Seven Books for When You’ve Lost Faith in Something (or Everything).

Honestly, this book is a bit dangerous, because hooks has a way of looking at love that’s intensely idealistic and pure. You may find other people’s definitions of love or their supposed practice of it to be lacking once you’ve learned what’s here to learn. Still, I think fostering some idealism about love is worth it in the long run.

On the one hand, this is a long essay about sleeping overnight in The Louvre. On the other hand it feels like a long conversation with a close friend that keeps you up for hours and sets something right deep inside you.

I came upon this short, mesmerizing book by accident a few years ago, but I’ve been seeing it around more recently and I’m not surprised. It feels like a message from God, delivered by Rose, about the worthwhile risk of loving another person without reserve.

Thomas Merton, a monk, theologian, mystic, and writer, really feels like he was the father none of us ever had. And no, you don’t need to be Christian to read him, you just need to be open to being humbled by a metaphysical realignment.

Even if psychoanalysis seems a bit too opaque or antiquated to you, the work of Jung, the weirdo woo-woo student of Freud, will probably still resonate, especially if you like paying attention to your dreams. The kind of book best read first thing in the morning, still in bed.

Boyer faces a cancer diagnosis with a mix of aplomb and rigor alongside the desperation and horror. It made sense of something I didn’t even know was disordered in my soul.

The voice animating these personal essays is so striking and intelligent that I would follow it anywhere; the result is a book that’s both upright and abject, both searching and totally still.