Thanks all for your replies to my post asking about good rock biogs. It lead to me reading the Dylan Jones Bowie biog and enjoying the online extracts available of Deke Leonard’s writing.
However I’m planning to set aside the rock biog for a little while and engage myself in uplifting, positive, life enhancing and knowledge imparting reading – something a bit worthy but not too challenging that I will feel better for having read. I would like to hear from you about one book or author that you have read that has made you feel more knowledgeable and better informed about this world, or just felt better about the whole business of being a human. I’m open to fiction and non-fiction, all genres and would be happy to hear about any ‘self-help’ books that you have read that ticked these boxes.
As a pointer, books that I have enjoyed along these lines are the works of Primo Levi, Charles Bukowski (Am I weird in finding his work uplifting?) and Bill Bryson. The last book I really enjoyed was Amy Liptrot’s ‘The Outrun.’
Looking forward to your suggestions and thanking you in advance
Two somewhat different suggestions.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Is pretty good for blowing the intellectual cobwebs away and giving you an enlightened sense of context about this whole life thing.
And And When Did You Last See Your Father, Blake Morrison’s memoir of his relationship with his father, is life-affirming to a tee.
Trinity by Leon Uris. 400 year story of an Irish family. Semi fictional and a great read. Death, famine, hunger, troubles … like an upbeat Angela’s Ashes.
“Absolute Beginners,” set as it is in the immediate post-Windrush era, is arguably more pertinent now than it was just 4 or 5 years ago.
It has a quite unexpected, yet life-affirming, final two or three pages.
Highly unlikely that Fatboy Cameron, Boris Johnson, Rees-Smug or our current Prime Minister have ever read it … what greater recommendation does one need to dive in?
I’ve just finished James O’Brien’s How to Be Right in a World Gone Wrong. He’s a phone in host on LBC, and unusually for someone or that calling he’s an evidence based liberal rather than a ranting right winger. His book is made up easily digestible chapters on Brexit, ‘PC gone mad’ and so on and uses transcripts from his show to demonstrate how those people who drive you nuts with their reactionary bpviewsmon Islam or whatever are showing opinion based on deliberately manufactured media lies rather than analytical fault, and how they can (sometimes) be made to realise this by persistently asking the right question rather than just disagreeing with them.
I’m getting that for Christmas (probably from Waterstones in Chelmsford, now it’s bought Foyles). As I listen to his podcast pretty much daily, I probably know most of his arguments, but it’s a refreshing, as you say evidence-based alternative to the stale, unthinking opinions there are so frequently expressed on the BBC. I mean, Tim Martin as a credible voice? Come on!
I’ll be taking the copy I read back to Chelmsford library on Monday, the city centre one on the lower ground floor of County Hall, if that’s any help.
Andrew Marr’s history of modern Britain. The great thing is it puts all the half remembered names and events into proper context. An easy but interesting read.
A History of Modern Britain https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1509839666/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_FDnfCbBQF28GH
Life affirming? I assume it doesn’t cover Brexit…
No it came out just before. But if you want to understand where we are and where we might end up it’s interesting to understand where we’ve been.
Dadland by Keggie Carew. Fascinating, deeply moving account by his daughter of her father’s gung-ho life and descent into dementia. Life-affirming isn’t the half of it.
Yes, Dadland is superb. Very moving.
I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re after but “A prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving did it for me.
I really like novels that are gripping small, personal stories in their own right but also teach you a lot about the wider historical context and background in which they’re set.
For example:
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (Tazmania at the turn of the century)
At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill (The 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland)
Star Of The Sea by Joseph O’Connor (Post famine Irish emigration)
Small Island by Andrea Levy (Post war Jamaican immigration)
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (modern Greece)
Captain Correlli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (modern Greece)
The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)
Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh (Gypsy life in modern Britain)
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (Ireland)
Wild Swans by Jung Chang (Chinese history)
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (American Indian history)
Dee Brown is interesting., and I speak as one who has plenty of his books.
I’m not sure I’d bucket him as “uplifting” at all. Passionate, knowledgeable and full of fire, yes. Life affirming? Not so much.
(And hopelessly and wonderfully one eyed on Native American history)
Yes, I kind of ignored the “uplifting” bit and focused on the “made you feel more knowledgeable and better informed about this world” bit of Stan’s OP. Mind you, Stan’s OP itself already made me feel more knowledgable. And his anticipatory gratitude uplifted me a bit, too.
Thanks, Gary for your kind and helpful comments. As an introvert and a bit of a natural nihilist I have previously suffered from depression which I have successfully kept at bay for the last few years by a combination of meaningful work, exercise, nature contact and trying to keep a positive attitude. However, this is a constant daily effort and I can find the winter months gruelling and it necessary to put in extra effort. Hence this shout out for life affirming books.
I am already looking forward to my new year reading so thanks too, to all the rest of you who have posted. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Thanks for the tip on The Outrun. Never heard of it, will check it out. Got so many books lined up and so many distractions. And I would really love to get round to rereading every book I’ve mentioned. Must make a concerted effort over Xmas.
If you’re after self help books that may lighten your load or give you a new perspective, here are a few I found useful:
– I’m OK you’re OK – the classic for understanding your interactions with people and whether they’re healthy or improvable
– Healing the Shame that Binds You – superb insight into the effects of early, even ‘happy’ life upon us all
– The Crossroads between Should and Must – engaging picture book that helps you explore whether you’re living entirely the right life
– Gifts Differing – understanding your personality type. This changed my life at 27 when I realised – at last – that I wasn’t entirely a freak and that many of my weird instincts and ways were characteristics of an identifiable type. It also helped me understand other types and why I drove so many of them nuts.
– a good NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) book. It changed Paul McKenna’s life, but don’t let that put you off. Most books by Richard Bandler or even a well reviewed NLP primer (which is basically the guts behind every McKenna book). I have never found CBT helpful and whilst I signed up to all the ‘get some exercise’, ‘get a pet’, ‘SAD’ light etc diktats (fucking dog dying after 3 years wasn’t in the script), eventually it became clear that a large part of my struggle was my lack of any kind of identified purpose. NLP was a useful tool in discovering some kind of purpose and it just possibly could be something you might appreciate too.
I’ve read dozens more, but these have been the most useful, at least for me. Hope you find something that helps. It’s a Wonderful Life repeat time soon for me. My kids will be overjoyed…
‘Papillon’ by Henri Charriere is an obvious one. A Montmartre gangster is, it seems, framed for the murder of a pimp in the 1930;s. Sentenced to life on a South American penal colony.
It’s a classic and long known now to be highly embellished by the author. Even so even the bare bones of it given the circumstances and the fact that he did eventually escape are inspiring enough.
Way better than the film.
I watched last year’s remake recently. Not as bad as I expected but totally pointless, and Charlie Hunnam steps out of his cell after five years’ solitary confinement looking remarkably similar to most people’s idea of a Hollywood film star and sex god dolled up for the red carpet.
Re: crap film of “Papillon”
Yes, they could’ve started by making the film in the language that the original book/events took place in. I can’t stand that: when books not originally in English are simply turned into films in English, sometimes with the actors in question putting on comic French/German/Spanish etc. accents. Do they think that English-speaking people can’t read subtitles or something? For exhibit A, see:
The House of the Spirits
Alone in Berlin
The Reader
Alive (the film of the book mentioned by Bartleby above)
Not a case of “can’t read subtitles”, more a case of “won’t”.
I know quite a few people, mostly of the Civilian persuasion but not all, who will not choose to watch anything with subtitles. To them, subtitles must seem an immediate negative aspect.
I imagine that for producers of movies intended for an English-speaking mass audience, subtitles are considered to be box office poison and so are much less likely to be made.
Rather than acting as a distraction I find that subtitles actually make you concentrate more on a film. You have to.
Also, possibly just the seeing of a lot of subtitled films makes the viewer better at reading them.
Amen.
Have you tried listening to dialogue these days? All that sighing and grunting, not exactly Shakespeare is it?
Mind you my taste in films is pretty specialist.
In the pre-Internet age, any late night TV film with subtitles carried with it the frissonic prospect of nudity. So much so that I believe a Pavlovian reaction “down there” is umavoidable in the over 45 demographic, even when a smart TV accidentally subtitles Michael Fabricant.
Books out this year that I have found life-enhancing are:
The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson – writing about her nursing life of 20 years with profound humanity
I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O’Farrell – all about her brushes with mortality whilst being very uplifting and fiercely proclaiming the message of her surviving “I am I am I am.”
With The End in Mind – by Dr Kathryn Mannix. The last one may not exactly fit your criteria but I still want to recommend it. Kathryn was a Palliative Care Consultant working in hospitals and hospices and writes stories of her patients and how she worked with them at the end of their lives. It is deeply moving, funny too, very well written and leaves you with a better grasp of how it is to live and die. In doing so, it does a lot to dispel the fear of the dying process. To anyone who is facing these issues with either themselves or their families it is invaluable.
I can endorse both the Watson and Mannix books. They are deeply moving and actually very positive.
I haven’t read the O’Farrell one but if Carolina is recommending it I’m buying.
Maggie O’Farrell hasn’t written a duff word in all the novels of hers I’ve read – one of my all time favourites. Her husband, Patrick Sutcliffe is a pretty nifty novelist. I was collecting books by both of them before I realized they were married.
I haven’t read I am I am I am yet, but I remember I wanted to, after reading an excerpt and recognising her amazing intimate style is still there when writing about her own life as when writing fiction. Thanks for the reminder, oh @Carolina – I’ll ask my sister for it for Xmas – she wanted a present idea for me.
Oh another – “Touching the void” by Joe Simpson about his survival of a high altitude climbing accident which is harrowing in the extreme but life affirming in his determination to get through it. After reading it Mark Ellen commented “I promise I will never complain about anything ever again”.
Now that is a life affirming tome. In the same vein, Piers Paul Read’s Alive, recounting the story of the survival of a Chilean rugby team and others after their plane crashed in the Andes is extraordinarily life affirming.
Yes that’s excellent too. I remember it being in the news. Cannibalism. “Into thin air” by Jon Krakauer is also superb.
Yes, seconded – three corkers in the life affirming stakes.
Touching The Void and Into Thin Air are both great books, though the latter is more ‘there but for the grace of God’, rather than life-affirming for me. Krakauer’s ‘Into The Wild’ is also really worth a read, too.
I remember reading the most famous section (let’s call it the one with the rope) in a camp chair on a blazing hot August day at Cropredy, and feeling deep chills flow through me in wave after wave.
Mrs Strut and I rarely agree on anything literary, but when we do friends and relatives tend to concur that it’s from the top drawer. From that (short) list, And bearing in mind you wanted “life-enhancing and knowledge-imparting” I would suggest:
Julian Barnes: Arthur & George (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/26/fiction.shopping)
Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (https://waterbloggedbooks.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/time-and-chance-happens-to-them-all/)
Angela’s Ashes made quite an impression. My mother was prone to a bit of a drama generally but she didn’t really talk much about her childhood. She was effectively the oldest of 5 children and the hardship was very much along the lines described in the book. Her father was a violent drunk – often no money for the family after a post-payday visit to the pub. This was not a problem as far as he was concerned – and acted like he was the only breadwinner – when in reality the women of the family earned the money that fed the household. My mother worked full time in a textile factory from the age of 15. My aunt told me she could barely read more than a few pages at a time because it was basically their life.
I met my grandfather once – in hospital, just before he died. I think I was kept from him (we all were) as I only ever saw Granny when we were kids. When I think about my upbringing compared to my mother’s, as described in Angela’s Ashes – the progress in one generation (pre and post war) is astounding. The main character’s obsession is with food. He describes with fondness mealtimes of only bread, jam and tea as if life can’t get much better than that.
So yes – Angela’s Ashes – makes you grateful for the progress.
Cheers for that BC. One for me to order I think.
The one book I’ve read that I think meets the OP criteria: uplifting, positive, life enhancing and knowledge imparting reading – something a bit worthy but not too challenging that I will feel better for having read
would be One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fuokoka. Essentially a book about farming/gardening, it’s also a guide to a life of simplicity and wonder.
Some fiction that I greatly admired in recent years:
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Him by John Connolly
Life After Life / A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Bringing it all back home by Ian Clayton. It made me cry,laugh, think and above all reaffirm my love of life. He is extremely funny, very passionate and with a deeply ingrained sense of compassion for his fellow human beings. Would love to have a pint with this guy.
Just brought a new book out ‘it’s the Beer Talking’ when to its launch so had a beer with him.
Splendid chap.
All of these have enhanced mine.
Pavane – Keith Roberts. I’ve mentioned this before on book threads. It began life as a series of linked short stories, and concerns a Britain where Queen Elizabeth the First is assassinated, and the Armada succeeds. The Catholic Church keeps the country – and indeed Europe – as feudal lands. But the land is not ours with just this one twist of occupation – it is a land where faeries and other mythological figures exist. Most of the narrative takes place in Dorset, and Roberts conjures a wonderful picture of the landscape. A great winter read.
Love On A Branch Line – John Hadfield. Another fantasy, of the early 1950s. As light and fluffy as that light and fluffy dessert made with whipped jelly and evaporated milk. Artist, civil servant and bore Jasper Pye is sent to close down the Department of Output Statistics in Norfolk, a government department dispersed there in wartime. Jasper discovers the Department has gone native in a major way, becoming the Duke of Flamborough’s property maintenance department at Arcady Hall. It is not a spoiler to say everything turns out well in the end, (Sir) Jasper being seduced by most (and eventually spurned by all) of the Earl’s daughters in the process, but not being ejected from Arcady on his own, and certainly no longer a bore. This was made into a lovely series by David Nobbs, who must have had the easiest adaptation job in history.
The Night Watch – Sir Terry Pratchett. Dark, but very uplifting. Blasted into his own past, when the City Guard were not the force they are in Vimes’ present, will Sam Vimes be able to make sure the future happens, being his teenage-self’s mentor? Uplifting because the law is ultimately upheld; Vimes might be good, but has to fight extremely dirty. I have never looked at a steel ruler quite the same since first reading. Or indeed a bottle of fizzy pop.
Pretty much any Anne Tyler book.
Lot of truth in that, @dai
Great subject! I’m sure I’ll refer to this thread for a long time in choosing books.
When I read the term ‘life-enhancing book’ one trilogy I read recently instantly came to mind. I’m not a major science fiction reader but I dip my toe in now and then. The main character of this trilogy is one of the most inspiring characters I’ve ever met and is, without a doubt, the most unusual character I’ve ever encountered.
The trilogy is called Imperial Radch. Publisher Weekly said about the main character, Breq:
“Breq’s struggle for meaningful justice in a society designed to favor the strong is as engaging as ever.”
Scientific American said the author:
“…..investigates what it means to be human, to be an individual and to live in a civilized society.”
This story is set thousands of years in the future, but revolves around issues human society has always struggled with. And life-enhancing it is.
I don’t know anyone who has read this strange story so I’d love to hear from you if you have!
The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy- I don’t need to say why do I? No book has enriched my life as much as that one.
The Code Of The Woosters – PG Wodehouse. His best book. And he is pretty much the best writer who ever lived.
Anything by WG Sebald. But I especially recommend The Rings Of Saturn. It’s a tool kit to rebuild the world around you.
Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt. A near genius on the brink of death tries to compress what he knows. Does a good job.
Flights – Olga Tocharczuk Out this year. Work of sublime genius.
Bartleby – Herman Melville – Miles better than Moby Dick. Kafka before Kafka.
Americana- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi – Seriously good. Will change your mind.
Read James Joyce. Samuel Beckett. Leo Tolstoy. Muriel Spark. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pretty much anything.
What do I have that’s good, and uplifting and life affirming…?
I may be out on my own, but I always find something enriching in Zen ATAOMM.
I thoroughly and unreservedly enjoyed William Waldegrave’s autobiography, ‘A Different Kind of Weather”. A proper, decent Tory, written with insight and humor.
For light fluff with a slight edge, I enjoy the Phryne Fisher mysteries. For even darker with a real soul, Anne Cleves Shetland series is wonderful. Caveat, after one of the books, I actually shouted at the author.
Kay Carmichael’s ‘It takes a lifetime to become yourself’ is wonderful. Similarly any of Kenneth Roy’s biographies of Scotland.
Jeff Kluger on Apollo 8; I went to the service at the National Cathedral (hey fact fans: only national cathedral to have a gargoyle of Darth Vader!) commemorating Apollo 8, with a reading by Captain Lovell. The mission that saved 1968.
My favorite book of the last 12 months? ‘Horses don’t fly: the memoir of a cowboy who became a WW1 Ace’ by Frederick Libby is just brilliant. It’s a story that should be a movie, and it’s all true. It’s written in what I imagine to be the author’s voice. Wry, humorous, sentimental, it’s an incredible book about an incredible man. If you only get one book, get this one.
Steven Pinker – Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophesies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In 75 jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature—tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking—which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.
Olive is a strange character – in some situations she’s cantankerous, difficult, selfish and thoughtless. Yet other times filled with good sense and empathy. There’s one scene in which she confronts a young man who is beset with bone deep depression. She recognises his condition and his likely mindset – and calls him on it. It’s a jarring, heartfelt moment – one of many in the book.
In my mid 30s, I went to an evening class to study for an English A level (a subject I had abandoned in my teens – a decision that always rankled with me). When confronted with Shakespeare again it was with the familiar feeling on bewilderment – this may as well be written in a different language. But I through perseverance (and a couple of brilliant tutors) I scales fell and I learned to enjoy Antony & Cleopatra. So there’s a love that knows no bounds, loyalty of soldiers, political machinations and military tactics – all wrapped up in gorgeous language.
And it took me ages to get along with Keats. I still don’t care for his longer works – but the odes are lovely. Autumn, Nightingale and Grecian Urn are filled with sensual language and discussions on the nature of mortality, unrequited love and of nature itself.