A Reader’s Favorite Books

Back in March, Tim wrote about eight terrific titles that have made a big impact on him, and have helped to shape Soul Shelter’s twin themes of fortune and fulfillment.

Readers were invited to email us with comments on the books that have proven most important in their own lives, for a chance to win a signed copy of The Prosperous Peasant.

Our prize winner is Soul Shelter reader Nadine Warner, who sent us the following eloquent recommendations of four unconventional and intriguing titles.

Says Nadine:

“This list may be colored by the fact that I read stories to children. But I think that who we are is influenced by our early years, especially the books that we read and that are read to us. I’m an avid reader — always have been — but when I think about the books that have truly shaped my outlook on life, I find myself going back to these books. Maybe it’s because I remember them within the bliss of my childhood. Or maybe it’s because the messages are just simple and timeless.

Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus: The quest for transformation, to “know thyself,” to think independently, to conserve … it’s all in there. In the author’s own words, “a tale-partly about life, partly about revolution and lots about hope for adults and others (including caterpillars who can read).”

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle: A book about other worlds, the importance of family, the balance of good and evil, how to go beyond appearances. Time and again I come back to this scene (and I read the book over 30 years ago!). The Beatles were right: Love is all you need.

An excerpt:

With the last vestige of consciousness she [Meg] jerked her mind and body. Hate was nothing that IT didn’t have. IT knew all about hate.”You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs. Whatsit!” she screamed.”Mrs. Whatsit hates you,” Charles Wallace said.

And that was where IT made ITs fatal mistake for as Meg said, automatically, “Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that’s what she told me, that she loves me,” suddenly she knew.

She knew!

Love.

That was what she had that IT did not have.

She had Mrs. Whatsit’s love, and her father’s, and her mother’s, and the real Charles Wallace’s love, and the twins’, and Aunt Beast’s.

And she had her love for them.

But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?

If she could give love to IT, perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness, and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was too much to ask of her, but she could not do it.

But she could love Charles Wallace…

…Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.

Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love.

Flatland, by Edwin Abbott: Sure, it’s a book that works on multiple levels (no pun intended!), but before I encountered this book about a two-dimensional square’s first contact with a three-dimensional object, I hadn’t given much thought to what geometry and physics could teach me about the nature of reality (this was grade school, after all!). Yet now, every time I hit a dilemma, I come back to this book to find out if, maybe, there’s something that I am not seeing, that I am not yet capable of seeing because I haven’t opened my mind to the possibility.

Earth Child, by Sharon Webb: The first book of an admittedly obscure Young Adult science fiction trilogy in which humans achieve immortality at the price of creativity. The process only works on children, so they are given a choice-live forever (my interpretation: become a god), or pursue the arts (my interpretation: channel God/The Divine/etc). As a creative type, I always come back to the idea of the arts being a calling, and recognize the sacrifices that we choose to make in the service of our craft.”

Many thanks to Nadine on her wonderful entry! Her copy of The Prosperous Peasant is on its way.