There are some books that leave us feeling inspired, joyful, contemplative, and hopeful about the goodness and beauty of the world. Each of these books offers a unique perspective on life, and with their hopeful messages about the world’s innate beauty, they’re ideal to curl up with during troubled times.

To rekindle your love for the world, here are ten of my favourite books to remind you of the beauty of life, including beautiful books from Tove Jansson, Sy Montgomery, and Annie Dillard among other writers who cherish our natural world.

10 gentle books about the goodness and beauty of life

1. Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson

In her late forties, Tove Jansson, helped by a maverick seaman called Brunström, built a cabin on Klovharun, an almost barren outcrop of rock in the Gulf of Finland. For twenty-six summers Tove and her life partner, the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä, retreated to the island to live, paint and write, inspired and energised by the solitude and shifting seascapes.

Notes from an Island, published in English for the first time, is Tove Jansson’s most personal book, featuring gorgeous illustrations by Tuulikki. It’s both a memoir and homage to the island the two women loved intensely and relinquished only when pressed by age, bringing together the meditative beauty of two artists’ work: Tove’s sparse prose, and Tuulikki’s subtle washes and aquatints.

2. Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart by Dr James Doty

Into the Magic Shop is neurosurgeon Dr James Doty’s beautiful testament to the mysterious connections between the human heart and mind. It’s one of my favourite books on approaching life mindfully with a kind, open heart.

“There are a lot of things in life we can’t control. It’s hard, especially when you’re a child, to feel like you have control over anything. Like you can change anything. But you can control your body and you can control your mind. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s very powerful. It can change everything.”

3. The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

In this graceful novel that will remind you of the beauty and goodness of life, a 20-year-old Chinese painter, Stephen, is sent to his family’s summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout of tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper, master gardener, and samurai of the soul; above all, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel world.

Over the course of a year, Matsu helps him not just to recover his physical strength, but also to realise profound spiritual insights.

4. How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

This beautiful memoir of a life well-lived with animals is a wonderful reminder of the kindness, generosity, and love that are innate parts of you, just like the other creatures that accompany us through life. It’s also one of my favourite beautifully illustrated books.

“Thousands of billions of mothers—from the gelatinous ancestors of Octavia, to my own mother—have taught their kind to love, and to know that love is the highest and best use of a life. Love alone matters, and makes its object worthy. And love is a living thing, even if Octavia’s eggs were not.”

5. Water, Wood & Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner

I came across this beautifully soothing and inspiring book in my local library recently and fell in love with it. Water, Wood & Wild Things is artist and food writer Hannah Kirshner’s journey through the culture and cuisine of Yamanaka, a misty Japanese mountain town with evergreen forests, local water, and smoke-filled artisan workshops.

Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, it’s a book about slowing down time, appreciating the joy of rituals, and finding purpose in cultivation, craft, and traditions.

From making a fine bowl to harvesting rice, this tender book is a celebration of the simple beauty of life, accompanied by Hannah’s gorgeous drawings and recipes inspired by her time in Japan.

6. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

What better book to help you marvel at the world’s beauty and goodness than Braiding Sweetgrass? This is a true love letter to the land, combining indigenous wisdom, science’s findings on the mysteries of nature, and the teachings of plants through truly beautiful writing.

Admiring the natural world is our first step to protecting it, even in the smaller ways accessible to us via our day-to-day choices about how to live our own lives, alongside the miniature ecosystems we create in our window boxes, balconies, and gardens.

“How do I show my girls I love them on a morning in June? I pick them wild strawberries. On a February afternoon we build snowmen and then sit by the fire. In March we make maple syrup. We pick violets in May and go swimming in July. On an August night we lay out blankets and watch meteor showers. In November, that great teacher the woodpile comes into our lives. That’s just the beginning. How do we show our children our love? Each in our own way by a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons.”

7. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

For a beautifully slow, thoughtful, and meditative description of the natural world, read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. This is the memoir of a dramatic year in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, accompanied by muskrats in the creek and fields full of grasshoppers, in which Annie Dillard set out to chronicle “beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.”

8. The Gift of the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In this beloved and lyrical classic, Anne Morrow Lindbergh gracefully weaves her meditations on youth and age, love and marriage, and solitude and contentment as she settles into a vacation by the sea.

Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, the mother of five, acclaimed writer, and pioneering aviator casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us, offering a reminder of the bliss to be found in carving out space for contemplation and creativity within our own lives.

9. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer is probably my all-time favourite book, weaving together the stories of interconnected characters as they witness and experience new life blooming by the mountains during a single summer. It’s a book to restore your faith in the goodness and beauty of the world, grounded in nature’s power for regeneration and human kindness after loss.

10. The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Arnim

If you’re feeling burnt out and need a retreat from the world, Elizabeth von Arnim is an excellent starting point. She’s best known for The Enchanted April, which is another fantastic choice, but I’d also recommend The Solitary Summer.

The protagonist of this little book intends to spend a summer wholly alone to rediscover the joy of life. She isn’t wholly successful in remaining alone, but her effort is valiant, and we can share her enjoyment of magnificent larkspurs and nasturtiums, cooling forest walks, and the refuge of her beloved plants and books.

“Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.”

For more soothing books, you might like my collection of the most beautiful books to treasure, the most beautifully written books of all time, and the most relaxing books to calm your mind and soothe your soul.

The post 10 soothing books to remind you of the beauty of life appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Beautiful books, inside and out, can offer us a dose of bibliotherapy when we’re experiencing difficulties, need a helping hand, or simply want some comfort. They offer a balm for the soul to help you get back to where you want to be; back out into the world with mindful gratitude.

The following books are some of the most beautifully written books of all time, offering gorgeous prose, unforgettable characters, and plots that help you to appreciate the wonder and beauty of life.

Which of these beautifully written books have you already read, and which ones can you add to your to-read list?

10 of the most beautiful books with truly gorgeous writing

1. The Waves by Virginia Woolf

The Waves is in close contention with Mrs Dalloway for my favourite novel by Virginia Woolf. It’s an innovative and wonderfully poetic book, layering six voices in monologue; moving from morning until night, from childhood into old age. All against the backdrop of the sea. The Waves helped to create modern fiction and is one of the most beautiful books ever written. If you love language, I think you’ll cherish it too.

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”

The Waves

2. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler

A Whole Life is a book that will move you to tears – and then make you want to turn back to the beginning and read it again.

It’s a story of the simple life of Andreas Egger, who knows every path and peak of his mountain valley in the Austrian Alps. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking book about what life is really made of; both the little and the big.

Choose whether you’d like to read it in a couple of sittings (like I did on a snow day in Switzerland) or try to savour it for longer. Or read it twice and do both.

“You can buy a man’s hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but no one can take away from any man so much as a single moment. That’s the way it is.”

A Whole Life

Another book by Robert Seethaler is The Tobacconist, which is a tender (and extremely heartbreaking) story about one young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna.

3. The Overstory by Richard Powers

A paean to the natural world, Richard Powers masterfully weaves together interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The Overstory is a spellbinding gateway into the vast, interconnected, and magnificently intricate world that we depend on in so many ways: the world of trees.

“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . . .”

The Overstory

4. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s writing will break your heart while you marvel at her mesmerising prose. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, is a powerful and painful examination of our obsession with white beauty that questions race, class, and gender with her iconic subtly, grace, and poetic wonder.

“And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”

The Bluest Eye

5. The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

The Living Mountain is one of the very best mountain memoirs ever written, crafted with so much simple magic and elegance by a woman in a sea of male writers. Each chapter is focused on a different aspect of a mountain experience; water, frost and snow, air and light, and being. Another favourite quote of mine is from Nan Shepherd’s first book, The Quarry Wood: “It’s a grand thing to get leave to live.”

“Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.”

The Living Mountain

6. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt may only write a book a decade, but they are worth every year of waiting. The Goldfinch is perhaps her most breathtaking novel. In this story of loss, survival, self-invention, and the hope that keeps us going, a young New Yorker grieving his mother’s death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth.

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead”

The Goldfinch

7. “The Dead” by James Joyce

“The Dead”, the final short story of Dubliners, James Joyce’s iconic collection, contains one of the most beautifully written sentences in the English language. This is perfect prose: every word is immaculately arranged, flowing like the falling snow Joyce so delicately describes.

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.“

“The Dead”

8. Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

Especially here in Why I Wake Early, Mary Oliver truly gets to the beauty of life – she’s one of the finest poetic ambassadors for the natural world. I love how humble her poetry is, how there are no wasted words: “Watch, now, how I start the day / in happiness, in kindness”.

I pinned to the wall of my old house a hand-written version of the following poem, next to a map of Switzerland marked with the route I’d walked across. I saw it every morning, and it reminded me to get outside and be a part of the world.

The Old Poets Of China

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

9. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Paul Kalanithi was at the pinnacle of his career as a surgeon when he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer at just thirty-six. When Breath Becomes Air is the story of his transformation from a medical student to surgeon, to patient, seeking answers as to what makes a virtuous and meaningful life. With beautiful prose and powerful questions about what to do when a life is catastrophically interrupted, this is one of the most moving memoirs of the last decade.

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”

10. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This stunningly ambitious novel (and Pulitzer Prize winner) is the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths cross in occupied France during World War II. It’s one of those books that I finished and wished I could read again for the first time. Although, it has been a few years… a re-read could be just as magical.

On Reddit, one user writes, “It is just loaded with gorgeous imagery. The main character is blind, yet sees more than any sighted person ever could. It made me rethink the way I take in the world around me, from nature to politics.”

For more exquisite books, you might like my selection of the most beautiful books to treasure on your bookshelves for years to come, as well as my favourite beautifully illustrated books.

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“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”

Ah, the beauty of early mornings… the sun hasn’t quite risen, the day is undisturbed as most are still in their beds, and the birds are starting to chatter outside.

For some of us, it’s the most precious time of day: a period of peace, creativity, and contemplation. And for some authors, too

Hemingway aspired to “write every morning as soon after first light as possible,” when “there is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write”.

My favourite description of morning writing may be from Toni Morrison, though, whose ritual was to rise around 5:00, make coffee, and “watch the light come.” This last part was crucial to her:

“Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. […] For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

Toni Morrison

It’s not always easy to keep up with the rituals we aspire for, but when we do – such as with the help of some beautiful writing – it can make for a magical day.

Here are some of my favourite books that celebrate the beauty of morning and waking early, featuring authors and characters who get a headstart on the day and recognise the preciousness of those early hours.

6 books about waking up early and enjoying morning

1. A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

As the queen of early mornings, I could put every book of Mary Oliver’s poetry and writing on this list. In her gorgeous essay collection, Long Life, she reasons:

“This is to say nothing against afternoons evenings or even midnight. Each has its portion of the spectacular. But dawn—dawn is a gift. Much is revealed about a person by his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. No one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.”

Long Life by Mary Oliver

For a beautiful book to accompany your early mornings – or a compelling incentive to roll out of bed a little earlier – pick up a copy of Mary Oliver’s poetry to keep on your bedside table.

Why I Wake Early and A Thousand Mornings are both perfect collections to choose, or enjoy a wider diversity of her poetry in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.

2. Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket

Horseradish is a lovely little collection of Lemony Snicket’s happy observations on life, including this wonderful take on mornings:

“Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. For instance, if you wake up to the sound of twittering birds, and find yourself in an enormous canopy bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of freshly made muffins and hand-squeezed orange juice on a silver tray, you will know that your day will be a splendid one. If you wake up to the sound of church bells, and find yourself in a fairly big regular bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of hot tea and toast on a plate, you will know that your day will be O.K. And if you wake up to the sound of somebody banging two metal pots together, and find yourself in a small bunk bed, with a nasty foreman standing in the doorway holding no breakfast at all, you will know that your day will be horrid.”

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid by Lemony Snicket

3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

If Mary Oliver is the queen of mornings, then Haruki Murakami must be king. His characters often follow a formula featuring coffee, jazz, whisky, and yes, waking up early. If you read about Murakami’s own intriguing routines and creative rituals, you’ll notice the inspirations from his own life.

In his memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami shares the routine he adopted after closing the jazz bar he used to run: “to go to bed soon after it got dark, and wake up with the sun”. In the morning he would write, and in the afternoon he would run.

As Murakami realises, we each have our own motivations and rewards for waking up early – be it the rich orange sunrise, a chorus of blackbirds, clear-headed creativity, or something else entirely:

“In the 1980s I used to jog every morning in Tokyo and often passed a very attractive young woman. We passed each other jogging for several years and got to recognize each other by sight and smile a greeting each time we passed. I never spoke to her (I’m too shy), and of course don’t even know her name. But seeing her face every morning as I ran was one of life’s small pleasures. Without pleasures like that, it’s pretty hard to get up and go jogging every morning.“

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

4. Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Okay, I’ve allowed two books by Murakami in this post – but I did have to cut several more. I love Murakami’s imaginings of escaping the world, summoning creative work, and early morning rituals in Killing Commendatore. Here’s a favourite:

“I would get up early in the morning (I generally always wake before six), brew coffee in the kitchen, and then, mug in hand, pad off to the studio and sit on the stool in front of the canvas. And focus my feelings. Listen closely to the echoes in my heart, trying to grasp the image of something that had to be there.”

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

5. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

Wintering, the stunning celebration of slowing down and allowing our bodies to recuperate by Katherine May, includes this beautifully-penned ode to the wonders of quiet early hours when you can’t sleep:

“I’ve come to love this part of the night, the almost-morning, which feels exclusively mine. Being the only one awake makes it a luxurious space in which I can drink in the silence. It’s an undemanding moment in the 24-hour cycle, in which nobody can reasonably expect you to be checking texts or emails, and the scrolling feeds of social media have fallen quiet. In a world where it’s hard to feel alone, this, finally, is solitude.”

Wintering by Katherine May

May adds, “this is a time in which only a few activities seem right”. Mostly, that’s reading, or “roaming through the pile of books that live by my favourite chair, waiting to offer up fragments of learning, rather than inviting cover-to-cover pursuits.”

6. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

It’s in this book that Julia Cameron shares her concept of “morning pages” – or dedicating time every morning to opening a notebook and emptying the contents of your mind into it before starting the day. As Cameron explains, “all that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.” And once your morning pages are done, you can truly get on with the day.

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In his Meditations, he shares how we seek retreats for ourselves in all manner of external ways, while forgetting that we can instead retreat into ourselves at any time – “into your own little territory within yourself [with] no agonies, no tensions.”

When the world is like nothing we’ve ever experienced, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and the power of having a calm and gentle inner landscape couldn’t be more valuable.

I spend a lot of time in my own head, which I don’t see as a bad thing. By choosing what I think about, I can select the furniture of my own mind. I spring clean and dust the cobwebs by gently evicting the thoughts I’d rather not allow to linger. And by encouraging joy and gratitude, I put some fresh flowers in there and open the windows.

Alongside this general upkeep, I furnish my mind by retreating into books. With every book I read, I have new places to imagine. There are Siberian forests, exotic beaches, magical libraries, and houses by the river to visit when I need a break. The journeys are endless – there are always more books to read.

Here are a few of the books I’ve loved retreating into – I hope they’re as soothing and rejuvenating for your mind as well.

“Men seek retreats for themselves – in the country, by the sea, in the hills – and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life.”

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by Martin Hammond

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

In the world of Glendy Vanderah’s novel, we meet Joanna Teale. After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her.

She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.

The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. For the rest of the story, venture into the unique world of Where the Forest Meets the Stars.

“the flower whisperer who made everyone and everything around her bloom. Her light is still with us, growing love across the universe…”

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

One small piece of joy for me in the global crisis has been seeing how more people are searching for tips on reading Tolstoy and finding my writing. I find that so wonderful to see – it’s an excellent time for Tolstoy.

If you decide to jump into the universe of War and Peace, try to immerse yourself in it. Don’t feel you need to remember every name of every character (there are far too many), just let the writing wash over you.

The best translation I’ve found for that is the Anthony Briggs, which you can read in this beautiful hardbound edition from Penguin Clothbound Classics:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

A retreat to the Italian Riviera, where everything is in full bloom, soothing, and gleaming with freedom.

“That evening was the evening of the full moon. The garden was an enchanted place where all the flowers seemed white. The lilies, the daphnes, the orange-blossom, the white stocks, the white pinks, the white roses – you could see these as plainly as in the daytime; but the coloured flowers existed only as fragrance.”

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Pick up The Great Alone to head back to 1974, when Cora Allbright and her husband, Ernt – a recently returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war – uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter, Leni, to start a new life in Alaska.

Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

“Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place.”

How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

Retreat into a book that celebrates the joy of sharing a life with animals, learning from them how to be a good creature ourselves. Heartwarming and wholesome, it makes for a perfect gift for animal lovers (am I alone in sending myself more book gifts recently?)

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

This book shaped everything I read afterwards. It’s so beautifully crafted. When I think back to Tan Twan Eng’s writing, I think of light rain over trees, gentle birdsong at dusk, and sitting quietly alone in a garden that’s well-tended without keeping the wild out.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Journey to Rivendell and the Shire, whether for the first time or as a repeat visit, to appreciate the best of what life has to offer in a world that isn’t always wholly good.

“Elrond’s house was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing (or reading), or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness. … Evil things did not come into the secret valley of Rivendell.”

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

Even if you can’t venture out and explore right now, reading The Living Mountain is one of the next best things. Divided into chapters about the elements of mountain adventures – Frost and Snow, The Plants, Senses, Being – The Living Mountain marks Nan Shepherd as one of Scotland’s finest nature writers.

Nan Shepherd is remembered on a Scottish banknote with her wonderful quote, “It’s a grand thing, to get leave to live.”

“This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.”

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Murakami is a master of creating universes. Most readers fall into categories of adoring his writing, despising it with a soaring passion, or feeling utterly indifferent and unable to get past a few pages.

If you’re new to Murakami, there will be cats, whisky, inexplicable truths, and wonder. Kafka on the Shore is my favourite and high up the queue on my re-reading list.

“It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way by Lars Mytting

A fun outlier on this list, Lars Mytting’s book is part guide to chopping wood and part philosophical pondering. It’s a window into Scandinavian culture that’s ideal for kindling your imagination on a lazy afternoon.

Epic Hikes of the World by Lonely Planet

This is one book I’m retreating into often while spending more time at home. Walking the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland last summer was one of the most transformational achievements of my life – I didn’t realise quite how strong I was until I completed it.

Now I’m looking to this beautifully-designed Lonely Planet book to help inspire my next adventure. Will it be Sweden, New Zealand, or one of the great American trails? Time will tell. In the meantime, my imagination can enjoy all of the great wildernesses on our beautiful planet.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

To retreat into the depths of the earth and venture many millions of years before we existed, read Robert Macfarlane. His other books are incredible too – I love Mountains of the Mind – and will have you planning your next adventure.

More hand-picked book recommendations:

• 12 of the best audiobooks to enjoy now
• 8 books to appreciate how beautiful life really is
• 7 self-care books for relaxing and unwinding with
• 12 calming books to help you take a deep breath and relax
• The 10 best books I read in 2019

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One of my favourite books of 2018 was a very late contender. In fact, it was the last book I read of the year: How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery. I adored it.

Sy Montgomery is an incredible woman. She has explored some of the world’s most remote corners and met beautiful, charismatic and memorable creatures along the way – octopuses, spiders, pigs, emus and, of course, dogs, to name but a few.

How to be a Good Creature reminded me of everything I love so much about animals. It also made me think back to my favourite dogs, rabbits, and other wild friends I’ve met so far. For a lot of my life, I’ve found animals considerably easier to get along with than people, that’s for sure.

But the point of the book is so much more than that; it gets you thinking of your place in the world and the lives you touch every day.

It’s a wonderfully beautiful book, complete with gorgeous illustrations. Without ever telling you how you should be, the book shares heartwarming stories of Sy’s life with animals that make you ponder:

Am I kind?

Do I bring joy to the world?

Do I share my warmth, intelligence, and wisdom with others?

Do I show people the real me?

I talked to my boyfriend a lot about this book during and after reading it. Be a good creature became a frequent comment to one another, especially if one of us was acting out of sorts.

When we’d say it, the underlying message would be: chill out, enjoy life, and be nice. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Be kind. Slow down and just live the life you want to live.

It’s rare that a memoir comes along and teaches you powerful life lessons without seeming preachy, woo-woo, or self-centered.

It also makes for the perfect gift: I read the book before giving it to a friend who’d had a tough year with losing pets, and she loved it too.

“I often wish I could go back in time and tell my young, anxious self that my dreams weren’t in vain and my sorrows weren’t permanent. I can’t do that, but I can do something better. I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you; with four legs or two or eight or even none; some with internal skeletons, some without. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.”

How to Be a Good Creature is humble, graceful, and a wonderfully heartwarming celebration of the innate goodness in the world. A life shared with animals is a special kind of existence.

You can get your copy of How to Be a Good Creature here, and find more books to remind you of the beauty and goodness of the world.

The post Pondering how to be a good creature with Sy Montgomery appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.