Top 3 Non-Fiction Books that Should Contribute to Society

by B Condon 8:48 PM

What are the top books that immediately pop in your head to recommend to others that are not only your favorites, it should be someone else's favorites in order to contribute to a better world? Too difficult to come up with a list? Well, I know my top 3 indefinitely.


"Letters to a Spiritual Seeker" edited by Bradley P. Dean, Authored by Henry David Thoreau and Harrison Gray Otis Blake

Henry David Thoreau is a genius and is quite quotable in this book, where he even delves into the female sex, the essence of spirituality, praising nature and even religion itself - which seems appropriate for the letters written are being sent to Blake, an ex-Unitarian Universalist minister back in 1848 who wished to pick Thoreau's brain  on all aspects of religion and life and the job is done in a way where poetry, prose, and correspondence meets perfectly. Best quote? It is a tie between Thoreau's“The warmth of celestial love does not relax, but nerves and braces its enjoyer.” and a very true statement, for me anyway, according to Dane that “Religion is never spoken because the deeper truths of human experience cannot be communicated directly from person to person.”  Why? Because awareness according to spirituality/religion is becoming more defined or blurred depending on where you are from - this book seems to explain to your unconscious that spirituality/religion, the words and labels are irrelevant to the point it comes to one word that should truly matter: lifestyle.

 Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Again stylized between literary types of poetry and prose, and that is more apparent in the Aesthetics of "Eros" than Thoreau's naturistic writing, Anne Carson discusses what Eros means - not as a Greek God, but more about what Psappha (or her English spelling Sappho) believed about Eros as passion, specifically for its glykopikron (which literally translates to the sweet bitter). The main thesis is supported by literatures ranging from  Sappho's lyrics to Plato's Phaedrus but done in an original way that the sensitivity of the subject is emulated in form. You will become more enlightened, especially if you are a writer or artist, about what true love is, especially through the eyes of an ancient society that highly regarded passion. Best quotes? Too many to count but the most memorable: “No one in love really believes love will end. Lovers float in that “pure portion of anxiety,” the present indicative of desire.”  “When you fall in love you feel all sorts of sensations inside you, painful and pleasant at once: it is your wings sprouting. It is the beginning of what you mean to be.”

Art Objects by Jeanette Winterson

Most known as a lesbian advocate and writer, Jeanette Winterson wiped that off that preconceived notion right away in one essay in Art Objects in a way that I do not have the quote exactly, but she advocates she is a writer first and loves second, the gender of her preference is irreverent to her writing. At least that's post-Oranges are not the Only Fruit. But in every single essay she has in this collection, she puts forth an astounding command of language and narrative over something such as memoir. While I spotlight on "A Veil of Words" the most for its importance in GLBT society, the other short essays are cute, quirky, and somehow have an underlying profound message. The why for this book seriously needs no reasoning, it's right out there in such quotes as “The Queer world has colluded in the misreading of art as sexuality. Art is difference but not necessarily sexual difference, and while to be outside of the mainstream of imposed choice is likely to make someone more conscious, it does not automatically make that someone an artist. A great deal of gay writing, especially gay writing around the Aids crisis, is therapy, is release, it’s not art. … It is true that a number of gay and lesbian writers have attracted an audience and some attention simply because they are queer. Lesbians and gays do need their own culture, as any subgroup does, including the sub-group of heterosexuality but the problems start when we assume that the fact of our queerness bestows on us special powers.” and “It would be a pity of lesbians and gay men retreated into the same kind of cultural separatism. We learn early how to live in two worlds, our own and that of the dominant model, why not learn how to live in multiple worlds?”

I would include Inga Muscio's "Cunt" but for reasons that are pretty apparent as well that doesn't need much embellishment.