100 books like Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

James Baldwin recalled that he wrote this book in between the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Medgar Evers. I have read numerous letters written by Baldwin, and this long essay, written during the 1960s, shares some of the intimacy found in his correspondence as he reflects on his role in the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s one of my favorite essays by Baldwin because it reveals his complexity and inconsistencies, giving glimpses into how he was torn between his role as a writer, artist, and activist. “[W]hat in the world was I by now,” Baldwin wonders,” but an aging, lonely, sexually dubious, politically outrageous, unspeakably erratic freak?” The writing is uneven in places, but the power and insight of Baldwin’s inimitable prose hold the essay together. 

This book, a collaboration with photographer Richard Avedon, is experimental, exhilarating, and exasperating. I’ve always been drawn to it, which includes striking portraits by Avedon (Marilyn Monroe, Civil Rights workers, Allen Ginsberg) alongside Baldwin’s gnomic and haunting essay.

Panned by the New York Times in 1964, the book has been overlooked by scholars and fans of Baldwin’s work, which encouraged me to return to this troubling book. Published shortly after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Nothing Personal offers up a portrait of the United States as complex and dangerous. Baldwin’s rage at the state of America is apparent, but I’m drawn to his writing about love, which he sees as key to the country’s future: 

“The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another,” Baldwin writes, “the sea engulfs us, and the light goes out.”

I remember feeling exhausted the first time I finished reading Baldwin’s last novel. In common with many novels published during the late 1970s, this is a saga, a sprawling account of interlocking families and characters across thirty years. It takes the reader to the US, South, London, Korea, Paris, and Africa. It is also a pioneering book that describes an intense sexual relationship between African American men.

As I’ve read Baldwin over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve relished seeing patterns and themes that cut across his work. One of his earliest essays, “Journey to Atlanta,” published in 1948, is an account of his brother David’s trip to the US South as part of a gospel quartet, a story that is played out in his final novel. As with much of Baldwin’s work, this novel explores love, family, and politics. 

I like it when writers take risks. Baldwin’s writing is frequently poetic, and while he was one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished essay writers, a successful novelist, and playwright, he is not remembered as a poet.

Jimmy’s Blues, published in 1983, a collection of nineteen poems, intrigues me. Why, I wonder, did the writer turn to poetry towards the end of his life? Was he aware of his impending death, which might explain why many of the poems were preoccupied with time? I am ambivalent about some of the poems on the page, but there are recordings of Baldwin reading his verse on the wonderful album A Lover’s Question, produced by the Belgian jazz singer David Linx.

Listening to Baldwin read from his poem, “Inventory/on being 52,” gives me chills. It’s spellbinding and is a reminder of how important Baldwin’s delivery is when it comes to his poems. 

This is not an easy book to find. It’s a small and short hardcover book where famed management legend, Tom Peters, lays out the how to turn your personal brand (and your work) into a project… but not just any project. Tom believes that every aspect of your work should be a Wow! Project. The book is 50 easy-to-grasp sections that have, without a doubt, changed my approach to everything from writing an article to starting a business. This book is a hidden gem… I’m quasi-mad that I’m sharing it publicly, it’s been a great secret advantage. ;)

Oliver Jeffers is a master storyteller. Like the girl in this story, when I lost my father, I wanted to build walls to protect myself from the pain of grief so my heart could never hurt so much again. It took time to find a way to open my heart again and continue to find wonder.

Reading The Heart and the Bottle felt like reading my own story, like Jeffers understood me. With sparce text and simple, but poignant, illustrations, Jeffers clearly shows the process of healing from loss.

Since zoologist Bill Schutt previously wrote the very popular Cannibalism, A Perfectly Natural History, you might expect that his more recent expose of the heart would be equally wide-ranging, engaging, and touched with macabre. It is.

With clarity and wit, Schutt describes circulation from worms to bats to whales along with the curious adaptations that explain why frog hearts can freeze solid and resume function and why the blood of horseshoe crabs is favored by researchers. Schutt not only describes this living pump across the animal kingdom but also through time as philosophers and scientists have pondered, and eventually discovered, its true function.

If you have an interest in biology, history of science, or your own inner workings, Pump will make your heart throb.

Reckless Memories is the first book in the standalone Wrecked series. Ford and Bell will capture your heart with their second chance at love. There’s angst and tension and a swoon-worthy love story brewing amidst suspenseful moments. If you love a good romance with Nora Roberts’ feels, you’ll enjoy this story!

I love books about smart and curious girls, and Charlotte, the main character of You Go First, fits the bill. She struggles with tricky middle-school friendships and her father’s declining health, but she keeps herself afloat emotionally by studying all sorts of interesting things, like sea creatures, wild animals, earthquakes, and geology. She maintains a collection of rock specimens on her dresser, and the sparkling hunks of Egyptian quartz, hematite, and feldspar remind her of her dream of studying minerals and gemstones at the base of a pyramid or volcano when she grows up. Charlotte is unapologetically herself, and her unwavering connection with the earth and its treasures is her saving grace during a very rough stretch.  

This book offers a response to a deep longing to be in the world with childlike curiosity. It encourages our direct perception of life through the energetic heart field. Although it is meant as a knowledgeable guide for listening to and communicating with plants, it elicits a poignant call during a time of profound alienation. Encouraging the letting go of top-down linear thinking, Buhner offers a step-by-step somatic path for decolonizing the soul. I discovered by exchanging the word “psoas” for “plant” the book easily becomes a personal guide for increasing our core awareness as it inspires opening the heart by rooting into a reciprocal relationship with the living Earth. To me, re-wilding my relationship with the deepest aspects of self is vitally personal and imperative if all life is to truly flourish.