Reading List
The following reading list consists of books that relate to the spiritual, relational, and creative strands of the "triple helix" of midlife renewal that Dr. LaBier has described. It contains works of both fiction and non-fiction. The books were chosen because they address issues, provide perspectives, or stimulate new thinking related to the triple helix.
The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a current guide which will be updated periodically. Books of the "how to," advice-giving genre, and those associated with the New Age movement are generally excluded. Most of those provide superficial and simplistic formulations which embrace, rather than penetrate through or critique the values and cultural attitudes which block human development.
Reading List Categories
Spiritual
These books, both non-fiction and fiction, address issues regarding meaning and purpose in human life. They raise questions, provide perspectives, and portray the struggles that men and women must deal with in order to transcend the short-term, self-oriented concerns that block or distort moral vision and principled action.
| Erich Fromm | To Have or to Be The Art of Being |
| Peter Matthiessen | The Snow Leopard Nine-Headed Dragon River |
| Jack Kornfield | A Path With Heart |
| Lao-tzu | Tao-Te-Ching (Stephen Mitchell's translation) |
| Philip Kapleau | The Three Pillars of Zen |
| Idries Shah | The Sufis The Way of The Sufi |
| G. I. Gurdjieff | Meetings With Remarkable Men |
| Thomas Merton | Mystics and Zen Masters |
| The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler |
The Art of Happiness |
| Shunryu Suzuki | Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind |
| Thich Nhat Hahn | The Miracle of Mindfulness Peace is Every Step |
| Viktor Frankl | Man's Search For Meaning |
| Herman Melville | Moby-Dick |
| Fritjof Capra | The Tao of Physics The Web of Life |
| Gary Zukav | The Seat of the Soul |
| Chinua Achebe | Things Fall Apart |
| Frederick Douglass | The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass |
| Kobo Abe | Woman of the Dunes |
| Shosaku Endo | Deep River |
| Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan | Awakening: A Sufi Experience That Which Transpires Beneath That Which Appears In Search of the Hidden Treasure |
| Hazrat Inayat Khan | The Art of Being and Becoming The Inner Life |
| Paramhansa Yogananda | Autobiography of a Yogi |
| Swami Rama | Living With The Himalayan Masters |
Relational
These are works of both fiction and non-fiction, both classic and contemporary. They offer vision, insights, and wisdom regarding the tasks of creating mutuality and awakening to truth in relationships, particularly in the face of family, cultural, and gender distortions. These distortions underlie the self-deception, betrayal, and false intimacy so prevalent in relationships.
| Jane Austen | Persuasion |
| Charlotte Bronte | Jane Eyre Villette |
| Emily Bronte | Wuthering Heights |
| Alice Munro | Open Secrets Friend of My Youth Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage |
| E .M. Forster | Howard's End Room With a View |
| Doris Lessing | Children of Violence series (the 4 Martha Quest books and Four-Gated City) |
| Fyodor Dostoevsky | Crime and Punishment (the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation) |
| Virginia Woolf | To The Lighthouse |
| Peter Taylor | The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor A Summons To Memphis In The Tennessee Country |
| Graham Greene | The Heart of the Matter The Human Factor |
| Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving The Art of Listening The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness |
| Judith Jordan, et al. | Women's Growth In Connection |
| Jean Baker Miller | Toward a New Psychology of Women |
| Olivia Butler | Kindred |
| Harriet Jacobs | Memoirs of a Slave Girl |
Creative
These books address, directly and indirectly, the cultivation of creative, flexible, mindsets and perspectives regarding daily life and problem-solving. They do this from a diverse base, including everyday life practice; business and leadership issues; the evolution of consciousness; and the interrelatedness of all phenomena in the natural world.
| Ellen Langer | Mindfulness |
| Warren Bennis | On Becoming A Leader |
| Robert Rosen | The Healthy Company |
| Tony Buzon | Using Both Sides of the Brain |
| Charlotte Joko Beck | Everyday Zen |
| James Gleick | Chaos |
| Max DePree | Leadership Is an Art |
| Daniel Goleman | Emotional Intelligence |
| John Horgan | The Undiscovered Mind |
| Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela |
The Tree of Knowledge |
| Francisco J. Varela, et al. |
The Embodied Mind |
| Jane Jacobs | The Nature of Economies |
| Idries Shah | The Commanding Self Learning How To Learn Knowing How To Know |