20 books that changed my life
"i wasn't the same person after i read these books": my life-changing books & convincing you to read them
If you ever ask me why I love reading so much, I will tell you to read any of these books. Then, you’ll understand.
i'll give you the sun by jandy nelson
This is the only young adult book that has made it to my list. I read this on my eighteenth birthday while furiously cramming for a test, bravely fighting the worst bout of senioritis the world had ever seen (written verbatim on my spring semester report card by a teacher). Here is what I wrote as my review on my first birthday as an adult, almost seven years ago:
“Some things just remind me that it is such a wonderful and happy thing to be alive. Maybe it's because I read this today, on my 18th birthday (I’m an adult now!), but this book just made me so ridiculously happy to be here, eighteen years later, despite everything.
This had absolutely no elements of magical realism or fantasy, but it felt even more magical than it would have if it had been one. Jandy Nelson's writing is unique in the way that it's lyrical and poetic but not too much. It felt electrically charged because I could feel every word permeating my skin. It was just so genuine and heartwarming and grounded and just made my heart hurt and ache and expand in the best way.
What a magical way to start my adult years. Hopefully, the rest of them will feel the same way I felt while I read this book. If not, a reminder for future me: take a deep breath. Feel the soles of my feet touching the ground, listen to the sound of my heartbeat. Find solace and appreciation in the quiet days that feel meaningless and during long nights that feel especially lonely. It’s going to be okay.”
the waves by virginia woolf
I read this back in 2020 during the pandemic, when everything felt claustrophobic and trapped; in reading The Waves I found myself floating alongside the dreamy prose, like the ebb and flow of water. I felt unanchored and boundless, at least for a few hours, and it was such a kindness. This was the first novel where it didn’t feel like I was reading words at all. Woolf’s language echoes and reverberates within me, extricating emotions I didn’t even know I had. While I love To The Lighthouse almost equally, The Waves has an intimacy and vulnerability that her other books do not, woven through the narratives of six childhood friends, grieving the loss of another friend.
It is difficult to try and explain what this book is in the same manner as I would with others. What I found most profound and life-changing about the book is the somewhat reluctant cognizance that we are a part of a cycle, a chorus, a rhythm interconnected to those of nature around us. A brilliant portrait of growing up and getting older, of friendship and isolation, of sunrises and sunsets.
in the dream house by carmen maria machado
This was one of the easiest five stars I have ever given a book. Machado’s writing transcends what words can describe. In the Dream House is unlike anything else. The writing is beautiful, raw, and haunting, and stylistically innovative. A triumph. The memoir is written in a way that resembles a manifestation of real memories—fragmented, dreamlike, hazy vignettes, not quite poems or lyrics or prose but somewhere in between.
Machado limns the architecture of the dream house with devastating vulnerability and a propulsive cadence. She constructs this house and then tears it back down; she lives in it as its resident and then haunts it all at once. This is not straightforward like a conventional memoir. However, the overarching tone of her narrative, paired with the short vignettes, feels less like baroque excess and more like intricate puzzle pieces to piece together.
Machado’s ability to speak to the readers beyond the pages and toss the stone into the archival silence makes it feel like the loudest scream I’ve ever heard. Like one of the chapter titles, this book is an unexpected kindness. I could talk forever about the more grounded side of this memoir—the brilliant research, the usually overlooked conversation of abuse in queer relationships, and the social commentary on power dynamics and politics. It truly felt like a privilege to even be able to read such a wonderful piece of work.
self help by lorrie moore
Jo March (2019): “Women…”
Self Help, although a short read, is a mighty one. shrouded in Moore’s signature razor-sharp wit and humor, the stories are simply moving, gut-wrenching, and brilliant. Her writing style has a unique balance between clinical and lyrical and it brought a muted sort of melancholy—the kind that creeps up on you and then eventually overwhelms you without realizing it. The prose is never too light yet never too solemn. While some parts were so viscerally devastating (What Is Seized absolutely broke me), Moore’s darkly funny narrative makes it bearable and entertaining. Many of the short stories are ironically written in a ‘self-help’ format. None of them are ‘helpful’.
At the core of Self Help are stories about lonely women. None of them have fully formed character profiles; we intrude on their lives during the most pivotal and vulnerable moments when their lives are on the precipice of changing forever. A woman becomes the other woman, another deals with terminal cancer and mortality, a third battles depression. Of mothers and daughters, of daughters and mothers.
“A series of pictures here of mothers and daughters switching places- women switching places to take care of one another. You, the daughter, becoming the mother, the Ceres, and she the daughter, kidnapped to hell, and you roam the earth to find her, to mourn her, leaving the trees and grain to wither, having no peace, you have no peace.”
play it as it lays by joan didion
I know that Joan Didion is more known for her essays (The White Album, Slouching Towards Bethlehem), but Play It As It Lays is arguably the star of her bibliography. Devastatingly nihilistic and fast-paced, Play It as It Lays begins at a psychiatric hospital, where Maria, the main character, is institutionalized. The postmodern classic follows along this line as it depicts Maria’s mental spiral into self destruction, drugs, and apathy.
Maria’s life is bleak and complicated. Her acting career is almost nonexistent. her husband left her. She lives and depends on barbiturates. She is terrifyingly cynical and fatalistic, showing brilliantly through the hypnotic and almost hallucinatory vignettes in which the plot is told. Reading this book was bleak and harrowing, especially through the eyes of Maria, whose mind is submerged in layers of numbness and detachment. She dissociates by driving aimlessly on California freeways, and her introspection is both claustrophobic and detached. In this vein, Play It As It Lays depicts not only one woman’s spiral but also the counterculture and ennui of an entire generation in postwar America.
Didion keeps readers captivated by changing the setting from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and finally to the Mojave Desert. Although the plot is loosely tied together and at times confusing, Didion’s signature sharp wit and beautiful writing kept my eyes glued to the pages. She makes Maria’s story and narrative (as well as other characters’) so evocative with her typical eloquent and visually stimulating prose. This entire book just felt like a kick in the gut for me and has haunted me since I finished reading its last pages a few years ago.
beautiful world, where are you by sally rooney
Conversations with Friends is my personal favorite Rooney but her third novel was the one that changed my life. I bought this book for six people in the past twelve months because I truly think it’s almost impossible to finish reading this book and feel unaffected by its enormity. Beautiful World, Where Are You is the literary manifestation of a Hopper painting. Seemingly antithetical, this book is lovely melancholy—a late summer breeze on the precipice of autumn.
The novel explores the relationships and dynamics between four people: Alice, Eileen, Simon, and Felix. The characters attempt to find the meaning of life through internal self-reflection and introspection, but also various external outlets: relationships, religion, jobs, family. Through Alice and Eileen’s emails, Rooney explores this on a macroscopic scale and how these struggles are also visible in society. I loved how human all of these four characters were throughout the novel. They simultaneously crave and reject romantic intimacy and continuously question their own emotions and intentions. They are also excellent at self-analysis (although it is often their downfall)—all of this reflects how we behave in real life. I loved how well she articulated these feelings in her novel.
Ironically, her characters do not believe in happy endings. They chase fleeting and elusive moments of happiness that are maybe illusions, but isn’t that enough?