Books like The Molecule of More — picked by fans

Are you like me? A people pleaser? So concerned about what the other person is feeling that I’m not even aware of my own feelings? Then this book is for you. Don’t be put off by the awkward title; it’s not about high-IQ kids. The drama is the way children must hide their true selves to please their parents; the gift is the ability to suppress our own needs.

Miller writes, “There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger—and, of course, the enjoyment of their own bodies.”

I feel that! Miller explains how therapy can help us confront and heal from that rage and pain. I get mad and cry every time I reread this book.  

I fell into and out of love all the time. It just never worked for me. It turns out that falling in love and loving are not the same. According to Helen Fisher, lust, romantic love, and long-term committed love are different states. She scanned the brains of people in love to find out which regions were active when someone was madly in love and mapped that state to brain chemicals. Romantic love, she found, is literally an addiction, activating the same brain systems and chemicals as opioids. I was hooked on romance, falling into it over and over instead of moving to the stage of deep and long-lasting love.

Fisher explains the role of three brain chemicals in lust, romantic, and committed love: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Understanding what’s going on in my brain in romantic love helped me look beyond that crazy feeling to find a deep connection.

When I was researching oxytocin, I traveled to Chicago and met John Cacioppo, a scientist who showed how loneliness affects our bodies and brains. So, I was intrigued to find this book by his wife, written after he died, that’s both science and a memoir of their marriage. A social neuroscientist, Stephanie Cacioppo explains why love is a biological necessity.

Love activates 12 specific brain regions, while desire has its own complementary brain circuits. Dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin come in for discussion, but this book focuses mainly on the activities of our brains, with surprising info, for example, that thinking about a loved one improves our cognitive ability. The combo of the personal and the scientific, along with research studies, makes for a good read. 

When I began researching love, one concept that blew me away was attachment styles: the theory that how our parents show us love—or don’t—determines how we love others. I learned that my style was to avoid intimacy; it was too scary. Understanding my style and my partner’s lets me begin to respond to him in ways that he needs instead of the way that feels natural to me.

This book explains how each of us is wired for relationships and how we can get past our unconscious needs to give partners love the way they need it. It includes little scenarios that helped me understand how our styles play out and made the book fun to read. It offers principles that codify the couple's relationship and exercises for couples to do together. 

James Lee provides a straightforward, simplified explanation of our neurochemicals—how they impact our moods, our relationships, our careers, and more.

This is a neurochemical introduction for dummies in its simplicity, and a user manual for those who are not neuroscientists. The emphasis on the dopamine connection is particularly useful in light of the revelation that expecting to fail may become addictive, since when we fail, we are rewarded by a dopamine drip for being correct with our expectation.

Awakenings is the novel-length true story of the patients comatose for decades from sleeping-sickness, a disease that reared its head in the 1920s and then died out.

I consider Oliver Sacks the master storyteller of medical mysteries, and he kept me completely riveted with his descriptions of watching these patients wake up when given the drug L-Dopa, re-entering the world after many decades. The story gives me chills every time I think about it.

Often our brain chemistry betrays us in that we may desire to achieve an objective but our chemistry undercuts our intention.

In plain English, the neurochemicals underlying success and happiness are not just laid bare, but Professor Breuning provides examples of how each of us can learn to manipulate those chemicals, ensuring that they support our goals and ambitions.

This book also deals with addiction science, and Hanson is a gifted writer who’s able to express complex ideas in simple, straightforward language. And he also devotes a good deal of time to the care and healing aspects of substance abuse. It takes one to know one, as the saying goes, and Mr. Hanson knows from personal experience and extensive investigative research what it’s like to struggle with addiction. Underrated and underread, this book is right up there with the best on the subjects of addiction and recovery.

I recommend these books because I believe seeking and finding never ends as we become adults. I find that I still seek jobs, seek friends, seek safety, seek shelter, and seek nourishment. These tasks are enjoyable when they are connected to my heart's path. It's a training of the brain that delights my inner child.

In addition, play is an important part of my adult life that has been difficult to materialize in the past few years. I have had to use all of my brain matter toward a conveyor belt of serious tasks, and it has been exhausting. Finding the missing piece, whether in my life, these books, or Wordle, gives me a much-needed dose of dopamine in a day filled with Saturnian energy.

Set in a Western setting and with a system, it’d be easy to wonder why this book is on this list, but don’t be fooled by its appearances; this story has all the basics of cultivation inside it; it’s simply hidden at first.

This book takes place in a subgenre of books that are commonly referred to as System Apocalypses or LitRPG Apocalypses, where a system arrives on Earth, giving people gamified abilities and bringing monsters that cause an apocalypse to happen.

This one, though, takes place in what is effectively a broad cultivation multiverse and expands what the genre tends to be and can be while also effectively delivering on the core premises of what makes cultivation stories so exciting: the power system. It’s one of the most recommended books in this space, and for good reason.