What is your favorite inspirational book?
 

Hi, I love reading true stories about people who overcome all odds and succeed. Here are two good ones below. I need to find something to read next. What are your favorites?

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly.

As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets.

Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar).

Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.



A Peice of Cake by Cupcake Brown

From Publishers Weekly:
Cupcake Brown (that's her real name) was 11 in 1976 when her mother died. Custody of Brown and her brother was given to a stranger—their birth father—who only wanted their social security checks. He then left them with an abusive foster mother who encouraged her nephew to rape Brown repeatedly. Brown got better and better at running away.

A prostitute taught her to drink, smoke marijuana and charge for sex. Her next foster father traded her LSD and cocaine for oral sex. Eventually she went to live with a great-aunt in South Central L.A., where she joined a gang. Almost 16, having barely survived a shooting, she decided to quit gangbanging. Drugs were her new best friends. A boyfriend taught her to freebase, but then there was crack, which was easier.

Before long she was a "trash-can junkie," taking anything and everything. It wasn't until she woke up behind a Dumpster one morning, half-dressed and more than half-dead, that she admitted she needed help. Brown conveys this all in gritty detail, and her struggle to come clean and develop her potential—she's now an attorney with a leading California firm and a motivational speaker—ends her story on a high note.

Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Richard Bach's "Illusions"

I also love Stephen Donaldson's fiction writings. They're entertaining and a testimony to loss, suffering and overcoming hardship.

Sav, thanks for the recommendations! I read the first two long ago, but I think I was too young at the time to really appreciate them so I think maybe I should read them again.

I never heard of Donaldson. I looked it up and it sounds interesting. I love sci-fi!

By the way I forgot to mention "Codependent No More" by Melody Beattie. This book really turned my life around.

Thanks again!

Chicken Soup series are nice. Short little stories fill the pages of many of the books in the series.

Joni Ericson-Tada is a lady worth reading about.
another ...
Quickie Wheelchair/Sunrise Medical is a company that was founded by a lady who was injuried in a hang glider crash. Upon getting finished with rehab for her injuries, she was given a wheelchair (standard like you see in hospitals) and told that it will be her legs from now on. A heavy cumbersome wheelchair. She went home and in her own garage with help of her friends, they took the same pipes that are used for hang gliders and built a lightweight wheelchair. She took her idea to Sunrise Med in Cali and they liked it so much that they made her a VP and started the Quickie Wheelchair Co.

A woman VP 20 years ago was something not heard of. A woman who is paralized from the waste down made her own wheelchair and started up a company that has helped millions. In my working in the industry and seeing what the other companies make...I say that Quickie is the best on the market.

Thanks Best. A friend of mine thought of an idea for wheel chairs. She thinks they should have some kind of easy access umbrella built in-do any of them have that?

That reminded me of something. Singer Neil Young has two kids with Cerebral Palsy. He invented some things for them to use so that they can more easily enjoy remote control model trains. It is a technolgy that can be applied to many things. They can operate mechanical things with their head instead of hands.

http://www.usaweekend.com/97_issues/...eil_young.html

You would be suprised at the electronics that can be hooked up and used.
They even have a system that reads eye movement so that you can control things just by moving your eyes from side to side or up and down.

Yes I remember seeing something on TV with Steven Hawkings where he had that. Pretty cool!

I hope that insurance is paying for these things for people that need them.

Raerae6 I think that Steve Hawkings has Multiple sclerosis. At one time in his life he was walking and talking but then as his disease progressed he got where he is now.
BTW My fave inspirational book is "The Dhammapada".

PS I don;t know what my favourite motivational book is!!?!

The Joy Diet: Ten Daily Practices for a Happier Life by Martha Beck.
Absolutely, positively changed my life forever. I am the way I am largely because of what I learned in it.

GL

The Five people you meet when you go to Heaven. Sorry, I can't remember the author, but when I picked up this book several years ago, I read through it entirely one day after work, sitting in the parking lot, and it helped me see so many things just about human nature and emotions, and mostly myself. It took me several hours to read, mostly because I cried through portions of it, but it was certainly inspirational for me. I do believe there was a movie made of it a couple years ago

its the holy bible for me, thanks for asking

More books!
 

No problem! The Gap series is *great*. The first book, "the real story", is a little strange and slow, but it's short. But it really gets going in the next, and the issues of the main character's addiction and the suffering she goes through (and then her *violater* goes through a similar almost worse form of suffering, how ironic!) can really put life in perspective.
If you want a really philosophical bent with similar themes, then Dan Simmons "Hyperion" series is incredible. (Hugo award!)

Oh, did you ever read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"? That's Bach to, as well.

Wow, twenty years later and I can almost still recite this book from heart. I occasionally (when faced with some who just can't, can't, can't do something for themselves) will whisper to myself under my breath:

"Argue your limitations
and sure enough
they're yours"

:)

GiveLove- have you read FINDING YOUR NORTH STAR by Martha Beck?

Also ~ can anyone recommend a book that helps with inner child healing?

Lol...

got it. got it. need it. got it. need it. got it. need it. need it.

((((Raerae))))

Lots of great recommends. Thanks.
I've read lots of books that have touched my heart, lifted my soul, laughed at, and cried to.
Recently, one of the "great" ones, was called, "You're Not You".
Sorry, no author's name on hand.
Hold on, be right back....
Okay, here's a description and photo. Isn't technology wonderful? Tee Hee!


Bec is adrift. It's the summer before her junior year in college. She's sleeping with a married professor, losing interest in her classes, and equivocating about her career. She takes a job caring for Kate, a thirty-six-year-old woman who has been immobilized by ALS.

As it turns out, before the disease Kate was a stylish and commanding woman, an advertising executive and an accomplished chef. Now, as she and Bec spend long days together, Bec begins to absorb Kate's sophistication and her sensuality, cooking for her, sharing her secrets, and gradually beginning to live her own life with a boldness informed by Kate's influence. The more intense her commitment to Kate, the further Bec strays from the complacency of her college life. And when Kate's marriage veers into dangerous territory, Bec will have to choose between the values of her old life and the allure of an entirely new one.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...r/10876199.gif

Happy reading...
Your gonna love this title, folks.

Hugs,
Linda

p.s. it's coming out in paperback at the end of this month. don't wait. get it today. lol

I have indeed read it...in fact I've read everything she's written except grocery lists :)

She has a funny, sassy edge that some people find tough to take but I (and Oprah...) like it...

Did anyone read a book called "My Side Of The Mountain" ever? I can't remember the author, but they made a t.v. movie of it.

It's about a young boy in NYC who runs away to "live off the land" in the catskills.

I remember "borrowing it permenantly" from the library. That book was my personal bible as a child. I remember studying up on edible flora and launa all winter so I could go to the catskills and live in a hollowed out tree!

I remember the TV movie, Sav, and I'm pretty sure I read the book when I was younger. It reminded me of the Foxfire series of books about living off the land, I'm pretty sure there was a movie made about that too.

One of my favorite inspirational books is Way Of The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. This week I rented the movie Peaceful Warrior that was based on the book, I thought it was wonderful. The last few minutes where Dan is doing his routine on the rings sent chills up my spine.

The author of my signature line, Og Mandino, wrote many wonderful books, small books full of great inspiration and spirituality. The Greatest Salesman In The World, The Greatest Miracle in the World, A Better Way To Live are just three that I love.