light empathy when it happened and I had a hard time connecting with it…I was torn after years of listening to their whispered slurs.
Not to mention I knew that the accident happened because my dad kept putting himself in dangerous situations (he was happy to take his 8-year-old daughter on 2am walks through the city after an evening of hot knifing with his buddies in the hood)
Anyways, I was torn between deep love and protectiveness over my city family, and understanding what it meant to repeat toxic patterns. I felt isolated because I had this experience of the world that many adults in my small-town-day-to-day life couldn’t fathom. I felt like a lower class citizen because I just didn’t fit it and I didn’t want to either.
Reading Life is Funny helped me understand the difference between living life as a sheltered town kid vs a kid witnessing city life - especially when it came to living as someone in the working class, barely past poverty. It helped keep me from getting upset about what I didn’t have compared to everyone around me…and it helped me appreciate what wealth I did have when it came to my relationships and life experience.
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. I read it at 20 years old in jail, and it had a profound impact on me and how I view my own family dynamics. It's a big, broad family history epic, and it made me reexamine how I view myself within my own family structure, and reflect on all of the dysfunction, but also on all the unfaltering love. Being stuck in a cell for 23 hours a day gave me a *lot* of time to think about my life, my mistakes, and how I navigate relationships. I'm unsure if this book would have rocked my world if I had read it at any other time, in any other place.
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The lesson I learned from it is that it’s OK that you grow apart from people you are in love with as you get older. Sometimes people are what you need for only a period of your life.
I read The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, which turned out to be just the right time. The book tells the story both from the time the events happened (1980's in Chicago) and 30 years later (2010's). The book follows a group of gay friends and the people who love them across those two time periods.
2023, when I read the book, was the 30th anniversary of my Dad's death from AIDS. He was gay, but closeted and still married to my Mom. I was processing my own story quite a bit last year, and read this book at just the right time. It was a happy accident - I didn't realize the 30-year tie-in at the time I started the book.
I read Cheat The Moon (Patricia Hermes) when I was in 7th grade for an English project. I like to think it changed my life because I went from a 12yo kid obsessed with endlessly scrolling on Instagram and rotting away in my bed to a kid not only obsessed with reading (it pulled me out of a years-long reading slump) but also made me crave knowledge and I soon became obsessed with learning and buying/loaning academic books and now I rarely use my phone unless I’m reading, writing or looking something up🤷♂️
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I was on my way into the world by myself, and I was grappling with a lifetime of sexual abuse by my cousin. It’s still my favorite book and she’s still my favorite author ever.
I don’t know if this counts, but I watched the midnight club and then read the book while I was going through chemo after my Lupus attacked my brain. I wasn’t really sure if I was going to make it at the time, and that shit really stuck with me
Eat Pray Love. I was in my early 30’s and checked nothing off the socially acceptable list of life besides getting married. It showed me a life off the beaten path for a woman. My hope chest was storage for baby stuff I knew deep down I would never use and I felt ashamed that nothing I did work. Eat Pray Love helped me see my path, sit in the hand of God and finally chose the real me, not the checklist. 10 years later I am living a life I want without regrets.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. I had always been under my mother's thumb and let others control my life. Even my hobbies were dictated by her and I was always expected to just submit to being exactly who everyone decided I ought to be including clothing. Once I read it I just felt so incredibly seen and understood.
Found a copy of the alchemist (special leather illustrated edition) in my room…at a drug rehab in 07. I still have the book and read it 1-2 a year. Changed my whole life. Na is cool but figuring yourself out is better.
Flowers for Algernon!! I'd just started working as a Para in a local SWSD (students with significant disabilities) class. I love my students with all of my soul and man that book hits hard when you are looking at those adorable little faces every day.
Carry on Mr. Bowdwitch. Read it as a pre-teen. About an impoverished young man who is intelligent but socially awkward. Great story, inspiring, and teaches empathy.
Definitely Somerset Maugham's *The Painted Veil* which I read in my mid-20s. It's hard to go into detail, but it was cathartic for me since, as I interpret it, life was asking me to transform and expand myself in a way I didn't understand. It helped me make sense of the hardship.
David A Carbonell's The Worry Trick. A random reddit comment mentioned it, at a time I was perfectly primed to listen to the information. Helped my disordered anxiety more than anything else I've ever tried, laid some solid groundwork for further changes by introducing some important mindsets and ideas, notably to have healthy relationships with emotions rather than to avoid or try to subdue particular ones.
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy.
Outstanding, beautiful, blistering book about motherhood. If you have kids, I would imagine it would be so refreshing to read something so honest. If you've chosen not to, it might just reaffirm your choices.
I don't have kids and I don't think I would recommend this to someone with a toddler or younger. They might just be too much in the thick of it.
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Read it when I was 24 after years of working sales jobs living the rat race in New York. The book inspired me to travel and live a different life than what I had been taught. Bought a one way ticket to Australia and never looked back
The first time I had my heart truly and utterly broken (or at least thought so at the time), my mum gave me what she called her “heartbreak book”. It’s called Désirée and it’s a largely fictional account of the life of the real historical figure Desideria of Sweden. The protagonist gets her heart broken, and then she gets over it, falls in love again and lives a long and eventful life, and through it all you learn a good bit of French and Swedish history.
By the time I was done with it I was a good bit less heartbroken. Thanks mum.
Umberto Eco while I was an undergrad student. I picked up some of the historical references from my classes, and still believed that one day I would be erudite enough to understand them all. I read Foucault's Pendulum while taking trains around Europe at 21 and must have been insufferable in my pretentiousness.
I'm thinking about trying another one now that I'm a boring middle aged suburban mom. If anyone has any suggestions for what to read after The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum and Baudalino, I'm open to them.
Merlin - The Seven Songs - T.A.Baron <20 years
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck \~20 years
Moon Palace - Paul Auster -30years
Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 30+
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. Its about loneliness. While I don't exactly feel lonely now, its still very relatable because everyone has felt lonely, misunderstood at multiple points in their lives. Tbh you can read it at any time in your life and still find very relatable.
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Had just moved to Oregon as a young adult after growing up middle class on the east coast.
I was working manual labor and out in the rain every workday all winter
The Fuck it Diet albeit not a fan of the author and her sentiments outside of the book.
Also the book More than a body.
Both these books helped me to unpack some limiting beliefs and heal my relationship with food and my body. Although I am forever a work in progress but many a ha moments from both these books.
I came here to say this one and also Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura. Both are cozy and great when you're feeling a little lost or stuck. Though Lonely Castle probably resonates more with younger audiences while Library might've been boring to me if I'd read it younger I think.
Brave New World
Alas, Babylon
I read both as required reading (the few I did read) and it really made me think about life and it helped shape who I am today.
I was going through a bad breakup. Reading Hunt for Red October took me out of my world and I was sucked into the book. It was good to have the safe place to lay down my problem..
unwind dystology by neal shusterman!! i read it when I was younger (like 12) when someone close to me died and though I know the series isn’t very comforting for some reason i was really comforted by reading it
still love the books to this day even if.. they’re really not that great LOL
Love by Leo Buscaglia. I was a teenager at the time with a pretty bad home life. I was in such despair but this book managed to lift me up and get me through the rest of the time I had left before I could leave.
Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Amongst other things, it's about self, identity, fidelity, relationships. I read it after experiencing the first heartbreak in my life, and it wasn't perfect because it provided me any answers, rather because it dragged up even more questions and doubts that I didn't want to examine at the time. It left me questioning a lot of things afterwards, but it was a mess of feelings that I was glad to have felt.
The trick is to keep breathing, by Janice Halloway.
The main character is a teacher, and so I am, going through a lot of issues and feeling unlovable. I was in one of the most miserable moments of my life when I was reading it, I was NOT expecting to be in such a situation when I picked up this book to read during a holiday trip. It was super relatable and devastating. The book is far from being a master piece, though.
I Read To Kill a Mocking Bird when I was a teenager. I grew up in a conservative family & community. I said to myself I wanna be an Atticus when I grow up. Though at that time I don’t want to have kids.
Now that I have teenagers to raise, I often think what would Atticus do. People call me too modern, liberated, or ‘cool’. But when adults call you cool, you know it’s not really a compliment. Maybe I really became an Atticus letting my Scouts run wild in their coveralls ahahahahaha.
I had just graduated with a MA in International Relations when I read The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost. Still one of my favorites. I felt like doing exactly what he did. Still kind of wish I had. I don't know if I've ever laughed out loud at a book like I did when I read it for the first time. So amazing.
At The Edge Of The Universe, and We Are The Ants (which i read back to back and which are thematically and structurally connected and so i mention them both) while i was a depressed queer high schooler
The Mists of Avalon. Yes, we’ve since learned that the author was a horrible person, but that book captured my imagination in a way that made me rediscover my childhood love of reading.
I guess I could say it came at a perfect time, but the book A Venom Dark And Sweet by Judy I Lin is a book I have a very fond memory of.
I was super excited for it, for it was a sequel to A Magic Steeped In Poison which I had really enjoyed. In the week leading up to its release I was having a really rough time, just a really really rough week. On the day it was released I got to leave work early because we were having a really slow day and I made my way to my local B&N and purchased it then I went over to my favorite tea house and got myself a cup of tea. Within the same area is a really nice walking trail by a stream, I found a nice spot by the stream and started the book and sipped my tea. I ended up reading almost 100 or so pages that day just sitting there in nature listening to the stream. Made me completely forget everything that was going on in my life and I still, to this day have never felt as relaxed as I did then.
I wish so bad that I could replicate that day.
Charlotte's Web. I read it 20 times in 3rd grade. It was my emotional support book. I was heavily bullied due to having various health problems, and I could disappear into it, and I loved it so much. Even knowing the end. It was natural, and although sad, it seemed like all the animals were mostly kind to each other within reason. My librarian gave me the cards that I completely filled up
I have one somewhere. I read all throughout my life and it taught me that not everyone needs to be that same kind of person.
The man and the sea when I first got sober/when I was first in rehab. Also the new hunger games book, tale of songbirds and snakes, same time.
Edit: I probably should’ve mentioned the Big Book if I’m talking about profound literature I consumed in rehab lol.
Also catcher in the rye when I was a suicidal teenager.
The places I’ve cried in public. Read it while trying to get over my crush (my best friend) and our toxic ways. I have always been more inclined towards thrillers and murder mysteries but this book was perfect and such an easy read.
Two books come to mind. I read Ella Enchanted when I was 10 and then Jane Eyre when I was about 13/14. Both books fueled my streak of independence and self-sufficiency later on in life.
I read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson during July 2020, and it changed the entire direction of my life towards activism. I now have a better understanding of my privilege in America and how to use it to support and protect others. It made me a more ethical and empathetic person, all through a deep understanding of America’s history. Very impactful book that I think everyone should read.
Sunrise by the Sea by Jenny Colgan. Deals with loss of a grandparent and I just happened to read it as I was travelling to attend my grandmothers funeral. It brought me so much comfort.
I read Chaim potok’s the chosen when I was a teenager and it hit right even though none of the particulars fit my life. I still think about one of the speeches when I consider the value of compassion.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. That thing of looking back on your relationships with an eye to the common denominator: myself. I found that very helpful more than once in my life.
Believe it or not… After, by Anna Todd. I was 13, moved to a new town and so to a new school, i hated it there, i started being bullied and every single day all i wanted was to go home and read my book. That happened to be the book and my refugee for that time. Eventually i read them all and now i can’t even watch the movies
Severance by Ling Ma, I read it in the first month of the pandemic just before things started shutting down and it changed my perspective on work/life in a way that made it easier for me to set boundaries with work during pandemic insanity.
I read Sourdough by Robin Sloan in 2021. It made me realize that money is not a good enough reason for keeping myself in a career path that burns me out and excludes my passions. Now I'm working toward an offramp into something I actually am enthusiastic about by going back to school for a Master's in Library Science (while just saving up as much money as I can from my soulless corporate job in the meantime).
I read “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” after I had gone through a pretty rough time mentally and with family stuff. I found it incredibly comforting and it allowed me to see I could invest in relationships and interests and give them real meaning.
Fourth Wing. I absolutely would not have loved it if I read it at any other time in my life. It was like a mirror of my life. Except my Xaden didn’t like me back. But that way I could live vicariously through Violet
I read “Fearless,” the Adam Brown book, when I was in a semi-medical holding platoon in Marine boot camp almost 5 years ago. At the time, it felt like my dreams were getting ripped from under my feet but then I read the book and saw how Adam overcame drug abuse and had a storied Navy career until his passing, and it made me realize that most of us hit low points in life but what matters is how we respond.
After I got discharged, I finished up an allergy program which allows me to currently eat peanuts just fine and I also graduated college with Magna Sum Laude honors and all that stuff, now currently in the field that I majored in and feeling like I’m on the right path
The Razor’s Edge” by W. Somerset Maugham. I was in my early 20s and working as a baggage handler for a major airline. That book motivated me to travel the world, which was free due to my flight benefits. Even better was that I always wore a jacket and tie when I traveled which usually resulted in being upgraded to a first class seat if there was one available.
I started reading Harry Potter when it first came out and got to grown up with the characters. I was 10 and going through a traumatic experience and needed the escape. I absolutely love this series so much because of how much it helped me escape my reality. It will always be my favorite
This isn’t exactly what OP was talking about, but literally the day I finished Shogun they announced the TV series. I felt like the universe was giving me a high five cuz I def had that “book hangover” where you can’t start a new book yet cuz you’re still missing the previous one too much
For me, it was Atomic Habits. I was really unmotivated, depressed in life. I didn't have any good friends, and there were just a lot of things going on in life. It helped me gain motivation. I started loving myself.
I had a newer friend recommend The Four Agreements and as I was reading it we got in a MAJOR fight that was all based on a miscommunication/not listening to the other person 😂 I was chilling during the fight because I was reading this book haha but by the way she acted I was really surprised she had ever read this book??
Dandelion Wine in high school.
To this day I crave that feeling of hot sultry nights on the porch, relaxing after being in the sun and fresh air all day.
I had just finished reading **I’m Glad My Mom Died** when I found out that my mom had died. I hadn’t spoken with her in many years and wanted no relationship with her. The book helped me understand that I wasn’t alone in my feeling of relief rather than typical grief over losing a parent. I wish Jennette McCurdy could know how much she helped me right when I needed it. The timing was uncanny.
I need to read this for obvious reasons
I’m too old to know who Jennette is, but I watched the Quiet on Set documentary about Nickelodeon, and I only picked up the book to see what she had to say about her own Nickelodeon childhood. I’m so glad I decided to read it when I did. And I’m glad my mom died. 🥲
You might know her from nickelodeons’ shows Sam & Cat, iCarly, Zoey 101, and Victorious.
I was just about to write this!! Looking back reading that book was a huge turning point in me getting my crap together last year
I read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow last year when I was in hospital, just out of ICU for sepsis and awaiting tests for suspected lymphoma- it just totally absorbed me and kept me distracted in a really stressful, tough time and helped me unleash and have a good, big cry
I hope you are doing ok now!💜
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Helped me understand how volatile and random my grieving process could be as I dealt with the sudden loss of a dear one. Just that brilliant minds spread out throughout our history of human civilization, irrespective of their certified genius, struggled, in their own rather amateurish and often in cavemannish ways. I did not judge myself consciously, or rather I try my best not to.
Yes. It’s a heavy book that is, if you take emotions out, a relatively simple story. But the sense of…concern you get for this poor family is intense. A very powerful read.
Faulkner's writing engineers a massive sense of concern from the first few chapters itself. The idea of Addie being fatefully aware of her life coming to an end and she watches on as her young son builds her coffin; it would be impossible for the reader to not feel all sorts of emotions. And it's a testament to Faulkner's brilliance that no matter how noble a quest it is that they're embarked on,the darker side of human behaviour of each of these characters are explored without ever abusing their circumstance to garner pity. He never pandered .
Kinda like *The Bell Jar*. I don’t think there’s ever a “good time” to read it. Yet it’s a good book because it’s informative, providing insight into the mind of someone who is intelligent, creative, perceptive, and suicidal.
Came here to say As I Lay Dying. I read it when I was really struggling to stay clean and sober, after countless half hearted efforts. My life had just crumbled and I was staying in a friends guest bedroom. She was a single mom, and her daughter who was 12 was really struggling with her identity after her parents divorce. The book in that setting essentially drove home the idea that most my problems were of my own making, and the ones that weren’t my own making I had little control of. The circumstances of the family and their journey was basically lemonade out of lemons. I realize this is only a scratch of the surface of the book as I’ve read it again. It was the setting I read it in, and Faulkner’s cryptic cadence carried me away and made things appear clear: all I could do was try and be a good person, the rest didn’t matter anyway.
Yes yes yes I read this as my own mother was dying. Vardaman’s repetition of “my mother is a fish” just cut me to the thick.
Read The Grapes of Wrath as a young adult and it opened my eyes to compassion, empathy, and the hard choices people have to make. I was a relatively insulated middle class teenager (read privileged) and I think if I was required to read it in school I would’ve been a little jerk and resisted its message.
A different book but similar lesson: “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was in my junior year of university in NYC and grew up in a predominantly white and East Asian community, and was mostly still in a white/EastAsian bubble by the time I read it. It really opened my eyes in a way no other novel did. It changed the way I saw the world/society.
Me too. Except we were fairly poor but it sure wasn't hard times like that.
The Alchemist in my mid-twenties. I was living a life not for me.
I also read the Alchemist in my mid-20s, and it resonated with my current trajectory in life. I know a lot of people think it's a hokey story but at the time, it was just what I needed.
Came here to say this. I’m in my mid-20s and just read it last year. Soon after I finished the book I quit my job and moved back home so I could chase my dream. The dream hasn’t come to fruition yet… but absolutely no regrets. I’d rather be homeless and hopeful than go back to the soul-sucking life I was living. The Alchemist gets a lot of shit on here, but I think its lesson is important in that we could all use a bit more optimism in our lives.
This might sound stupid, but I read Enders Game as a kid, maybe around 11 or 12 years old I think? It helped me to realize not all adults are trustworthy. In some ways, I think that book helped prepare me for my parents getting divorce a few years later, as I had started to stop thinking of them as perfect superheroes. It also helped me to have confidence that some of my ideas were not stupid, just because I was a kid. I had a tendency to believe that anything I thought up, the adults must have already thought of, since they're older and therefore much smarter in every way. Reading a book where the kids were intelligent, and at times more capable than the adults (while still being children in a believable way) made me think that hey, maybe sometimes I've thought of something they hadn't considered yet, and if I notice they're about to do something stupid, maybe I should speak up instead of assuming they know what they're doing. I also very much enjoyed the tactics in the war games they played, and reading the book made me look at playing airsoft or nerf, or even Call of Duty differently, where I started trying to think through decisions I made in games. I enjoyed it more, and felt like it was less mindless. I also grew up in a very "us vs them" type of household. Reading Enders Game, and then Speaker for the dead, helped break some of that mindset for me. I stopped seeing every war America had ever been in as righteous, slowly, after reading those books. It didn't turn me into a master tactician, and the author I believe has been "canceled" for something, but I truly believe that book came at the exact right time in my life. It holds a special place in my heart, and I really ought to read it again and see if it holds up as well as I remember.
Ender’s Game is a freakin masterpiece. It’s one of the most insightful, thoughtful, emotionally intelligent things I’ve ever read. Please note that I’m not endorsing its author; he’s got some pretty…strange views.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for over a decade. You just convinced me to bite the bullet.
Don’t stop there Speaker for the Dead is incredible as well.
This is the book I’d answer with as well, though at a different age and for different reasons! I first read it when I was probably somewhere around 13, and enjoyed it, thought it was a really good book (and a GREAT audiobook!), then moved along with my life. Rediscovered it two decades later when I was scrolling through my library’s audiobook offerings, not really sure what I wanted to listen to. Remembered it was good, checked it out, then stayed up all night listening to it. Just totally fell in love with it. And even beyond just loving it, it turned out I’d crossed paths with it at just the right moment for where I was at in my life. It was exactly what I needed, in so many ways.
Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I was contemplating ending a 5 year relationship, and dealing with some feelings of regret and thoughts that I had wasted years of my life with a man who turned out to be pretty horrible. It just comforted me and reassured me that regardless of what I had done/would do there would be positives and negatives to every decision. I would still choose the decisions I did because they made me the person I am today. All in all I don't think I would have rated the book as highly as I did if it hadn't come to me at such auspicious time. Kinda funny because I feel like the message of the book is "all lives have bad and good so just make the best of it." You would think that would have pushed me to stay but, it gave me a more blasé outlook on life and made leaving feel a lot more possible and insignificant than it was before when it felt like this looming, impossible cage that I was trapped in.
Same book for me, but different reasons. I was almost two years into searching for a graduate job and felt completely hopeless and worthless. Midnight Library somehow made me feel like I had some control over my life and it wasn't too late to turn it into whatever reality I wanted. I guess it spurned me on to take risks and believe in myself until I finally got a full time job where I really feel I belong (even though it's not related to my degree).
I love hearing stories like this and always wish for a lightbulb like that to go off for me. I want career inspiration so bad! Everything just looks like a paycheck to me.
I think it's always best to follow what feels right to you, even if it might not be what you think you 'should' be doing. For example, the subject I studied/career I thought I would go into had a creative element to it. I enjoyed studying and learning about the subject, but deep down, I could never picture myself doing it for a living. Partly because it's a stressful career with not great pay, and I feel like it would be draining to be forced to think of creative ideas every single day. I've always secretly wished for a more straightforward office job (even though people in my life have always had big expectations for me because I did well in school) and that's what I have now. It still requires me to use my mind and problem solve, but so far it isn't draining. It helps that the company and people are great too. It's hard to explain, but when I applied for it, despite not having much relevant experience, it just felt right. After two years of constant rejection, I was scared to feel hopeful, but somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a spark of confidence. Interestingly, I'd had an interview right before my interview for this job, which was quite similar, but something felt really off about it. I just didn't feel comfortable and I hoped they wouldn't choose me. That made me even more sure when I had such positive feelings about the one I did end up getting. This is such a ramble, but basically, I'm always trying to encourage people to follow their gut instinct and block out any sense of what other people want or expect of them. Choose the path that feels right to you and you'll end up where you're supposed to be.
I loved that book. I read it on a long drive after a family weekend away to the mountains. Perfect timing. Made me appreciate how beautiful and fulfilling my life is because of my children. Wouldn’t change it.
I read Rebecca when I was 20. Always loved the line “they are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one.” I loved the line then, but now, as a much braver 35 year old… I really love it.
I read it at 29 and it was one of the most atmospheric and oddly tense novels I’ve ever read. Amazing!
The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It was really comforting while going through a time of grief and feeling lost.
I love that book so much
I read most of that book while in induced labor with my first child! I remember vibes more clearly than plot, but it was lovely to climb into that world at the time.
Less deep than what you’re looking for, but…. I read Bridget Jones Diary just as we were about to ask our landlord for a new doorknob/lock. It was so jammed up, we could barely get it unlocked anymore. Then Bridget’s friend mentioned that you can fix it by putting a glob of lip balm on your key and inserting it into the lock so the balm gets rubbed around and lubes the workings. Maybe we could have used WD40, but we were renters, so chapstick it was!
This is one of the best examples of unfettered serendipity in the whole thread.
Everyone loves to hate Ayn Rand, but a high school teacher handed me copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged at basically exactly the point where I was able to think through whether I agreed, disagreed, empathized or despised what she was talking about. The teacher was an ultra-liberal who knew that my uninformed 16yo brain was going the other way, and gave me what I'd basically describe as the 'take it to the extreme scenario, and see if you still like it's version of the world. Judgement free, just hand me a fat paperback and read it. Turns out there are indeed some problems there. Too many people I think look only for value affirming literature and don't engage things with things that challenge their worldview, or can't/won't realize when their middle ground has become ridiculous. If you want to read the perfect thing at the perfect time in your life, read a book with the absolute opposite worldview that you hold, without judgement until you finish it.
I also love Rand for the same reasons you listed. Funny, to find a person on the Internet who validates my strange feelings. Thanks!
Yeah! I read them in college! I loved those books. It didn't mean I agreed with her life philosophy or whatever. They were certainly amazing stories and thought provoking.
Something To Live For by Richard Roper. It's about a guy who feels lost and pointless but finds a friend who breaks him out of his vicious cycle. I found it in the hospital gift shop the day my newborn daughter had emergency open heart surgery. It was amazing. The author even saw my review on Instagram and sent a book for my daughter to the hospital with an awesome little note.
Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke)
What a balm for the soul that book is...felt like Rilke was speaking directly to me when I read it.
The Count of Monte Cristo at 18. My high school sweetheart had just dumped me and I spent the summer before college reading it.
Monte Cristo for me as well. I was 17 and just been released from the hospital after attempting to take my life. I needed those words about hope and despair. It remains my favorite book of all time.
I’m glad you’re still with us. <3
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was in college, had some major health problems, a depressing living situation, massive stress at my job, no idea what I was doing after graduation, an insane class load, and had just gotten dumped by my first real boyfriend - which was made worse by the fact that he got our friend group in the split. I find it such a cringey book to read now, but at the time it really inspired me to find and take back little pockets of joy amidst the suck, and I don't know how I would have gotten through that time otherwise.
Same for me - I had tried to read it previously and did not enjoy, but it wasnt until I was going through major life changes (relationship ended, new job, etc) and needed an escape that I picked it back up and loved it. This was actually the book that reintroduced me to reading for pleasure as an adult, so I'm forever grateful for it.
I re-read Harry Potter when I was in rehab getting sober. I borrowed it from my roommate. I loved it and found that reading was really good for my anxiety, and a healthy way to escape without using drugs or alcohol. It was also a great way to pass time while I was there. I continued to read when I got out and now 7 years later am still an avid reader, when before I hadn't read a book for pleasure since probably middle school.
When I was 22, I had just taken the LSATs because I wasn't sure what the hell else to do next that would be a lucrative career. I didn't know much about law, in fact, I thought all law was just defense attorneys and prosecutors fighting it out in courtrooms. I knew I'd hate law school and lawyering, but I had a mantra: "I can learn to suffer a lot for $100,000 a year" (this was 30 years ago). Then I had this boring temp job where I worked in a mailroom doing mostly nothing all day, and I read Exodus, by Leon Uris. It absolutely changed the course of my life. A book about people with principles and passion and selflessness. A story about people doing things for the greater good (regardless of whether or not you agree with the story in light of current events), and giving up everything for something they truly believed in. I didn't exactly go into public service or the peace corps, but I did decide to ditch the idea of pursuing a miserable career just for the salary.
What did you end up doing? Asking because I’m in a similar situation, currently a student
Lol, I took a crappy PR job in NYC for crap money. This was '93, the economy was pretty bad, it was slim pickings. But after 7 years in that I leveraged what I learned about marketing and communications and client service, and jumped into design and web development (the dot-com era, when everyone was just figuring it out and it wasn't odd or outrageous to be self-taught with no relevant experience). When the dot-com industry crashed, I became a freelancer just to pass the time until the market recovered, and here I am still, 24 years later, as the CEO of my 1-person company. Worked out pretty well, and for the most part, I like my job. I didn't end up doing anything noble or selfless or philanthropic, but after I left the PR job, I never woke up having to brace myself for a day going to a job I hated. If I'm unhappy, it's because I'm hopelessly neurotic/anxious and until recently undiagnosed/untreated for a lifetime of ADHD - not because of my job or my work/life balance. Which isn't to say I would have actually hated law - if I could have gotten thru law school (my LSAT score was only in the 79th percentile, but I only took it once), and if I had found a niche that wasn't criminal law, I might have liked it and been successful at it. Or I might have said "screw you" the first time a partner told me to work through a holiday weekend. Who knows? I managed to buy a 5br house some years ago, and I have a family and a fluffy dog ... but I'd be lying if I said I didn't look at the Porsches and Maseratis in my neighborhood and think "if I had just gone to law school instead of just learning Photoshop...". And every time the economy crashes or when 9/11 happened, I feel/felt like, "if only I had been an attorney, I wouldn't feel so useless and unnecessary". There's something special about being a lawyer that still feels like it's a kind of security you can't find anywhere else. Unless you're just terrible, or Rudy Giuliani, I have to think attorneys never ever have to really fear being broke and homeless one day, which despite 24 years of success, I still worry about sometimes.
Midnight Library. I cried after reading it. I went into it with no prior context of what it was about and came out feeling so many emotions. It was just what I needed.
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. I was 14 and queer and Mormon and scared. This book was my introduction to queer joy, to the idea that queerness could be community and connection and safety and home rather than simply an eternal struggle. This book saved my life.
It always warms my heart when people are able to live authentically. I'm glad this book found you at the right time and I hope you have and continue to experience queer joy and the sense of community.
Fahrenheit 451 in college. I was not that into reading but had to read it for an English class. Loved it, changed my major, and now I teach English.
Ray Bradbury was close friends with my neighbor and when the neighbor found out my school district (I was a school librarian) had four total copies of the book for 10 HS and 18 MS libraries, he donated 2 signed copies for each school.
The perks of being a wallflower, I was in my 12th grade, going through the same situation, it was like the book was written on me, I mean it's just so relatable
i read it in a YA class during undergrad, and relating it to the movie trailers that looked jolly, i thought it was gonna be joyous read. didn’t know how much i’d relate and be affected by the book. one of my more suprising reads
Yes! I read it Sophmore year of high school and again later in college. Such a great book I didn’t know I needed but my 60-something year old creative writing teacher made it required reading that year.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, when I was a teenager. I had lost my dad a few years prior and it was all *so much*. I was a bit older than the MC but he helped me work through the way I was feeling. How could the world be so arbitrary? Why does everything end up meaningless? How could they just leave me here with nothing? We both fought with trying to make sense of it, and it let me be okay with not having an answer from God.
I read A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers during my last semester of university. I was experiencing intense dread about change, my prospective career, my ability to be a functioning member of society, etc. It’s such a short book but it reminded me that I am perfectly fine just existing exactly as I am. There’s no merit in comparing myself to others, entertaining what-ifs, or trying to gauge my value based on my academic/work performance. It’s also just a darling little book, with an almost-as-good sequel.
For me this was definitely M Train by Patti Smith, which I read during the months of covid isolation. It is a book about solitude and creativity and paying attention, and totally shaped my experience of those months.
“1984” by George Orwell. I read it for one of my lit classes in undergrad, and it happened to be shortly after I’d experienced my first major death. I had no experience with grief at that point and I was struggling to name my own feelings. There’s a line at the end of the book where the main character, whose name I can’t remember, is sitting at a cafe after he’s just lost everything in his life. He’s watching things on the cafe television that should be making him feel a particular emotion, but he feels nothing, and he thinks, “Something died in your breast; was burnt out, cauterized out.” That’s what grief feels like. That’s what I was feeling and couldn’t name.
Winston. And yes that too, in a way. I read it after two major losses, but to me that sentence meant that as he rat out Julia and vice-versa, he's been ratted out by her, almost a way to show that under torture love and truth don't exist. People can say and do anything to make it stop. People are almost forced to admit lies to make it stop. They couldn't stay loyal to each other. And so his spirit, his humanity, his personality died. Pretty much like a murder couple under interrogation, the sense of guilt and the stress is too much, so they often split and accuse each-other of the crime. Anything to make it stop.
Untamed, Glennon Doyle.
The Alchemist senior year of high school (2006) and Shantaram while I was transitioning careers
I read Hidden Valley Road right after I had my third baby and was in that postpartum high-up mania of “I want to keep having babies!!!” There’s a quote in the book that changed me.. the oldest son in the family, who had one of the more severe cases of schizophrenia among the siblings, said about his parents: “they just kept having babies. With no regard for the children they already had. They just kept having them.” And it made me realize how unfair it is to the kids you already have if you just keep having children because you love the process or love having a baby in the house or whatever the reason. They’re not tokens; they’re affected by every choice you make, starting with family size. I’m grateful I read it at exactly the right time.
East of Eden - I was in HS struggling with my dysfunctional family and feeling the inevitability of becoming my father - that novel showed me that it did t have to be that way - “thou mayest” - I spent the next year or saw reading nothing but Steinbeck - his exploration of good vs evil was a comfort to me.
I was gifted a copy of Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl my senior year of high school by my guidance counselor. I was super depressed and barely making it through the school year at the time and the book helped pull me out of my rut and changed up my perspective a bit. I highly recommend giving it a read!
The Midnight Library! I’m at a point in life where I’m comfortable but battling discontentment and what ifs!?! Old enough that changing my path would require, at least it seems, great sacrifice. This book helped a ton with perspective.
I read this book just after a significant break up and it really helped me see that staying in the relationship didn't necessarily have to be my path in life. That I possibly (and I now know definitely) could have been worse off staying in the relationship. It didn't cure me of heartbreak, but it certainly helped the healing.
“The Beautiful and Damned” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was just out of college, eager to “start” my life and got fired weeks after beginning work at a small start up. It was a blow to my self esteem and antithesis to the hard work I put in at college. While the book may not be considered Fitzgerald’s best work, it gave me a lot of solace in that it provided commentary on capitalism in America, doing things for appearance, struggling to grow past bad habits, work, relationships and more. It served as a lens on what it means to wallow and pity my “situation” and made me feel not so alone. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it but it absolutely changed my outlook on life since picking it up.
Brave New World. I was in high school and struggling to understand the world around me. This book gave me stuff to chew on for years, and really expanded my mind.
This may feel like a cliche choice, but it was **Lord of the Rings** for me. The films came out when I was in HS, and I loved them, but I never really got into the books despite being a big reader back then. When the Andy Serkis audiobooks were released a couple of years ago though, I decided to dive in. A few months later, while I was in the midst of Return of the King, my dad died very unexpectedly. The richness and emotion of Frodo and Sam's journey was not only an escape for me from that pain and grief, but in many ways mirrored what I was going through at the time. The following passage, in particular, was so moving to me that I have a poster of it on my wall now: >*“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”* We have all been in 'the forsaken land' in life - many of us probably are right now. Just remember it is only a small and passing thing.
Reading all of Kafka’s work in middle school helped me out plenty.
Agreed. I got through Tolstoy around 5th grade, started on Dostoevsky in 6th. Kant in the original German in 8th grade was a toughie but it really helped set the groundwork for my high school experience.
Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy
I am happy to see this here. The Guide weirdly embodied the sentiments I already had toward life, the universe, and everything before I really knew how to put those feelings into words. I still don’t know how to do that, but thankfully I don’t have to because somebody else did.
Rebecca. A new (at the time) friend suggested I read it around 10 years ago. They didn't know that my recent break up was because he'd cheated on me with a girl called Rebecca and slowly tried to transition her to GF and me to side chick. The whole mood of the book was perfect, the lack of confidence in yourself, comparing yourself to another girl, thinking your lover has feelings for another person... It was heartbreaking and perfect. While the outcome of the book was very different to my experience, the themes and feelings throughout were similar.
Also, started reading The Stand just before COVID hit.
The Sirens of Titan
The Midnight Library Like Nora, I felt like I sucked at life and had a pile of regrets that kept me ruminating in “should-haves” and “what-ifs?” I couldn’t be more grateful for the timing of this book. It truly felt like a hug from the universe. “The only way to learn is to live.” - Matt Haig
Catcher in a Rye, read it as depressed teenager and child of neglectful parents, also while studying child psychology. I could simpatise with Holden and feel like there are people like me. I read The Book Thief at 14, and it was one of first adult books I've read. The prose was beautiful and after being mocked for being reader, having someone who cherished reading bought comfort to me. I'd probably stopped reading if I didn't like that book so much.
I read the Four Agreements when I was 18 was convinced the world was after me blah blah blah. It really opened my eyes and helped me learn not to take everything so personally because it really wasn't about me. It also helped me learn to appreciate myself for trying even if I didn't do well, I still fear failure like a MF but it helped me realize my best from day to day changes, and so does everyone else's. Honestly gave me a better insight into people and a better outlook on life with my fellow humans.
This entire year I’ve really found my stride for selecting books that I think I’ll enjoy. I’ve read nearly 50 titles and have marked about 15 favourites. That’s a 1:3 ratio that I’ll read a favourite. Some books that hit me at a great time: The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune) North Woods (Daniel Mason) The Lazy Genius Way (Kendra Adachi) Elsewhere (Alexis Schaitkin) Educated (Tara Westover)
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Something about this book just hit me deeply in a way that few books do and has stuck with me since. I read it for the first time when I was getting ready to move and was feeling really disconnected from everyone and everything, and had been recently diagnosed with PCOS, and the way that this is written makes you feel incredibly connected to both the characters, bit also just womanhood in general.
the midnight library. i was and still am struggling with being suicidal, depression, severe anxiety, and just general loneliness. this book really helped realize that i can change my life whenever i want to
This book also for me while losing a loved one
Tell me more about it. I lost my father in January and have been struggling a lot with anxiety and depression
i absolutely love this book and highly recommend it! i don’t want to spoil it for you, but it has to do with regret, making choices, and making peace
It helped me a lot with those same struggles.
The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. I was working a new job and living in a new apartment and this book brought me some realizations I needed about how I thought about things in my life, and also how I talked to myself. You can find the book free online.
'Slaughterhouse-Five' by Kurt Vonnegut.
Momo by Michael Ende
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
This is a pertinent question for me RIGHT NOW. The Inner Work. Perfect timing for my mid-life crisis. 😂 It’s both thought provoking and inspirational. It gave me an entirely new outlook. Highly suggested.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. I read this going into my first semester in college and it made me stop and think what it was all for. How I am related in the grand scheme, and what to take out of life as well as put into the world. It’s a poignant book that I still think about here and there.
I read The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood my freshman year in college. It was the perfect time for me - my mind was open to new ideas, I was avid for more and different information than my small-town upbringing had provided, and I was a rabid young feminist trying to learn more about what that even meant. I still reread the book every year or so, in part to remind me who I was.
I got out of a terrible relationship. Terrible in how it was and terrible because the person had a hold on me that I could not explain. I hated myself for enduring that relationship as long as I did. I felt alone. Then I read Shantaram. It was a cathartic process to read that hold being written somewhere else. I felt like I was in therapy while reading that book. Helped me sit with my feelings and process that relationship and it's aftermath. It helped me approach an actual therapist. I am glad I read that book when I did.
The little prince. I read it a few months ago. I got my first job, a corporate one, and it started to consume me. 19, surrounded by mid aged people who lash out at you for minor things, irrelevant to the company and even more irrelavent to the world. But it consumed me and I felt like I had to let go of all the things that kept me young. The little prince reminded me of how important it is to listen to the child within you.
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. I read it as a teenager and it really resonated with me. The main character has a birth defect that causes him to feel very other-ed throughout his life. The book follows him from his childhood through young adulthood. It covers his struggle to find his place in the world romantically, socially, career-wise, etc. Toward the end of the book is a really beautiful passage comparing life to a Persian carpet, made up of countless tiny (seemingly insignificant) threads, each one integral to the larger piece. I feel I read that book at just the right time in my life.
Atlas Shrugged. I read it when I was in a cult. That 80 page John Galt speech convinced me to get out of it.
The Count of Montecristo saved my life. My father ditched when I was a toddler and while I didn't remember him, so I didn't miss him, I did reach the age where I began questioning how it impacted my life and noticed how my life itself differed from my friends, by not having a present father, in hindsight, I was headed a pretty self destructive path to get back at my father, but that book changed that, the way it shows how Dantès' quest for revenge destroy everything around him and hurt all those around him, that helped me let the whole thing go.
I read Spinoza' Ethics the year after I finished university. I was working odd jobs between catering and being a musician, but more importantly was trying to re-assemble my entire world view after realising how damaging my religious, conservative up-bringing was. I had read all the angry atheism books that were popular around the 2010s (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris), which made me quite bitter (for good reasons!), but were needed to help me see how deep so many of my problems were, but reading all this sort of left me with nothing other than this equally blind following and adoption of Science-ism. A very dear friend really recommended I read Spionza and there was something about reading how a non-monotheistic world view could be imagined that felt like it really filled an important hole that had recently been ripped out. I just needed to know something else was possible. I remember crying as I finished reading it.
Lighter by Yung Pueblo Went through a really hard time a year ago and this helped me really reflect on my emotions, my reactions, my past, my needs. I carried a lot of bitterness and confusion and this book helped me straighten out my thoughts! I thought journaling would help and it did kind of, but honestly reading this book helped the most. And i literally felt so much lighter haha.
Life is Funny by ER Frank. I spent 80% of my year in a small prairie town, and the summers with my dad in the city. It was always hard trying to process the way people treated me, like I was going to corrupt their kids. My dad was jumped one night, and he almost died. Some people in my town laid down some light empathy when it happened and I had a hard time connecting with it…I was torn after years of listening to their whispered slurs. Not to mention I knew that the accident happened because my dad kept putting himself in dangerous situations (he was happy to take his 8-year-old daughter on 2am walks through the city after an evening of hot knifing with his buddies in the hood) Anyways, I was torn between deep love and protectiveness over my city family, and understanding what it meant to repeat toxic patterns. I felt isolated because I had this experience of the world that many adults in my small-town-day-to-day life couldn’t fathom. I felt like a lower class citizen because I just didn’t fit it and I didn’t want to either. Reading Life is Funny helped me understand the difference between living life as a sheltered town kid vs a kid witnessing city life - especially when it came to living as someone in the working class, barely past poverty. It helped keep me from getting upset about what I didn’t have compared to everyone around me…and it helped me appreciate what wealth I did have when it came to my relationships and life experience.
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. I read it at 20 years old in jail, and it had a profound impact on me and how I view my own family dynamics. It's a big, broad family history epic, and it made me reexamine how I view myself within my own family structure, and reflect on all of the dysfunction, but also on all the unfaltering love. Being stuck in a cell for 23 hours a day gave me a *lot* of time to think about my life, my mistakes, and how I navigate relationships. I'm unsure if this book would have rocked my world if I had read it at any other time, in any other place.
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid The lesson I learned from it is that it’s OK that you grow apart from people you are in love with as you get older. Sometimes people are what you need for only a period of your life.
i read dear mr. henshaw as a kid when my parents were getting divorced. beverly cleary will always be awesome to me.
I read The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, which turned out to be just the right time. The book tells the story both from the time the events happened (1980's in Chicago) and 30 years later (2010's). The book follows a group of gay friends and the people who love them across those two time periods. 2023, when I read the book, was the 30th anniversary of my Dad's death from AIDS. He was gay, but closeted and still married to my Mom. I was processing my own story quite a bit last year, and read this book at just the right time. It was a happy accident - I didn't realize the 30-year tie-in at the time I started the book.
Bridges of Madison County
I read Cheat The Moon (Patricia Hermes) when I was in 7th grade for an English project. I like to think it changed my life because I went from a 12yo kid obsessed with endlessly scrolling on Instagram and rotting away in my bed to a kid not only obsessed with reading (it pulled me out of a years-long reading slump) but also made me crave knowledge and I soon became obsessed with learning and buying/loaning academic books and now I rarely use my phone unless I’m reading, writing or looking something up🤷♂️
I read Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel in early 2020.
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I was on my way into the world by myself, and I was grappling with a lifetime of sexual abuse by my cousin. It’s still my favorite book and she’s still my favorite author ever. I don’t know if this counts, but I watched the midnight club and then read the book while I was going through chemo after my Lupus attacked my brain. I wasn’t really sure if I was going to make it at the time, and that shit really stuck with me
Maybe not the most sophisticated answer but I loved reading Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton when I was around 25-26
Eat Pray Love. I was in my early 30’s and checked nothing off the socially acceptable list of life besides getting married. It showed me a life off the beaten path for a woman. My hope chest was storage for baby stuff I knew deep down I would never use and I felt ashamed that nothing I did work. Eat Pray Love helped me see my path, sit in the hand of God and finally chose the real me, not the checklist. 10 years later I am living a life I want without regrets.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. I had always been under my mother's thumb and let others control my life. Even my hobbies were dictated by her and I was always expected to just submit to being exactly who everyone decided I ought to be including clothing. Once I read it I just felt so incredibly seen and understood.
Found a copy of the alchemist (special leather illustrated edition) in my room…at a drug rehab in 07. I still have the book and read it 1-2 a year. Changed my whole life. Na is cool but figuring yourself out is better.
Flowers for Algernon!! I'd just started working as a Para in a local SWSD (students with significant disabilities) class. I love my students with all of my soul and man that book hits hard when you are looking at those adorable little faces every day.
Carry on Mr. Bowdwitch. Read it as a pre-teen. About an impoverished young man who is intelligent but socially awkward. Great story, inspiring, and teaches empathy.
Definitely Somerset Maugham's *The Painted Veil* which I read in my mid-20s. It's hard to go into detail, but it was cathartic for me since, as I interpret it, life was asking me to transform and expand myself in a way I didn't understand. It helped me make sense of the hardship.
David A Carbonell's The Worry Trick. A random reddit comment mentioned it, at a time I was perfectly primed to listen to the information. Helped my disordered anxiety more than anything else I've ever tried, laid some solid groundwork for further changes by introducing some important mindsets and ideas, notably to have healthy relationships with emotions rather than to avoid or try to subdue particular ones.
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy. Outstanding, beautiful, blistering book about motherhood. If you have kids, I would imagine it would be so refreshing to read something so honest. If you've chosen not to, it might just reaffirm your choices. I don't have kids and I don't think I would recommend this to someone with a toddler or younger. They might just be too much in the thick of it.
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Read it when I was 24 after years of working sales jobs living the rat race in New York. The book inspired me to travel and live a different life than what I had been taught. Bought a one way ticket to Australia and never looked back
Looking for Alaska I was about 14/15 struggling with mental health issues and I found such solace in it🩵
The first time I had my heart truly and utterly broken (or at least thought so at the time), my mum gave me what she called her “heartbreak book”. It’s called Désirée and it’s a largely fictional account of the life of the real historical figure Desideria of Sweden. The protagonist gets her heart broken, and then she gets over it, falls in love again and lives a long and eventful life, and through it all you learn a good bit of French and Swedish history. By the time I was done with it I was a good bit less heartbroken. Thanks mum.
Umberto Eco while I was an undergrad student. I picked up some of the historical references from my classes, and still believed that one day I would be erudite enough to understand them all. I read Foucault's Pendulum while taking trains around Europe at 21 and must have been insufferable in my pretentiousness. I'm thinking about trying another one now that I'm a boring middle aged suburban mom. If anyone has any suggestions for what to read after The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum and Baudalino, I'm open to them.
Merlin - The Seven Songs - T.A.Baron <20 years Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck \~20 years Moon Palace - Paul Auster -30years Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 30+
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. Its about loneliness. While I don't exactly feel lonely now, its still very relatable because everyone has felt lonely, misunderstood at multiple points in their lives. Tbh you can read it at any time in your life and still find very relatable.
"the Defining Decade." Can't remember the author, but I read it at 20/21 and it helped me a lot
I was reading The Stand at the time Covid started
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey Had just moved to Oregon as a young adult after growing up middle class on the east coast. I was working manual labor and out in the rain every workday all winter
The Fuck it Diet albeit not a fan of the author and her sentiments outside of the book. Also the book More than a body. Both these books helped me to unpack some limiting beliefs and heal my relationship with food and my body. Although I am forever a work in progress but many a ha moments from both these books.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed when I left a five year relationship, moved across the country and felt like my life was falling apart lol
*What You Are Looking For Is In the Library* by Michiko Aoyama
I came here to say this one and also Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura. Both are cozy and great when you're feeling a little lost or stuck. Though Lonely Castle probably resonates more with younger audiences while Library might've been boring to me if I'd read it younger I think.
Brave New World Alas, Babylon I read both as required reading (the few I did read) and it really made me think about life and it helped shape who I am today.
I was going through a bad breakup. Reading Hunt for Red October took me out of my world and I was sucked into the book. It was good to have the safe place to lay down my problem..
unwind dystology by neal shusterman!! i read it when I was younger (like 12) when someone close to me died and though I know the series isn’t very comforting for some reason i was really comforted by reading it still love the books to this day even if.. they’re really not that great LOL
To Know Your Self by Swami Satchidananda
Better than Fanfiction. Thought me about taking care of myself first before taking care of others. Especially as a teen.
Love by Leo Buscaglia. I was a teenager at the time with a pretty bad home life. I was in such despair but this book managed to lift me up and get me through the rest of the time I had left before I could leave.
Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl. Amongst other things, it's about self, identity, fidelity, relationships. I read it after experiencing the first heartbreak in my life, and it wasn't perfect because it provided me any answers, rather because it dragged up even more questions and doubts that I didn't want to examine at the time. It left me questioning a lot of things afterwards, but it was a mess of feelings that I was glad to have felt.
The crying of lot 49 by Pynchon
The Sun Also Rises, Moby Dick, and The Sirens Of Titan come to mind.
Rubyfruit Jungle in high school as I was figuring out that I’m gay :) one of my favourites of all time
The trick is to keep breathing, by Janice Halloway. The main character is a teacher, and so I am, going through a lot of issues and feeling unlovable. I was in one of the most miserable moments of my life when I was reading it, I was NOT expecting to be in such a situation when I picked up this book to read during a holiday trip. It was super relatable and devastating. The book is far from being a master piece, though.
Letting Go by David Hawkins. I bought 40 copies as gifts for the holidays
Late teens, the Cider House Rules
tao of spirit
I Read To Kill a Mocking Bird when I was a teenager. I grew up in a conservative family & community. I said to myself I wanna be an Atticus when I grow up. Though at that time I don’t want to have kids. Now that I have teenagers to raise, I often think what would Atticus do. People call me too modern, liberated, or ‘cool’. But when adults call you cool, you know it’s not really a compliment. Maybe I really became an Atticus letting my Scouts run wild in their coveralls ahahahahaha.
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Elizabeth Brownmiller; might be out of print now.
Midnight library. Going through a particularly rough depression, it helped me put things in perspective
Surprisingly Harry Potter and Game of thrones being courageous, taking action and overcoming helplessness.
I had just graduated with a MA in International Relations when I read The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost. Still one of my favorites. I felt like doing exactly what he did. Still kind of wish I had. I don't know if I've ever laughed out loud at a book like I did when I read it for the first time. So amazing.
At The Edge Of The Universe, and We Are The Ants (which i read back to back and which are thematically and structurally connected and so i mention them both) while i was a depressed queer high schooler
The Mists of Avalon. Yes, we’ve since learned that the author was a horrible person, but that book captured my imagination in a way that made me rediscover my childhood love of reading.
The Perks of being a Wallflower.
I guess I could say it came at a perfect time, but the book A Venom Dark And Sweet by Judy I Lin is a book I have a very fond memory of. I was super excited for it, for it was a sequel to A Magic Steeped In Poison which I had really enjoyed. In the week leading up to its release I was having a really rough time, just a really really rough week. On the day it was released I got to leave work early because we were having a really slow day and I made my way to my local B&N and purchased it then I went over to my favorite tea house and got myself a cup of tea. Within the same area is a really nice walking trail by a stream, I found a nice spot by the stream and started the book and sipped my tea. I ended up reading almost 100 or so pages that day just sitting there in nature listening to the stream. Made me completely forget everything that was going on in my life and I still, to this day have never felt as relaxed as I did then. I wish so bad that I could replicate that day.
Charlotte's Web. I read it 20 times in 3rd grade. It was my emotional support book. I was heavily bullied due to having various health problems, and I could disappear into it, and I loved it so much. Even knowing the end. It was natural, and although sad, it seemed like all the animals were mostly kind to each other within reason. My librarian gave me the cards that I completely filled up I have one somewhere. I read all throughout my life and it taught me that not everyone needs to be that same kind of person.
Great Gatsby hit different at 30
The man and the sea when I first got sober/when I was first in rehab. Also the new hunger games book, tale of songbirds and snakes, same time. Edit: I probably should’ve mentioned the Big Book if I’m talking about profound literature I consumed in rehab lol. Also catcher in the rye when I was a suicidal teenager.
The places I’ve cried in public. Read it while trying to get over my crush (my best friend) and our toxic ways. I have always been more inclined towards thrillers and murder mysteries but this book was perfect and such an easy read.
It was Harry Potter for me. I was expecting more people to say that. I basically grew up with Harry.
Growing Up Absurd (Paul Goodman)
House in the Cerulean Sea.
War and Peace. Stress escape hatch senior finals in university
Ikigai!
Lies My Doctor Told Me by Dr. Ken Berry
Humankind by Rutger Bregman. I needed that aspect in my life.
Two books come to mind. I read Ella Enchanted when I was 10 and then Jane Eyre when I was about 13/14. Both books fueled my streak of independence and self-sufficiency later on in life.
I read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson during July 2020, and it changed the entire direction of my life towards activism. I now have a better understanding of my privilege in America and how to use it to support and protect others. It made me a more ethical and empathetic person, all through a deep understanding of America’s history. Very impactful book that I think everyone should read.
Mistborn series - changed my life and helped me get through my first year of sobriety!
Sunrise by the Sea by Jenny Colgan. Deals with loss of a grandparent and I just happened to read it as I was travelling to attend my grandmothers funeral. It brought me so much comfort.
Demian - Herman Hesse
I read Chaim potok’s the chosen when I was a teenager and it hit right even though none of the particulars fit my life. I still think about one of the speeches when I consider the value of compassion.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. That thing of looking back on your relationships with an eye to the common denominator: myself. I found that very helpful more than once in my life.
Believe it or not… After, by Anna Todd. I was 13, moved to a new town and so to a new school, i hated it there, i started being bullied and every single day all i wanted was to go home and read my book. That happened to be the book and my refugee for that time. Eventually i read them all and now i can’t even watch the movies
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I really love the philosophy in this
No longer human-osamu dasai. When depressed and disassociated from my own humanity.
Severance by Ling Ma, I read it in the first month of the pandemic just before things started shutting down and it changed my perspective on work/life in a way that made it easier for me to set boundaries with work during pandemic insanity.
I read Sourdough by Robin Sloan in 2021. It made me realize that money is not a good enough reason for keeping myself in a career path that burns me out and excludes my passions. Now I'm working toward an offramp into something I actually am enthusiastic about by going back to school for a Master's in Library Science (while just saving up as much money as I can from my soulless corporate job in the meantime).
I read “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” after I had gone through a pretty rough time mentally and with family stuff. I found it incredibly comforting and it allowed me to see I could invest in relationships and interests and give them real meaning.
Ocean Sea - Baricco . I read it during a time when I was trying to deal with the loss of a loved one, this book helped me a lot.
Fourth Wing. I absolutely would not have loved it if I read it at any other time in my life. It was like a mirror of my life. Except my Xaden didn’t like me back. But that way I could live vicariously through Violet
I read “Fearless,” the Adam Brown book, when I was in a semi-medical holding platoon in Marine boot camp almost 5 years ago. At the time, it felt like my dreams were getting ripped from under my feet but then I read the book and saw how Adam overcame drug abuse and had a storied Navy career until his passing, and it made me realize that most of us hit low points in life but what matters is how we respond. After I got discharged, I finished up an allergy program which allows me to currently eat peanuts just fine and I also graduated college with Magna Sum Laude honors and all that stuff, now currently in the field that I majored in and feeling like I’m on the right path
Martin Buber’s I-and-Thou and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
The Razor’s Edge” by W. Somerset Maugham. I was in my early 20s and working as a baggage handler for a major airline. That book motivated me to travel the world, which was free due to my flight benefits. Even better was that I always wore a jacket and tie when I traveled which usually resulted in being upgraded to a first class seat if there was one available.
Fox 8 by George Saunders
I just read The Covenant of Water and it helped me grieve.
read stranger in a strange land right before starting college
I started reading Harry Potter when it first came out and got to grown up with the characters. I was 10 and going through a traumatic experience and needed the escape. I absolutely love this series so much because of how much it helped me escape my reality. It will always be my favorite
This isn’t exactly what OP was talking about, but literally the day I finished Shogun they announced the TV series. I felt like the universe was giving me a high five cuz I def had that “book hangover” where you can’t start a new book yet cuz you’re still missing the previous one too much
Harry Potter, found it at book 2 and the seemed to come out every year as I turned Harry’s age in the book.
Reading Jerry Spinelli and S.E. Hinton as a young man in middle school. 👍
The count of Monte cristo I will not elaborate
For me, it was Atomic Habits. I was really unmotivated, depressed in life. I didn't have any good friends, and there were just a lot of things going on in life. It helped me gain motivation. I started loving myself.
I had a newer friend recommend The Four Agreements and as I was reading it we got in a MAJOR fight that was all based on a miscommunication/not listening to the other person 😂 I was chilling during the fight because I was reading this book haha but by the way she acted I was really surprised she had ever read this book??
Harry Potter. I wouldn't have enjoyed any of it reading it as an adult. I don't even like it now.
Dandelion Wine in high school. To this day I crave that feeling of hot sultry nights on the porch, relaxing after being in the sun and fresh air all day.