Books that shaped me
Discover the books that shaped a life—from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. Explore a curated literary journey of fiction, memoirs, and wisdom.
Book
The Tao of Pooh
by Benjamin Hoff
For Taoists everywhere, the New York Times bestseller from the author of The Te of Piglet. Happy 90th birthday (10/14/16), to one of the world's most beloved icons of literature, Winnie-the-Pooh! The how of Pooh? The Tao of who? The Tao of Pooh!?! In which it is revealed that one of the world's great Taoist masters isn't Chinese--or a venerable philosopher--but is in fact none other than that effortlessly calm, still, reflective bear. A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh! While Eeyore frets, and Piglet hesitates, and Rabbit calculates, and Owl pontificates, Pooh just is. And that's a clue to the secret wisdom of the Taoists.
Book
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters.
Book
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by Clive Staples Lewis
Four English school children find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist Aslan, the golden lion, to triumph over the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.
Book
Nobody Said Not to Go
by Ken Cuthbertson
Known as "Mickey" to her friends, Emily Hahn traveled across the country dressed as a boy in the 192Os; worked as a Harvey Girl in Taos, New Mexico; ran away to the Belgian Congo as a Red Cross worker during the Great Depression; was the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai in the 1930s; became an opium addict; had an affair and an illegitimate child with the head of the British Secret Service in Hong Kong just before the outbreak of World War II; was involved in underground relief work in occupied Hong Kong; and moved back to the United States and became a pioneer in the fields of environmentalism and wildlife preservation before her death last year. Mickey Hahn also wrote hundreds of articles and short stories for The New Yorker from 1925 to 1995 and wrote fifty-two books in her lifetime, astonishing her publishers and agents by moving effortlessly from biography to humor to fiction to travel memoir to history.
Book
The North China Lover
by Marguerite Duras
A young woman growing up in Indochina experiences the humiliations and the passions of her poverty-ridden world and, like her friends, grows impatient for the experiences of adulthood while still caught up in her childhood
Book
Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century
by Boston Women's Health Book Collective
Addresses a variety of women's health issues including body image, illness, pregnancy, childbirth, AIDS, growing older, nutrition, sexuality, and other related topics.
Book
The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature “In [On the Road] Kerouac’s heroes were sensation seekers; now they are seekers after truth . . . the novel often attains a beautiful dignity.”—Chicago Tribune First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac’s most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans—mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer—whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco’s Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
