The most recommended books about the mind

This is a book like no other! With its first sentences, it gripped me, and I couldn't put it down till the very end. The same happened to everybody I recommended it to. 

Formally, it is part of a trilogy, and I loved to read all three of them. Its style is dry and almost merely reporting, and yet it is emotionally involved in a powerful way. 

Is what we are told meant to be real? Or is it only the product of a traumatized mind trying to cope with war, poverty, pain, abuse, and the endless yearning for what is lost? Are the twins, the protagonists of this trilogy, really two separate fictional characters or rather one with a dissociated mind? A thrilling question till the end.

In this book, a little girl named Sarah is worried about starting her first day at school. She can’t help but imagine all the terrible things that could happen. Her friend named Benny helps her to change her perspective by showing her all the things that could go right instead of wrong. I really enjoy this book because it’s so easy to let our minds wander to the negative possibilities. I like how this book reminds us to see the good that can happen in situations and also encourages us to find good positive friends like Benny that will help give us a boost when needed! 

A great beach-read story about a father who keeps trying to marry off his daughter.

Ella is spunky, with a mind of her own, and determined to find her own husband. She posts an ad of her own looking for a perfect lover, not a husband. What she gets is a bad boy who has lots of experience but is running from his past. The man is hot and utterly perfect. When these two get together, the sparks ignite!

It’s witty, funny, and a great read. I loved it!

This book gives all the summer feels in a sweet and heartwarming romance novel about a girl following her dreams despite the fear of failure.

It embodies the delicacy of new love and growing into yourself as a person, and it kept me smiling and rooting for the characters from page one. The storyline is lighthearted but with depth, and at a time when I was struggling with my own writing, it really inspired me.

There cannot be a more brilliant or more shattering evocation of what it feels like to gradually realise you are forgetting yourself and vanishing from your own life: the mind observes the mind’s deterioration. Bernleff’s pioneering novel, published in 1984, follows the journey of its narrator Maarten from the first days of confusion into a darkness of self-loss. A beautiful, poignant masterpiece about memory and forgetting. 

When Jo’s stepdaughter Chloe comes to stay, she’s excited to introduce her to baby Evie. Unfortunately, Chloe is the stepdaughter from hell. Don’t Let Her Stay is such a clever book, based on a simple premise but delivers so much, with secret after secret making me gasp out aloud.

I reckon it’s the realism in this book that makes it so compelling. The characters jump off the page, and just when you think you have it all figured out, bam, you don’t! As a veteran psychological thriller reader, it’s rare that I’m totally surprised.

This one got me and stayed in my mind long after I finished the book.

I only discovered the world-renowned author Clarice Lispector in 2015, when the excellent edition of her complete stories was published.

Her capacity for keen and idiosyncratic observation penetrates the human heart and mind and makes her tales simultaneously shocking, amusing and thought provoking. Imagine to read the story of a chicken and feel yourself being almost passionately involved in its short life! Or think of the birthday party of an 89-year-old woman, who despises her family that surrounds her in barely veiled hostility!

These stories are amazing in every way; they are rooted in a deep understanding of the human mind, and their psychological grasp is eye-opening. I find them much more accessible than Lispector's novels and enjoy rereading them from time to time.

I loved this book’s story flow; the realism and the grit of it gave me chills. I absolutely love books that make me feel something, that give me something to walk away with.

The characters in this book make you see the story being told in your mind, and with every twist, you feel them all.

I included this book because the most important part of dream interpretation is recording your dreams. This journal has space for your to write a title for the dream as recommended in the previous book Dream Work. In addition to writing out the dream, there are boxes to check off the category of dream – from a nightmare to mundane - and a checklist to note the prevailing emotion. There is space to draw images from the dream and a section to reflect and try an interpretation. You can use any of these features and the journal, by offering space and checkboxes, deepens engagement with the dream, and may offer directions you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself.

The Power of Concentration is a practical guide for developing concentration. I liked this book because it helped me through graduate school when stress was high. The book contributes to a discussion of positive psychology. Concentration is placed within the grasp of each person. The author links concentration to the development of desirable habits while overcoming bad habits." Theron Q. Dumont noted, "Concentration is paying attention to a chosen thought." His work is relevant today given distractions from many corners of life.