57 books like Stand Out of Our Light

We all dream about it: a life free of scrolling, tweeting, liking, faving, streaming, replying, apologizing for not replying, and other assaults on our poor, saturated brains. But what would an analog world actually look like? Award-winning writer, Chris Colin, paints a picture in his bedtime fantasy book for adults titled Off: The Day the Internet Died. 

Delivered in a pitch-perfect, tongue-in-cheek biblical style, this little book imagines an alternate reality that will hit home in our tech-addled worlds. Un-barraged by celeb gossip and political news, we begin to notice nature again. Rinee Shah’s playful illustrations perfectly capture the absurdity of life reflected in our screens. Whether you’re addicted to tech or not, you’ll see something of yourself when you put down your phone and pick up this smart, funny book.

Off is “So funny and so necessary. For humanity to stay sane, this must be read like the… show more.

Several years ago when Keri Smith, bestselling author of Wreck This Journal, discovered cryptic handwritten notations in a worn copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, her interest was piqued. Little did she know at the time that those simple markings would become the basis of a years-long, life-changing exploration into a mysterious group known only as The Wander Society, as well as the subject of this book.

Within these pages, you'll find the results of Smith's research: A guide to the Wander Society, a secretive group that holds up the act of wandering, or unplanned exploring, as a way of life. You'll learn about the group's mysterious origins, meet fellow wanderers through time, discover how wandering feeds the creative mind, and learn how to best practice the art of wandering, should you choose to accept the mission. Reading this book is an experience. You won't… show more.

I love how Ingrid’s background comes together so perfectly to create this book, which reflects the crux of her whole professional and personal focus. Her background in design and branding led her to delve deeper into the neuroscience between our instinctual responses to our environments and how this links to our mental health, which eventually led to her hugely successful TED talk, ‘Where joy hides and how to find it’ (which was where I initially discovered her work and became instantly fascinated in this topic). Ingrid champions the idea that we can all create more joy in our homes (and lives) and this book shares both the psychology behind why certain colours or spaces can have the power to make us feel anxious or happy, along with how to practically harness the power of joy to create a home that feels full of whatever joy means to you personally.

People have called Henri Nouwen many things: a priest, an author, a spiritual guide, a natural mystic. His books have sold millions of copies and continue to resonate deeply with people from all walks of life. In 2000, when asked to share the book that had most influenced her life, Hillary Clinton chose Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. The following sentence, in particular, she said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, hit her “like a lightning bolt”: "The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a "gift to be celebrated with joy." 

“I had never thought of gratitude as a habit or discipline before,” she explained, “and I discovered that it was immensely helpful to do so.” I first discovered Henri when I was eighteen years old and gifted with… show more.

Kai-Fu Lee, once himself an AI pioneer, wrote AI Superpowers to help non-technical readers understand how and why AI is changing our world, with an emphasis on how it’s reshaping work. Lee breaks down which types of jobs are most vs. least likely to be replaced by AI, and offers wisdom on which skills it makes sense for all of us to lean into given those shifts. He also offers clear-eyed predictions about the potential for AI innovations to reshape global politics. 

I enjoyed this book from page one. Lee’s prose is crisp and his points sharp. I appreciated his occasional meanderings into humanistic realms. This also feels like a personal book, given how much Lee himself has done to accelerate the AI revolution.

I rarely think about why I see what I see online. Yes, I know algorithms had something to do with it, but they’re just algebra on steroids, right? Well, not so fast!

This book opened my eyes to how and why bias – in this case, racial bias – shows up online and what we can do about it. I learned a lot about the intricate connections between our online lives and our real ones. 

Superior by science journalist Angela Saini is based on source materials. In addition, it is animated by interviews with key scientists involved in the struggle to end race science. Saini weaves together stories that get at the more intimate details of, on the one hand, the persistence and continual reinvention of race and race science, and on the other, the work of individuals including Jonathan Marks and Jay Kaufman to move us all to better understanding why racism, not biological race, is the cause of inequalities in health and wealth. Superior is the most readable of all the books that focus on race and human variation.  

Everyone hates bureaucracy. But no one hated it quite like the late David Graeber. Amongst all of Graeber’s intoxicating books, this is my favourite. Utopia of Rules finally made me understand what exactly was so pernicious about bureaucracy. (Short version: it does the opposite of what it promises.) Graeber also sets out, with typical lucid prose, how new technologies, particularly digital technologies, are making everything even worse.

To me, this book is a classic, and isolating 'attention' as the real currency of business and individuals is pure genius. The author observes that attention actually has many of the same attributes as money. People who don’t have it want it. People who have it, often want it even more. You can trade attention, and you can purchase it.

I like the way the author explains how we covet our time and resources in relation to attention: people work to preserve and extend what they already have, and so caller ID and email-filtering software are popular because they screen out whatever might divert one's attention."

The authors note that similar to airplane seats and fresh food, attention is a perishable commodity. They cite Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, who proclaimed that, "What information consumes is rather obvious; it consumes the attention of recipients. Hence, a wealth of information… show more.

I started out my career path as an artist, and when creating art, I regularly got into a state of what is known as flow. Hours would pass before I realized that it was already deep into night and I should be at home.

We think we know what flow is but Csikszentmihalyi tells us what it really is—a combination of the right amount of challenge and skill. Flow describes a state when one experiences the ultimate form of creativity—when a person is so immersed in an experience that time doesn’t matter.

Learning why people pursue experiences that can get them into flow is fascinating. Few psychologists have presented such optimistic views of people as Csikszentmihalyi.