On Books That Shaped Me as a Therapist & Human: A Personal Reading Journey
Why I Recommend Books the Way I Do
Unsolicited book recommendations are about as tricky as unsolicited book gifting as far as getting someone to read something. But it’s almost always worthwhile just to put a book on someone’s radar. And I do think you can learn a lot about the books people choose to recommend, especially if they are open enough to say that those books had some notable impact on them.
I want this blog to feel less like “reading these books will change your life” or “read these works if you want to be fitter, happier, more productive, etc.” and more like “hey, these books have meant something to me and will tell you something about me as a therapist and human being.”
This list includes a mixture of fiction and nonfiction, crossing a fair amount of genre lines, but hopefully weaving together a semi-defined tapestry of where I find myself and where you might find me. I’ll save some of the deeper cuts for the end, not in the interest of manufacturing anticipation, but actually because I think it closely models the process of my comfortability’s gradual expansion when I’m getting to know someone else.
My Relationship With Reading (and Why It Took Time)
I’ll also just add a little blurb about my relationship with reading. I did not grow up reading books. Not even a little. I did not read books for fun. I did not read books assigned to me at school. If I was going to sit down and focus on something for a long period of time it had to have more than just words. I actually developed most of my vocabulary playing video games with a lot of reading in them, like Pokémon and Pikmin. I didn’t really even start reading consistently until I was 19 years old and it took years of consistency and acceptance of my individual focus-related needs to be where I’m at now, reading as much as I do.
As far as the audiobooks vs. traditional reading debate: who gives a shit? Do whatever works best for you and inspires your continued curiosity.
Books That Have Influenced Me as a Therapist
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
Themes: Shame, trauma, identity formation, and resisting societal expectations
Starting this list with a book as widely known and compulsorily ingested as The Catcher in the Rye inevitably invites strong opinions just by nature of the book’s history and place in the U.S. English class curriculum. I am also unable to mention the book to many people I know without hearing the same South Park reference for the ten thousandth time. But it’s a risk worth taking because of what this book meant to me. This book wasn’t assigned to me in high school or middle school and I wouldn’t have read it back then anyway for reasons I explained above. I actually didn’t read the novel until I was 27 years old. I’ve been told by many that they used to resonate with protagonist Holden Caulfield’s perspective as teens but now, in their adult years, they find him whiny and entitled. It almost made me ashamed to openly admit the narrative felt like an insight into my thought process at the time.
Impulsive actions derived from and perpetuating conflict both internal and external that led Holden to continually encase himself in a rigid black-and-white mindset are hallmarks of the narrative. It’s wild to me that a common school assignment related to reading this book in school is one in which students are asked to diagnose Holden. I see the connection, given where we find him at the book’s end, but good grief what an awful way to conceptualize a human being, much less a teenager. Holden is a unique intersection of shame, trauma, and being forced into a mold he wants no part of. Anyone who finds themselves frustrated by majority expectations, sometimes sure of themselves or other times wondering if they’re broken, could experience some resonance with this book.
The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2022)
Themes: Disability justice, accessible futures, reimagining ability, and collective liberation
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is many things, as we all are, but their capacity to create at the intersections of their depths completely took hold of me when I read The Future is Disabled earlier this year. It’s one of the books on this list that fundamentally changed the way I thought about my own identity and just how able-bodied I really am. It brought me back to a question posed by a college professor of mine: When you imagine a utopia, do you imagine it is a world that is fully accessible to all bodies and needs or a world where no one has disabilities in the first place?
It’s the sort of thing Piepzna-Samarasinha addresses in their many works, but this book specifically is aimed at seeing disabilities (deafness, neurodivergence, chronic illness, etc.) as valid parts of the wide spectrum of human existence and experience. They explore what that means for conceptualization of self and society. What if disabled folks weren’t seen as cautionary tales for appreciating one’s own able-body or ‘good’ health? What can contemporary society learn from folks across a wider range of bodies and needs? Why is recognition of a ‘disabled future’ necessary to overcoming fascism? If these questions are of interest to you, Piepzna-Samaraishna’s work as activist, poet, and writer will undoubtedly be of interest to you.
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture & Charles V. Hamilton (1967)
Themes: Structural racism, political liberation, the limits of liberalism, and radical solidarity
Despite being written nearly six decades ago, Black Power remains potent in 2025 as a powerful reminder that the politics that brought us here will not be the politics that liberate us. Ture and Hamilton recount the many ways black folks have attempted to engage with American politics through the ‘appropriate’ coalitions and movements only to be hung out to dry when white liberal complacency and comfort prevents the deeper systemic changes needed for liberation. They speak on the ways labor movements, suffrage movements, and liberal political ideologies have failed black folks in America and how real allies must be fully willing to confront white supremacy on an institutional level.
Ture and Hamilton, both civil rights leaders, saw no room for compromise in the quest for liberation. The book explains why BIPOC acquisition of wealth within capitalism or a practice of ‘they go low, we go high’ will never be enough to exact meaningful change. It remains a firm reminder that operating within the structures and narratives of the majority will only ever serve the status quo.
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (1944)
Themes: Language shaping reality, infinity, authorship, and shifting perceptions of truth
In the interest of questioning the nature of reality and our existence, Borges provides so many incredible spaces to tarry in and work through. Ficciones is the Argentinian writer’s most widely known work and it contains many of his most intriguing short stories. Perhaps most accurately understood as speculative fiction, Borges writes these short little tales that sometimes read like ethnographies and other times as traditional narratives. He explores how language shapes our reality, the nature of authorship and agency, and comes as close to any author I’ve ever read at conceptualizing infinity.
I think he’s best read for himself and some stories I’d highly recommend are Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940), Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote (1939), The Library of Babel (1941), and The Garden of Forking Paths (1941).
Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Estaban Muñoz (2009)
Themes: Queer futurity, longing, non-assimilation, and desire as connection
A prominent and powerful work in the field of Queer theory, Cruising Utopia is, as I see it, nothing short of revolutionary if really taken in and digested. Cruising is a term used in the gay community to describe the act of seeking out sexual encounters in public spaces by negotiating desires and intentions through the environmental context (bath houses, specific public restrooms) and non-verbal cues. Much more than sexual pleasure though, cruising is about making connections in varying capacities with little expectation beyond that immediate encounter. As Muñoz conveys it: it’s all about acting out mutual desires for connection while resisting the repressive mechanisms that encourage us to label and categorize our every action and thought.
In this book, Muñoz discusses growing up as a Cuban immigrant and feeling his sense of difference very early on both as an outsider to America and a comp-het society. He critiques the push by LGBTQ groups over the course of recent decades to assimilate into a repressive majority. He questions the underlying implications of fighting for gay marriage or the ability to openly serve in the military. Similar to Ture and Hamilton’s book mentioned above, he wonders if liberation is even possible while operating within status quo affirming structures and narratives.
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti (2006)
Themes: Philosophical horror, the uncanny, destabilized identity, and existential dread
Thomas Ligotti is my favorite author and it has nothing and everything to do with the other books on this list. If the ideas I mentioned so far have all sought to challenge traditional modes of thought and societal configuration, Ligotti writes almost exclusively in the space only implied by the notion that nothing is innate, immutable, or as it seems. Teatro Grottesco is a collection of short supernatural horror stories that provide fascinating concepts like Borges merged with the uncanny nightmares of Lovecraft. Whereas Lovecraft wrote about characters discovering forbidden and paradoxically unknowable knowledge that upends their sanity, Ligotti delivers stories that seek to turn us into those characters. I didn’t realize I would like horror as much as I do until I read Ligotti. His works both speak to and inspire me in ways that are hard to explain for how pessimistic they are. But I derive a sense of hope from them that I’d like to explain further in its own blog post someday. For now, I’ll just turn you to Ligotti himself.
Of the thousands (or even millions) of you who read this blog, a small percentage are likely to enjoy Ligotti’s works. But that small percentage who do will likely find themselves fascinated by the implications of his stories.
Some standouts for me include: The Clown Puppet, The Red Tower, The Bungalow House, and The Shadow, The Darkness. For a broader look at this genre, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a great overview of horror literature.
The Trouble With Being Born by Emil Cioran (1973)
Themes: Existential paradox, outsiderhood, meaninglessness, and the paradoxical theory of change
A tricky sort of book to recommend as a therapist who absolutely believes in creating a world that feels fulfilling and generally pleasant for everyone. As such, it’s the only book on this list I wouldn’t really recommend to everyone. If taken a certain way, it can feed the sort of limiting beliefs that foster feelings of helplessness and isolation. I spent too many years waving around the ‘certain knowledge’ of my defeat as a banner of victory, so I’ve been there. I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt for a bit while I explain why this book means so much to me and how it has actually talked me down from many a ledge.
Cioran writes in these pithy little aphorisms that do justice to the form on par with some of the best aphorists I’ve ever read like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Wilde. On a foundational level, when life hasn’t been good to you it can’t be extremely cathartic to hear someone else essentially say ‘yeah, this all generally blows!’. But there’s more to The Trouble with Being Born than someone to commiserate with. Many of his reflections are illustrative of a person who feels the permanent outsider, nowhere to call home, and no one who really gets them (at least in the mainstream). Yet, in reading this book, many will find comfort and understanding. What a fascinating paradox that is.
How These Books Shape My Therapeutic Lens
Something we talk about here at the practice, and a big theme in Relational Gestalt therapy, is the paradoxical theory of change, or knowing and coming to terms with where you are being an essential component of moving toward where you want to go. To try to move without acceptance of your current position saps the energy needed for growth and directs it toward resistance.
The knowledge that while being brought into the world has exposed us to innumerable hardships and suffering, nothing is as it has to be. The idea of challenging the whole ‘that’s the just the way things are’ notion is what set me off on a journey to read so many books that imagine new possibilities for the world. I’ll end off on one of my favorite of Cioran’s musings:
“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live – moreover, the only one.”
If you’re curious how these themes show up in therapy, you can learn more about our work by scheduling a free info session.
Featured therapist author:
Liam DeGeorgio, AMFT, is a neurodivergent associate marriage & family therapist who strives to challenge society’s expectations and perceptions of ‘normal’. He lives with ADHD, OCD, and PTSD and enjoys working with clients wanting to challenge toxic masculinity, embrace feminism & anti-racism, and adults with childhood trauma. He loves playing the drums, reading books, and his four cats.
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