10 titles to fill you with gratitude
Getting lost in a good book is a special gift during the holidays. However stressed you get, however much drama there is, however sad you feel, the right kind of book can act like an escape hatch, putting the world on pause.
To celebrate Thanksgiving, try getting lost in one of these 10 books for which we’re truly grateful. You’ll find family and togetherness, happiness and hope – and even the strength to overcome seemingly impossible odds.
‘The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well,’ Meik Wiking
You know that warm, fuzzy feeling when you light a new candle? When you curl up on the couch with a fresh cup of tea? That’s hygge (pronounced Hoo-ga). Hygge loosely translates into a sense of well-being, coziness, togetherness and contentment. The book has lots of easy tips for achieving hygge (a particular favorite: eating more sweets). But perhaps the most important is feeling gratitude for the little things in the here and now. Don’t take our word for it: Denmark ranked No. 3 on the most recent World Happiness Report.
‘Little Women,’ Louisa May Alcott
Alcott’s 19th-century classic is the literary equivalent of a cup of hot cocoa on a cold night. The heartwarming tale follows the four March sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy – into adulthood as they confront hardship and tragedy in Civil War-era Massachusetts under the guidance of their mother. Anyone who has read and loved “Little Women” will, even if they’re only children, forever feel like they’re in a family of sisters.
‘Gratitude,’ Oliver Sacks
When neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he wasn’t bitter. In his final months he wrote the essays that comprise this collection and did the impossible: He made coming to terms with mortality uplifting. “My predomi- nant feeling is one of gratitude,” he wrote. “I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
‘The Glass Castle,’ Jeannette Walls
Walls’ story is an inherently moving one. It has to be, or else her 2005 memoir would not have spent years on the New York Times best-seller list. Born to a pair of wayward dreamers – Rose Mary, an artist, and Rex, an alcoholic – the four Walls children grew up in nomadic poverty, rich in love and poor in nearly everything else. Was it negligence? Abuse? Or were Rex and Rose Mary too anti-establishment to raise their kids in accordance with the world’s demands? There are no easy answers in “The Glass Castle,” but there is an abundance of love.
‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ Madeleine L’Engle
“It was a dark and stormy night.” So famously begins Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 classic sci-fi adventure and Newberry Medal-winning “A Wrinkle in Time,” in which child heroine Meg travels through space and time to find her father, a scientist who’s disappeared. Meg is a plucky protagonist for the ages, and though her journey is beset with terrors, her family has armed her with the one thing that has the power to triumph over evil: love.
“Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things,” Jenny Lawson
Lawson is open and vulnerable about her lifelong battle with mental illness in this memoir about living with crippling depression and anxiety. It is nevertheless furiously funny, full of bons mots, random hilarity and words of wisdom. Lawson is the kind of writer who makes you feel better about being yourself, even when being yourself is hard.
‘News of the World,’ Paulette Jiles
It seems an unlikely feel-good story: Hurting for some cash, 71-year-old widower Captain Kidd agrees to transport a 10-year-old white girl, transformed and wild after being raised in captivity for years by Kiowa warriors, back home. It is on one hand a rip-roaring adventure Western, the road home long and beset with the dangers of 19th-century postCivil War Texas. But above all it is a portrait of kindness in an unkind land as two sympathetic hearts cleave to each other. As they close in on their destination, Kidd, a man of his word, realizes he must break it to do what is right.
‘Wild,’ Cheryl Strayed
There’s no shortage of memoirs that double as journeys of self-discovery, but Strayed’s best-selling 2012 memoir is based on a literal journey. After losing her mother to lung cancer, suffering a divorce and grappling with drug abuse, Strayed rebooted her life with 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995. There’s joy and terror of forging ahead into the unknown, whether it’s a literal dark forest beset with terrors or going toe-to-toe with personal demons. “Wild” is a powerful reminder that sometimes the only way forward is through.
‘Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,’ Ross Gay
Maybe you haven’t read a poem since high school. Not to worry: Gay’s verse is as accessible as it is profound. A finalist for the National Book Award for poetry, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” is exactly that, a stirring cry of thanks to the universe that you can’t help but feel the warmth of thanks reading. “I can’t stop/ my gratitude, which includes, dear reader,/ you, for staying here with me,/ for moving your lips just so as I speak./ Here is a cup of tea. I have spooned honey into it.”
‘Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?’ Dr. Seuss
The good Dr. Seuss was known to drop some serious wisdom on kids, but at least he cushioned the blow with whimsical rhymes. Here, the lesson is: Stop complaining. Be grateful. Tons of people have it worse than you. Of course, because it’s Dr. Seuss, his example of who has it worse is the crumple-horn, web-footed, green-bearded Schlottz, whose tail is tangled with unsolvable knots. “It’s a troublesome world. All the people who’re in it/ are troubled with troubles almost every minute./ You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot,/ for the places and people you’re lucky you’re not!”
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