2025 has proved a deeply tumultuous (but equally rewarding) year full of, for me, triumphs, tribulations, and a vast multitude of learning experiences. I have learned an immense amount about myself (as have many others) through graduating high school, entering college, and embracing the newfound agency that the kind of independence only leaving 1400 miles away from home can grant. Solace is imperatively vital under circumstances like these, and I’ve managed to find my own within words– whether they be my own or the works of others. Below are 5 of the most impactful books I’ve read this year, with considerations to their generalized themes, certain quotes, or even a mere resonance between myself and the author’s words. I am recommending these same books to my HERCampus readers because I truly believe each one holds the capacity for lining one’s perspective in totality with something new.
- .) Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain- James R. Doty
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“Into the Magic Shop” is a non-fiction work (a memoir, actually) regarding James R. Doty’s life and his conquest for discovering meaning beyond his own mind and beliefs. Doty is faced with immense hardship during his adolescence, between familial responsibilities against his mother’s depression, an alcoholic father, and finding himself amidst this plight of contention and poverty. It’s only when Doty wanders into a “magic shop” and meets Ruth, an elderly woman, that he discovers his own capacity for revealing “the mysteries of the brain”, subsequently leading to his later career as a neurosurgeon despite all cards having been dealt against him. As to not reveal too much but also to provide a brief synopsis of the work, Doty encompasses the potential mindfulness holds through a series of challenges. This can be related back to most everyone’s lives and experiences, no matter how varied. It is entirely too easy to disregard the autonomy we hold over our own lives, especially when placed in circumstances that we feel powerless against. This book, however, has entirely revolutionized the scope through which I view my agency over my life, and I wholeheartedly believe everybody should read this book at least once (if not more) in their lives. “You need to understand that what you think you want isn’t always what’s best for you and others. You need to open your heart to learn what you want before you use this magic; otherwise, if you don’t really know what you want and you get what you think you want, you’re going to end up getting what you don’t want.” Huh?”― James R. Doty, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart.
- .) Tuesdays with Morrie- Mitch Albom
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Tuesdays with Morrie is another revolutionary read to any reader’s life, and will guarantee the scope through which we view privilege and appreciating life’s seemingly smallest (but most significant) facets. Another memoir, this book delves into the relationship fostered between the author, Mitch Albom, and his terminally ill professor, Morrie Schwartz. Over a mere span of 14 meetings (all occurring on Tuesdays, hence the title), life’s greatest triumphs and errors are explored and related back to both Albom and Schwartz. Life, love, privilege, and the lack of are all delved into, and how these inalienable truths shape our own lives and worldviews. While their relationship is further nurtured, Morrie succumbs more gradually to his terminal illness, ALS, emblematic of life’s greatest concessions we too often forsake. Morrie helps Albom to recognize and embrace life in totality while simultaneously watching his own slip away from his grasp. As a time-oriented individual myself, exploring the relationship between the two has taught me just how invaluable the aspects of life I so often (and so easily) overlook are. This book assuredly will change and shape one’s overall perspective regarding life and is another vital read. “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”– Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie.
- .) I Who Have Never Known Men- Jacqueline Harpman
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While I Who Have Never Known Men is a dystopian novel rather than a memoir like the preceding 2, the lessons to be derived are just as valuable to one’s life and overall perspective. This book follows the life of an unnamed narrator trapped (from her own birth) alongside 39 other women. Although they inevitably escape preceding immeasurable tragedy, Harpman explores in her post-apocalyptic world the vitality of female relationships, love, trust, and the capacity friendship holds in a life devoid of control (at least in a political context). I’ve chosen to include this book in my brief list of must-reads due to its uncanny resemblances drawn between its dystopian setting and our own political climate, targeting the minds, bodies, and lives of women today. These women s collective resistance taken against the male guards is both heartening and deeply galvanizing, representative of the own power we can take against a patriarchal power system while embracing the solace found in camaraderie and a collective bearing for administrative change. Against a ruthless political climate is intimacy and joys, however slight, to be derived from companionship. “I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men.
- .) The Dead Poets Society- Nancy H. Kleinbau
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While this book is incredibly popular (as is its beautiful film adaptation), it is not without a concrete rationale. The Dead Poets Society embraces so many of life’s most vital facets explored within the relationship between its main characters and their exploration of individuality against innumerable social and familial pressures. The capacity words hold for single-handedly shaping one’s life and shifting worldview is directly explored and emphasized, contributing to my inclusion of this invaluable piece of literature within my list. This book is just as much about the teachings of Mr. Keatings, the English teacher at Welton Academy, as it is about the boys’ established “poetry society” and its associated joys and devastations. Similar to myself, these protagonists find not only meaning, but themselves, within words and the freedom they allow for expression and self-discovery. This book and its sub-lessons are far too remarkable to attempt to convey through a mere opinion piece, but it is a must-read for anyone (and if you’ve likely already read it, read it again; this is a rare work that can be reread time and time again without one ever boring of its words or profound meaning relative to the power words wield). “Carpe Diem,” Keating whispered loudly. “Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary.”– N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society.
- .) The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera
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The final book I believe everybody should read at some point in their lives, due to its magnitude held towards shifting one’s perspective, is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Occurring in Prague Spring, this story encompasses the dichotomized lives and differences drawn between Tomas, a surgeon, and his wife, Tereza. With vastly different upbringings and modes of privilege, this overall theme of lightness against life’s most cumbersome burdens is compared and explored. This work of literature encompasses existentialism to explore these modes of existence in totality and the facets of identity that allow oneself to define their own life’s worth and direction. Tereza finds herself questioning her own purpose beyond her intrinsic and direct motivations against her husband’s mistress, Sabina, and Sabina’s own “forbidden” love, Franz. Motivations and meaning beyond one’s direct values and beliefs are explored and contrasted among these characters and their compounded lives, and what is considered “ideal”. To draw differences in one’s own life between lightness and heaviness is invaluable and a deftness vital to one’s development of self-identity against social constraints and indissoluble life pressures to be everything at once.
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.