100 books like The Sound of Silence

By Katrina Goldsaito, Julia Kuo (illustrator),

Here are 100 books that The Sound of Silence fans have personally recommended if you like The Sound of Silence. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of I Am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness

Deborah Sosin Author Of Charlotte and the Quiet Place

From my list on mindfulness and silence.

Why am I passionate about this?

Charlotte and the Quiet Place is somewhat autobiographical, as I tend to crave quiet. For many years, I’ve been meditating twice a day for 25 minutes. I relax my mind and body, sometimes silently repeating a word or sound or just breathing rhythmically. I’m almost always more peaceful and energized after meditating. In addition to being a writer, I’m a therapist with a mindfulness specialty. I believe deeply that every child (and adult, too) can tap into their quiet place inside by noticing what’s happening in their mind and body, no matter what’s going on in their lives. We all need this skill—now more than ever!  

Deborah's book list on mindfulness and silence

Deborah Sosin Why did Deborah love this book?

I Am Peace is part of a wonderful series by this well-known team. The series explores topics such as compassion, empathy, resilience, and what it is to be a feeling human being. I Am Peace is about a child (gender not identified) who worries about the past and future and learns how to comfort and ground themselves by noticing the here and now, breathing evenly, and practicing kindness toward themselves and others. The simple, sparse text expresses these rather deep ideas in ways that all children can understand: “I can watch my worries gently pop and disappear. I let things go"; “I can hug a tree and thank it for its beauty and strength.” The back matter features a discussion of mindfulness and a guided meditation.

By Susan Verde, Peter H. Reynolds (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked I Am Peace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When the world feels chaotic, find peace within through an accessible mindfulness practice from the bestselling picture-book dream team that brought us I Am Yoga. Express emotions through direct speech. Find empathy through imagination. Connect with the earth. Wonder at the beauty of the natural world. Breathe, taste, smell, touch, and be present.

Perfect for the classroom or for bedtime, Susan Verde's gentle, concrete narration and Peter H. Reynolds's expressive watercolor illustrations bring the tenets of mindfulness to a kid-friendly level. Featuring an author's note about the importance of mindfulness and a guided meditation for children, I Am Peace will…


Book cover of Peaceful Piggy Meditation

Deborah Sosin Author Of Charlotte and the Quiet Place

From my list on mindfulness and silence.

Why am I passionate about this?

Charlotte and the Quiet Place is somewhat autobiographical, as I tend to crave quiet. For many years, I’ve been meditating twice a day for 25 minutes. I relax my mind and body, sometimes silently repeating a word or sound or just breathing rhythmically. I’m almost always more peaceful and energized after meditating. In addition to being a writer, I’m a therapist with a mindfulness specialty. I believe deeply that every child (and adult, too) can tap into their quiet place inside by noticing what’s happening in their mind and body, no matter what’s going on in their lives. We all need this skill—now more than ever!  

Deborah's book list on mindfulness and silence

Deborah Sosin Why did Deborah love this book?

In this colorful book about pigs learning to meditate, we see their stressful world and how it is sometimes hard to manage emotions such as anger and frustration: “So it’s good to have a peaceful place inside.” In simple, accessible language, the author shows how, through meditation, the pigs learn, among other things, to accept what “is,” instead of wishing it were otherwise. A sweet scene showing a dead goldfish that can’t be wished back to life gently makes this point. Themes of self-care, self-acceptance, and kindness add to the strong message. Back matter includes a meditation instruction, how to make a glitter jar, and notes about family meditation. A great introduction to how to do the formal practice of meditation. 

By Kerry Lee MacLean,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Peaceful Piggy Meditation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, and 6.

What is this book about?

The Coalition of Visionary Resources Children's Book of the Year Winner

What can you do when you're mad, sad, or anxious? Find a quiet spot, sit, and breathe. When you meditate every day, your mind stays happy, and even bad days are a little easier.

Sometimes life seems like it's all about hurrying―so many places to go! And sometimes it's hard when things don't go your way―it can make a piggy angry and sad. So how do young piggies find a peaceful place in a frustrating world? They meditate! They find a quiet spot, a special place with a few…


Book cover of The Quiet Book

Deborah Sosin Author Of Charlotte and the Quiet Place

From my list on mindfulness and silence.

Why am I passionate about this?

Charlotte and the Quiet Place is somewhat autobiographical, as I tend to crave quiet. For many years, I’ve been meditating twice a day for 25 minutes. I relax my mind and body, sometimes silently repeating a word or sound or just breathing rhythmically. I’m almost always more peaceful and energized after meditating. In addition to being a writer, I’m a therapist with a mindfulness specialty. I believe deeply that every child (and adult, too) can tap into their quiet place inside by noticing what’s happening in their mind and body, no matter what’s going on in their lives. We all need this skill—now more than ever!  

Deborah's book list on mindfulness and silence

Deborah Sosin Why did Deborah love this book?

This is one of my favorite all-time picture books! Each page identifies one “type” of quiet accompanied by a whimsical illustration with delightful animal characters. Some of my favorites are “Hide-and-seek quiet,” which shows a baby moose trying unsuccessfully to hide behind an office chair; “Lollipop quiet,” which shows a bear and a rabbit with bandages comforting themselves with lollipops; or “Top of the roller coaster quiet,” which shows an assortment of animals anticipating that fateful moment! The words and illustrations are beautifully paired and children will want to invent their own stories about each scene. A sweet, evocative, and original book that expands the notion of quiet in imaginative ways.

By Deborah Underwood, Renata Liwska (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Quiet Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Quiet can be sweet, and cozy, and can most definitely help you fall asleep. This irresistibly charming bedtime classic explores all the different quiets that can fill a child's days from morning; until night. Sweet, beautifully rendered bears, rabbits, fish, birds, and iguanas propel the story far beyond words.


Book cover of Silence

Deborah Sosin Author Of Charlotte and the Quiet Place

From my list on mindfulness and silence.

Why am I passionate about this?

Charlotte and the Quiet Place is somewhat autobiographical, as I tend to crave quiet. For many years, I’ve been meditating twice a day for 25 minutes. I relax my mind and body, sometimes silently repeating a word or sound or just breathing rhythmically. I’m almost always more peaceful and energized after meditating. In addition to being a writer, I’m a therapist with a mindfulness specialty. I believe deeply that every child (and adult, too) can tap into their quiet place inside by noticing what’s happening in their mind and body, no matter what’s going on in their lives. We all need this skill—now more than ever!  

Deborah's book list on mindfulness and silence

Deborah Sosin Why did Deborah love this book?

What can we hear when we stop to listen, really listen, to the world around us? This gorgeously illustrated book by Lemniscates, a studio of artists and designers from Barcelona, depicts a girl’s journeys in nature and through the seasons. She names what she hears “in the silence,” such as “the wind playing with my kite,” “my heart when running,” or “my breath when still.” I love the simplicity of the art and the text, leaving room for readers to answer the question, “How many things can you hear?” The experience of reading the book is almost like a mindfulness meditation, but without any didactic component. I can’t recommend this book enough! 

By Lemniscates,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Silence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What can you hear when you are completely silent? Beautifully illustrated and gently written, Silence encourages children to stop, listen, and reflect on their experiences and the world around them. Using qualities of mindfulness, readers are asked to pay attention to what otherwise gets drowned-out in our noisy environment and use those sounds as a means to develop imagination and curiosity, and learn a little more about themselves.


Book cover of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction

Alejandra Bronfman Author Of Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean

From my list on sound and why you should care about it.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell what’s relevant, significant, and true, and what is not. 

Alejandra's book list on sound and why you should care about it

Alejandra Bronfman Why did Alejandra love this book?

Sterne explores the cultural history of how and why Americans developed technologies that reproduced and transmitted sound. It is a surprising story that takes us through the Civil War and ideas about death, deaf children and their teachers, the discipline of medicine, and the practice of folklore. It turns out that cultural shifts encouraged the preservation of sound, and those machines we developed in turn changed the ways we listen.

By Jonathan Sterne,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Audible Past as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Audible Past explores the cultural origins of sound reproduction. It describes a distinctive sound culture that gave birth to the sound recording and the transmission devices so ubiquitous in modern life. With an ear for the unexpected, scholar and musician Jonathan Sterne uses the technological and cultural precursors of telephony, phonography, and radio as an entry point into a history of sound in its own right. Sterne studies the constantly shifting boundary between phenomena organized as "sound" and "not sound." In The Audible Past, this history crisscrosses the liminal regions between bodies and machines, originals and copies, nature and…


Book cover of Adventures in Modern Recording: From ABC to ZTT

Richard Niles Author Of The Invisible Artist: Arrangers In Popular Music (1950-2000)

From my list on to get inside popular music.

Why am I passionate about this?

Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting – The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.

Richard's book list on to get inside popular music

Richard Niles Why did Richard love this book?

Known as ‘the man who invented the ‘80s’, Trevor Horn is considered one of the most innovative producers of modern pop.

He revolutionized production from his group The Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star to Band Aid’s Do they Know It’s Christmas?, to hits for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ABC, Yes,  Rod Stewart, and Seal. I can tell you this book is the real deal because I worked with him on hits for The Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, Frankie, and ABC.

This book takes you inside his unique process, and reveals his production concept - at once mind-blowing and surprisingly down-to-earth.

By Trevor Horn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Adventures in Modern Recording as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Telegraph Book of the Year

As a renowned recording-studio maven, Trevor Horn has been dubbed 'the man who invented the '80s'.

His production work since the glory days of ZTT represents a veritable 'who's who' of intelligent modern pop, including the likes of ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Simple Minds, Grace Jones and Yes - among many others.

This book is Trevor's story in his own words, as told through the prism of twenty-three of his most important songs - from the ones that inspired him to the ones that defined…


Book cover of Ten Ways to Hear Snow

Wendy BooydeGraaff Author Of Salad Pie

From my list on playing outside.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love the outdoors, and there are so many benefits to playing, imagining, and being outside. I grew up on a fruit farm in Southern Ontario, so I spent much of my growing years playing outdoors and enjoying the natural world. When I became a professional educator, I read the research about the very concrete benefits being outside every day has on young learners. Bring on the recess! Books have a way of sparking action. When we read about how someone else enjoys the outdoors, it makes us want to do the same. Books are inspiring.

Wendy's book list on playing outside

Wendy BooydeGraaff Why did Wendy love this book?

Ten Ways to Hear Snow commemorates the sounds of winter. Lina sets off alone to visit her grandmother (another Little Red Riding Hood reference!) the morning after a blizzard. As she walks through the neighbourhood, she notices the sounds snow makes while building a snowman, shoveling snow, and more. At her grandma’s place, they form a new point of connection because her grandma can’t see well and so relies on listening.

By Cathy Camper, Kenard Pak (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ten Ways to Hear Snow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

One winter morning, Lina wakes up to silence. It's the sound of snow - the kind that looks soft and glows bright in the winter sun. But as she walks to her grandmother's house to help make the family recipe for warak enab, she continues to listen.

As Lina walks past snowmen and across icy sidewalks, she discovers ten ways to pay attention to what might have otherwise gone unnoticed.


Book cover of Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy

Lauren Walker Author Of The Energy to Heal: Find Lasting Freedom From Stress and Trauma Through Energy Medicine Yoga

From my list on understanding what energy is and how to use it.

Why am I passionate about this?

I remember being a kid and wanting to know everything about everything. After I’d been teaching yoga for several years, and finding myself struggling with stress and trauma that the yoga wasn’t helping, I really started to dive into the world of Energy. That world is fascinating, endless, and powerful. And the more I study and learn, the better my life gets. I’ve created my own teaching methodology from all the studies I’ve done and helped thousands of people find their own inner strength and healing. I love learning how other people overcame their struggles and how at the root, we basically all want to help each other! That's the kind of world I aspire to. 

Lauren's book list on understanding what energy is and how to use it

Lauren Walker Why did Lauren love this book?

If you want your mind blown, and want to cultivate a new understanding of how the universe works: buy this book! Eileen opens up the cosmology that we all learned and shows us that there is another way to view how the world works. And with that understanding, we have a way to see ourselves as part of the world instead of separate from it. This connection is the start of healing. And all of that is only the first half of the book. 

She then takes the reader on a wild ride into understanding how the field that surrounds the body – called the aura or the biofield – works, holds information, and also holds one of the keys to healing and well-being. This book is engaging, inspirational, and totally not what you were expecting!

By Eileen Day McKusick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tuning the Human Biofield as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A guide to the basics of Biofield Tuning, using tuning forks to clear trauma stored in the human energy field

* Provides a precise map of the energetic biofield that surrounds the body, showing where specific emotions, memories, traumas, and pain are stored

* Details how to locate stored trauma in the biofield with a tuning fork and clear it

* Winner of the 2015 Nautilus Silver Award

When Eileen McKusick began offering sound therapy in her massage practice she soon discovered she could use tuning forks to locate and hear disturbances in the energy field, or biofield, that surrounded…


Book cover of Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles

Eric Porter Author Of A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport

From my list on airports teaching us about society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve long had an ambivalent relationship with airports. They have been the starting point for my adventures, but I have also known well the discomfort, boredom, stress, surveillance, bad food, and other unpleasantries that often define airport experiences. Despite my ambivalence, I’ve found airports to be fascinating places where differently situated people (travelers and workers) encounter one another. I’ve learned that those encounters, as well as airport operations and design, tell us something about the places where they are located and the broader societies in which we live. I’ve since become aware that reading (and writing) about airports are also great ways to gain such insights. 

Eric's book list on airports teaching us about society

Eric Porter Why did Eric love this book?

This account of how LAX shaped its surrounding environment usefully affirmed my own decision to focus on a particular place. Its careful focus on how jet noise catalyzed relationships among a wide array of people and social forces in Los Angeles helped me understand better how such relationships had developed about 400 miles to the north.

Beyond all of that, this book has a lot of smart things to say about how noise more generally shapes our urban environments and attunes us to them.

By Marina Peterson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Atmospheric Noise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Atmospheric Noise, Marina Peterson traces entanglements of environmental noise, atmosphere, sense, and matter that cohere in and through encounters with airport noise since the 1960s. Exploring spaces shaped by noise around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), she shows how noise is a way of attuning toward the atmospheric: through noise we learn to listen to the sky and imagine the permeability of bodies and matter, sensing and conceiving that which is diffuse, indefinite, vague, and unformed. In her account, the "atmospheric" encompasses the physicality of the ephemeral, dynamic assemblages of matter as well as a logic of indeterminacy. It…


Book cover of Sound: A Story of Hearing Lost and Found

Adriana Barton Author Of Wired for Music: A Search for Health and Joy Through the Science of Sound

From my list on memoirs on music that explore the agony and the ecstasy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Music has been a passion ever since I joined my mother’s hippie jam sessions as a toddler. During my 17 years as a professional cellist-in-training, I tried Yo-Yo Ma’s Stradivarius and played Pachelbel’s Canon at a gazillion weddings. I even made it to Carnegie Hall, performing in a university orchestra on the gilded stage. But injuries, both physical and psychological, put an end to my classical music career. Trying to forget my cello years, I entered journalism, eventually becoming a staff health reporter at Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Later, when a percussion workshop triggered a dramatic shift in my perspective, I answered the call to explore music in a more expansive way.

Adriana's book list on memoirs on music that explore the agony and the ecstasy

Adriana Barton Why did Adriana love this book?

In the words of Joni Mitchell, you “don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” Only a person who has gone deaf partway through life knows what it means to live with and without sound. And music.

In this evocative book, British journalist Bella Bathurst chronicles her profound loss of hearing starting at age 27—and twelve years later, its dramatic return. The health reporter in me gave a thumbs-up to her skillful exploration of the lesser-known science of hearing.

She introduces expert lip readers, soldiers who accept deafness as an occupational hazard, and the copper “ear trumpets” used by Beethoven as his greatest joy ebbed. When Bathurst regains her hearing, I was awed by her description of hearing music anew: “It was a thousand volts of birdsong.”

By Bella Bathurst,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sound as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1997, Bella Bathurst began to go deaf. Within a few months, she had lost half her hearing, and the rest was slipping away. She wasn't just missing punchlines, she was missing most of the conversation - and all of the jokes. For the next twelve years deafness shaped her life, until, in 2009, everything changed again.

Sound draws on this extraordinary experience, exploring what it is like to lose your hearing and - as Bella eventually did - to get it back, and what that teaches you about listening and silence, music and noise. She investigates the science behind…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in sound, Tokyo, and Japan?

Sound 28 books
Tokyo 92 books
Japan 516 books