After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi Patel, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger, Richard Parker, for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again.

Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.

Review from Drew: Don’t feel like I have to say much for this one, other than - even if you’ve seen the movie, it is so, so, so worth it to read the book. So much nuance and commentary in there, about religion and animals and will to survive and life. And the writing is absolutely spectacular.

In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.

A Muse nº3 recommendation

The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, Shams, the whirling dervish—that together explore the enduring power of Rumi's work.

A Muse nº3 recommendation

Still Life with Woodpecker is a sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads.

Review from Eloise: This book just might be the love of my life, and I don’t say that lightly. I sleep with in next to my bed. I go out of my way to bring it up in conversation. It not only is an interpersonal love story, but it is a love story, a love message, a love loving to the moon. It is a dream come true. Just be sure to have a pack of Camel Blue cigarettes (or at least a reference photo) for you will end up spending far too long holding a flashlight/magnifying glass searching for hidden women and words…A short and sweet review, I refuse to say anything more other than, A MUST READ <3

Provides an illuminating explanation of the origins and meaning of romantic love and shows how a proper understanding of its psychological dynamics can revitalize our most important relationships.

A Muse nº3 recommendation

“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. 

Review from Eloise: Love. bell hooks presents an exploration of love in all of its forms—romantic, familial, communal, and self. And she does so in a way that, in all honesty, is terrifying. Everything I thought that I knew, or more relevant, didn’t know, was turned upside down in the most illuminating way. Western culture has turned love into both a commodity and an ideal. She is able to deconstruct the most common of misconceptions and challenges us to radicalize our evaluation of how we approach love through challenging the cultural norms that distort our perceptions. But, she guides us every step of the way, weaving in philosophical reflections, personal experiences, and wisdom from spiritual traditions, offering a holistic view of love as a transformative force that can heal.

We all desire great love. Yet, there seems to be a lot in the way when it comes to cultivating a relationship we crave.

Why is that?

It’s time for a new template — one rooted in choice, truth, safety, and respect. To get us there, Mark Groves and Kylie McBeath, champions of positive philosophy, provide us a roadmap, one they walked themselves, to step out of protection mode and into connection mode.

A Muse nº3 recommendation

Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you're striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner? Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide.

Review from Olivia: whether you are polyamorous or not, this has the best section on attachment theory I have ever come across

For 20 years The Ethical Slut—widely known as the “Poly Bible”—has dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices.

Review from Drew: This is the book you’re handed at the front door on your first day of polyamory school. But I honestly think anyone would benefit from reading it - if not cover to cover, then at least skipping around in it and reading the parts that either intrigue or horrify you. The book is written on the radical premise that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you, and are parts of life to be sought after and celebrated, not ashamed of. As I read it I felt a huge weight come off my chest and lots of moments of “Wait - yeah! It should be that way!” Very liberating book, which is what I’m after.

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

Review from Eloise: In keeping with shifts of all kinds, Claudia Rankine presents a powerful exploration of race, identity, and systemic injustice in modern America. She works to present and confront encounters of racial microaggressions, violence, and the weight of history through a blend of poetry, essay, and visual imagery. While not necessarily a ‘comfortable’ read, we are drawn to reflect on how racism shapes the emotional and psychological landscape of individuals and communities. Rankine helps us see the layers behind pop-culture events, asking us to engage with the pain, anger, and exhaustion of living in a society that marginalizes and dehumanizes. Engaging with texts, such as these, we are able to further (or challenge) our own perspectives.

Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, or happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.

Review from Eloise: Who doesn’t appreciate a book of short essays?! Mythologies is a collection of just that, dissecting the ‘myths’ of modern life, and showing how cultural signs and symbols are used to create meaning that reinforce social principles. The smallest details can be loaded with hidden messages that are there to serve dominant ideology. By drawing attention to these ‘myths’ we are able to see through the media-saturated environment, where the messages we consume are often layered with implicit social and political agendas. This book is one of my defenses against the age of media that is impossible to escape.

The Dispossessed is the spellbinding story of anarchist Shevek, the “galactically famous scientist,” who single-handedly attempts to reunite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust.

Review from Drew: My ex’s favorite book of all time - I just finished it and whole-heartedly agree with her. It’s a science fiction novel about a brilliant physicist who was raised in a utopian anarchist society as he tries to bridge the gap between his world and their sister planet, which looks very much like our own. There are tons of new-paradigm seeds in this story that have planted themselves firmly in my subconscious. And Ursula Le Guin in general is a must-read for any science fiction lover - I’d recommend The Left Hand of Darkness as well.

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.

Review from Drew: Mix some short stories into your life! And there is no better place to start than with Ted Chiang - he’s brilliant. Many of his stories lean towards science fiction, but in a way that’s really thoughtful and deep and has a lot to say about life and spirituality. His other book Stories of Your Life and Others is just as good - the titular piece Stories of Your Life was the basis for the movie Arrival, which got my brother excited enough to read it.

In an "epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant" story of love and hate, two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together -- and changing the destiny of the human race (Viola Davis).

Review from Drew: I’m a little obsessed with the concepts of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine, and I’ve never seen them as clearly portrayed as in this novel. Doro is an ancient spirit with boundless powers, possessing humans and killing without remorse as he jumps from body to body to sustain his own life. He’s immortal, so he spends his time traveling the world and breeding humans with supernatural powers into beings that at least might resemble him. He knows no equal until he meets Anyanwu, who can heal with a bite and transform her own body, mending injuries and reversing aging. She uses her powers to cure her neighbors and birth entire tribes, surrounding herself with kindred who both fear and respect her. The mixing of the two is horrifying, and magical, and fuckin’ well worth the read.

The kin of Ata live only for the dream. Their work, their art, their love are designed in and by their dreams, and their only aim is to dream higher dreams. Into the world of Ata comes a desperate man, who is first subdued and then led on the spiritual journey that, sooner or later, all of us must make.

Review from Drew: This one is a hidden treasure. Slight trigger warning at the beginning, as the narrator commits some horrible domestic violence to kick off the book. But the you drop into a utopian community where the entire society is set up around improving your ability to dream… It’s great food for thought for the new world we hope to build, and I highly recommend.

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported, near-fatal accident in 1999--and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it--fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

Review from Drew: Whether or not you’re into his stuff, I feel like any writer would benefit from reading Stephen King tell about his story and his writing style. This book is part memoir and part King sharing his process and his writing process. It’s a bit masculine in flavor for my liking, to be honest (that’s how you churn out 65 novels in about as many years), but I’ve incorporated many of his tools and approaches into my own writing process.

As we attempt to understand the psychology of success and become successful ourselves, studying the habits of successful people is not enough. To create real self transformation, we must dissolve the obstacles to success buried within us. To reclaim our power and regain control of our lives, we must uncover the old safety strategies and patterns that still run our lives so that we can heal and transform them.

Review from Drew: This is the book that I think of when I hear the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover.” It looks like any self-help book that your dad might get you to read on outside, but inside it is fucking brilliant - the best psychology book that I have ever read. Kessler mixes human development psychology with energetics in such a powerful, Truthful way that I think this should be required reading for anyone on a spiritual healing journey.  

The basic premise is that most humans will go into one of 5 survival patterns when they are distressed: leaving, merging, enduring, aggressive or rigid. Which pattern you go into is coded into you by things you did / did not receive during the early stages of your development. The book will help you diagnose yourself and give you real strategies for how to break out of that pattern in order to spend more time with your real self.

A stunning gift edition of the powerful bestselling book on creativity.

The Artist’s Way is one of the bestselling gift books of all time. Beautifully packaged with a slipcase and ribbon, this tenth anniversary gift edition is the ideal gift for loved ones engaged in creative lives.

Review from Drew: As a writer, this book was such a boon to me when I was just starting. It’s structured as a full 12-week curriculum that guides you through the process of getting in touch with your creative energy. To be totally honest I only made it to week 7 or 8, but I have integrate some of the central tenants (e.g., Morning Pages, where you get up and write three stream-of-consciousness pages every morning) into my daily / weekly practice. I credit this book and the exercise with helping me snap into focus as a writer.

A modern handbook for the journey, Soulcraft is not an imitation of indigenous ways, but a contemporary nature-based approach born from wilderness experience, the traditions of Western culture, and the cross-cultural heritage of all humanity. Filled with stories, poems, and guidelines, Soulcraft introduces over 40 practices that facilitate the descent to soul, including dreamwork, wilderness vision fasts, talking across the species boundaries, council, self-designed ceremony, nature-based shadow work, and the arts of romance, being lost, and storytelling.

Review from Drew: Soulcraft is perhaps my favorite book I’ve ever read, and certainly the most impactful. It served as a sort of jet fuel for me during my first year of spiritual seeking - I remember slowing myself down to make it last longer, and always seemed to open to just the right page to receive the wisdom I needed at that moment. Bill Plotkin is a true living elder, and I highly recommend his books and his programs at the Animas Valley Institute to anyone seeking a nature-based path to healing their wounds and discovering their purpose.

There is something about you brighter than the sun and more mysterious than the night sky.

Review from Drew: Adyashanti is another one of those living spiritual elders, who I believe to be a true enlightened being. This book is a collection of his dharma talks that he has given at retreat sessions throughout the years. It’s one of those books that you more feel than comprehend - sometimes at the end of a chapter I’m not quite sure what I read but I feel this glowing in my heart and this closeness to Spirit that always signifies Truth when I feel it.