100 books like When Life Gives You Pears

Reading this book made me a better mom almost overnight! It impacted me and changed the way I approach my relationship with my kids more than I thought was possible.

I’m a mom of five kids and a pretty darn good one, but this book took parenthood to the next level for me. I wish I had read it years ago! Now I can hardly imagine parenting without this insightful, informative, inspiring, book. 

This is the most impactful book on motherhood I’ve ever read. It is filled with compelling data supporting what most people already know: Moms are important to their children. The book opened my eyes to WHY mothers are crucial to the early cognitive, emotional, and social development of their babies and how a mother’s impact can last a lifetime.

Erica Komisar is a rockstar in her field with over 25 years in private practice and has a wealth of wisdom to share about the most important job in the world: Mom. I think this is an ideal baby shower gift, but even old moms can benefit from reading it. In my opinion, no mom should face motherhood without this book in her back pocket! 

I absolutely love this book! I knew the story of Maria von Trapp from The Sound of Music, but reading Maria’s experiences in her own words was compelling beyond anything I expected.

Although not everything in the movie is true, the vast majority of it IS true, and what we get in the movie is only half the story! There’s so much grit and goodness in this remarkable book. Above everything else, it is the story of a woman who didn’t expect to be a mother but became one of the best mothers the world has ever known.

I walked away from this book feeling absolutely inspired to be as good a mom as Maria von Trapp. If she could do it, so could I! If you’re looking for an incredible true story, whether you’re a mom or not, this is it. 

This book ripped my heart to pieces and somehow put it back together better than it was before. It profoundly changed my outlook on motherhood and freedom and showed me how those two things are intimately connected.

This true story of one woman, her husband, and their unthinkable life in China is riveting, chilling, hopeful, and tender. I cried, and then I cried some more. Copies of this book can be difficult to find; I’m so glad I found one. 

In my work in the world of mental health and trauma, anxiety is a common complaint. I love the positive (and scientifically accurate) portrayal of the function of anxiety in this whimsically illustrated book. “Sometimes your brain works so hard to protect you, it hits the panic button by mistake.” With this strengths-based framework woven into every page, Hey Awesome teaches kids how to be the boss of their brilliant and brave brains. A must-read for all children, and a lifeline for those who struggle with anxiety. And remember, “anxiety and courage always happen together.”

If there were only five things I could bring to an island to live on, Terrel Miedaner’s deeply thought-provoking fiction book The Soul of Anna Klane would be among those five items.

His book is on a question which is more fundamental than the one on the I in AI. The Soul of Anna Klane ponders the many sides of the question of what constitutes life and consciousness: the scientific, the atheistic, and the religious with due respect.

It showed me how little we know about the brain, mind, and soul. And if we don’t understand the center of human intelligence, how can we make sense of the I in AI? Undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read. For this reason, it would be on an island where I only possess five things so that I’m not distracted from reading it again and again. The effect would… show more.

V. S. Ramachandran is a gifted experimentalist and writer who does not hesitate to pursue deep and important questions about our minds. Rather than employing expensive imaging or large sample sizes, he is more likely to use a cardboard box, an old stereopticon, or a rubber hand in his experiments. 

His creativity in finding concrete ways to test seemingly vague but interesting claims about our minds has led to several breakthroughs, in our understanding of phantom limbs and our ability to treat phantom pain, and also in our study or synesthesia—cases in which people see numbers as having colors, for example.

As I can attest, he is able to transmit to his students the idea that pursuing scientific questions can thrilling, fulfilling, and so much fun that you can’t wait to get to work in the morning.

I’ve never read anything remotely like this book.

It’s a painfully difficult but beautifully poetic read about an Irish girl from a miserably dysfunctional family with a difficult, abusive, ranting mother and a disabled older brother. After she is sexually abused by her uncle, the girl allows herself to be used by the boys at school and begins a series of loveless encounters, as if determined to prove how worthless she is. At college, she continues her career of joyless, destructive promiscuity.

The book is steeped in guilt and shame, redeemed only by the depictions of pure love she has for her brother. Like a poem or a lyrical poetry performance, the novel does truly incredible things with language.

When dealing with difficult behaviour, it can help to understand how your kids’ early experiences may have influenced their emotional landscape.

Sue Gerhardt's book draws on recent developments in neuroscience and developmental psychology to explain how babies’ brains are formed. She shows us that our early, fumbling parental mistakes can have consequences that play out over a lifetime.

As a working parent, I found it a sobering read–Gerhardt pulls no punches about the potentially damaging impact of putting your one-year-old in nursery, for example. But ultimately, the book is so persuasive that it feels worth facing up to these tough questions. She also constructs a compelling case about the long-term social impact of a government’s failure to support parents.

This is an expansive treatment of the intellectual and cultural ramifications of the bilateral mind from ancient times to the present. The dominance of the analytic left hemisphere (the “emissary”), McGilchrist fears, threatens to usurp its experience-grounded “master” – to the detriment of human culture.

While The Master and His Emissary and The Origin of Consciousness cover similar topics, it is interesting and important to note that there are areas where their perspectives complement each other and those where they differ, such as their accounts of schizophrenia. I still find myself vacillating between the two. I sometimes wonder whether my indecision may itself be the result of my own hemispheric split.