Helpful books…

There was a question posed about which books had seen people through hard or difficult times in their lives. You might think the answers would mostly have been about religious works or other meaningful and spiritual books, but there were all sorts of different answers, some of which from an outside perspective might seem puzzling.

The answer I gave was ‘Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy.” it’s still a favourite book of mine but there was a period when I would pick it up and  be able to distance myself from thins which were difficult for me. Now I just reread it for pleasure!

There were 44 answers altogether including mine, but some people had a couple of books. Some of the answers were just simply the title and author of the book, no other comment:

1. Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl.
2. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
3. The Book of Joy – the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
4. Stillness Speaks – Eckart Tolle
5. In the Body of the World – Eve Ensler
6. A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis
7. High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
8. The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham
9. Little Women – Louis May Alcott
10. The Alchemist – Paul Coelho
11. Half Wild – Sally Green
12. The Case for Faith – Lee Strobel
13. Talisman – Stephen King and Peter Straub
14. Twilight series – Stephenie Meyer

There were a couple of light-hearted answers too –

• ‘I once wedged a door open with a copy of The Da Vinci Code’ – to which someone else replied: ‘Finally some good use out of that book!’

I think I have read this before, but someone wrote:

• Encyclopaedia Britannica. Stood on it to reach my life-saving medication on the top shelf.

There has been a debate recently about what good reading does… well there are lots of answers to that, but the question posed about how books can help in dark times shows an excellent reason for people being able to read.