22 books all humans should read

I curated this list from my adventures in reading, though it is neither exhaustive nor decolonized. It’s a list that spans the last decade – a decade of opposites and extremes, of vast pendulations of self, love, body, motherhood, grief, spirit, spitting anger, and oceans of salty tears.

The list has been evolving in my thoughts for some time. I refer to each book in conversation, in teachable moments with my daughter, as instruction or medicine for my clients (a few on the list were client recommendations, which fills my heart so).

Two questions formed the criteria for the list: 1) Did the book move, impact, change, hold, or teach me in a profound or novel way? 2) Do I think the book offers something profound or novel to offer most humans? The books traverse several genres, from memoir to spiritual; medical to poetry; science to mental health. I purposefully did not include fiction, though some works fulfilled the first criteria, I could not resolve the second for the fiction titles (Circe, The Red Tent, and The Alchemist would be close contenders).

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." - James Baldwin 

1.     All About Love (bell hooks)

2.     Belonging (Toko Pa Turner)

3.     Between the World And Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

4.     Burnout (Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA)

5.     Call of the Wild (Kimberly Ann Johnson)

6.     Come As You Are (Emily Nagoski Ph.D.)

7.     Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth (Randi Hutter Epstein M.D.)

8.     Hello, Goodbye (Day Schildkret)

9.     How To Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan)

10. I don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage (Susan Squire)

11. My Grandmother’s Hands (Resma Menakem)

12. Nobody’s Victim (Carrie Goldberg, Esq.)

13. Pause, Rest, Be (Octavia F. Raheem)

14. Quit Like A Woman (Holly Whitaker)

15. Sex At Dawn (Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá)

16. Talking With Strangers (Malcolm Gladwell)

17. That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You to Seek ( Cheri Huber and June Shiver)

18. The Art of War (Sun Tzu)

19. The Body Keeps the Score ( Bessel van der Kolk M.D.)

20. The Woman’s Anatomy of Arousal (Sheri Winston)

21. Wintering (Katherine May)

22. Yes Means Yes (Jessica Valenti)