I love stories. It seems that I always have.
Even my spiritual heritage lives there. My first experiences with faith came from teachers who shared stories from the Bible. Not just lessons. Stories that helped us understand them and remember them.
Then as a young girl, a librarian invited me into the world of other books, and I’ve never left.
This week is one that in the past I’ve tried to just get through without fanfare. It’s my birthday week. I’m sure many of you can relate to what I mean. We grow up excited to be getting older until we realize that we are. Then we want to slow down our own aging, just as we used to want to slow it down for our children.
But here I am at this juncture, and this year it feels different because this checkpoint is one where I am fully appreciating the gift of it.
I will tell you right up front that this post will be longer than most I’ve written because, in writing this message, so much surfaced that seemed important to share. I hope, though, that you will read it to the end because I believe that somewhere in what I’m sharing, you will find your own story sneaking in there and you’ll also find, once again, a reason to celebrate you.
Not surprisingly, I’m sure, I decided to approach this from a place that I cherish. Books. So as my Dad used to say to us, seemingly every Sunday afternoon, let’s take a ride and see what’s waiting for us.
This is the story of a life told through the books
and the people who arrived at just the right time.
Let me begin by saying how I see birthdays now began on my 59th birthday. My oldest granddaughter was being a bit cheeky (lovingly though) when she reminded me that it really was the start of my 60th year. It felt a bit like a cold plunge in the moment. But there was, in fact, wisdom in that observation. Something that frequently happens with her.
So this year, it’s my 71st birthday. But really, I’m stepping into my 72nd year. I love that shift.
Writing this has been an excavation of those years through the lens of how I got here, specific to the books I’ve read and the people I’ve met. We’ve all heard that sentiment – where we will be in the next five years or ten years will be determined by the books we read and the people we meet.
But it’s also true in retrospect. It’s also true that where we are in this moment is because of the same influences.
So let’s get started.
Let me begin by saying that I have a feeling that a librarian who once put a book into the hands of a fourth-grade girl would smile if she knew where that simple act eventually led.
Since that moment, I have read thousands – truly thousands of books over the course of my life. I decided to do a bit of rudimentary research and found that I’ve purchased over 2000 books since 2005 alone from Amazon – just to give some perspective.
I was already fifty years old by then.
But don’t be too alarmed – we’re not going to talk about all of them. This is about the ones that shaped me in some significant way. To give myself some guardrails and to save this from becoming a book on its own, I decided to limit myself to seventy-one books worthy of having a place in that roster.
There are three more that sit above those that I’ll mention later, but for now, let’s get started with those seventy-one.
This is not going to be a chronological list because I’d end up repeating myself on some things, but I am going to start with where my reading journey began: fiction. With stories.
I’ve mentioned the Bible stories, but beyond that, let’s just look at a few that even now have stayed with me.
First up takes us back to that librarian. My elementary school didn’t have its own library. We were just down the street, barely the equivalent of a city block from our local library, so that’s what we used. Once a week we would all walk together to the library. But for some reason, I never took any books home. My fascination at the time was music, and I preferred reading music back then.
But my piano teacher lived just across from the library. So another walk each week was to the library to wait for my piano lesson, then I would cross the street for that. And on one of those days, the librarian decided to reach out to me and ask about what I might like to read. I honestly didn’t know, but she thought she had a possibility for me.
She placed a book in my hands titled Sue Barton, Student Nurse, written by Helen Dore Boylston. She recognized I was more mature than most of my classmates and thought I would enjoy the story. And I did. In fact, I loved it. But it also introduced me to character-based stories, or chapter books, as we now call them.
There were seven in that series, and I still remember every single one of them. In fact, one of them included a story about when Sue Barton had to have emergency surgery to have her appendix removed. When I went through the same thing when I was twelve, I wasn’t afraid. I already knew what to expect.
Later in life, I shared that story with one of my team members, and for my birthday that year, they found an old copy of that book, complete with the library envelope and card still inside, and gifted that to me. It remains one of the most treasured books in my library.
Other books and series followed that. I later came to enjoy C.S. Lewis and his mythical and magical worlds, and I can still remember listening as a teacher read to us the magnificent tales in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
For a long time, though, fiction fell away for me. I did read some, but it wasn’t the same. It was more entertainment or escape. And then I discovered Rosamund Pilcher. Her book The Shell Seekers remains one of my favorites.
Here’s what is remarkable to me about that one: I read that book in my 30s. The main character, Penelope Keeling, was in her 60s. But for some reason, I identified with her.
When I look at my life and how it has unfolded, what I see is that many of the traits I so admired in that character in that season of her life are now mine. It is as if that became a road map for me to follow. It’s one of those books where you really wish the story was true and that you could go find the characters and become friends.
After that, I was a faithful reader and devoured everything she wrote, including all of her short stories. It also introduced me to a new part of the world where I would later travel and feel like I’d already been there.
A few others worth mentioning here are the book Straight by Dick Francis; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows; and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.
Dick Francis became another prolific writer who seemed to always have something just right for all the Friday nights I was a single mom who needed some escape. But his book Straight told the story of two brothers, one of whom kept a journal that ended up being the key to the mystery. That stayed with me and, not surprisingly, turned me into a journal writer myself.
The other two demonstrate how people often come before the book. A dear friend of mine gifted the second one on that list to me and said I would be delighted with it, and I was. I’ve gifted it to others many times as well, but what I remember most is how it deepened a friendship across a distance because of a shared love of books. He’s gone now, but the books we shared remain, and I think of him every time I see them on my shelf.
But the last one (A Man Called Ove) is one of my favorites because my oldest granddaughter introduced it to me. We shared a love of books and had many conversations about them, but this time, she found the book and recommended it to me. What I remember most was her delight when I loved it. There was something affirming to her that she had given me the gift of knowing me. We’ve both read everything he’s written, and his work will forever be linked for me to those moments with her.
There are two more in this category that are more contemporary. A dear friend, Kathryn Brewster Haueisen, wrote the first. It is the story of one of her ancestors, Mary Brewster, told in a fictional setting: Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Matriarch of the Mayflower. This one made the list not just because my friend wrote it, but because we both resonate so strongly with the women in our lineage. For me, it was Molly Mackenzie, my great-grandmother. She didn’t come over on the Mayflower; she lived in a later time, but both of them were influential in their time and in ours because of their legacies.
The last one is a book some of you may have also read this year. I wanted something quite contemporary, and this was an easy one to choose. It is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I would almost put this one on the same level as The Shell Seekers. The act of writing beyond books is so important, and the story told in the books through the sharing of notes, letters, and e-mails is extraordinary.
So that concludes the fiction part of the journey.
The next part does go back to my roots, though, and is my spiritual reading.
First, let me say that I have always had a daily reader beyond the Bible that has spiritual teaching in it. I haven’t included any of those. Those change my life daily. But six books have made, and continue to make, a profound difference in my spiritual life.
What surprised me when I stepped back and looked at them was the fact that they have a very common theme: Prayer.
I first came across Mark Batterson many years ago when someone online posted about his book The Circle Maker. I read it, and even after many decades of thinking I knew what prayer was about, I found I hadn’t even scratched the surface. His books If and Soulprint are two more on the list that were just as transformational.
The other three have their own stories about how they deepened my spiritual experience, and all of them are books I have read many times.
Here they are:
The Miracles in You by Mark Victor Hansen (I was honored to get to meet Mark in person and have him sign my copy of this book – a true-life moment.)
2 Chairs by Bob Beaudine (I first heard Bob speak and then got his book. It helped me through some very tough days.)
Holy Moments by Matthew Kelly (This is only one of many in my library from Matthew, but this one taught me that spirituality can be found in every moment, not just those reserved for it.)
The next group of six focuses on the craft of writing. My craft.
First up is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I was attending a conference in Portland, Oregon, and a woman I met there recommended it. Little did I know just how much I would need it. I got it as soon as I returned home and just after that faced one of my most difficult years. Julia’s Morning Pages were right there with me and made that experience not only bearable, but investable. They also reinforced the power of daily writing and journaling.
And speaking of conferences, Jeff Goins was hosting a writing conference near Nashville that I was going to attend. I was researching the speakers and came across Jon Acuff. I got the audio version of his current release and listened to it on the drive. Because of that conference and Jon’s book Finish, my own book found its own finish line. The other book from that conference that pushed it forward came from Jeff with his work in Real Artists Don’t Starve. Two examples of how books bring people together and create real change.
Another conference introduced me to Michelle Prince, which also led me to her book The Power of Authority. Her book and subsequent coaching helped me to fully understand the value of the book beyond its pages to what it can make possible for the reader. One of her signature lines was that you can’t spell authority without the word author. That resonated with me.
But then, as is always the case, reality can set in, and it gets harder. That’s where the next two books have made the difference for me. First was Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Every author should read it, but it’s about life as much as it is about writing. And you should never pass up an opportunity to hear her speak. That’s where I first found her. She was speaking, and I had the opportunity to attend.
Second in that season came from another favorite, Steven Pressfield. My nemesis is resistance. Always has been. I re-negotiate everything with myself to the point of exhaustion. He still helps me with that every time I pick up my copy of Do the Work, read it, and then get back to business.
This next group is perhaps one of the most telling for me anyway. These books fall into the category of biographical writing. But for each of them, what happened within me was life-changing.
Let’s begin with an early favorite.
Gilda Radner’s story in It’s Always Something. The title was borrowed from a phrase she often heard her father say. I can’t say I was a fan of hers. I didn’t watch Saturday Night Live. In fact, I had barely heard of her before reading this book. But I was a fan of her husband, Gene Wilder. His movie, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, released in 1971, was one of my Dad’s favorites, and I watched it with him many times.
When Gilda passed away in 1989, Gene Wilder’s devotion was very much a part of that story, so I got the book. It was timely for me as my Dad had passed away in 1988, also from cancer. There were so many things in her story that were healing for my own with him because it gave me a clearer understanding of what cancer looks like and feels like from the other side. One review noted that the book shows us that not all poems rhyme.
Then came my fascination with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. I have long admired her work but was completely in awe of what she did with her book Tomorrow is Now.
She was quite ill near the end of writing it but was determined. It has been said often that she willed herself to stay alive long enough to finish the writing of it. That gave me a very different perspective on what it means to be the messenger and not just the writer.
Years later, I wrote a blog post about her and asked this question: Would Eleanor Roosevelt Be On Twitter? and to my surprise, her foundation picked it up and asked if they could reprint it. What an honor that was. And of course, the answer was that she would. She would have taken advantage of every possible channel and tool to spread the messages that needed to be shared.
The next three came from women in times when I needed them.
Joan Didion’s offerings in The Year of Magical Thinking changed how I saw our journey through grief and re-shaped my own.
Shonda Rhimes story in Year of Yes was a wake-up call for me at a time I really needed one. I was another one of those who said no to everything that was outside of my work-focused existence. I had my own year of yes thanks to her and met incredible people and had experiences that shaped the rest of my story.
Then came the recent offering from Ina Garten – Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir. She’s been a shero of mine for many years because of the way she reinvented herself. Going from being an analyst in the White House to buying a specialty food shop on a whim after seeing an ad in the paper to her later success as a television host and author is what many dreams are made of.
But in this book, for the first time, she talks about the person who was on the journey. She is someone I share with my daughter, Lauren, who loves her recipes! We both have every one of her cookbooks, but her memoir gave me an even deeper appreciation and respect for the woman behind them.
Which brings me to the last one in this group, which is another book written by a dear friend. Her name is Bobbie Casolino-Lewis, and her book is So That’s What 70 Looks Like. It’s not easy for me to articulate what this one has meant and still means to me. I have never liked to have my picture taken. I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin. She is. She’s not a traditional beauty, but she is beautiful. She’s not traditional by choice. Because she’s inexplicably herself and she is stunning. This book is where she shares where that emanates from, and it has beautiful imagery throughout.
When she first published the book, I was not 70 yet, but it was looming and, to be candid, I was dreading it. Her spirit comes through in every word and image, and it is inspiring me to live into my 70s with a very different perspective. And it’s inspired me to write my own memoir about what aging means.
In the last section, which is primarily non-fiction about life and business, forty-five remain. That is far too many for me to share every reason with you here, but you can go to the end of this post and get the full list.
Here are some of them that bear mention.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This book was a gift for Christmas the year my daughter married. The story itself became the real gift, and it gave my journey as an empty nester a very different beginning. I read it now every year between Christmas and New Year’s.
The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
I have a shelf of books by Ryan Holiday, and others could have easily found their way here, but this one was my clarion call that everything makes something else possible.
Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields
Jonathan Fields is a fascinating person who never fails to help me see things differently. This book is where I first began to see myself as a possibilitarian. It was a permanent lens change for me. I am now a faithful listener to his podcast and subscriber to everything he writes.
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
I honestly do not remember how I first discovered this book. It’s become such a part of my life that it’s hard to even remember how I first encountered it, but no book has influenced my life to the same degree as this one. In addition to the impact the book’s story has had on my approach to my life and work, it led me to a community of extraordinary people that I cherish. I was also privileged to get to know the authors and can count them both as friends and mentors. I joined John David Mann’s Writing Mastery Group, spent three years there, and am now writing my own parable.
The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous
When I went back to college at 52, I thought it was to get the degree and, initially, it was. But it became so much more because of this textbook and class. It not only changed the trajectory of the rest of my career in supply chain logistics, but it is also now the basis of my own work with founders.
A Passion for Excellence by Tom Peters
I still remember burning the midnight oil to read this one. I couldn’t get through its pages fast enough. It answered a burning need in me to understand why mastery was so much a part of what drives me. It allowed me to accept that as a core value and also learn how to leverage it in a meaningful way.
Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud
This is perhaps not only one of the most important books I’ve read, but also without question the one I have gifted and recommended more than most any other. It is not as you might think a tome about quitting. It is a beautiful road map for pruning our lives just as a master gardener would do. It is not allowing the good to get in the way of the great. I refer to it often when faced with the start-stop-continue questions.
Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher
This is another voice with many offerings on my bookshelf. But his words go beyond the usual shelf-help so many are. I chose this one for here because it is what I have been able to do because of this book. We don’t just live by days, weeks, years, or even decades. We live by our seasons, and each one calls a different form of us forward. This book showed me not only that it’s possible, but how to claim that.
Start With Why by Simon Sinek
If I have a philosophical hero, it is Simon Sinek. I could listen to him speak or read his words every day and never get enough. My own work now comes from what he teaches in this book. It helped me define my own work.
The Pivot Year by Brianna Weist
I’m wrapping up this section with this book because it’s the only daily reader that made the list and there’s a reason for that. I first read this book the year I resigned from my long-time corporate career and decided to go full-time into writing and teaching. It’s also the year I decided to sell my home of thirty years and move.
It was, in every way, my pivot year, and this book was my therapist and guide. I read it again the following year. I now pick it up from time to time whenever I need that boost re-orienting can bring.
Going back to the beginning, though, for my three honorable mentions, here they are:
The Bible – I mentioned Bible stories, but the Bible itself is a life-changing book. No list of books that have changed my life would be complete without it.
My Journals – I’ve mentioned journals throughout this message, but this is about my own journals. Especially the Jim Rohn leather journals I’ve kept over the years. The first one was a gift to me from Kyle Wilson, Jim Rohn’s business partner for many years. I was privileged to be part of his Inner Circle Mastermind, where I met people and discovered many of the books that would change my life.
And lastly, there is my book- Adjusted Sails: What does this make possible?
What I can tell you is that beyond any of the other books on my list, this one has brought about the most significant change because no book will change you like the one you write. But it’s true for any of us – whatever our creative calling is – while we can curate and learn and admire with great enthusiasm and even passion the work of others, none will change us like what we ourselves create.
As I was writing this post, I found myself going back to something Emma Thompson once said. Perhaps she was only half right when she said that books are like people and arrive just when we need them. Books do arrive when we need them. But I’ve come to realize that, more often than not, someone places them into our hands.
That’s one of my desires for you in sharing all of this: that you may find a book among these that is your next invitation to something in your life.
The other gift from writing all of this has been the reminder that since the last 71 years were shaped by books that arrived right when I needed them, that means there are more out there, unread, waiting to do the same thing. There it is again as I’m walking into my 72nd year: Hope.
That’s wonderfully true for all of us — and for me, there are more of my own coming.
Here is the promised full list of the 45 books for Life and Work:
| Title | Author |
| From Strength to Strength | Arthur Brooks |
| The Checklist Manifesto | Atul Gawande |
| Personality Isn’t Permanent | Benjamin Hardy |
| The Go-Giver | Bob Burg, John David Mann |
| Mastering Fear | Brandon Webb, John David Mann |
| Strong Ground | Brené Brown |
| The Pivot Year | Brianna Weist |
| Energy Leadership | Bruce Schneider |
| Drive | Daniel Pink |
| The Power of Regret | Daniel Pink |
| To Sell is Human | Daniel Pink |
| The Second Mountain | David Brooks |
| Business Made Simple | Donald Miller |
| Necessary Endings | Dr. Henry Cloud |
| The Power of Goals | Earl Nightingale |
| Tools for the Trenches | Elizabeth Benton |
| Heartspoken | Elizabeth Cottrell |
| The Success Principles | Jack Canfield |
| Choose Yourself | James Altucher |
| Reinvent Yourself | James Altucher |
| Skip the Line | James Altucher |
| The Power of No | James Altucher |
| One Word | Jon Gordon |
| Uncertainty | Jonathan Fields |
| Selling With a Noble Purpose | Lisa Earle McLeod |
| The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning | Margareta Magnusson |
| The Let Them Theory | Mel Robbins |
| How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters | Michael Bungay Stanier |
| Body of Work | Pam Slim |
| The Widest Net | Pam Slim |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
| Follow Your Joy, Shift Happens | Robert Holden |
| The Obstacle is the Way | Ryan Holiday |
| Ask | Ryan Levesque |
| The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making | Scott Plous |
| Start With Why | Simon Sinek |
| The Infinite Game | Simon Sinek |
| Speed of Trust | Stephen Covey |
| A Passion for Excellence | Tom Peters |
| Choose to Win | Tom Ziglar |
| Fall in Love With the Problem | Uri Levine |
| A More Beautiful Question | Warren Berger |
| Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life | Wayne Dyer |
| Ikigai – The Japanese Art of a Meaningful Life | Yukari Mitsuhashi |
| See You at The Top | Zig Ziglar |
