Books

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington, painter, playwright, and novelist, was a surrealist trickster par excellence, and The Hearing Trumpet is the witty, celebratory key to her anarchic and allusive body of work. The novel begins in the bourgeois comfort of a residential corner of a Mexican city and ends with a man-made apocalypse that promises to usher in the earth’s rebirth. In between we are swept off to a most curious old-age home run by a self-improvement cult and drawn several centuries back in time with a cross-dressing Abbess who is on a quest to restore the Holy Grail to its rightful owner, the Goddess Venus. Guiding us is one of the most unexpected heroines in twentieth-century literature, a nonagenarian vegetarian named Marian Leatherby, who, as Olga Tokarczuk writes in her afterword, is “hard of hearing” but “full of life.”

Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights on the Lotus Sutra by Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay)

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh uses the Lotus Sutra, one of Mahayana Buddhism’s most revered texts, to illustrate the Buddha nature inherent in everyone. With great passion and clarity, he demonstrates how each human being has the capacity to transform their own individual suffering, develop compassion, and help create more peace in the world.

Sacred Instructions by Sherri Mitchell (WEH'NA HA'MU KWASSET - She Who Brings the Light)

A narrative of Indigenous wisdom that provides a road map for the spirit and a compass of compassion for humanity. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our say, such as environmental protection and human rights. For those seeking change, this book offers a set of cultural values that will preserve our collective survival for future generations.

The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martín Prechtel

Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise—how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, “Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.” At base, this “little book,” as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts that inhabit us all.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield

Filled with stories from Jack’s Buddhist psychotherapy practice and portraits of remarkable teachers, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, The Wise Heart offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.

Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw

In Courting the Wild Twin, acclaimed scholar, mythologist and author of Smoke Hole and Bardskull, Martin Shaw unravels two ancient European fairy tales concerning the mysterious ‘wild twin’ located deep inside all of us. By reading these tales and becoming storytellers ourselves, he challenges us to confront modern life with purpose, courage, and creativity. Martin summons the reader to the ‘ragged edge of the dark wood’ to seek out this estranged, exiled self – the part we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms – and invite it back into our consciousness. If there was something we were meant to do with our few, brief years on Earth, we can be sure that our wild twin is holding the key. After all, stories are our secret weapons – and they might just save us.

The Moomin series by Tove Jansson

The Moomins, in case you haven’t already met them, are kind, philosophical creatures with velvety fur and smooth round snouts, who live in a beautiful valley called Moominvalley. They have the most natural way of turning friends into family – Moominmamma simply adds another plank to the table and builds a new bed. Moomins sleep through the winter, when the snow turns their house into a great snowball. But, when spring comes, they wake and clamber down rope ladders hanging from their windows, ready for a bright new adventure.

Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel

Frog and Toad are best friends—they do everything together. When Toad admires the flowers in Frog's garden, Frog gives him seeds to grow a garden of his own. When Toad bakes cookies, Frog helps him eat them. And when both Frog and Toad are scared, they are brave together. Here are five wonderful stories about flowers, cookies, bravery, dreams, and, most of all, friendship.

Guess Who My Favorite Person Is by Byrd Baylor

A young man and a little girl play a game of choosing and describing their favorite things while resting in an alfalfa field. The girl is the leader and she is a harsh critic of his choices when they are not specific enough. With choosing favorite colors, for instance, she demands that he not just declare his choice to be blue, but that he tell exactly which kind of blue, seen where. The game proceeds as they choose their favorite smells, things to touch, and times of day. As the game goes on, they develop a friendship over the course of an afternoon. The title question is never answered in the book, but the reader knows they would name each other.

All books by Haruki Murakami

In 1978 Haruki Murakami was in the bleachers of Jingu Stadium watching a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that he hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized that he could write a novel. He went home and began writing that night.