Ten Fiction Books to Realign your Perspective to Reality

The birds are singing a full-on chorus right now, have you noticed?

They must do this every year, but ever since we moved to the country, I’ve noticed things in nature that went undetected in our former bustling city life.

What they are singing about, we can only guess. But I like to wonder what the lyrics might be.

(Some guesses: “This is no ordinary day!”, “I’m not worried about a thing”, and “who knows what tomorrow holds, but today I’m doing okay.”)

There are many different sounds in the world that can make up a chorus and give us an impression of the world we live in.

Most of them, I think, sound more like a cacophony of confusion: an algorithm that shows us a version of the world that feeds our particular desires or fears. Even if everything we are seeing or reading on our phones were true, the picture it paints for our brains is far from reality, because of what is left out.

If I told a child fearsome tales about ferocious lions, the jaws of deep sea creatures, and snakes that lie in wait to strangle their prey … but I left out the chorus of birds … I wouldn’t necessarily be lying about nature, but it certainly wouldn’t give her an accurate picture of it, would it?

In fact, it might even make her afraid to walk out her front door. And think what a shame that would be.

I think there’s a reason we can’t hear the lyrics to the songs the birds sing.

Unlike the powers behind much of what we are consuming online, the source of a bird’s song doesn’t force a particular message or a certain perspective on us, but instead invites us to wonder.

Because a bird’s song is wordless, we can only assume the force of nature behind it is asking us with genuine interest, “what do you hear?”

(Whether you can hear the birds where you live or not, isn’t it comforting to know they are singing just the same?)

At any rate, GOOD NEWS:

Birds aren’t the only ones singing a beautiful chorus right now. You can hear their common theme just about anywhere, if you listen carefully.

But one very good place to listen is in the pages of good literature, for the practical reason that whereas birds don’t use words, books do.

(And by “good” I mean, literature that seeks to offer us more than just an escape or a tightly crafted view of the world, that doesn’t allow for any nuance or space to ponder our own pressing questions.)

I’m not a doctor or therapist, but might I suggest a few good books that, whether you’ve read them before or not, have healing powers known to secure us more firmly in what is actually real?

As in, real at its very core, not just our current perception of reality … the reality that birds sing along to in perfect harmony.

… As in, truer than any comfort you could receive from Google or Reddit.

Here are ten really good books that will help realign your perspective to what is real:

1. When you are feeling stuck in place, metaphorically or physically, or craving the healing power of nature: read The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.
2. When you are yearning for love, feel like you’ve failed in love, or simply want to be a stronger heroine rooted in love, read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
3. When you or a someone you love are going through a healing journey and need a reminder of how the process works (slowly and undetected at times), read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
4. For when you are fighting what feels like an unrelenting battle, or if you simply need to remember your own grounding truths, read Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor.
5. When you want to read a story aloud with a child you love that will make you grow in gratitude along with the heroine you are reading about, read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.
6. When you want to grow your awareness of beauty in a world that, at times, seems devoid of it, read Charis in the World of Wonders by Marly Youmans.
7. When you feel unqualified for the work you have to do, read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
8. For when it feels like you are trying your hardest but you are still missing something (and need some encouragement that maybe, just maybe, there’s unseen good working hard under the surface …), read Till we Have Faces by C.S. Lewis.
9. For when it feels like everyone in your life is moving on, and you are the only one left behind, read Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace.
10. And as a shameless but honest plug for my own book (which is technically not fiction, but rather non-fiction that gushes over fiction), if you are feeling hungry for simplicity, the joys of community, or reliving the delights of the books that shaped your youth … (or maybe you are just really in need of a picnic in your life) read Eat Like a Heroine: Nourish and Flourish with bookish stars, from Anne of Green Gables to Zora Neale Hurston, by Lorilee Craker and me.

What is one true thing nature, or a good book, is saying to you right now?