Books

Recommended reading(s)

I think you can tell an awful lot about someone - how they think, who they are, their values - by what they read.  Therefore, I'd like to share some of my favorite authors and books with you.  I hope they inspire you as they have me.

Non-Fiction

Alexander Lowen:  "The Betrayal of the Body", "Love, Sex and Your Heart", "Fear of Life", "Narcissism" and "Pleasure"

Alice Miller: "The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self"

Alice Walker: "Now is the Time to Open Your Heart" and "Possessing the Secret of Joy"

Anne Lamott:  Anything by her

Betty Friedan: "The Fountain of Age"

B.K.S. Iyengar:  "Yoga: The Path to Holistic Health"

Brenda Wilkinson & Jim Haskins, editors: "Black Stars:  African-American Women Writers"

Carol Pearson: "Awakening the Heroes Within"

Chellis Glendinning: "My Name is Chellis and I'm In Recovery from Western Civilization"

Christian de la Huerta: "Coming Out Spiritually"

Dalai Lama: "The Way to a Meaningful Life"

Diane Ackerman:  anything by her

Daniel Ladinsky:  "Love Poems from God"

David Snowdon, PhD.:  "Aging with Grace"

Francine du Plessix Gray:  "Them"

Geneen Roth: "When Food is Love"

Isabel Allende: "Paula"

Jack Kornfield, "A Path with Heart" and "The Wise Heart"

Jack Morin: "The Erotic Mind"

Jennifer Finney Boylan:  "She's Not There"

Jill Ker Conway: "True North"

Jim Clarke: "Creating Rituals: A New Way of Healing for Everyday Life"

Jimmy Carter: "Living Faith" and "Beyond the White House"

Joan Didion:  anything by her

John Boswell:  "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality"

Jon Kabot-Zinn:  "Wherever you are, there you are" and "Full Catastrophe Living"

Joseph Cornell:  "Listening to Nature"

Joseph Goldstein: "One Dharma" and "Insight Meditation" 

Julia Cameron: "The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity"

June Jordan: "Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union"

Karen Armstrong: "The Spiral Staircase"

Luis Alberto Urrea: "The Devil's Highway"

Maryanna Eckberg: "Somatic Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder"

Matthew Fox:  "The Reinvention of Work"

MFK Fisher: "The Physiology of Taste", "How to Cook a Wolf", "Among Friends"  and "Considerable Town" 

Michael Ford (editor): "Happily Ever After:  Erotic Fairy Tales for Men"

Naomi Wolf: "The Beauty Myth"

Nuala O'Faolain: "Are you Somebody?"

Patti Smith: "Just Kids"

Pema Chodron:  "The Places that Scare You", "When Things Fall Apart" and "Comfortable with Uncertainty"

Philip Helfaer: "Sex and Self Respect"

Rebecca Walker:  "Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self"

Richard Rohr:  anything by him, especially "From Wild Man to Wise Man", "Soul Brothers", "Adam's Return" and "Everything Belongs"

Robert Hilton: "Relational Somatic Psychotherapy: Collected Essays"

Ruth Reichl:  "Tender at the Bone" and "Garlic and Sapphires"

Sister Helen Prejean: "The Death of Innocents" and "Dead Man Walking"

Stephen Batchelor:  "Living with the Devil: A meditation on Good and Evil" and "Buddhism Without Beliefs"

Stephen Johson:  "Characterological Transformation:  The Hard Work Miracle" and ""Character Styles"

Stephen Levine:  "Turning Towards the Mystery"

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon:  "A General Theory of Love"

Thomas Merton: "Thoughts in Solitude"

Wilhelm Reich: "Character Analysis"

Winston Leyland (editor) "Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists"

 

Fiction

Alexander McCall Smith:  "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency", "Morality for Beautiful Girls" and "The Kalahari Typing School for Men"

Alice Adams: anything by her; her novels and short story collections are brilliant

Alice Munro: "Too Much Happiness" (short stories)

Ann Packer:  "The Dive from Clausen's Pier" 

Ann Patchett:  "The Magician's Assistant"  

Annie Prouxl:  "Close Range" and "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories"

Barbara Kingsolver:  anything by her

Barbara Pym:  "Civil to Strangers" and "Excellent Women"

Bernhard Schlink: "The Reader"

Colette:  "Cheri" and "The Last of Cheri"

Diane Johnson: "Le Divorce" and "Le Marriage"

Donna Tartt:  "The Secret History"

Elizabeth Strout:  "Olive Kitteridge"

Frances Hodgson Burnett "The Secret Garden"

Gish Jen: "The Love Wife"

Jeffrey Eugenides: "Middlesex"

Larry McMurtry: "The Last Picture Show"

Le Thi Diem Thuy: "The Gangster We Are All Looking For"

Louise Erdrich:  anything by her

Marilynne Robinson:  "Home", "Gilead" and "Housekeeping"

Ralph Ellison:  "Juneteenth" and "Invisible Man"

Sue Monk Kidd: "Firstlight" and "The Mermaid's Chair"

Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka "Dr. Seuss"): "You're Only Old Once: A Book for Obsolete Children"

Truman Capote:  "Music for Chameleons"

 

Poetry

Adrienne Rich: "Your Native Land, Your Life" (especially "In the Wake of Home")

Antonio Machado: "The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy"

Carl Sandburg:  "Harvest Poems"

David Wagoner: "Lost"

David Whyte:  "Midlife and the Great Unknown", "Everything is Waiting for You", "The House of Belonging", "Fire in the Earth" and "The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America"

Jelaluddin Balkhi Rumi: "The Essential Rumi: Translations by Coleman Barks and John Moyne" 

John Keats: "The Complete Poetical Works of Keats"

Mary Oliver, anything by her, especially "Blue Iris" and Why I Wake Early"

Pablo Neruda, anything by him, especially "The Captain's Verses: Love Poems"

Phillip Larkin: "Collected Poems" (especially, "Here")

Rainer Maria Rilke: "Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God" and "The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke"

Robert Frost: "The Silken Tent" and "A Further Range"

Robertson Jeffers: "The Tower Beyond Tragedy"

Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz:  "The Gift" (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Terry Tempest Williams: "Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert"

Thomas Berry: "The Dream of the Earth" and "Evening Thoughts"

T.S. Elliot:  "Four Quartets"

Wallace Stevens: "Collected Poems" (especially "Sunday Morning")

Walt Whitman:  anything by him, especially "Leaves of Grass"

W.B. Yeats: "The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats" 

W.H. Auden: "Poems"

William Stafford, "The Way It Is"

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: "The Collected Poems: 1952-1990"

 

...and, to conclude this list, here's a favorite quote from a favorite book of mine (I think you can guess its title):

"There is no use trying", said Alice, "one can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour each day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

- Lewis Carroll