Books That Altered My Brain Chemistry (On Art, Politics, and the World)

For someone who reads as often as I do, I'm not too big on a lot of fiction. My goal is always to find a new way to see the world, whether that be by nonfiction, poetry, or a good story. These books are very intimate and personal for me, and I hope you find some that inspire you.

1. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

"There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am thawing."

I read a lot, and writing is my passion. But never in my whole life has a book affected me as much as this book did- simultaneously horrifying and breathtakingly beautiful account of grief and mental illness, this book resonated with me in a way few books did, filled with metaphors and a strange sense of mania, an understanding that something is terribly, horribly wrong with the world Lia lives in.. the world we live in.

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss—her life—and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory, and feeling guilty for not being able to help save her.

- Goodreads Book Description

Image Credit: unnamed by Pixabay

Take the Quiz: Which Literary Fiction Should You Read Next?

Jump into the world of literary fiction with the one of these novels based on your existing favourites.

2. Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

You've probably heard of this book before. It's perhaps the most famous contemporary "sad girl" book there is, and the reason is more than just it's versatility. It's one of the few books where the author clearly knows what she's talking about, has been through it all, and most importantly: has recovered.

She sees her illness for what it is. She is careful to show us the process of healing, not the process of hurting, careful to portray it in all its realism and ups and downs. And yet, she doesn't shy away from going there, from being unflinchingly honest about how the real world works. There is never any hero coming to save you, and sometimes good people die. But sometimes, good people learn to live, in pain and in joy, and at the end of the day that's the point of this story. It's scarily relatable to almost any situation, and is so far from being preachy: one of those rare books that tell a story so well, it doesn't have to spell out the message.

"Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. [censored] washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm.

You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge."

3. My Body by Emily Ratajowski

This is one of my FAVORITE books of all time, and I could probably rant about it for hours if you let me. I really adore activist books that let the story spell out the message, instead of trying to preach their version of the truth to people, and that´s why a lot of famous feminist books didn´t resonate with me the way this one did.

Emrata did it better because she isn´t trying to push any sort of truth on people. She never once tried to portray the female experience as anything simplistic but instead lays out her facts, feelings, and opinions as exactly what they are: subjective but wholly telling and oddly relatable.

Book description:

¨Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age twenty-one, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.

My Body is a profoundly personal exploration of feminism, sexuality, and power, of men's treatment of women and women's rationalizations for accepting that treatment. These essays chronicle moments from Ratajkowski’s life while investigating the culture’s fetishization of girls and female beauty, its obsession with and contempt for women’s sexuality, the perverse dynamics of the fashion and film industries, and the gray area between consent and abuse. Nuanced, fierce, and incisive, My Body marks the debut of a writer brimming with courage and intelligence.¨

Goodreads

4. Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Haunting, poetic, and soft, this book is pretty much a 100 page ode to the color blue.

“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color," Maggie begins, embarking on an almost divine prayer towards the color. “We don’t get to choose what or whom we love... we just don’t get to choose.”

“Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? Or is the love itself the disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?” In a way, she decides, she is in love with darkness.

Her hushed adoration had me falling in love with a color too.

Image Credit: macroperspective from Pixabay

5. The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey

Reminiscent of the literary Black Swan, sometimes the drive for power can drive you mad. Ambition and greatness can be like drugs, horrifically enticing, impossible to get away from. A sarcastic, scathing analysis of the world of ballet, The Cranes Dance is one of those books that reads between the lines of human behavior, and it changed by understanding of people.

6. Ariel by Sylvia Plath

This was the start of my obsession with older poets. Also proof that Sylvia is nothing short of a GENIUS. As SnowWhiteHatesApples put it, "This collection is angrier, more bitter and feeling very much like Plath’s final words to the world." I don't think I can express in words my love for this collection.

"“I kept telling myself I was the sort that could only write when peaceful at heart, but that is not so, the muse has come to live here, now Ted is gone.”—

Sylvia Plath, in a letter to Ruth Fainlight, October 1962

Fierce, harsh, and unflinching, "the poem ends just on the edge of destruction. Its last lines—“the cauldron of morning”—again point to the mix of destruction and rebirth," one reader writes of the book's namesake. Channeling feelings of [censored], rage, despair, and euphoria, the author herself seems somewhere between life and death when she wrote these poems.

Image Credit: Pedro Vit from Unsplash

7. The Journals of Sylvia Plath

With a book like Ariel being one of Plath's last words on this earth, it is easy to sensationalize her life. But the fact is, despite her madness and tragic backstory, her true life was a lot more complicated than this. She fell in love deeply, wrote like her life depended on it, and treated even the smallest moments of her life as if they were something beautiful to be admired. At times, I could pick out chunks of this journal that were almost word for word in mine, and her letters to Richard especially were intoxicating in their beauty and mysticism.

8. I Would Leave Me If I Could by Halsey

Aka the reason I now love rhyming poetry (with sarcastic undertones). Halsey's talent for lyricism and emotion really sticks out here in this colorful memoir-in-verse. It even reads like a song at time, showing Halsey's knack for linguistics and manipulating the English language. And it's really short, a great introduction to poetry! It also has LGBT themes, if that piques your interest (Halsey identifies as bisexual.)

Book description: "Grammy Award–nominated, platinum-selling musician Halsey is heralded as one of the most compelling voices of her generation. In I Would Leave Me If I Could, she reveals never-before-seen poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder."

-Goodreads

9. Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

This was the kind of book that just leaves you speechless, another one of those that is too busy spelling out the information to tell you what to think. But I promise you, you will leave a different person than you once were.

Filled with anger, rage, and confusion, Olivia spins us a list of vignettes about her childhood that will make you question everything. Written in verse, the simplicity somehow makes it more emotionally rich- and even if you aren’t usually a poetry fan, I promise you that this story is anything but boring, and is generalized enough that it isn't overly autobiographical or falsely deep.

Book Description: “A dazzling debut collection of raw and explosive poems about growing up in a sexist, sensationalized world, from a thrilling new feminist voice.

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood now weaves together her own coming-of-age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. At times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant, Life of the Party explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does a girl grow into a woman in a world racked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? In precise, searing language, she illustrates [this]”

Goodreads

Image Credit: karigamb08 from Pixabay

10. Pieces of Why by K.L Going

This is probably the only middle grade novel (besides Mockingbird) that really stays with you. Raw and simple, the book addresses a question that, try as you might, will never have an answer: why does cruelty exist? After she witnesses a shooting that kills an infant and destroys its mother, she finds herself questioning everything.

She can't stop asking herself: why? Why would anybody do such a thing? Where does a good person become a bad one? Through her struggles, she realizes she needs to find forgiveness, for both victims and the people who do such terrible things, find compassion regardless of what somebody has done, and discover how love gives you the strength to carry on even after tragedy.

11. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Susanna Kaysen's startling account of BPD changed by understanding of the world by redefining madness and sanity. After all, as Susanna herself asks, "was insanity just a matter of dropping the act?" After all, the brain is deep, complex, and at times it is terrifyingly accurate. Kaysen zooms in on the smallest things, the space between seconds, the things that may or may not exist.

Susanna states that her writing of this book was fueled by rage, and a desire to dissect the world. If that's true, well then she achieved it. In a hyper-fixated, obsessive way, she dissects our definition of reality, good, and bad.

Image Credit: Tama66 from Pixabay

12. Girls With Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young

A sci-fi, dystopian book that is oddly metaphorical in a horrifying kind of way. At first, this seems like a normal society. The girls attend a boarding school that is tended to by teachers, doctors.. and the Guardian. Slowly, we start to learn more and more about her lifestyle, her so-called caretakers.. and that she is absolutely, 100% not safe.

Book description: “Some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.

The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved—it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardian, they receive a well-rounded education that promises to make them better. Obedient girls, free from arrogance or defiance. Free from troublesome opinions or individual interests.

But the girls’ carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears. As Mena and her friends uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there—and who they really are—the girls of Innovations Academy will learn to fight back.” -Goodreads

13. The Silent Patient by Alex Michealides

A psychological thriller: a murder that stunned me, not because of it's horror, but because it made a kind of twisted sense. You

"Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him...."

- Goodreads

13. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erksine

"Books are not like people. Books are safe.”― Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird

This book is incredibly raw. The simplicity of it, the nativity and innocence of the child narrator, all add to the heartbreak I felt reading this book about gun violence. At 9 years old, Caitlin lost her brother to a school shooter.

Like Tia in Pieces of Why, she finds herself faced with a terrible, inevitable question: why? And more importantly, how can she possibly go on, knowing what she knows about the world?

Image Credit: IstvanKopeczny from Pixabay

Everyone's relationship to books are different, and I'm really interested to know what books changed your life and why? I hope you enjoyed this list, and thanks for reading!