If you have ever wondered what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a writer, what the contents of your school lunches said about what your parents were really like, this book is for you. From faith, love, and grace to pain, jealousy, and fear, Lamott insists that you keep your eyes open, and then shows you how to survive, always from the life of the artist, she turns to the art of life.

Allen’s premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective productivity and unleash our creative potential. In Getting Things Done, Allen shows how to apply the “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule to get your in-box to empty, reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations, plan projects as well as get them unstuck, overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed, and feel fine about what you’re not doing.

Vladimir Nabokov, the emigre author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory, wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Vera, and third for no one at all. Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs’ fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Vera, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine, a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy.

The work, divided in 5 sections, juxtaposes the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King, with a snapshot of early twentieth-century British society. In contemporary times, it is often read published within The Waste Land and Other Poems and has come to be Eliot’s most popular poem.

Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte’s Web, high up in Zuckerman’s barn. Charlotte’s spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur’s life when he was born the runt of his litter. E. B. White’s Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come.

Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life, from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy, to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction, to the philosopher who becomes a pirate, to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph, to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad. This is a mystery story, not about the murder, and rebirth, of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller.

This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite, of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately but married his worst enemy, and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction, that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life or mercilessly destroy it.

Maggie is the story of a pretty child of the Bowery which is written with the same intensity and vivid scenes of his masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage. In her short life, Maggie was driven to prostitution, and died by her own hand while still a teenager. Crane, who worked as a free lance reporter, was in many ways addicted to the low life of the cities.

Published by Doubleday in 1900, it gained a reputation as a shocker, for Dreiser had dared to give the public a heroine whose “cosmopolitan standard of virtue” brings her from Wisconsin, with four dollars in her purse, to a suite at the Waldorf and glittering fame as an actress. Dreiser told a tale not “sufficiently delicate” for many of its first readers and critics, but which is now universally recognized as one of the greatest and most influential American novels.

Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into 57 languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience.

Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, it is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams, which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives and the power of one.

They show White’s changing concerns and development as a writer. In matchless style White writes about everything from cicadas to Khrushchev, from Thoreau to hyphens, from academic freedom to lipstick, from New York garbagemen to the sparrow, from Maine to the space age. White has been described by one critic as “our finest essayist,” and these short pieces and essays are classics to be read, savored, and read again. Also included are an Introduction and Selective Bibliography by Rebecca M. Dale.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet extraordinary women struggling there. Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential, and that unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do, but also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

The book follows the years of spiritual struggle, to his emergence as a witness for the Holocaust’s martyrs and survivors and for the State of Israel, and as a spokesman for humanity. With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Though his physical wounds from the war heal, his spirit is changed almost beyond recognition. He leaves his betrothed, the beautiful and devoted Isabel; studies philosophy and religion in Paris; lives as a monk, and witnesses the exotic hardships of Spanish life. All of life that he can find, from an Indian Ashrama to labor in a coal mine, becomes Larry’s spiritual experiment as he spurns the comfort and privilege of the Roaring 20s.

Moving to the town of Christminster where he finds work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking ‘New Woman’.

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story.

Sarton reflects candidly on friendship, creativity, and the need for solitude in order to reconnect with her true life and inner work, offering an intimate look at a year of her life in New Hampshire.

In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins show how many women have redefined spiritual beliefs and rediscovered their unique spiritual heritage. Anderson and Hopkins guide readers through the sacred garden of childhood, leaving home, relationships, spiritual practice, sexuality, and much more.

A collection of talks she gave between 1987 and 1994, the book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties. Chödrön discusses using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage; communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down; practices for reversing habitual patterns; methods for working with chaotic situations; and ways for creating effective social action.

Still as vital today, this is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for a new century.

In Being Perfect, she shares wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about “the perfection trap,” the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free. Quindlen believes that when your success looks good to the world but doesn’t feel good in your heart, it isn’t success at all.

Rilke’s profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself.

Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the HSP, it’s a way of life. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.

Based on his own experience and the stories of his patients, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. At the heart of his theory, known as logotherapy, is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure but the pursuit of what we find meaningful. Man’s Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.