Think before you speak. Read before you think.
– Fran Lebowitz
Here are 10 books I recommend from what I finished reading in January.
[See previously recommended books here]
Nonfiction
1. The Wisdom of Your Body
Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection Through Embodied Living
by Hillary L. McBride
If you fight with your body, this book can help break it up. Making peace with how we’re made heals us from the inside out. A ground-breaking book.
[my review here of The Wisdom of Your Body]
2. Somebody’s Daughter
by Ashley C. Ford
Ashley’s father was sent to prison when she was a young girl. For years she wasn’t told why. But as she grew older, she was disturbed by what she discovered. This well-written and moving memoir takes you through Ashley’s relationship with her father and with her mother and life along the way.
3. Making Numbers Count
The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers
by Chip Heath and Karla Starr
Chip Heath is one of my favorite authors because whatever topic he writes about, it’s guaranteed to be fascinating.
This time it’s a very interesting look at our human relationship with numbers. How we can make it better. How we can better convey numbers to each other. How to make numbers more meaningful.
For example, I read this morning that astronauts in space lose 3 million red blood cells per second. Crazy! Until I read that even on earth we each lose 2 million red blood cells per second. The 3 million still sounds absurd, but put in context with the norm, it’s a little different.
This book is full of those type examples that you’ll never see the same again.
[my review here of Making Numbers Count]
4. Grieving Mindfully
A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
by Sameet M. Kumar
Dealing with loss is a difficult journey. But finding meaning through it can guide you to healing.
“Grief is the transformation of feeling love into feeling loss. It is neither punishment nor weakness. It is the mystery of suffering—that being in pain ourselves can cause us to increase our love and compassion for others.”
“Your main task in acute grief is simply to feel, with radical acceptance, what you are feeling.”
5. The Divine Dance
The Trinity and Your Transformation
by Richard Rohr
Even though the Trinity can feel like a total mystery, there are certain things we can learn by studying it. One of the great takeaways for me in this book is more clearly understanding our invitation into the divine relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the divine relationship we can have between each other.
6. Love for Imperfect Things
How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection
by Haemin Sunim
This book is full of beautiful vignettes of life’s wisdom for compassion toward others and compassion toward ourselves.
“Sometimes we want to be told ‘I need you’ more than we do ‘I love you,’ because we want to feel that our lives have a purpose. So, be brave and say honestly, ‘I need you.'”
“Because I have experienced pain, I am able to embrace the pain of others. Because I have made mistakes, I am able to forgive others their mistakes. May my suffering become the seed of compassion.”
7. Constructive Wallowing
How to Beat Bad Feelings by Letting Yourself Have Them
by Tina Gilbertson
While you, like me, may have often been told not to wallow in your emotions, this book says that if we’ll just feel our feelings when they arise (not necessarily act on them), they serve their purpose and move on. I found the information here very enlightening and helpful.
“Wallowing doesn’t mean you’re making yourself feel bad, or worse than you already do. It just means you’re consciously letting your emotions be exactly what they are, instead of minimizing them or pretending they’re not there when they SO are.”
“Contrary to popular opinion, the people who look like they’re holding it together are often the ones who’ve fallen apart.”
8. More Beautiful Than Before
How Suffering Transforms Us
by Steve Leder
We all experience suffering. It may look different on each person. Rabbi Leder writes of the pain he’s felt and has witnessed in others. He uses it to draw meaning from suffering.
“Change, “It will never go away” to “It waxes and wanes.” “It will ruin my life” to “My life can still be full of purpose and meaning.” “I have nothing to look forward to” to “There is a lot I can still do and new things I will do that I have never done before. “I will never be happy again” to “There will be many things in the future that will bring me joy.” Live with faith in the future and in yourself—one hour at a time.”
“The most important things are said with the fewest words. I love you. I’m here. No. Yes. It’s a deal. He’s gone. It’s a girl. I was wrong.”
Fiction
9. How to Stop Time
by Matt Haig
This isn’t a time travel book per se, but it spans one person’s lifetime across many normal lifespans. It’s an intriguing premise done well. I don’t want to spoil it so that’s all I’ll say.
10. Wish You Were Here
by Jodi Picoult
This novel hits close to home. It was written during and its setting is our current pandemic. The main character Diana is planning to travel abroad with her surgical resident boyfriend when the virus comes to New York City. The book takes a major plot twist halfway in. Very interesting.
Reading Now
- Jesus and John Wayne
How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
by Kristin Kobes du Mez - Atlas of the Heart
Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
by Brené Brown - All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep
Hope—And Hard Pills to Swallow—About Fighting for Black Lives
by Andre Henry - The Book of Joy
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
by the Dalai Lama XIV and Desmond Tutu - Good Enough
40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection
by Kate Bowler - The Grieving Brain
The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
by Mary-Frances O’Connor - Wholehearted Faith
by Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu - Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy
by Frank Schaeffer
What good book are YOU reading this month? Please share in the comments.
MORE READING
More books I recommend
