I think it is impossible not to think by reading and certainly many books are capable of making life more enjoyable. However, there are a multitude of texts that make you reflect more than others and that help you see things differently. Can a book change your life? Yes of course. With this Psychology-Online article we will discover together 20 books that make you think, a list of special books. These are very famous texts, true editorial cases of millions of copies, where the people who have read them, very often, have argued that, afterwards, their life is - in some way - changed. If you are looking for a list of books to read before you die, this is the selection. We will see addictive books, life books, life changing books and books you have to read.
Index
- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- The Alchemist, Paulo Cohelo
- Siddharta, Herman Hesse
- Juan Salvador Gaviota, Richard Bach
- The end is my beginning, Tiziano Terzani
- 1984, George Orwell
- American Pastoral, Philip Roth
- A thousand splendid suns, Khaled Hosseini
- Lord of the Flies, William Golding
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- Story of a seagull and the cat that taught it to fly, Luis Sepúlveda
- The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
- The unbearable lightness of being, Milan Kundera
- On the road, Jack Kerouac
- Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Travel Notes, Ernesto Guevara
- The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
- Tokyo blues (Norwegian Wood), Haruki Murakami
- Paula, Isabel Allende
- The Nine Revelations, James Redfield
The little prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Here is my secret, which could not be simpler: only with the heart can one see well; The essential is invisible to the eyes.
The Little Prince is the story of the meeting in the middle of the desert between an aviator and a funny little man dressed as a prince who came to Earth from space. But there is much more than just friendship in this surreal, philosophical and magical book: there is the wisdom of those who look at things with pure eyes, the voice of feelings that speaks the universal language, and a sincere and natural desire for authenticity. Because beauty, when it is not filtered by prejudice, manages to reach the hearts of children, but also that of adults who have lost the ability to truly listen. That is why the little prince is one of those essential books that you have to read.
The Alchemist, Paulo Cohelo.
Another book that can change your life is The Alchemist: The Story of an Initiation. The protagonist Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd who, in search of a dream treasure, undertakes that adventurous journey, both real and symbolic, that beyond the Strait of Gibraltar and through the entire North African desert will take you to the Egypt of the pyramids. And, precisely during the trip, the young man, thanks to the meeting with the old alchemist, will climb all the steps of the wisdom scale: in its progression over the desert sand and, together, in the knowledge of itself, discover the soul of the world, love and universal language, he will learn to speak to the sun and the wind and finally he will fulfill his personal legend.
Siddharta, Herman Hesse.
Who is Siddhartha? He is one who seeks, and above all tries to live his whole life. He goes from experience to experience, from mysticism to sensuality, from philosophical meditation to business life, and he doesn't stop at no teacher, does not consider any acquisition definitive, because what you have to look for is the whole, the mysterious whole that is dressed in a thousand faces changing. And in the end that all, the wheel of appearances, will return behind the perfect smile of Siddharta, who repeats the "steady, quiet, fine, impenetrable, perhaps benign, perhaps mocked, wise, multifaceted smile of Gotama, the Buddha, who himself had seen it hundreds of times with veneration ". Siddhartha is undoubtedly Hesse's best known work and a book to reflect on.
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Juan Salvador Gaviota, Richard Bach.
Juan Salvador is a seagull that abandons the mass of common seagulls for which flying is nothing more than a simple and clumsy means of getting food and learns to fly as an act of skill and intelligence, a source of perfection and joy. It thus becomes a symbol, the ideal guide for those who have the strength to obey your own inner law; of whom he feels a particular pleasure to do well the things to which he dedicates himself. And with Juan, the reader is drawn into an exciting adventure of flight, of pure air, of freedom. Juan Salvador Gaviota is one of the books that mark you.
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The end is my beginning, Tiziano Terzani.
A Zen monk sits in the silence of his cell, takes a brush and with great concentration makes a closing circle, the last gesture of the hand on this earth. Tiziano Terzani, knowing that he has reached the end of the route, speaks to his son Folco about what it has been her life and what life is: "If you have understood something, you want to leave it there in a package", He says. So he talks about a lifetime of traveling the world in search of the truth. And looking for the meaning of the many things that he has done and of the many people that he has been, he delineates a fresco of the great passions of his time. That is why it is one of the most recommended books.
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1984, George Orwell.
The action takes place in the near future of the world (the year 1984) in which power is concentrated in three huge super-states: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. At the apex of political power in Oceania is the omniscient and infallible Big Brother, whom no one has seen in person, but of which great manifestos are visible everywhere. The Ministry of Truth, in which the main character Smith works, is tasked with censoring books and newspapers that are not are in line with official policy, to alter history and reduce the expressive possibilities of the idiom. As much as the cameras control him, Smith begins to lead a "subversive" existence. Without a doubt, it is one of the books that hook a lot and that make you think.
American Pastoral, Philip Roth.
Seymour Levov is a wealthy and successful American, and is called "the Swede" in high school. What you seem to expect of him in the 1950s is a life of professional success and family joys. Until the contradictions of the Vietnam conflict involve him and his beloved daughter Merry, determined to literally bring the war home. A book about love and hate for America, on the desire to belong to a dream of peace, prosperity and order, on the rejection of the hypocrisy and the falsehood hidden in that same dream. A book that you have to read.
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A thousand splendid suns, Khaled Hosseini.
Laila was born in Kabul on the night of the revolution, in April 1978. She was only two years old when her brothers joined the jihad. That is why, on the day of her funeral, she finds it difficult to cry. For Laila, the real brother is Tariq, the neighbor's child, who has lost a leg in an antipersonnel mine but knows how to defend it from the grievances of her contemporaries; the playmate who teaches him swearing in Pashtu and says good night to him every night with light signals from the window. Mariam and Laila couldn't be more different, but war will unite them unpredictably. From the intertwining of two destinations, a story that runs through the history of a country in search of peace, where friendship and love continue to seem the only salvation.
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Lord of the Flies, William Golding.
In this novel, the protagonist is the shadow: the shadow from which each of us tries to escape, but which then traps us. But what to do when your hidden part ends up in the body of the person you love? Perhaps, there is nothing left but to leave the tops of the dock and set sail for madness. And what is the madness? That of being in Hell without having sinned? Or relying on an unstructured system for care, one that is based on technique, that doesn't dig deep, and doesn't ask too many questions? In this novel, time seems to mark life, but time is not here. Life has a magical taste and in life there is something stronger than all emotions and all systems, a love, something against death: something that does not die.
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The stranger, Albert Camus.
Published in 1942, Abroad It is a classic of contemporary literature and other essential books to read. The protagonist is Meursault, a modest employee who lives in Algiers in a state of indifference, of strangeness to himself and to the world. One day, after a fight, Meursault inexplicably kills an Arab. He is arrested and surrenders, totally impassive, to the inevitable consequences of the fact - the trial and the death sentence - without looking for excuses, defenses or lies. Meursault is an "absurd" hero, and his brilliant awareness of reality allows him to reach the truth of being and feeling through an exasperated logic.
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Story of a seagull and the cat that taught it to fly, Luis Sepúlveda.
Count the adventures of zorbas, a "big, black, fat" cat whose unwavering sense of honor leads him one day to commit to raising a seagull chick. His mother, a beautiful seagull, caught by a wave of oil spilled into the sea by a stranded ship, leaves Zorbas as a pledge, just before dying, the egg she has just laid. Zorbas, who is a cat of his word, will fulfill his two promises: will not only raise the chick, but teach it to fly. One of the best books that make you think.
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The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.
After eighty-six days in which he has not been able to catch anything, old Santiago finds the strength to retake the sea: this new fishing trip renews his apprenticeship as a fisherman and seals his symbolic initiation. In desperate search for a giant Caribbean swordfish. In the fight almost bare-handed against sharks that one piece at a time they tear off his prey, leaving him only the symbol of victory and the curse finally defeated. Santiago establishes, perhaps for the first time, a true brotherhood with the irrepressible forces of nature. And, above all, it finds within itself the sign and the presence of his bravery, the justification of a lifetime.
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The unbearable lightness of being, Milan Kundera.
This novel shows us that everything in life that we choose and appreciate as light does not take long to reveal its unsustainable weight. Perhaps only the vivacity and mobility of intelligence escape this condemnation: the qualities with which the novel is written, which belong to another universe for that of living. Who is heavy can not help falling madly in love with someone who flies lightly in the air, between the fantastic and the possible: while the light are rejected by their peers and carried away by "compassion" towards bodies and souls possessed by heaviness. This is the case in the novel: Tomás loves Tereza, Tereza loves Tomás: Franz loves Sabina, Sabina (at least for a few months) loves Franz.
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On the way, Jack Kerouac.
Sal Paradise, a young New Yorker with literary ambitions, meets Dean Moriarty, a boy from the west. As he leaves the reformatory, Dean begins to wander defying the rules of bourgeois life, always looking for intense experiences. Dean decides to go west and Sal catches up with him; is the first in a series of journeys that give a new dimension to Sal's life. Dean's continuous flight has a heroic characteristic in it, Sal can't help but admire it, even when feverish, in Mexico City, he is abandoned by his friend, who returns to the States United.
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Kill a nightingale, Harper Lee.
In a town in the "deep" south of the United States, the honored attorney Atticus Finch he is in charge of the ex officio defense of a "black" accused of rape; he will be able to prove his innocence, but the man will also be sentenced to death. The story, which is only the central episode of the novel, is told by little Scout, Atticus's daughter, a Huckleberry in skirt, who It scandalizes the ladies with an unorthodox language, witness and protagonist of events that in their atrocity and violence never manage to be greater than her. In his soft and fast, ironic and regrettable story, he relives the world of childhood that is a bit of all of us, with its myths, its emotions, its discoveries.
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Travel Notes, Ernesto Guevara.
December 1951. Two young Argentine students, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and Alberto Granado, set off on a motorcycle stool, the "Poderosa", to cross Latin America. Seven months of adventures and encounters await them destined to forge them forever. These pages reveal the fresh but already critical and intelligent gaze that will be from "Commander Che Guevara"; they contain the thousand faces of America, the misery of the Indians and the dazzling beauty of the landscape; They tell of the desire to explore, understand, get excited as only at twenty years of age can, while the motorcycle loses parts in the street and two boys become men. This story is one of the books that make you think and that you must read.
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The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger.
It has been over 60 years since it was written, but we still see you, Holden Caufield, with that annoying air, defying hypocrisy and conformism, him and everything that has fallen on him since the day he left Pencey Institute with a suspense in his pocket and not wanting his parents to they knew it. The plot is all here, narrated by that ramshackle and blunt voice. But it is his thoughts, his rabid mood, that go on stage. Why is Holden angry? As it is not known precisely, each has read his own anger, has hired the protagonist in "exemplum vitae", and this has decreed the immense success that still lasts. This is one of the most engaging books.
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Tokyo blues (Norwegian Wood), Haruki Murakami.
Norwegian Wood is also a great novel about adolescence, about the conflict between the desire to integrate into the world of the "others" to enter victorious into adult life and the inalienable need to be oneself, whatever the cost. Like young Holden, Toru is continually attacked by the doubt that he has been wrong or may be wrong in his life and love choices, but it is also guided by a stubborn and personal sense of morality and an instinctive dislike of everything that knows false and constructed. Divided between two girls, Naoko and Midori, who attract him with irresistible force, Toru can only decide. Or wait for life (and death) to decide for him.
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Paula, Isabel Allende.
Paula, born on October 22, 1963, is a happy girl, in love with her husband, passionate about her work. His is a simple life, which has nothing to do with that of his mother Isabel. Two women, two different destinations. Suddenly Paula falls ill with a very serious illness, porphyria, which leads to a coma from which there is no turning back. Isabel goes to her bed to try to keep her alive, or perhaps to gently accompany her towards the end. With writing the mother-writer tries to "distract death", she tries to find meaning in such a senseless tragedy: thanks to the magic of the word evokes all the members of his exuberant and bizarre family to surround Paula, surpassing the individual limits of life and death. An interesting book that makes you think.
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The Nine Revelations, James Redfield.
He could not miss between the books to reflect. An ancient manuscript, containing nine keys to interpreting existence, is discovered and is the object of studies and research. The Peruvian Government and Church try in every possible way to destroy it and persecute all those who possess some of its parts. An American psychologist lets himself be involved in the search for the full text, to find which one he will have to trust in the flow of coincidences of everyday life that, once interpreted, lead to their true destination. The investigation begins in the Andes and leads to a surprising discovery among the ruins hidden deep in the rainforest.
If you want more information about books, in this article you will find the best psychology books.
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