I didn’t sit down to write Carried Away with a personal sermon in my back pocket. No buried lessons or hidden curriculum—it was just a story I wanted to tell. But stories have a way of outsmarting you.
So when I chose these books, I wasn’t looking for perfect comparisons—I was looking for echoes. Some of these books will drag you through POW camps or strand you on a lifeboat with a tiger; others will lean in and whisper that you’ve been running a program and calling it personality. A few say the quiet part out loud—about grit, meaning, and purpose. Others ring you up with fable, abstractions, or science, but they leave their mark just the same.
Almost impossible to put down—this was the first book that made me physically feel the words.
I wouldn’t call it enjoyable in the usual sense; the experience was excruciating. But that’s exactly what makes it unforgettable. Hillenbrand’s prose, paired with the true story of Louis Zamperini’s plunge from Olympic track star to the unrelenting hell of a POW camp, smacks you off your cozy little couch and right into a world where Sleepytime tea, candles, and Netflix don’t exist.
What struck me most was how it captured not only the brutality of survival, but the stubborn, almost irrational resolve of the human spirit—and the possibility of forgiveness that would defy logic. This isn’t a book that’s light to hold—it’s grit, torment, and triumph in equal parts. I recommend it because it inspires without sugarcoating—harrowing and uplifting in the same breath.
For anyone who wants proof of just how deep the well of human strength runs, Unbroken is a masterpiece.
From the author of the bestselling and much-loved Seabiscuit, an unforgettable story of one man's journey into extremity. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood,…
Hell, I think I actually wore the pages out, if that’s even possible. When I was younger, I went back to it like a lab rat hitting the lever for a pellet—each parable connecting another dot. To me, the mystery was life, the teacher the universe, and I was the student—albeit a lousy one.
The Alchemist is one of those rare novels that feels both timeless and uncomfortably personal. At its foundation, it’s about following your own path—trusting the itch of intuition and chasing something bigger than yourself, even when it feels a little foolhardy in the moment.
What I love is how Coelho cuts through with fable-like simplicity: those who love walking go farther than those who love the destination—and they usually learn a hell of a lot more if they’re paying attention.
I recommend it because it doesn’t matter if you’re a dreamer, a skeptic, or a dyed-in-the-wool nihilist—this book jolts you back toward curiosity, wonder, and maybe even a little faith.
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
What can you really say about this one—besides the obvious: it’s perfect.
Chuck Palahniuk isn’t like the rest of us. He’s sharper, more cynical, funnier, more original. Calling myself a writer in his presence would be like hanging a finger-painting at the Louvre.
Fight Club digs straight into the restless undercurrent of modern life—that gnawing sense that comfort, convenience, and consumerism have carved a hollow right through your chest. We’re one Amazon delivery away from losing whatever’s left of our humanity. Or our masculinity. It reminds me of that line in Jurassic Park: “A T-rex doesn’t want to be fed, he wants to hunt.” More applicable to us now than we’d like to admit.
I love this book because it doesn’t let up where others might. It doesn’t edit its message to fit some form of Overton window. It laughs in your face while stripping everything down to bone. Less about basement brawls than about wrestling with yourself, your identity, and what it means to be awake.
I recommend it because it’s brutal, hilarious, and—if you’re honest with yourself—true.
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.
This book left me thinking, what the hell did I just read?
The image of a kid stuck on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger is both terrifying and mesmerizing. Adventure, spirituality, survival—it’s all here, but what really connects it to my book is how it shows that survival isn’t just about enduring the physical. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the impossible, how reality is perception, and how the mind builds its own scaffolding just to keep going.
I recommend Life of Pi because it unsettles, moves, and makes you question what’s real—which is exactly what survival often feels like.
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi Patel, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger, Richard Parker, for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
This book hit me as both tragic and strangely hopeful.
Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a backpack and a stubborn streak, and people have argued ever since: was he brave, reckless, or just plain stupid? But his compulsion isn’t as rare as we might think. In my book, Cole feels the same tug—escape the sterile shoebox apartment and the $8 lattes. This can’t be all there is.
What drew me in wasn’t the verdict but his hunger for something real—stripping away every layer of artifice most of us cling to. Krakauer tells it with empathy and curiosity, letting you wrestle with the questions instead of handing you neatly typed answers. I recommend it because it forces you to stare down your own compromises: freedom versus responsibility, idealism versus pragmatism.
Admire Chris or dismiss him, you won’t forget him. And the story lingers like a stone in your shoe.
Krakauer’s page-turning bestseller explores a famed missing person mystery while unraveling the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all…
Feeling numb and worn down by routine, Cole leaves New York for a remote chain of Indonesian islands, chasing silence, clarity, and something real. Amidst the salt and heat, he reconnects with old friends and finds an unexpected spark with someone who sees through his detachment. But paradise has teeth.
After a catastrophic tsunami, the laid-back surf trip quickly turns into a violent fight for survival. Cut off from the world, the group is tested physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and Cole is forced into a rare kind of stillness, the kind that redefines what matters.
In an underground coal mine in Northern Germany, over forty scribes who are fluent in different languages have been spared the camps to answer letters to the dead—letters that people were forced to answer before being gassed, assuring relatives that conditions in the camps were good.
When an EMP brings down the power grid, Dr. Anna Hastings must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology. She joins devoted father Mark Ryan and his young daughter on a perilous journey across a thousand miles of backcountry trails.
