100 Books Like Finding What You Didn't Lose

What I love most about Bird by Bird is the way that Anne Lamott characterises writing as a gift, a giving over to someone else in a manner akin only to being a parent.

While I am not a parent, I am inspired by this idea that the written word can make a person braver and better by virtue of opening them up to the world and people in new ways. Despite the hurdles and difficulties of the practice, which Lamott deftly outlines, she ultimately decides that a writer is pursuing an act of generosity and openness. I really love this idea.

There is a real lack of pretentiousness to Lamott’s writing, which allows you to take these nuggets and accept what otherwise might be sentimental claims that “writing is life” as simple truths. 

Writers often struggle to think of themselves as “writers” because the world has us believing that we can only carry that title if we are successfully published, and of course words such as “success” and even “published” can be fraught with subjective controversy. One of the lessons I learned from Brenda Ueland, among other great thinkers, is that we need to focus first on our own authenticity and only much, much later dare we think about what the world might have to say. This allowed me to let go and move on and trust myself on my writing path. It wasn’t easy, but as emphasized in If You Want to Write, we will be all right if we believe in our inner richness.  

My mum had this book on her bookshelf for many years, and one day, I decided to read it, hoping it would help me learn to paint and draw. I didn’t learn anything about drawing or painting but instead learned how to slow down a bit and regather my energy.

This is an inspiring yet practical guide that helped me put aside my critical, doubting, worrying ‘adult’ self and allow myself to explore what I love and value in life. I found Cameron’s tools, such as the Morning Pages and Artist’s Date, so life-changing that I recommend them to many of my patients, especially those struggling with chronic illnesses, fatigue, or burnout.

Writing professor Gabriele Rico knows how to take the fear out of writing, which is why this book became such a powerful best-seller and why I love to read and recommend it. Among the many strategies and techniques she offers in Writing the Natural Way, one of my favorites is her brainstorming strategy called clustering, which gives us permission to wander and bypass the critical censorship we are often hindered by. In turn, this fuels creativity and prompts us to make associations among ideas, memories, and feelings that are otherwise seemingly diverse or disorganized. She also firmly believes that, although writing can be a painful process, it’s not what hurts us that matters but rather it’s how we deal with the pain, and it’s through an honest expression of our truth that we can grow and heal.

Even if you don’t want to be a poet, there’s something about playing with poetic form that I think is useful to any writer because it enables you to explore the use of rhythm, metaphor, simile and other ways of honing your consciousness into literary and written form. It demands specificity of description and uniqueness of voice, and Kate Clanchy’s book - she is herself a published poet, writer but also a teacher - gets to the nub of it through examples and exercise, to emerge a more fluent and confident writer, and in whichever form you choose.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Keith Holyoak and I collaborated on a series of articles and books about analogy, which is the underpinning of complex metaphors. His new book is a delightfully insightful discussion of metaphors in poetry, drawing not only on his deep knowledge of cognitive psychology but also on his experience as a highly published poet. Through analysis of great poems by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and many others, he illuminates how metaphors contribute to beautiful poems and to creativity in general.  

For only the fifth of what could be more recommendations on musical collections, I wanted to draw attention to Avery Young’s book for its relentless approach to enactment and what movements manifest in the aftermath of music’s touch.

I read this collection during a low period of 2022 when COVID was still rampant, and it was a reminder of what it is I am listening for. Past our doctoring or our purities, our humanity is most clear when we are true about our experiences.

I would highly encourage readers to grab a copy of this dream of a book and look out for what’s next from Chicago’s inaugural poet laureate.

This book is a guided tour through poetry’s potential and its cliches. At its heart, this book is a toolbox (that’s not my metaphor; it’s literally on the book’s cover).

I once harbored an ambition to support myself solely through writing (secretly, I still do), so I encountered Kooser’s opening advice with a combination of humor and denial: “You’ll never be able to make a living writing poems.” But once I accepted this very pragmatic and practical mindset, I began writing better. (And, oddly, writing more.)

This book helped me become a happier, more relaxed writer. As a bonus, I’ve found that the tools readily adapt to prose.

If you love Borges, and thought you’d read everything he wrote, this is the book for you—a collection of his “lost lectures,” delivered at Harvard in 1967-68 and finally published in 2000. And if you want to hear the actual voice of a creative genius, as if risen from the dead, the recordings are also available. Best known for his intricate short stories and essays, Borges was also—perhaps foremost—a poet. As he puts it in the book, “The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.” Starting from the creation of poems, Borges explores the creation of metaphors, meaning, and life’s irreducible mystery.

This book of ancient vacanas- lyric verse of four saint-poets of South India- will seer into your heart. These mystical poems, translated by one of India’s most revered writers, bring the reader into direct experience with the divine, or God, or Shiva, cutting through caste, class, race, religion, and culture. Born of the bhakti (devotional) protest movement, these poems will remind you of Rumi. I’m always surprised that these soulful poems are not better known to Western readers. Read a verse. Sit in meditation. Notice what happens inside your body.