When I entered my fifties, I was very surprised to discover that I didn’t have my life all figured out. This was especially surprising since the nature of a good human life has been my research topic for decades. What I have learned, from philosophy and from my collaborations with psychologists, is that it’s always going to be a process. We have to figure out what matters and how to get it, we have to navigate value conflicts, and we have to accept that the answers will change as our circumstances change. The books I’ve recommended aren’t guides to life, but I think they’re great for understanding the process.
To achieve the things that matter to us, we have to know what they are.
We tend to think we know ourselves really well – certainly better than anyone else knows us. But in this book, psychologist Timothy Wilson presents fascinating evidence that we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.
In particular, we tend to rationalize our choices after the fact in ways that don’t actually reflect our deeper, emotional state.
This book opened my mind to the idea that we need to “look under the hood” to figure out what matters to us most.
"Know thyself," a precept as old as Socrates, is still good advice. But is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? What are we trying to discover, anyway? In an eye-opening tour of the unconscious, as contemporary psychological science has redefined it, Timothy D. Wilson introduces us to a hidden mental world of judgments, feelings, and motives that introspection may never show us.
This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious. The adaptive unconscious that empirical psychology has revealed, and that Wilson describes, is much more than a repository of primitive drives and conflict-ridden memories. It is a set of pervasive, sophisticated mental…
I'm a writer of humorous fiction living in Austin, Texas. I enjoy writing novels about unusual friendships and the healing power that comes when people just shut up and listen to each other. Many of my stories have the odd-couple dynamic on full display and I love to explore what would happen if people with very different backgrounds and opinions are forced to deal with each other. I do have a couple of novels that wouldn’t seem to be humorous on the surface, but there is an element of humor or comedy that runs through all of my work. My next novel, The Codger and the Sparrow, will be published by TCU Press in 2024.
Named one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018, this indie novel proposes that a beer-guzzling car enthusiast can also be a philosopher about time and Einstein’s incorrect (!!!) theory of relativity. Main character Selraybob (also the author of this fictitious novel) is left astray by his wife. When she walks out the door, he notices two clocks that are off by seven minutes. He has an epiphany: time is simply a count! Beer is consumed, the nature of time is pondered, and a picaresque adventure begins, one that will have you laughing until the end.
Mark Twain meets Vonnegut in this witty and uplifting redemption romp that Kirkus Reviews (starred review) called "funny, wise and poignant”. BlueInk Review (starred review) called it “quirky and picaresque” and said “Selraybob is lovable and easy-to-root-for.”
Ne’er-do-well Selraybob is beaten down and uninspired. He spends his days on his lounger, drinking quarts of beer and talking to his buddy on the phone. Until, during his fed-up wife’s long overdue kiss-off speech, Selraybob notices two clocks. They’re seven minutes off. And he has an epiphany. Time, he decides, is a count. It’s only a count.
I have always felt like a bit of a misfit. I was taller, bigger, and clumsier than the other kids. I listened to the wrong music, wore the wrong clothes, and read the wrong books. I wasn’t cool. And when I became a high school teacher, I saw many kids, especially young women, who I could see felt the same. When Young Adult literature came into its own, I really loved all the wonderful ways YA stories were telling the stories of the kids who didn’t fit in, and it made me want to read them, and eventually write one of my own.
This book was one of the first I read that featured a main character who looked like me. I love the humor, honesty, and insight of Virginia, which is perfectly captured in the diary format of the writing. And the book takes a hard but hopeful look at the ideas of perfection and expectations and all the ways we are flawed, but also worthy of love.
Fifteen-year-old Virginia feels like a fat, awkward outsider in her perfect family, especially next to her golden-boy big brother Byron. She's got a lot to deal with - her weight, her best friend moving away, the mean girls at school - not to mention a boy who seems to like her! To survive, she decides to follow the 'Fat Girl Code of Conduct' to make herself acceptable, unnoticed ... invisible.
It seems to be working until something unthinkable happens and, before her eyes, Virginia's flawless family begins to fall apart. As her world spins out of orbit, Virginia realises that…
During my fifth year teaching 7th grade, I found myself repeating the same lessons as prior years, participating in the same club events, marching in the same parades, etc. My students would inevitably reach the end of the school year and move on, while I was forever frozen in 7th grade. Herein my fascination with time loops was born. Over a decade later, I’m now happily teaching high school English while moonlighting as a writer of stories featuring temporal anomalies and time travel. I hope to spread my wings into dystopians and fractured fairy tales in the future, but until then…I may or may not have 22 clocks in my house.
Before I Fall is Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day, with the popular and pretty protagonist, Sam, forced to relive February 12th (her beloved “Cupid’s Day”) over and over. In the beginning, I had no love for Sam and was appalled by her and her friend’s nasty behavior, but Sam’s character growth throughout the novel is inspirational. The time-turning in the novel is handled flawlessly with repeated events never growing dull, and each new loop offering another layer to Sam’s redemption. Admittedly the book didn’t end the way I wanted (I’m a fan of fairy tale endings, even if unrealistic), but watching Sam evolve from a shallow mean girl to a beautiful soul was a moving experience and made the book worth the read.
A bestselling summer read as heartbreaking as The Lovely Bones and as gripping as Jenny Downham's Before I Die.
**Now a major Netflix movie starring Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley*
'Gossip Girl meets Groundhog Day' Grazia
'Tender, funny and raw' Marie Claire
'A clever, funny, insightful and utterly addictive novel' Daily Mail
'Compelling and poignant, a truly memorable read' Closer
They say 'live every day as if it's your last' - but you never actually think it's going to be. At least I didn't. The thing is, you don't get to know when it happens. You don't…
I went into foster care at nine months old, was adopted three years later, and as an adult I was reunited with five siblings I never knew I had. I’ve spent my whole life wondering or searching for the truths about my past.
Jenna Fox wakes from a year-long coma after a terrible accident and tries to figure out who she is now. This is a book with futuristic medicine and technology, but the feelings and emotions are universal. Jenna’s struggle to find out the truth about her past, and her place in the present make this one of my very favorite books, which I’ve read and reread many times.
Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?
This fascinating novel represents a stunning new direction for acclaimed author Mary Pearson. Set in a near future America, it takes readers on an unforgettable journey through questions of bio-medical ethics and the nature of humanity. Mary Pearson's vividly drawn characters…
Although I was an avid reader of romance when I was a tween, the middle grade novels I wrote prior to Crashing in Love were about more “serious” topics. Yet, much of the mail I received from kids had pressing questions about the future of potential love interests. That’s when I realized that I’d been guilty (like many) of considering romance to be “light” fiction. What could be more important, more serious, than discovering ourselves while making genuine connections with others? Those letters changed my mind. Learning to love is essential and not to be taken lightly at all.
This sweet story brings me back to the rush of heady (albeit sometimes fleeting) infatuations and reminds me that simple friendship rules such as “Don’t let guys come between us” are not always as simple as they seem. The best part? Although Keiko ends up with the right romantic interest (there’s a scene that will melt your heart), she learns that self-love is paramount.
Fans of Judy Blume and Jenny Han are sure to fall head-over-heels for this funny, sweet story of crushes, competition, and the confusing reality of middle school. "Heartbreak is for suckers."
When Jenna Sakai gets dumped over winter break, it confirms what she learned from her parents' messy divorce: Relationships are risky and only lead to disappointment. So even though she still has to see her ex-boyfriend Elliott at newspaper club, Jenna is going to be totally heartless this semester - no boys, just books.
But keeping her cool isn't always easy.
Jenna's chief competition for a big journalism scholarship…
I’m an Australian writer with a passion for literary fiction, especially novels centered on complex and multi-layered power dynamics. To me, relationships between women are particularly ripe for this kind of exploration – my own friendships with other women have been influential and formative, but not always easy! My interest in these darker and more complex dynamics of close friendship eventually led me to write my own novel on the topic. I’ve also published a range of essays, reviews, criticism, and creative nonfiction.
While many novels about female friendship focus on young women, The Weekend follows three women in their seventies, whose decades-long friendship has sustained them through illness, infidelity, divorce – and recently the death of their fourth close friend, Sylvie.
Drawn together over a weekend to clear out Sylvie’s house, the remaining women must grapple with their shared past and uncertain future. I loved this glimpse into the lives of older women – a reality not often portrayed in fiction – and admired Wood’s ability to make each of her three narrators flawed, relatable, and human.
If you like immersive character-driven novels, this book won’t disappoint.
People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them.
Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?
They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public…
As a curious Pratt Institute art school professor and loving parent of a daughter who has also written and/or illustrated sixteen children’s books I want to share my favorite books with other children’s book connoisseurs. It also helps that I have lots of opinions. Too many to count. And when someone actually wants to listen to my opinions I get very excited. I’m hoping one of my favorites becomes one of your favorites.
One of my all time favorites and not very well known, this remarkable book deals with a very grown-up topic, war, in such an innocent and simple way that it is somehow a perfect children’s book.
How does one conquering group get taken over by the people they are trying to conquer? Read it and find out! Created by the man who created Elmer the Patchwork Elephant.
There once was a large country that was ruled by a General. The General would take his army and attack all the countries around him until they were conquered. Eventually, there was only one small country left to conquer. However, this one did not resist but welcomed the soldiers - leading to a quite unexpected result!
I’m a history instructor and often think about alternate historical outcomes, but you don’t get to choose those. Wish the Spanish Armada hadn’t sunk? Tough luck. But you can take a novel in any direction—kill a character, bring them back, let them fall in love, make them eat an egg salad sandwich… When the book itself is about parallel worlds, it increases those possibilities exponentially. In What Goes Up, Rosa and Eddie have very different backgrounds—Earth is two different worlds for them. What happens when there’s another world out there and they meet themselves in a different place? As one character asks, how much do you trust yourself?
Mirror in the Sky is about what happens to a girl who’s just trying to navigate through high school and family situations when a planet incredibly similar to Earth is discovered–and news spreads that people may have doubles on the new planet, called Terra Nova. (The main character’s name is Tara, so there’s a play on words, and a riff on the theme, here.) Mirror in the Sky is more about reactions on Earth to news of the new planet and less a sci-fi adventure.
Readers wanting hard sci-fi–tentacled aliens with ray guns–may be disappointed, but readers who want a contemporary with another world as a backdrop might take a look.
Another Earth meets Perks of Being a Wallflower in this thoughtful, mesemerizing debut and subject of a TedX talk about the discovery of a mirror planet to Earth and how it dramatically changes the course of one Indian-American girl's junior year.
“[O]ne of the most powerful reads of the year. A novel about family, race, and discovering who you are, Mirror in the Sky promises a unique read that blends YA contemporary struggles with imaginative science fiction." —Paste Magazine
For Tara Krishnan, navigating Brierly, the academically rigorous prep school she attends on scholarship, feels overwhelming and impossible. Her junior year…
As a licensed social worker, it struck me as bizarre that none of my training equipped me to talk to my clients about money. In grad school, the opening line from every professor was, “You didn’t choose this field to make money.” Yet? It’s something every single one of us needs and interacts with daily. So I started checking out personal finance books by the armsful. These books are different than novels: they deserve to be updated and modernized. But the same handful of personal finance books have been published and republished for decades, and most of them sound boringly redundant once you get past the intro.
Scarlett believes that money is something to be to improve our lives now and that it's something to save for the future.
She, like me, found far too many people focusing on sacrificing in the short term for the hope that their future would be better. Instead, she defines money as "an essential tool for creating the life I wanted," through that lens, she writes about money. And a tool that can be used now and not only in retirement.
At the end of each chapter, Scarlett summarizes the chapter's topic and gives readers a list of action steps to take. I love that she offers readers actionable advice that they can apply in real-time. The action steps vary between journal-style questions and tactical try-it-out tips.
A new, holistic way to understand money and find your own path to financial freedom, from the wealth-building expert behind One Big Happy Life
You deserve to live your dream life. Mastering your finances and learning how to use your money to create that life is a nonnegotiable, because let’s be honest: life costs money. The good news is that you can create a money plan that you actually enjoy sticking to—one that allows you to build wealth while spending guilt-free on a life that you love today.
Scarlett Cochran knows because she’s been there, from starting out as a…
