32 books like Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand

While I adore Eckart Tolle’s playfully impish and relaxed personality, I most appreciate his unflinching clarity about why we suffer and what liberation looks like. He invites me to realize that my mind’s inner dialogue—that perpetually comments, critiques, judges, compares, or tries to figure it all out—is not who I am, essentially. Who am I, then? The witnessing awareness which can simply observe that mental chatter, without identifying with it.

When facing a challenging situation, I rely upon Eckhart’s advice, which is to notice that I have three (and only three) sane choices: (1) to leave the situation, (2) to do something to change it, or (3) to accept it completely. So often this has helped to clarify things; and resurrect my inherent sanity. 

One of the secrets of my wildly successful joy trainings is an elevation of self-love. I say “secret” because self-love is a tired, cliched topic.

For some, it implies a self-indulgent pursuit for weaker-willed people than we like to admit ourselves to be. Others, who know they don’t have it, deep down believe they aren’t worthy of it anyway. It’s heartbreaking because self-love is the key to everything we believe we want. And it’s not about bubble baths or buying the shoes.

It’s about how we talk to ourselves all day long, day after day, with that voice in our heads. Spending time with Scott Stabile via the insightful musings in this precious book will create a shift in your relationship with that voice. And that shift will upturn everything.  

My books and trainings are all about joy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t geek out on the science behind it all.

I’ve long admired Eldon Taylor’s approach to bridging the gap between spirituality and what is considered hardcore scientific understanding at this current stage of human evolution, and this book addresses a question that underlies all of the work I do.

If more people could release the widespread, ridiculous idea that spiritual concepts (understood and practiced by our far wiser ancestors thousands of years ago) are somehow not as “real” as the other arbitrary, culturally-accepted paradigms they subscribe to, we’d have a far more joyous, compassionate, successful society.

Eldon provides a fact-based bridge for readers to cross in this well-researched book! 

As we explore in my joy trainings, when life sucks, our sweet little hearts want to close in defense. It’s been that way our whole lives.

We learned from experience that an open heart is a vulnerable heart, so it only seems right and natural that we’d want to safeguard this fragile part of us in this way. The problem is it doesn’t work. In walling off our hearts from experiencing pain and mess, we inadvertently block out joy, wonder, and bliss in the process.

In this gorgeous little gem of a book, S.C Lourie shows us what it looks like to bravely wedge open your tender heart, even when circumstances around you would dictate you do otherwise.  

His earlier and best-known book, The Embarrassment of Riches, may offer a more comprehensive synopsis of the culture of the Dutch Republic’s Golden Age, including everything from the fashions, drinking and dice games that paradoxically thrived amid the strictures of Calvinism to the interpretations placed on passing natural events such as comets in the sky or the appearance of a whale on the beach. But Schama here gives us a loving and humane portrait of its greatest artist, doing in words what Rembrandt did in paint for his subjects, presenting his humanity with truth and dignity enlivened by inimitable splashes of colour and brilliant strokes of the pen. Using the paintings themselves as his window, Schama allows us not only to see back in time to this astonishing period, but to view it as those who lived through it must have seen it.

Rembrandt is a fascinating journey through Rembrandt’s paintings and also his lesser-known (to the general public) prints. It’s also a chronological roadmap of his works from his early years until his final period.  Watching his progression and the mastery in his latest period was a true learning process of how ‘less’ can be ‘far more.’ In the works displayed in the book, Rembrandt shows his skill at wringing every last bit of functionality out of each color in a very limited palette and also the cornucopia of atmospheric density he played with so masterfully to push and pull the viewers’ eye.  

Rembrandt was incredibly prolific and well known in his lifetime, unlike so many artists whose fame only followed their deaths.

Both his reputation and the value of his paintings have continued to grow in the centuries since he died, so the combination of ubiquity and name recognition makes Rembrandt’s paintings particularly attractive to art thieves.

Quickly recognizable and easily appraised, a stolen Rembrandt is exactly the kind of black market currency professional criminals value most, whether using it for collateral during a deal, holding it for ransom until the museum pays, or selling it illicitly to a private collector.

One of the stolen masterpieces in my novel is a Rembrandt, so this book was invaluable in understanding the ambition and scope of modern art crimes. The problem of profiting off something that everyone knows is stolen turns out to be a minor challenge if you know the perfidious players working… show more.

No list about mysteries involving missing art can exclude Aaron Elkins! He is the author of several art history mystery novels revolving around a museum professional searching for artwork lost during World War II. Old Scores is no exception. This borderline cozy mystery novel is a clever art history mystery about forgeries, the worth and perception of art, and what some will do to 'make it' in the art world. 

Robert K. Wittman is the founder of the FBI Art Crime Team, and any one of his undercover adventures could be the plot for a box office thriller. Over the course of his career Wittman not only recovered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth a stolen property, he protected priceless masterpieces from being lost forever. 

When I first began doing research for a novel about art theft, it was clear the global market for stolen masterpieces is incredibly complex, an underground network of smugglers, master forgers, and organized crime syndicates. To get my facts straight I needed a navigator, and this book immediately put me on the right track.

Wittman’s backstory and relentless drive to make art crime a priority within the FBI, as Italy has done with its Carabinieri Art Squad, is an inspiring story on its own, and many of his cases would feel right at home in… show more.

Jessa Crispin’s Creative Tarot suggests ways to connect to one’s muse through tarot. Crispin’s chapters match each tarot card’s essence to artists, thinkers, philosophers, and writers, looking at challenges and gifts each personality encountered over the course of their lifetime (and how they manifested in detriment or bloom). One of my favorite lines makes tarot card exploration forever relevant: Crispin writes, “It is about retelling the present.” And it is about how to ground tarot energy in specifics: what does it mean to be a King of Cups? Who has lived such an incarnation? Her “living examples” make tarot tangible for my students; I love her specific suggestions for how to explore the energy of each tarot card through music, film, paintings, art, and literature.