It’s that holiday time of year again when we have a bit more time to get stuck into a good book. I always like to take an easy read book that doesn’t require much thought and one to inspire me so I feel like I have learnt something whilst being away. Following are my top 5 inspirational books that I have read so far this year:

1) Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Alborn.

Morrie was Mitch’s favourite professor at College, he was someone who inspired and mentored him. After Mitch left college they lost touch until one day when he saw his old mentor on the TV being interviewed because he was dying. He had a terminal illness and decided to use his experience of death as his final lesson. Mitch got in touch with Morrie and he agreed to be his student for one last time. Every Tuesday Mitch would go to visit Morrie during his last few weeks alive for lessons in how to live. The book is a beautiful chronicle of their time together. The main learning, or perhaps reminder, that I got from this book is the importance of Love. Morrie says “Love or Die”, that nothing else matters so spend your time and energy with the people you love, doing things you love. We are all going to die so don’t waste your time getting stressed or doing things you hate.

2) Many Lives Many Masters by Dr Brian Wiess.

This book was fascinating!! Dr Brian Weiss is a psychiatrist and had been seeing a female client for 18 months, she had been suffering from panic attacks, chronic anxiety and reoccurring nightmares. The treatment he was giving her just wasn’t working though, until one day when she started to recall traumas from her past lives. He was sceptic at first until she started to channel messages from highly evolved spirits, called The Masters, from the space in between lives. The messages from The Masters gave him revelations towards his own life that she could never have known. Over time through recalling her past lives and deaths her present life traumas started to fade. The messages Dr Wiess received from the Masters provided information about life after death and the influences of our past lives on our behaviour. This book was a further confirmation for me that there is life after death and it highlighted the importance of learning from the experiences you have and not repeating ones that damage you. We will repeat the same time of experiences until we learn what we need to, so anything that does not work learn from it and move on.


3) The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho.

Paulo Coelho writes beautiful stories which always include lessons about life. This one is no different; it is the story of a girl from Romania who comes to live in London told by people who knew her. She was nicknamed the Witch of Portobello because she grew heavily into dance as a way of connecting with her soul. She would hold groups where people would all come and dance together which lifted their spirits and had a huge impact on their daily lives. She gradually started to realise she had psychic powers and started channelling spirits through her, people would come to her meetings to receive messages about their lives. This book reminded me how important it is to dance! When we really dance it’s easy to get lost in the music and really be in the present moment, this helps you to connect with your soul. Also that love just is, you can’t control another.

4) Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

This is the story of how Elizabeth Gilbert got her life back together after her messy divorce. She travelled to Italy to indulge herself with things she is passionate about, food and learning Italian. Then she went to an ashram in India and discovered enlightenment. Finally she ends up living in Bali and falling in love again. The simple message I got from this book was the importance of just doing whatever you need to do to get through things and following your instincts on what that is.

5) The Shack by William P Young.

This is the kind of book that leaves you wondering if it actually was a true story or not. William’s youngest girl was abducted and later found murdered in a shack in the mountains. This is the story of him getting a message from God, in the form of a letter(!), telling him to meet him at the shack. Slightly dubious, and suspecting it may even be the killer luring him back, he takes a chance and journeys there in hope of some kind of closer. On arriving he is welcomed by God, The Holy Spirit and Jesus. You really have to read the rest to find out what happens. As someone who is not fully sure what I believe in in terms of religion I found this a beautiful and moving book. It made me realise that you really don’t have to follow any strict rules or go to church, God is all around and, just like most of the other 4 books I have written about above, love really is the only thing that matters.