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On International Book Day, we thought this might be the right time to start compiling a list of some of the books and writers we read this year, and some of the ones that we go back to over and over.
These are the books that changed us, guided us, comforted us and inspired us, as we embarked on this new adventure. Many of them are quoted and referred to in our weekly journal, so this list will grow.
In no particular order or reference style, we love:
Sensuous Knowledge, by Minna Salami, A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone.
Les Sorcières / Brujas and Chez Soi, by Mona Chollet
Sacred Instructions, Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset (She Who Brings the Light), Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit Based Change
Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde
The Wave in the Mind, Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, by Ursula K. Le Guin and No Time to Spare, Thinking about what matters.
My Seditious Heart, Arundhati Roy, Collected Nonfiction
All about love, new visions, by bell hooks,
The Source of Self-Regard, Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations, by Toni Morrison
Who do we Choose to Be? and Perseverance by Margaret Wheatley,
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
One-way Street and Other Writings, by Walter Benjamin
Undoing Border Imperialism, by Harsha Walia,
The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt
Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake; How Fungi Make our Worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures
Be Water My Friend, by Shannon Lee, on the Writings of Bruce Lee
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, some instructions on writing and life
Consolations, by David Whyte; The solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Miro, I work Like a Gardener
Lady Sings the Blues, by Billie Holiday
The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben; What They Feel, How they Communicate. Discoveries from a Secret World.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, A new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Year of the Monkey, by Patti Smith
The Art of Listening, Erich Fromm,
Call them by their True Names, by Rebecca Solnit, American Crises and Essays
At the Same Time, Essays and Speeches, by Susan Sontag
King Kong Theorie, Viriginie Despentes
Be More Pirate, by Same Conniff Allende and How to Be More Pirate by Alex Barker and Sam Conniff
Learning from the Germans, Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil, by Susan Neiman
Lettres à un jeune poète, Rainer Maria Rilke
On Fire, Naomi Klein
A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader, edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick
Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
the sun and her flowers, by rupi kaur
Ensayo sobre lo que no se ve (Essay about the Unseen), Enrique Lynch
“Everything that needed to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” — Erich Fromm
“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, … but nothing I did before the age of 70 was worthy of attention. At 73, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am 86, so that by 90 I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At 100, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at 130, 140, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive.”— Katsushika Hokusai, also known as Gakyō Rōjin Manji (The Old Man Mad About Art)
