Hello.
This video is a little bit different from the last few i've put up, and there's a reason for that, because i think it was high time i talked about books.
It's been a little while, and i recently had to take a much longer break than expected from my position as a bookseller and i've been looking into other avenues related to potential career changes.
I've been considering the, In other words, books have been on my mind a lot.
And so I thought, why not just make a video talking about books and just get it out of my system?
So today I'm talking about the books that have changed my life.
In all honesty, I've watched quite a few videos of people online who have been sharing the books that have changed their life, and a lot of them are strictly self-help books or kind of very poignant literary masterpieces.
I'm not here to share any of those with you.
I don't really have a lot of that sort of thing to share with you today.
Arguably, what I'm sharing with you today are literary masterpieces, but you know, according to me.
So yes, I thought I would share with you the eclectic and unusual books that have changed my life specifically, and maybe ones that you might enjoy as well, and perhaps they inspire you to read one of them, or just pick up one of your own favorite books that have had a great impact on your own life, because all of us are so unique and we all have such interesting stories to tell and and interesting books and art and things in general that influence us in positive ways.
Some of these titles you probably know very well, others might come as a surprise.
In any way, I'm going to just try to throw them at you in a random order.
And, without further ado, here are the books that have impacted me in some really big ways throughout childhood to today.
Here is a very old, dusty, crusty volume that even has some old waxy stains on it.
And it is one book that has had a huge impact on my life.
I got this book from a thrift store.
I'm pretty sure it was a Goodwill for just a couple dollars.
One of the reasons I love it is that there was someone who owned it in 1912 and then I found it in 2014, and that will forever be something so special to me, because it's incredible that two people can enjoy the same book a hundred years apart.
They also left a lot of notes on it, and ones that I have been able to decipher.
Others I have not been able to decipher.
But they had very beautiful and elegant handwriting.
The person that owned this book had such elegant handwriting, in my opinion, that I dedicated the next several years to perfecting my cursive writing.
To this day, I write cursive as a habit, instead of just writing like most people do, with just spaces in between, because I got so used to it, partly due to this book and the influence of a lot of people that lived quite a while ago.
The mysterious Alan B Carlton, who lived in 1912, also heavily annotated the section of John Keats's poetry in this book, and John Keats is a romantic poet that I always loved, and I found his poetry quite moving, and so I felt like we were two kindred spirits, just living a hundred years apart.
Sticking to the realm of the Anglophile, I also wanted to share that Beatrix Potter A Life in Nature, by Linda Lear had a huge impact on my life as a child.
I loved Beatrix Potter.
I loved her work.
I loved the story of her life and I loved her art.
And I have the full collection of little tiny books, such as The Tale of Miss Tiggy Winkle, which is one of my very favorites.
There was a time in history where women were not allowed to use all the art mediums.
Most mediums were reserved for men, and so watercolor was one of the considered feminine art forms that women could practice.
And so, of course, it was what Beatrix Potter knew and she became a true master of watercolors.
And it really inspired me to also pursue watercolor.
This woman created such a whimsical world with her art that it just inspired me to also fall in love with the medium of watercolor.
It is one of the kindest art mediums to the environment.
It involves so much meditative movement. and it is just one of my favorite types of art.
When I considered pursuing art in university, I had quite a few more experienced art teachers tell me that I really had to focus on other areas of art and not focus so much on painting little whimsical animals and fairies, and it was just such a wonderful experience to remember her and her story and just really stay true to what I really wanted to paint, and to this day I'm able to do it and I've been able to sell some on my Etsy shop.
So it has meant a lot just to be able to express myself in the way I always wanted, and Beatrix Potter inspired me to do so.
Another couple books that I've mentioned before, so I will just mention briefly is The Highly Sensitive Person.
A misconception about being a sensitive person is that that means you are highly emotional or dramatic in a very external way.
And I think it's really important to remember there is a very important portion of the population that are just more sensitive to the world started me on the journey of really realizing that there's nothing wrong with me if I feel deeply, if I'm easily overwhelmed by the world, if I can be overstimulated by sights and sounds and all sorts of experiences.
There's nothing wrong, and that just means that I have my own special, unique set of gifts to share with the world, such as every single one of you watching also do.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Shipper of Her Own Making and The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Blue Bear are three books that had a big impact on my childhood as well.
They are all absurdist books, meaning that they are strange, they don't always make and they follow kind of bizarre plot lines.
I absolutely love these types of books because I think they constantly remind me reading is meant to be fun, life is meant to be enjoyed, and there's no reason you cannot find humor or just joy, or whimsy or magic in your daily life.
You just have to have the right perspective and attitude.
The Frog and Toad Treasury is a book that I'm sure a lot of you have experienced.
These stories were iconic and beautiful for me growing up.
They are just so sweet.
They tell the story of Frog and Toad, two creatures that embody what it is to have a slow and mindful and peaceful life.
They live exactly how I want to live every day. and it is just such an adorable set of stories.
I think it is the saddest thing when adults think they're too old to read children's books, because I think there's so much wisdom and insight to be gained from them.
I just made a video talking about my journey with anxiety and stress management and emotion regulation and just all of that for my Patreon recently.
And making that video was incredibly emotional and cathartic.
And while I was sharing it, I was thinking about the books that had a huge impact on me and my journey with anxiety.
As a highly sensitive person, and a one that i did come back to quite a few times, was fear essential wisdom for getting through the storm.
This book, while not the first or last book i read in relation to managing anxiety, it was a really helpful foundation with learning to not give thoughts and feelings meaning that is harmful to you.
It started me on the path of learning to be mindful and present and non-judgmental of myself and my thoughts and emotions.
And I think this book as well reminds me throughout that To find the true answers you were searching for and develop that wisdom, you can only look outward so long.
You can only read so many books and you can only go to so many seminars or so many therapy appointments until you have to truly accept that the hard work begins with you, begins within, and you have to start implementing these changes.
And there is a lot of wisdom within if you just slow down and stay present and start learning to make peace with your interior world.
Similarly, a surprisingly morbid-looking book really helped me on my anxiety journey as well, and it was this book The Mysteries by Bill Watterson.
It is a very strange book.
It has very unappealing pictures in a way, but I do not mean that as an insult to the artist, because I know that the artist created them to be in a way unappealing, but interesting and thought-provoking.
It is a highly interpretive piece of literature that is not going to sit well with everyone, but for me it was really powerful.
What it talks about is how important it is to be aware of the fact that you don't really have control over your life not in the ways you may think you want to have control and that if you can make peace with that, you can find true freedom.
And i think a lot about what triggers anxiety in the vast majority of people is a desire to control what is uncontrollable, at its core at least, and so this book is one i reread when i need to and i need to be reminded about some universal truths and the importance no, not the importance the absolute necessity of learning to let go in order to thrive.
Well then, I just wanted to share a couple of more of my favorites.
They're not necessarily books that changed my life, but they're ones that I definitely enjoyed.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon is a more recent release that I definitely enjoyed.
As a child, my favorite book of all time was The Penderwicks and I think will always have a very special place in my heart.
Recently i just read a book that i absolutely loved, and it was the undead fox of deadwood forest.
I got an advanced reading copy of it and i absolutely loved it.
So if you're looking for a whimsical but poignant tale for october, i highly recommend this one.
It is not coming out until next year, but if you get it for not this october but next october, i highly recommend it.
It is the perfect, Slightly scary, slightly haunting read that is not actually scary at all.
If you are a human marshmallow like me but you want to experience some of the October autumn feels, I highly recommend this book.
It will not scare you, but it does feel very autumn-esque and October and harvest time theme deeply reminds me of Over the Garden Wall.
It has just a very similar vibe to me.
It's about a fox named Claire who has passed away and he has now been given the role of moving animals who have died into their appropriate afterlives, and he encounters the ghosts of animals and talks to them and ferries them away to where they're supposed to go.
And so that may sound a little bit morbid, but it's a really sweet and fun story.
It has quite a bit of humor in it.
The author was absolutely lovely and sent me an advanced reading copy of it to show me some of the art in it.
I highly recommend you pre-order this one if it's been a while since you've read a book with an animal protagonist, because I think more people should do that.
There are two books that had a huge influence on me once I became a parent.
I became a mother to a little baby boy not too long ago and it was a, of course, very new, overwhelming challenging time, as it is for everyone when they bring home their first newborn.
And there was so much for me to learn and I was sometimes so overwhelmed with everything I felt I had to learn.
The book Mothershift and Mama Zen were huge in helping me through the postpartum period.
Both have so much wisdom and kind of snarky truths to share and they really get into the nitty gritty about the emotional experience, about building a new life after you give birth.
It made me realize that becoming a parent is so much more than just learning how to take care of baby or do proper parenting techniques.
It's an opportunity to grow in incredible ways spiritually, to completely dismantle your ego, break down your sense of identity in order to build yourself back up again into someone so much better and stronger and more resilient and more amazing than you thought you ever could be.
And I think there's a lot of universal wisdom in it that apply to you, whether or not you are becoming a parent.
It's more whenever you're changing your life in huge ways.
The Hidden Life of Trees also was a huge book for me.
It completely changed my perspective about nature and it helped a whole new passion for nature preservation to come to life in me, and it has never left me since.
I hope you enjoy all these books and please let me know what it is that you were reading that you really enjoyed, maybe in your childhood or even presently.
There's so many books out there that can change and shape us and help us in writing our own story, living out the own chapters of our own life.
And so I hope you enjoyed this, something a little bit different, but I hope it was fun nonetheless.
I'm sending you all so, so much love and I will see you soon.
Goodbye.
