90 Books Like Meeting the Shadow

This classic is my go-to for the challenges of living the creative life and how to push through them.

In short, punchy chapters, it identifies the main source of blocks writers and artists have and how to push through them.

I love its approach to the workmanlike attitude one needs to have to create consistently and move toward a goal, and how to be clear-eyed about the inner “resistence” we all have that seems to want to stop us.

Hochschild is a sociologist, exploring modern types of jobs that commercialize human emotions. Think of flight attendants or bill collectors: people who have to smile at clients or remain polite, even if these clients make that very hard. Hochschild shows the impact of such acting; I use her insights in my work on sex work.

We live with so many toxic myths about happiness, and many of these myths come from books about happiness! The Happiness Myth steps up to defend happiness from all the nonsense. It’s a rollicking and often-hilarious tour through the history of human happiness, full of surprises and strange-but-true ideas to ponder. 

Historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht challenges our current certainties in this irreverent and well-researched exploration of what our ancestors (and we!) need to live happy lives. She’s a wonderful and witty person to spend time with, and she’ll help you become more intelligent about the true and everlasting nature of human happiness. Happy now?

Published in 1997, DeBecker offered something no one else I was reading came close to: an explanation of warning signs that precede violence that are so subtle they leave many people with a bad feeling about a situation, for example, with a stranger, but no idea why they feel that way. The temptation then is to override the gut feeling: “What is wrong with me? It’s the middle of the day and this nice man just wants to help me carry my groceries up to my apartment.”

DeBecker himself is a fascinating figure. He grew up with a heroin-addicted mother who waved a gun around frequently and finally shot his stepfather before committing suicide when he was 16. DeBecker learned to rely on small, subtle clues to tell when she was dangerous and when she was not. After her death, he was taken in by Rosemary Clooney, the mother of… show more.

I love this book because it explores a new way of understanding human emotions. When you laugh, cry, or scowl with anger, you often assume that the emotions you're feeling are the same as everyone else’s. Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that this is not necessarily the case, according to the new science of emotion.

She clearly describes the research, including her own, that shows that emotions are not hard-wired at birth but are constructed by our brains and our bodies as we go through life. It means that we can be the architects of our emotional lives, and the implications for society are profound. Reading this book has excited me and given me a great deal of hope and optimism about how we can have more agency over our emotional lives. 

I have to admit, part of me squarely into midlife, is still scared of my own shadow. This was the first book I read after my father passed away, and not only was it the perfect guide through the grief, loss, and rite of passage, but also a homecoming of sorts. Roshi Joan Halifax has clearly wandered the vastness of her own inner landscape and offers up treasures from the dark, mysterious depths. She makes it clear, that yes, darkness exists. And also, yes, evil and other unspeakable things may hide within it. But upon her travels and fearless exploration, she has found other luminous gifts that only the soul houses, and only a valiant seeker could discover. The Fruitful Darkness as she calls it is akin to the night sky filled with stars, the fertile soil with seeds, or the womb brimming with new life. It is alive, inviting… show more.

If I only had one book I could bring on a deserted island, The Great Work of Your Life, would be that book. It focuses on what is known in the Hindu tradition as one’s “dharma” or our soul’s unique duty or mission we are called to endeavor. Using The Bhagavad Gita—an epic Hindu folktale as an analogy, TGWOYL follows the lives of culturally known (Beethoven, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Susan B Anthony) and everyday characters from the author’s life, as an exploration of what it means (and requires) to live one’s dharma in the world. We all know the heroic and courageous sacrifices these well-known icons made, but often we don’t know that they too were faced with paralyzing doubt, setbacks, inner criticism, and a sense of purposelessness amidst their remarkable lives. The book brings these larger-than-life characters down to earth and in essence says, if they could… show more.

Ah, it's still the best book on awakening! Despite its sublime title, this book is actually mostly about the ecstasy, with its multiple instances of “awakening porn”—alluring accounts of how someone, seemingly out of nowhere, while quietly washing the dishes or watering the garden, suddenly underwent a radical shift in perception and experience that opened up a whole new world.

Often, they say they don’t know how to speak of it, yet somehow do, in ways that send ripples and goosebumps through the body and skin of this reader. Handled with the deep kindness of Kornfield’s wise heart, they are never repetitive, always fresh, and collectively steer us through the author’s extensive commentary to understand what it would mean not just to awaken but to live an ever-deepening path of awakening.

I love how much Mercy learns about herself. I also really admire the time and space and, above all, respect Briggs's investments in Mercy's witting and unwitting explorations of her powers and heritage. And how Mercy reacts to revelations about her mother and mostly unknown father. I, at least, admire when Mercy is allowed to get cranky and try to pick and choose what she wants to keep or discard, approve or disapprove.

All this, and it's a heck of a roller coaster ride. I rode the slow build-up, increasingly bracing myself for the first big drop, and then whoop-whoop-whoop, I whirled up and down and sideways to the end.

It’s always a joy to find a good short story collection, better yet when the stories are all giving the villains from fairy tales a chance to tell their side of the story. From Jack in the Beanstalk to The Little Mermaid, this collection is a great one to dive into and find out what makes our famous villains tick.