Books like Goodnight Beautiful — picked by fans

Like many people, I’d heard so much about this classic that I was braced for disappointment the first time I read it.

But no, du Maurier’s rich, atmospheric prose gripped me from that famous first line. While I agree about the power of the iconic cast, such as the infamous Mrs. Danvers, I feel that the setting itself is just as powerful a character. I especially love du Maurier’s way of personifying the setting, so that things such as trees, and plants, and buildings come alive with malevolence.

The opening pages, for example, immediately fill you with unease despite the narrator talking about nothing more than the driveway leading up to the house on the estate! From the woods that “crowded, dark and uncontrolled” and the beeches with “white naked limbs” to the hydrangeas “rearing to a monster height without a bloom, black and ugly” and the nettles that “choked… show more.

The book is better than the movie, and the movie is amazing. I love how the author manages to create a dense feeling of female suffocation, gaslighting, hallucination, panic, satanism, conspiracies, deception, and paranoia while simultaneously describing the ordered and neat lives of New York City's emerging glitterati through detailed descriptions of the housewife’s sphere of choosing the right material of towels and the right hue of wallpaper when nesting.

Rosemary’s personal limits and borders, both physical and psychological, are challenged as she becomes a vessel of something unknown, but only unknown to her. An amazingly dense yet easily accessible book.

I am partial to a soupçon of the paranormal in my psychological thriller, which I know isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was gripped the whole time reading, but although I knew something shocking was coming, I had absolutely no idea what was going on until the final chapters.

The reveal at the end genuinely left me shaking. It is probably my favorite twist of all time. Outstanding.

Golding is an excellent stylist and manages to combine the detective story with the fantastical element of Irish myth: the Selkie. Is the young mother truly a seal longing to return to the sea? Who is not fascinated by a creature from another world? I know I am. Like her, I have sometimes felt that I am only a visitor here, yearning for my true home. Maybe we have all known something of that feeling, and that’s why we know that on some level, the Selkie is real. The audiobook narration is superb.

Shame is often more traumatizing than we realize, and there hasn't been enough exploration of its connection to prolonging the impact of initial traumatic events. In my first book, I dedicated an entire section to shame, and it was this work that significantly aided in delving deeper into its various forms and consequences.

This book's ability to distinguish between shame and guilt is particularly enlightening. While it may not be the most enjoyable read, it was undoubtedly a valuable reference for me when I needed to develop a better understanding of this crucial aspect of trauma.

Dr. Doherty, a Professor in the Department of Family Social Science and Director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota has long been a voice for questioning the manner in which the psychotherapy field avoids the moral/ethical issues presented by our clients. 

Some of these ethical issues are presented directly by clients; others maybe be unacknowledged by them, such as the moral issues around whether to engage in a secret affair or to withhold important information from partners, friends, or business associates in order to attain personal gain. 

From Freud onward, psychotherapists have been trained to adopt a stance of ethical neutrality, with an emphasis on maximizing the client’s individual happiness, even if this means pursuing goals that may negatively affect the lives of those with whom they have important relationships. 

This emphasis on personal happiness above all else draws upon the larger Western Eurocentric emphasis on… show more.

This collection of essays contains pieces by many of the same authors in my first recommendation. But this begins with the historical roots, including early psychoanalytic arguments that meditation was an attempt to return to the womb. Also, there are Buddhist writers emphasizing that in meditating you're trying to get to a state of "no mind," so what good was psychotherapy? But the book moves to a conversation between a Japanese Zen teacher and C.G. Jung, and then towards the Dalai Lama's thoughts about the unconscious. It even includes a writer who is both a psychoanalyst and a Zen priest.

We all make ourselves. How well we do it is our choice!

This book has had a profound impact on my approach to executive coaching and organizational change, where a key difficulty that compromises performance centers on self-limiting and misguided beliefs. Drs. Ellis and Harper focus on self-management techniques that shift the focus from “them” to “you.” We can change negative emotions and behaviors that stem from our own thinking. It’s our choice as to what we think and emote.

This book, based on clinical research, provides readers with insights and techniques to permanently shift their game.

As a psychologist, I know that depression is the common cold of mental illness, yet as a reader, I haven’t seen many books cover it well. This one is a recent exception.

The fact that BTS’s leader, RM, had this on his bookshelf during their Bon Voyage series may be the reason it has become an international bestseller, but Namjoon’s bookshelf aside, this memoir-meets-self-help narrative is so intimate, it almost feels pornographic.

I came for the title (tteokbokki makes me want to live too, so much so that it also makes a cameo in my own book as well) but stayed for the first-hand peek into one woman’s sessions with her therapist. 

I feel less like the hard parts of my life and my story are too horrible to share, thanks to Catherine Gildiner’s powerful stories of her clients’ intense traumas. If therapists can help clients like Gildiner’s recover then there is hope for me too.

I love that she offers readers a “fly on the wall” perspective into the revelations and insights that come to light in a therapist’s office. In doing so, she opened a space for me to consider the ways I may relate to some of the clients’ experiences but, more importantly, the therapeutic advice Gildiner provides.