Welcome to this virtual book corner! Here I’m sharing with you my all time favorite books, a little about them as well as my current reads. Hope you enjoy and happy reading
A bit about my all time favorite reads
I love books that activate my curiosity, inspire me and remind me of the frequency of love, I love books which remind me that life is a miracle and everything is possible.
“Be Here Now”
“Be Here Now” By Ram Dass: When I lived with two roommates the year I moved to the US, there was this square blue book in our bathroom, I knew it was there for a few months, for aesthetics I thought. When I decided to open this book my life was changed forever. I couldn’t stop reading Be Here Now, in the train, while cooking, when I worked in the darkroom, and sometimes even during class! Ram Dass became the friend I needed right there: when my mind and heart started shifting and my spiritual journey was unfolding miraculously and I had very little friend who got what I was going through, he was there with his sweet and gentle words that embody the energy of loving awareness. Can you tell how passionate I am about this book? Be Here Now begins with Ram Dass telling his story, from being a professor in Harvard to meeting his guru in India and changing is life forever. Then it goes into what I would call “life lessons for the soul” which are written and drawn by various artists, and the last part of the book is dedicated to tips, routines and rituals of how can we keep embodying a life of loving awareness instead of wanting to stay “high” in the oneness of it all. I kid not when I say this book changed my life forever, and the lives of so many more!
The Little Prince
The little prince has to be by far my favorite book since before I ever know how to read. My sister, Lore, had the little prince in French when we where kids for some reason, I was a toddler and remember clearly the day I picked up this book from her closet, and couldn’t stop looking at the beautiful drawings, of course I couldn’t read and less understand French. Growing up I’ve read this book a gazillion times, I revisit the little prince at last once a month, and it has a new lesson every time. A lot of people say this is a book for kids, but for me this is the bible of what it means to have a human experience and be alive in this world.
Las 3 Mitades del Ino Moxo
“Las Tres Mitades del Ino Moxo” Written by Cesar Calo tells stories and myths from the Amazon’s Jungle in Peru. A mix in between reality and fantasy, and where the lines in between begin to disappear in the mystic jungle and the plant allies. This book has fascinated me since I stumbled upon it in my college years. I came to find out a few years ago that my dad went to school in Tarapoto with the author’s grandchild, and this conversation also got my dad interested in reading this book! If interested, I found a link to the book in English. Such a fascinating way to learn about the Jungle’s cosmovision through the stories of the people that live there.
Women Who Run With Wolves
Where do I even start with this book? We all carry a Wild Woman inside, we can hear her howling and ready to express, dance, rewild, be free… Clarissa Pinkola takes us on a thousand different journeys in this book, unraveling the real story of the female power and our magic. There’s a lot of myths we’ve heard (like the Grimm Brother’s) which tell very well known stories, but what most of us don’t know is that in a lot of this worldwide known myths the stories where actually led by females and we don’t know this as they have been manipulated to be led by male figures. Clarissa Pinkola’s “Women Who Run With the Wolves” shares a lot of this stories with us to later break down the meaning and symbiology behind them all. If you are ready to feel the call of the wild woman, of the freedom, of reconnecting with nature and dancing freely in your body this book is for you.
Walking Each Other Home
This book was Ram Dass’ last gift before transcending into the next reality. “Walking Each Other Home” was written by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush during the course of months of living together, in Baba’s home in Hawaii where they shared tea, stared at the rain, ate and talked about loving and dying, and what it means for them to have a human experience in planet earth. In Baba’s books, talks and life death has been a very big topic, and this book explores death as Ram Dass approached his own death. This book I’ve read two times since 2019 and I know I will be revisiting again, the amount of widsom and calmness in every page is astounding. It was very interesting for me how I read this book right before my beloved cousin Monique transcended, and I finished after her passing, during this moment I also met mama cacao for the first time, and my life changed a lot.
All The Women In My Family Sing
All The Women In My Family Sing is a beautiful anthology of the voices of 69 women of color who tell a passage of their life’s stories surrounding themes around justice, freedom, love and equality. This book was a gift from a resilient woman I had the pleasure to make a couple commission paintings for, I read it last year and fell in love with every page of it. Learning through listening (in this case, reading) the stories of others is a gift that I believe can move mountains, and if you are looking into understand at least a tiny bit of what life as a woman of color looks like, this book is a must! I learned so much from every single story, and it really inspired me to keep reading other people’s stories so I can at least get a little glimpse of what other’s experiences are like in this planet we all share.
Art Forms in Nature
I came across Ernst Haeckel’s work in 2014 and it changed my life forever (ok, I’ve said this for pretty much every book, but that’s because these are my all time favorite books! sorry) Ernst’s artwork was something I had never seen up until that day, I felt I had an artist friend from the past who spoke a similar language (even though of course he’s the master of all time) If you’re looking to stay inside an artist’s universe and be swept of your feet this is your book. His work embodies the harmony, symmetry, balance and intricate universe that every single living organism is, if we take a close look at them. Wow! I’m inspired.
Entangled Life
I started reading “Entangled Life” looking to learn more about the Fungi Kingdom while I started painting “The Evolution of Fungi”. Along the way I realized this book was about much more than fungi, and that is because fungi are MUCH more than just fungi. These mystery creatures are the building blocks of mama earth, our ecosystems, our own human bodies and everything in the world as we know it. This book felt like poetry, like a love letter to mama earth. Merlin Sheldrake takes us on a journey and teaches us how to see our world as a magical living being. I had to stop reading the book every few pages to integrate and journal about everything I had just read, WOW. If you are looking to learn a mycologist’s perspective on the world and maybe ask yourself if fungi might be our oldest ancestors… this book is for you :)