Books like The Measure of My Days — picked by fans

I first read this book decades ago and never forgot it.

When the Russian poets under Stalin, not allowed to write or publish their own poems, once met secretly in Mandelstam’s kitchen to recite their poems. The only food was one boiled egg, which sat on the table between the few poets. And no one ate the egg! Integrity above poverty and famine. Stalin was responsible for sending creatives to Siberia, where so many died- including Osip Mandelstam.

The widow of the great Russian poet and martyr, Osip Mandelstam, gives us the most luminous record of the purges in Russia in the 1930s under Stalin. A wife who kept her husband’s legacy alive by memorizing his entire body of work yet tells the story of these hellish times with humor and heart.

As an undergraduate, I loved this memoir of C. G. Jung, which led me years later to obtain a graduate degree in Jungian Psychology.

The most accessible of Jung’s writings are recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe, who was trained by Jung. This unique memoir reveals not only the origin of Jung’s psychological discoveries but the man behind the genius. With humor and heart, Jung, in his 80's, looks back on a remarkable life and work.

Ahead of his time, Jung leaves a valuable and timeless legacy for today.

I first met Anne Truitt when we were both guest artists at the Yaddo Colony in upstate NY. Later, we became good friends.

I admired not only her sculptures and paintings but also the three elegant and poignant published journals of an artist’s life. My favorite is the third published Journal, Turn.

Known as a superb artist and sculptor, Turn is Truitt’s third journal revealing the woman and journey of a true artist and unique individual. A husband’s suicide leaving the author and artist to raise three children and pursue her art, creates a unique memoir timeless in the chronicles of the resilience of single women artists.

Some years ago in Hollywood, Bradbury introduced my first film premiere as a Hollywood screenwriter, The Christmas Wife. Ten years later, I met again with Ray Bradbury at a Film Festival and was amazed that this elder author remembered both me and my first film.

One of America’s best authors of science fiction leaves this memoir of his life and work. It is not only an entertaining read, but a tool for writers in any genre desiring to fulfill their potential.  

I read this wonderful coming-of-age tale when I was in my teens, but its magical mood remained with me ever since.

Reading the story of Emil Sinclair meeting the enigmatic Demian at school–who not only freed him from bullies but showed him that there was another world usually invisible to the common senses–set me on a life-long journey in search of the miraculous. 

Edinger was a student of Carl Jung’s and this book picks up from Jung’s essential essay, “God’s Answer to Job”. Jung realized that God was in a dialectical relationship with his “Chosen People,” and when Job maintained his faith despite being subject to unspeakable cruelties, this compelled God to incarnate as Christ. Following Jung, Edinger believes we are currently living through the archetype of the Apocalypse. The word means “revealing” or “uncovering.” Psychologically, the Apocalypse is the “Coming of the self” into conscious realization. It is a point of maturity where we have gained the self-knowledge needed to integrate, rather than project, the Shadow. This portends a collective incarnation of God into our human world.

C. G. Jung anticipated everything we do today, and more, with his practice of active imagination over 100 years ago. I have used this book as a primary reading in my courses. I also consider it to be among the best books dealing with the creative process, especially the emphasis on how the individual ego, or person of the artist, is a participant in a larger intelligence of creative imagination. We relax a grip on the controls to enable the expression to manifest itself, as Jung personally demonstrates in The Red Book, Liber Novus, just recently available to the public.

Myers brilliantly exposes the limitations of thinking about personality types as stereotypes. The book explores the nature of individuation and the steps to finding solutions for our one-sidedness.

I find this to be one of the most overlooked and yet fascinating works dealing with, among other things, spontaneous encounters with the dead. The apparitions and visions in this work, which often coincide with deaths, are primarily drawn from Switzerland.

Each account, in letter form to the author, is as compelling as the last, and Jaffe offers a unique Jungian perspective that I personally found to be at least very novel and intriguing. The accounts themselves, however, are the star of the show, and Jaffe, like Virtanen earlier in this list, makes some interesting connections between her sample and those further afield. I believe anyone interested in experiences of spontaneous encounters with the dead should have this singular work on their bookshelves!

Shumate has masterfully integrated Jungian ideas, the history of psychological type, and recent evolutions in personality type. The book covers the depth of Jungian principles related to the psychological types and new evidence on the patterns of Jung’s eight functions.