The Books That Healed Me (Part 1)

The Book That Made Me a Writer

Last time: Every Story is a Story About Loss

My shelf of favorites

”It is hard and I am okay. It is both.” —Taylor Harris, This Boy We Made

I don’t know if it is completely fall reading season yet (88 degrees yesterday here) but I’m ready for cozy, scary, and otherwise fall-ish vibes in my books. And something about almost-fall also has me thinking a lot about the books that have healed me, changed me, and otherwise left their marks.

I’m talking about the books that stand out because they either guided me through the toughest times or woke me up in a way that altered my mental state. As a reader, it is natural that books mark specific periods of my life much the way certain songs and albums can also bring up memories of an event or time period in a single note.

Five books stand out in this way, but I’m only going to talk about one at a time. This is Part 1: The Book That Made Me a Writer.

Expect to hear some personal stories that I don’t usually share. I had to really dig deep and interrogate my memories here. It’s never as easy as it should be.

As Anne Bogel writes in I’d Rather Be Reading, “I don’t carefully plan—and yet it’s uncanny how often I seem to be reading just the right book at just the right time.”

It is true, no matter how hokey it sounds, that I didn’t find the following book, the exact book I needed. It found me.