The 2014 Curious Cats Read debut blog post explored how books can help sustain us during difficult times. As I write this more than six years later, many of us are confronting unprecedented challenges of sudden physical solitude and social isolation coupled with uncertainty and fear arising from the COVID-19 global pandemic.
This seemed an ideal time to revisit and excerpt a few edited passages from that original post along with an updated list of reading recommendations, hoping it will prompt ideas for how we can use reading for inspiration and comfort.
There is something about books we don’t often consider: books sustain us. Not in the physical sense, like food and water…but books can revive our psyche and spirit through their intrinsic messages of hope, faith or triumph; arouse our intellectual vigor; elicit laughter and tears, or evoke warm memories.
Years ago, I attended a conference where Terry Waite was a featured speaker. In 1987, Waite was the envoy for the Church of England and was taken captive himself when he was negotiating for the release of a group of hostages in Lebanon.
Among the lessons that Waite shared he had learned during that bleak period was how grateful he was for the joy of reading and having read good books earlier in his life. His recall of passages and stories helped him endure his terrible ordeal of almost four years in solitary confinement. He later wrote “Solitary confinement taught me anew the delight and value of books.”
Books can foster empathy and help us get out of our own head, which can enhance our emotional resilience.
Whether you reread an old book or reach for a new one, reading can be a source of strength, inspiration, and offer us precious perspective during times when we need it most…times like today.
I hope you will share your own recommendations with me and others.
What are the books that sustain you?
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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. –Viktor Frankel
Some Suggestions from Readers
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
A Tale of Two Cities
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
Four Quartets
Letters to Sam: A Grandfather’s Lessons on Love, Loss and the Gifts of Life
R.S. Thomas Collected Poems, 1945-1990
Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, a Chorus of Hope
The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness
The Great Divorce
The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
When Things Fall Apart