I think it is impossible not to think while reading and, certainly, many books are capable of making life more pleasant. However, there are many texts that make you think more than others and that help you see things differently. Can a book change your life? Of course. With this Psychology-Online article we will discover together 20 books that make you think, a list of special books. These are very famous texts, true editorial cases of millions of copies, where the people who have read them, very often, have maintained that, afterwards, their life is – in some way – changed. If you are looking for a list of books to read before you die, this is the selection. We will see addictive books, books about life, books that change your life and books that you have to read.
Index
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Here is my secret, which could not be simpler: only with the heart can you see well; The essential is invisible to the eyes.
The Little Prince is the story of the meeting in the middle of the desert between an aviator and a funny little man dressed as a prince who came to Earth from space. However, in this surreal, philosophical and magical book there is much more than a simple friendship.
On the one hand, there is the wisdom of those who look at things with pure eyes, the voice of feelings that speaks the universal language, and a sincere and natural desire for authenticity. Because beauty, when it is not filtered by prejudice, manages to reach the hearts of children, but also that of adults who have lost the ability to truly listen. That’s why The Little Prince is one of those essential books that you have to read.
The Alchemist, Paulo Cohelo
Another book that can change your life is The Alchemist: The Story of an Initiation. In this story, the protagonist Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd who, in search of a dreamed treasure, undertakes that adventurous journey, both real and symbolic, that beyond the Strait of Gibraltar and through the entire North African desert will take him to the Egypt of the pyramids.
And, precisely during the journey, the young man, thanks to the encounter with the old alchemist, will climb all the steps of the sapiential ladder: in his progression on the sand of the desert and, together, in the knowledge of himself, will discover the soul of the world, love and the universal languagehe will learn to speak to the sun and the wind and finally fulfill his personal legend.
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Siddharta is a person who seeks and, above all, tries to live his entire life. Throughout history he passes from experience to experience, from mysticism to sensuality, from philosophical meditation to business life, and he does not stop before any teacher, he does not consider any acquisition definitive, since what must be sought It is the everything, the mysterious everything that is dressed in a thousand changing faces.
In the end, that everything, the wheel of appearances, will return behind the perfect smile of Siddhartha, who repeats the “constant, calm, fine, impenetrableperhaps benign, perhaps mocking, wise, multi-rough smile of Gotama, the Buddha, who himself had seen him hundreds of times with veneration.” Siddhartha is undoubtedly Hesse’s best-known work and a book to reflect.
Juan Salvador Gaviota, Richard Bach
Juan Salvador is a seagull that abandons the mass of common seagulls for whom flying is nothing more than a simple and clumsy means of obtaining food and learns to fly as an act of skill and intelligence, a source of perfection and joy.
It thus becomes a symbol, the ideal guide of those who have the strength to obey your own inner law; from whom he feels a particular pleasure in doing well the things to which he dedicates himself. And with Juan the reader is dragged into an exciting adventure of flight, of pure air, of freedom. Juan Salvador Gaviota is one of the books that marks you.
The end is my beginning, Tiziano Terzani
A Zen monk sits in the silence of his cell, takes a brush and with great concentration makes a closing circle, the last hand gesture on this earth. Tiziano Terzani, knowing that he has reached the end of his journey, speaks to his son Folco about what his life has been and what life is: “If you have understood something, you want to leave it there in a package.” “, he says.
In this way, this book tells us about a lifetime of traveling the world in search of the truth and searching for the meaning of the many things he has done and the many people he has been, he outlines a fresco of the great passions of his time. That is why it is one of the most recommended books.
1984, George Orwell
The action takes place in the near future of the world (the year 1984) in which power is concentrated in three immense superstates: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. At the apex of political power in Oceania is Big Brother, omniscient and infallible, whom no one has seen in person, but of whom great manifestos are visible everywhere.
The Ministry of Truth, where the main character, Smith, works, is tasked with censoring books and newspapers that are not in line with official policy, of altering history and reducing the expressive possibilities of the language. No matter how much the cameras control him, Smith begins to lead a “subversive” existence.
Without a doubt, it is one of the books that is very engaging and makes you think.
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
Seymour Levov is a rich and successful American, and at school he is called “the Swede.” What seems to be expected of him in the fifties is a life of professional success and family joys. Until the contradictions of the Vietnam conflict involve him and his beloved daughter Merry, determined to bring the war home, literally.
American Pastoral is un book about love and hate for America, about the desire to belong to a dream of peace, prosperity and order, about the rejection of the hypocrisy and falsehood hidden in that same dream. A book you have to read.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Laila was born in Kabul on the night of the revolution, in April 1978. She was only two years old when her brothers enlisted in the jihad. That’s why, on the day of her funeral, she finds it difficult to cry. For Laila, the real brother is Tariq, the neighbor’s boy, who has lost a leg in an anti-personnel mine but knows how to defend it from the grievances of his peers: the playmate who teaches him swear words in Pashtu and every night gives him good night with light signals from the window.
Mariam and Laila couldn’t be more different, but the war will unite them unpredictably. Of the intertwining of two destinies, a story that traces the history of a country in search of peace, where friendship and love continue to seem the only salvation.
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
In this novel, the protagonist is the shadow: the shadow from which each of us tries to escape, but which then traps us. But what to do when your hidden part ends up in the body of the person you love? Perhaps there is nothing left but to abandon the peaks of the pier and set sail towards madness.
And what is the madness? That of finding oneself in Hell without having sinned? Or rely on an unstructured system for care, that is based on technique, that does not go in depth and does not ask too many questions? In this novel time seems to mark life, but time is not here.
Life has a magical flavor and in life there is something stronger than all emotions and all systems, a love, something against death: something that does not die.
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Published in 1942, Abroad It is a classic of contemporary literature and other essential books to read. The protagonist is Meursault, a modest employee who lives in Algiers in a state of indifference, of estrangement from himself and the world.
One day, after a fight, Meursault inexplicably kills an Arab. He is arrested and surrenders, totally impassive, to the inevitable consequences of the event – the trial and the death sentence – without looking for excuses, defenses or lies. Meursault is a “absurd” heroand his brilliant awareness of what is real allows him to reach, through exasperated logic, the truth of being and feeling.
Story of a seagull and the cat that taught him to fly, Luis Sepúlveda
Count the adventures of zorbasa “big, black, fat” cat, whose unwavering sense of honor leads him one day to commit to raising a seagull chick.
His mother, a beautiful seagull, trapped by a wave of oil spilled into the sea by a stranded ship, leaves Zorbas as a pledge, just before dying, the egg she has just laid. Zorbas, who is a cat of his word, will fulfill his two promises: will not only raise the chick, but will teach it to fly. One of the best books that make you think.
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
After eighty-six days in which he has not been able to catch anything, old Santiago finds the strength to return to the sea: this new fishing trip renews his apprenticeship as a fisherman and seals his symbolic initiation. In desperate search for a giant Caribbean swordfish.
In the fight almost with bare hands against sharks that one piece at a time they tear off the prey, leaving only the symbol of victory and the curse finally defeated. Santiago establishes, perhaps for the first time, a true brotherhood with the irrepressible forces of nature. And, above all, he finds within himself the sign and the presence of his braverythe justification of a whole life.
The unbearable lightness of being, Milan Kundera
This novel shows us that in life everything we choose and appreciate as light soon reveals its unsustainable weight. Perhaps only the liveliness and mobility of intelligence escape this condemnation: the qualities with which the novel is written, which belong to another universe than that of living.
Those who are heavy cannot help but fall madly in love with those who fly lightly in the air., between the fantastic and the possible: while the light ones are rejected by their peers and dragged by “compassion” towards bodies and souls possessed by heaviness. This is how it happens in the novel: Tomás loves Tereza, Tereza loves Tomás: Franz loves Sabina, Sabina (at least for a few months) loves Franz.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Sal Paradise, a young New Yorker with literary ambitions, meets Dean Moriarty, a western boy. Upon leaving juvie, Dean begins to wander challenging the rules of bourgeois life, always looking for intense experiences. Dean decides to go west and Sal catches up with him; It is the first of a series of trips that give a new dimension to Sal’s life. Dean’s continuous escape has in itself a heroic characteristic, Sal cannot help but admire him, even when feverish, in Mexico City, he is abandoned. for his friend, who returns to the United States.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
In a town in the “deep” south of the United States, the honest lawyer…