Some books just resonate, you know?

I vividly remember their words and turns of phrase. They teach something. They call to action.

They made me make some changes in my life. They helped me make a big decision. They changed my perspective.

These are my favorite life-changing books:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

Why I love it:

It’s a great, uplifting story and I love the parable style. It’s such a familiar story and speaks to our hearts about how we’re all connected. I wish I’d gotten this as a graduation gift, but I only just recently discovered it. I laughed. I cried. I want all my kids to read it!

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

TEACHER SEEKS PUPIL.
Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

It was just a three-line ad in the personals section, but it launched the adventure of a lifetime.

So begins an utterly unique and captivating novel. In Ishmael, which received the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for the best work of fiction offering positive solutions to global problems, Daniel Quinn parses humanity’s origins and its relationship with nature, in search of an answer to this challenging question: How can we save the world from ourselves?

Why I love it:

It’s so unexpected. It made me think about what an impact I have, we all have –  on each other, the earth, animals, society. It makes me question everything I’ve ever been taught.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver’s fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel’s intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.

Why I love it:

I read this when I was a single mother. I was longing for meaningful connection. This book offered me hope that very different people can work together and find a place in each other’s hearts. I also love nature stories.

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec.  Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices.  Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.  Here is a rich mine of ideas from an extraordinary writer about contemporary life and nature, families and marriage, and about women fragmented…and becoming whole.

Why I love it:

I read this book after some very difficult life circumstances.

Sometimes, I desire to be wild and free, lost in the woods, foraging and alone, cut off from the world. It helps me find myself again.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Why I love it:

I read it in 10th grade. I taught it to my students for several years. I read it with my daughter. It’s an amazingly hopeful book in the face of a tragic society.

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

In Falling Upward, Fr. Richard Rohr seeks to help readers understand the tasks of the two halves of life and to show them that those who have fallen, failed, or “gone down” are the only ones who understand “up.” Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as “falling upward.” In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness.

This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right–a fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life.

Why I love it:

It put together a puzzle for me about why I struggled so much until recently. It explains why so many others seem displaced and I don’t fit in.

These books have always resonated with me and I can read them again and again.

You might also like my Women’s Literature Study.