Here are 100 books that Solitude fans have personally recommended if you like
Solitude.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I have taught writing to adults for over half of my lifeāstarting in my twenties, when I looked so young that my students once mistook me for a confused kid having wandered into the wrong room! I love love love seeing writers find their writing voiceāand the only way to do so is simply to do it. Writing and communicating well is an art, a delight, a form of self-expression, and a way of being in the worldāand it is VERY easy to learn with a good teacher. All of these books inspire me because their writers are excellent, encouraging, practical teachers.
Each time I read it, I am reminded that the creation of art is a sacred ritual; that the beautiful process is what creates the beautiful product; that the showing up matters most; and that when we choose art-making as a vital part of our lives, we will do a brave thing each day we go to greet our project.
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide forsucceeding in any creative sphere, The War ofArt is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.
What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?
Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid theroadblocks of any creative endeavorābe it starting up a dreambusiness venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?
Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy thatevery one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer thisinternal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesāall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueā¦
If I were teaching a course on life, this would be a mandatory textbook. Talib defines black swan events as events that 1) are disproportionately huge, 2) cannot be predicted, and 3) are mistakenly explained in retrospect with hindsight and fallacies.
This book helped me leave my corporate job and strike out on my own. Why? To help unroll the canvas of myself and my life, so I was more exposed to black swan events, leading me to write more books and have more unlikely, amazing experiences.
The most influential book of the past seventy-five years: a groundbreaking exploration of everything we know about what we donāt know, now with a new section called āOn Robustness and Fragility.ā
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religionsā¦
I am an LA-based author, sociologist, and cultural and political theorist who writes from beyond the surface. A seer since childhood, I have always challenged the official story (even when it got me in trouble), guided by my intuition and a refusal to accept injustice as inevitable. My writing is fueled by a deep curiosity to unravel societyās darkest puzzlesāsystems of control, violence, collective amnesiaāand to imagine what could exist beyond them. Through storytelling, I invite readers to question what theyāve been taught and to see the world not only as it appears, but as it truly is, and reimagine what it could be.
Urgency is a lie. We all need a reminder to sit down and do nothing and this book is the one to remind you. One of the main points is that our attention is sacred, and we live in a fast world vying for it. Refusing to participate is one of the highest acts of liberation, especially when practiced in community with others who to believe in the art of ādoing nothing.ā
I love the permission this book gives. Often, we need permission to sit down because nothing is as urgent as we are told it is.Ā
This book is great for those who constantly fill their calendars. Something beautiful happens when we refuse and sit with our own thoughts: we come to know our own minds.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time ā¢ The New Yorker ā¢ NPR ā¢ GQ ā¢ Elle ā¢ Vulture ā¢ Fortune ā¢ Boing Boing ā¢ The Irish Times ā¢ The New York Public Library ā¢ The Brooklyn Public Library
"A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."āJonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review
One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.Ā
I always carry the old Penguin Classics edition of this book in my suitcase. When I'm anxious and stressed, I can ground myself by getting my mind into a 2000-year-old book. Seneca reminds me to make the most of my life by not wasting my limited time pursuing external validation that doesn't actually make me happy.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselvesāand each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched livesāand destroyed them.
Ā
Now, Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are. Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers, and each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-drive design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature inā¦
I studied psychology in college and am fascinated with the human mind. The psyche holds so many joys, wonders, and the deepest horrors imaginable, all compact and functioning within our skulls. My love for psychology grew into the horror realm, where I read and watched anything revolving around the character study of an individual driven to the brink. Now, I write stories about the morality of actions taken by those who have found themselves in a peculiar position. I believe there is more to the clean-cut view of right versus wrong regarding the decision-making of oneās self-preservation.
I could not predict this book. I love how dark and disturbing it was. It led me down a path of psychological vertigo. By the end, I had exhausted all possible predictions and guessed wrong.
The shock of the twist wrung me out dry. Iām a big fan of books that can take you on a turbulent journey and then deposit you onto uneven ground, leaving you to question your own reality. Was it all real, or was it a part of some awful, waking dream?
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM DIRECTED BY CHARLIE KAUFMAN AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
āIām Thinking of Ending Things is one of the best debut novels Iāve ever read. Iain Reid has crafted a tight, ferocious little book, with a persistent tenor of suspense that tightens and mounts toward its visionary, harrowing final pagesā (Scott Heim, award-winning author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear).
Iām thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. Itās always there. Always.
Jake once said, āSometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality,ā¦
In life and writing Iām torn between a desire for solitude and for connection with people. As a young woman I lived in a cottage miles from friends, working from home while my husband was at work, bringing up our first child. No email, no texting, few visitors. It was idyllic, and I was desperately lonely; thatās when I began to write. We moved, I found friends. But still I dream of solitude. Could I handle it now? Itās surely why I found myself writing a novel about a young woman who finds herself suddenly alone in the wild, with no friends ā doesnāt everyone write about the things they fear?
This is one of the most beautiful novels of solitude Iāve ever read.
Conti immerses us in the strange, shifting world of the ParanĆ” Delta in Argentina where Boga lives on a sandbank until the old man he used to fish with dies. Boga finally has the solitude he has craved for so long and sets off in his small boat.
This wondrous book carries us with Boga floating with the currents and tides, following fish, drifting. Though Bogaās chosen life feels aimless, weāre swept with him in the world of the delta and its people, where every storm, every encounter builds towards an unforgettable climax.Ā
I read it four years ago, and Iām still there in the boat with Boga: itās a quiet masterpiece.
'Neither the old man nor Boga ever said more than was needed. And yet they understood each other perfectly.' Over the course of a season, Boga and the old man work side by side on the sandbanks of the Parana Delta, cutting reeds to sell to local basketweavers. But when the old man falls sick and dies, Boga abandons himself entirely to the river and the life of solitary drifting he has long yearned for. Echoes of John Berger sound throughout the evocative prose of this great Argentinian writer. A twentieth-century classic, Southeaster is a central work in Haroldo Conti'sā¦
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers.Ā Among them are four Indiana soldiersā¦
Itās often said that it takes a village to raise a child. I grew up in an intergenerational family in India. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles provided that extended community. Grandparents can pass down traditions, ensuring the preservation of culture. Stories that speak to the reality of multi-generational households can normalize and celebrate the presence of elders. The number of Americans living in multigenerational households is about four times larger than it was in the 1970s, yet the educational potential and the joy of these relationships are often ignored in literature.
I loved that the heroine of this story, Martina, is a quiet, imaginative little girl. In contrast, she has loud, rambunctious Tias. So, she slips away at a party and finds a quiet place to imagine. This rollicking picture book reimagines the familiar Caribbean folktale, la Cucaracha Martina. The illustrations are bold and lively, and they are also available in Spanish.
A quiet girl overwhelmed by her rambunctious family finds a magical land of solitude only to discover what truly makes a home a home in this lively and magical bilingual picture book that reimagines the beloved Caribbean folktale āLa Cucaracha Martina.ā
Martina does not like parties. Parties are full of tĆas with their flashy fashions and boom-and-bellow laughter thatās too much for quiet Martina. At least with all that noise, no one notices when she slips away. She finds herself in a magical place: a warm, familiar island where she can finally play in peace and quiet. Martina is homeā¦
Iāve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardās western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardās setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenāone in the dark season and one as the light returnedāand I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.
I enjoy the ābased on a true storyā feel of this novel, even though itās purely a product of Hardingās imagination. A historical novel set in 1616, the story centers upon a headstrong English whalerāThomas Caveāwho, on a bet, stays behind alone on an Arctic island in the Svalbard archipelago to endure the dark season. More threatening than carving out an existence in a forbidding environment is the effect of isolation on Cave, whom we see through excerpts from his diary.Ā
I hadnāt realized until I wrote this list how possessed I am by novels set in extreme environments and alsoānot surprisinglyāones whose themes arise from that obsession: the nature of loneliness and the effects of isolation.Ā Iām a fan of layered narratives as wellāakin to the kind of framed narrative found in Heart of Darkness.
Caveās diary entries are embedded within the voice of a first-person narrator whoā¦
August, 1616. The whaling ship Heartsease has ventured high into the Arctic, but now must begin the long journey home. Only one man stays behind: Thomas Cave makes a wager to remain here, alone, until the next season. No man has yet been known to survive a winter this far north. As the light recedes and the ice begins to close in, Cave pits himself against blizzards, avalanches, bears - and his own demons. For in this wilderness that is without human history his past returns to him: the woman he had loved, the grief that drove him to theā¦
For too long, single life has been characterized as a lesser life. As a 70-year-old who has been happily single my whole life, I want that to end. As I said in my book, āIn the enlightened world that I envision, every child will understand, as a matter of course, that living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any otherāand for some people, the best path of all. Every adult will forsake forever the temptation to pity or patronize single people and will instead appreciate the profound rewards of single life."
The stars of this book are āsolitaries,ā people who choose to live alone or spend substantial stretches of time alone. Upending the demeaning caricatures of people who spend a lot of time alone, Johson shows that some of the most renowned artists and authors have been solitaries.
They have rich inner lives and contribute meaningfully to society. Even unknown solitaries are artistsāthey design their own lives. Solitaries value friendship and do not see romantic relationships as sitting atop a relationship hierarchy. Free of a conventional focus on The One, they are more open to more different people and the world.
Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explore what it means to choose solitude and to celebrate the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic solitaries he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickenson in Amherst, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. The bright wakes these figures have left behind illuminate Fenton Johnson's journey from his childhood in rural Kentucky to his solitary travels in America, France, and India. Woven into his musings about better-known solitaries are stories of friendsā¦
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted reparteeā¦
Iām a music historian who loves to read novels. Most of my childhood was spent either playing the piano or devouring whatever books I could get my hands on. Now, I try to share my love of music and good writing with my students at Boston University. When not at school, you can usually find me exploring the trails of New England with my dog.
Who knew a book about sleeping could be so funny and engaging?
As someone who constantly wants and needs more rest, I related to the protagonistās hunch that a year of (almost uninterrupted) sleep would change her life. And it does, though not at all in the way she expects.
Moshfegh writes about trips to the local bodega and the edgy conceptual art scene in such a brilliant way that the book will (perhaps, unfortunately!) keep you up late.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible
A New York Times Bestseller
"One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound." - Entertainment Weekly
"Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh's] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood." -Vogue
