A bunch of kids are graduating out of high school and heading to college and no, no graduation parties here! While I understand the ease and flexibility of gift cards/money etc, I want to give them books too - just a personal choice. There are some books that have stood in good stead for me and I have read them over and over and still find value. I am looking for some recommendations in the same vein. For ex., I never tire of reading The Alchemist and Illusions. Would appreciate some recommendations - ones that you hold on to, ones you have gifted etc. More the merrier for I am looking to gift at least 10 kids. With your help, hopefully I will be able to match the book(s) to the kid.
I can suggest few, not sure if you will like GRIT - by Angela Duckworth QUIET - Susan Cain Siddartha - Hermen Hesse Book of Joy - Douglas Abrams ( captures Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu meet and their philosophy) Wealthy Barber -- (this to teach saving habits )
@radsahana ,Radhika, Thank you for the list. I appreciate any and all recommendations Siddhartha is on my list. Will check out others. Thank you for responding.
Switch - How to change when change is hard https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Chang...preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
If the kid is ... I have overwhelming wonder and curiosity than talent in me ...but I don't want to nurture my curiosity in a conventional wagon.. I want to hitch my own ride ...I want to thrive in my curiosity as my personal liberation than from imposed prospects in such indulgence ...I want to hold on to that wonder ...fictive or fact ...I want to stimulate in that wonder ..I want to inspect the world through those wonder-ridden eyes ..I wish to forge an intimate and unique expression with the capacity to wonder at the world. If the kid is ... I hate mediocrity. I loathe the trite and sentimental and petite-bourgeois thinking of my peers. I feel suffocated with the hive-mind that has taken over the world yet I intend to spar and intrude myself with this alienated crowd. I don't belong here yet I am beckoned here from my own doing and passion to examine and scorn the banality reeking from this intellectually impoverished society. I stand out yet weigh in. What am I called? A steppenwolf. If the kid is ... I am at corrosively confounding conflict with the world that discombobulates me. I want to clarify with the world better but in my attempt to canoodle with the world, I tend to complexify it and then calcify it. What am I doing wrong?
If the kid is ... What is this double think on revelation (faith) and reason (inquiry)? How can both co-exist? Surely, one is wrong. Which one? What is this natural inquiry and revelatory induction and skeptic argument and humanistic existence and what is reality trying to tell me. More than reality trying to tell me, what is it that I want to listen to ...I don't believe in supreme power so what controls me? Can I control myself? Do I have the free-will to chart out a life with my wilful perception of existence over essential. Can I? If the kid is ... I have withdrawn from the love of my life. OK, they don't know that I exist because it is only a crush yet I feel the pain from thousand cuts. Hold on, now, I had a real break-up from a real relationship. It is tearing me apart. I am lost. Why am I so hurt with real and imaginary flutters of my heart? I need someone to tell me that it is going to be okay and I will transfer my heart and affection onto someone else. I want someone to assure me that I will get attracted in new future to another pretty nose and fat lips. Does everyone go through the roller coster from pickings of love? Am I the ultimate romance fool? If the kid is ... I am lost! I am totally lost! Who am I ...what am I ...what is my identity ...am I to others what I am to myself. Where do I even start to discover myself?
I would never recommend the books I have read through my life save of course Wodehouse. By the time, the kids grow up, they'll have a great language in their command. Don't give the kids Livingstone Seagull yet. There is time for reading such stuff!