100 books like Hustle

The gold standard of recovery books. I found this gem literally in the gutter when I was homeless. Changed my life by showing me if I could get my shit together, I, too, could write a book about my experience, and, in the process, maybe help someone else who was suffering as well.

Orangutan is a working-class opus. Broderick excels in his display of the grind and how some men can weather and accept, as the Boss sings, dying little by little, piece by piece, and how others need more help to make it through the day. The most compelling part of Broderick's writing is the way he is able to delineate between the haves and have-nots. And, no, I don't mean money. Some men can drink a six-pack on the weekend, even do some blow. They'll be fine. Others? Like Colin? A shot is too much of an allure. Not just to get drunk, wasted, blotto. It goes way deeper. It's a form of wakeful suicide. You get through the day. You get your paycheck. You survive. But the price is not living.

I’m starting to feel bad it’s all dudes (and white dudes) on my list, but I think that, despite the fact that these days I only read women-written domestic psychological thrillers (they’re just better at it), when I first got straight I sought out others just like me. I didn’t think recovery was possible. Josh’s book is as harrowing and poignant and gorgeously written as they come. I mean, I think Oprah picked it for a book of the month. What more can you ask for?

Some Things That Meant the World to Me is gritty with plenty of down and dirty. But at the center of Josh’s (and his stand-in Rhonda's) story is a poet's heart (as well as a love letter to my city too, San Francisco).

This one hurts. Because when I was asked to write this list, Ryan’s book immediately came to mind. Part fiction, part memoir, all hell, Wasted Talent might be the most aptly titled book ever. See, Ryan, who was an amazing writer, talent, and friend, died last week. I don’t know what of. I’m not gonna speculate. But he was in his thirties and wasn’t hit by a car. Over the last few years, Ryan and I weren’t in touch as much, though I did put money on his books when he returned to prison. Ryan’s life and work are a testament to one irrefutable fact. I didn’t go the AA route. But, boy did they get the final destination right. Addiction ends one of three ways: jails, institutions, death. Wasted Talent is Ryan’s only novel. That he didn’t grace the world with more defends his titular choices.

Benson and Simpson use the opportunity perspective – assuming that crimes often depend on offenders recognizing an opportunity to commit an offense – to uncover the processes and situational conditions that induce white-collar crimes. 

They offer solutions to this persistent and widespread social problem, recognizing the difficulties of control.

The treatment is thoroughly researched and empirically supported. 

This book is about a mother’s struggles with Ambien addiction. This is another hugely relatable book that shows that regardless of how you present on the outside (Laura’s kids were in fancy private school, she lived in a massive house, and she was married to a big-time studio executive), your insides can be falling apart.

This book is beautifully written and painfully honest, which is a combination I can get behind.

This book may seem out of place in a list of psychologically-minded self-help recommendations. And it is long, and hard to read. Don’t even get me started on the use of end-notes in a work of fiction. But it is quite simply one of the best books written in the past 100 years and it is all about people who have gotten stuck, trapped by habit or circumstance, and are yearning for a way to find meaning in life.

To me, this book is a self help book because it is written so powerfully (in a not-so-distance fictional future) that as the characters are inevitably transformed and sometimes freed from their assumed destinies, Wallace somehow illustrates how we too can be transformed in our daily routines and interactions by finding moments of clarity and meaning right where we are, rather than being saved by some outside force that promises liberation… show more.

After 30 years of counseling and 1000s of people in bondage to various sexual behaviors, I take a minority view, and do not believe that addiction, and sexual addiction in particular, is a disease; it is a bondage to sin. This book, I believe helps supports that view. I find in counseling, that when you deal with the sin problem as sin, not just a behavior problem, which is a symptom of sin, lives are radically changed. I could give hundreds of examples, but one that stands out was a sexual predator who seduced 100s of women, but after a radical heart change, his marriage survived and he went on to minister and help others, rather than to continue to use others.

Leslie Jamison’s memoir rocked my world, and I think it’s because of her treatment of the drama associated with addiction.

She digs deep into her addict-psyche, specifically her tendency to both create and seek “the unhinged sparks of luminous chaos.” The source of this special brand of electricity can be a dirty martini or cheating on a boyfriend (the term “love-grope” is inspired).

But this is a book about recovery, and Jamison travels from glorifying the angst of her drunk writer heroes to the realization that she and legends like Raymond Carver and Dennis Johnson actually write better sober, and that ultimately the story of healing can be just as compelling as the story of a dramatic demise. 

An excellent, well-written memoir of what it is like to be a food addict. Sara Somers tells her story of discovery and how she finds recovery. You really feel the drama of what it is like to eat, to overeat to the point of shame and sickness, and then that is possible to recover from even the worst case. A book to identify and feel inspired to change.