Here are 100 books that Born to Run fans have personally recommended if you like
Born to Run.
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I am passionate about this book list because it helped me get where I am today, a multiple-times bestselling author and an award-winning senior reporter. I began working as an overnight police round reporter before moving into sports, where I became one of Australia's best news-breaking rugby league journalists. I was then appointed News Corp Australia's Chief National Motorsports Writer and traveled the world chasing Formula 1 story, as well as covering Australia's V8 Supercar races. Everyone has to start somewhere, and for me, this list of books helped me begin and continue to grow to reach the level of success that I have.
Itâs 2005, and itâs my first day at The Daily Telegraph. I still couldnât believe they had hired me as a cadet journalist. The smile I was wearingâfrom ear to earâsuddenly vanished when the Chief of Staff walked over and said, âPhelpsy, a bus has just crashed in Egypt. We have been told that there may have been some Australian tourists on board. Punch out 500 words and give it to me in an hour.â
I turned to my computer screen, looked down at my keyboard, and suddenly realized that I had no idea what I was doing. Iâd never had any writing training, and my experience was limited to the gibber I had been submitting to the paper (for free) for the past year in the hope of landing a job. After ten minutes of writing a word or two, deleting them, and then doing it again, IâŠ
Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINEâS TOP 100 NONFICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME
Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen Kingâs critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
âLong live the Kingâ hailed Entertainment Weekly upon publication of Stephen Kingâs On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writerâs craft, comprising the basic tools of theâŠ
My expertise and passion for these topics stem from my lived experiences. I never understood why I would be the only girl to suffer so much, but now, having written my memoir, I know it all had a purpose. Some people with similar backgrounds write to me, and I try to offer them compassion, encouragement, hope, and understanding. I advise them to write their own memoirs to shed light on different life issues and inspire meaningful conversations. I have been a platinum member of Audible since 2016 and have more than 1000 memoirs in my libraryâI hope this helped me to choose the best five memoirs for this list!
I listened to this audiobook motionless, with my eyes closed, forgetting that I needed to sleep, drink, or do chores. Itâs easy to forget who you are when you are so immersed in a book. Sometimes, I would catch myself in a horrible or elated mood and then realize that I was unable to separate myself from what I listened to or read in the morning.
That's how this book affected me. It was very easy to identify with this story, as it also centers on a dysfunctional family like mine. I also loved the transformative power of knowledge portrayed in this book. Having missed all my Elementary School myselfâbecause of my dysfunctional familyâand then having become a teacher as an adult, I hugely appreciate and celebrate Mrs. Westoverâs fight for her education.
Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE
'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day 'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill 'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times
Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificateâŠ
Music has obsessed me since I got my first record player, around age five, and learned how to play the stack of used Beatles records that seeded my collection. I could probably pick a favorite music book from every decade of my life, and this list isnât far off.
Lester Bangs ranks as one of the great music writers and as a high priest of gonzo, the new-journalism approach that posited the writer as the dominant character in rambling, straight-from-the-typewriter pop-cultural manifestos published in Rolling Stoneand Creem and their ilk. I think Lester rivals Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion as the most potent and enduring voice of that era. Heâs one of my favorite writers. I donât think he wrote anything but record reviews.
Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegade Beat poet, and his essays, reviews and scattered notes convey the electric thrill of a music junky indulging the habit of aâŠ
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Early in my life, I developed a keen appreciation of and a strong affinity for the unique culture encompassing the Jersey Shore, a lifestyle that unites infinite waves, distinctive art, soulful music, sand between oneâs toes, and the dream of the endless summer. The sea speaks to me, and always has. My appreciation of the ocean and shore living leads me to seek comparable books with hopes of learning from and/or connecting with other writers like me, and it served as the basis of the setting for my novel, Enduring the Waves. I hope you make a similar connection to one of the books on my recommendation list.
Iâve read Jaimal Yogisâ Saltwater Buddha: A Surferâs Quest to Find Zen on the Sea countless times.
His coming-of-age story recounts his experiences after traveling, rather running away, to Hawaii as a teenager with little money and only a few belongings to learn how to surf. Riding the blue barrel waves and the salty waters, alongside wisdom from his mentor, led to him realizing the science of surfing, the formation of the ocean and its underwater typography, and the quest for enlightenment are forever meshing and melding together.
Yogis helped me to grasp the space between moments is just as important as moments themselves, and the essence of just âbeingâ is sometimes enough.
Fed up with teenage life in the suburbs, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries, from the warm Pacific to the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue.
On reaching my late 40âs, the topic of ageing and dying raised its head with a clarion call. This wake up call led me to draw upon my 25 yearsâ experience as a scientist to research why we age, how we die, and what (if anything) we can do about it all. I also looked beyond the physical into the social and emotional aspects. These book recommendations reflect my journey to understanding that a life well lived is about doing things you like with people you love, rather than swallowing vitamin pills.
Life is a journey that each of us only takes once. This book shows how to undertake that journey with warmth and wisdom.
Whilst we all take a unique path, there are lessons we can learn from others further up the escalator to the inevitable end; Morrie provides them. We are better off together, we live longer, fuller, richer lives. This book reminds us to connect with others and share the journey.
THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT HAS TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 9 MILLION READERS
'Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary' Cecelia Ahern __________
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague? Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it? For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like toâŠ
Family history has always fascinated me. I didnât want mine to be buried with my loved ones. So, out of curiosity, I asked relatives lots of questions. If unsatisfied, I sought answers elsewhere. I traveled as far as Celle San Vito, Italy, where my grandfather was born, to solve a one-hundred-year-old mystery, and I filmed it for others to enjoy. Iâve memorialized momentous family events in poems, handmade greeting cards, memory books, screenplays, a documentary, and now, in my memoir A Cup of Tea on the Commode. The books on my list are about âfamily.â Iâve been moved by each, and I hope they move you as well.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, Rick Braggâs writing is poetry.
He grew up dirt poor in Alabama. I grew up in a middle-class suburb in New Jersey. He and I have little in common but our love for our mothers. This story touched me on many levels. All mothers sacrifice to some extent in raising their children, but Rickâs mother went above and beyond while facing dire circumstances to provide for hers.
It made me appreciate my mother even more. And though I hadnât discovered this book prior to my story, it reconfirmed my commitment to my mother.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER âą From the Pulitzer Prizeâwinner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prizeâwinning reporter for The New York Times. It is also the story of Bragg's father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of runningâŠ
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: âAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?â Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itâŠ
Music has obsessed me since I got my first record player, around age five, and learned how to play the stack of used Beatles records that seeded my collection. I could probably pick a favorite music book from every decade of my life, and this list isnât far off.
This floppy paperback matched the dimensions of an actual record, a geometry that made you feel you were flipping through your Beatles albums as you read it. It came to me as a birthday or Christmas present, probably around age eight. I read it cover to cover, over and over, memorizing entire passages like biblical verses. It was pretty much my only book until I discovered Mad magazine, around age ten. You could do a lot worse.
A comprehensive critical guide to the recordings of the Beatles includes over two hundred photographs tracing the lives and careers of these legendary rock stars
Music has obsessed me since I got my first record player, around age five, and learned how to play the stack of used Beatles records that seeded my collection. I could probably pick a favorite music book from every decade of my life, and this list isnât far off.
I stumbled across the first great Rolling Stone record guide around the time I first encountered used record stores: Second Hand Tunes, Dr. Wax and the legendary Wax Trax, all within walking distance of my Chicago high school. I never had sufficient funds to actually purchase the guide, so I snuck it from the shelf at Krochâs and Brentanoâs downtown and memorized as much data as my brain would hold:The best B.B. King albums are the ones on the Crown and Kent labels. Grab any early Kinks LPs you can find. I still quote from Dave Marsh & co. whenever I write about music.
Like many others, I had an early fascination for pop music, which moved on to rock music as I grew older. I would love to know more about the artists or music figures who made such emotional and stunning music that made the world better and more exciting. British rock and roll music has made a massive impact on the Western life that we all know and love. These five books are the best ones for me, and while all are unique, they have humor and interesting details and let me gain knowledge about these iconic figures.
As lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards has been a massive influence on British music since the 1960s. Personal stories about his amazing life and rock' n'roll icons like John Lennon, James Brown, and Bo Diddley litter this autobiography and make it a fascinating read. He has created a book that is engaging and hard to put down!
As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, onlyâŠ
I was first a clinical social worker and then a social work professor with research focus on older adults. Over the past few years, as I have been writing my own memoir about caring for my parents, Iâve been drawn to memoirs and first-person stories of aging, illness, and death. The best memoirs on these topics describe the emotional transformation in the writer as they process their loss of control, loss of their own or a loved oneâs health, and their fear, pain, and suffering. In sharing these stories, we help others empathize with what weâve gone through and help others be better prepared for similar events in their own lives.
This book attracted me because, as a gerontologist/social worker, Iâm interested in the subject of Alzheimerâs disease (AD) and dementia. This book, rather than describing the long, sad decline of a loved one, tells Bloomâs story of trying to help her spouse with AD to end his life.
Bloom is a clinical social worker who writes with a deep understanding of human behavior and motivation, most notably her own, which makes her a fine memoirist. She writes candidly about her emotions, unafraid to reveal less flattering details.
Her story is a sad one, with many ups and downs, but the overwhelming sense I got was of her powerful love for her husband and desire to give him what he needed in the face of his dementia diagnosis.
A poignant love letter to Bloom's husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.
In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge 'into the darkness of an expiring existence'.