I love reading and am always searching for a good novel. Some books fly by as a blip and I barely recall them. Others, such as the four below have changed my thinking, touched my heart, and I've never forgotten them. Add them to your bookshelf now!

1. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Ever watch the Viggo Mortensen movie ‘Captain Fantastic’, where Viggo’s character and his children live in the wilderness? His family focuses on survival skills and other intellectual pursuits in the movie.

This book is similar but is also so much more than that. It is a deep personal awakening of the author’s self as a person and her right to define herself and freedom to live her life on her terms.

Along her journey, she has to confront her own ideas about learning.

School education is important, but what about survival skills? Homeopathic medicine skills? Homesteading skills? What about life education: Thinking for yourself, self-respect, acceptable relationship or family dynamics.

You may want to weep for the author, but she is a strong soul who made her own path and educated herself.

2. The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter by Brionni Nwosu

Would you make a deal with Death to live forever? Nella Carter did.

This concept was intriguing because I have always wished to time travel. Even as a kid I wished to travel back in time to see what life was like hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Living forever seems like an amazing experience!

However, I never considered the possible losses that occur, as this book does.

Would I allow myself to make friends or love another if I could never tell them who I was? Or, watch time take them from me and I go on? I’m not sure I could.

Does it really benefit humankind to live forever or is life more meaningful because of death?

3. The Puma Years by Laura Coleman

Just..wow. Read this book. It will change your life.

Could you give years of your life to protect endangered animals, risking everything through fire, sickness, hunger, and danger? That is the first unsettling thought within me as I read this book.

The second question was what I could do to help if I couldn't physically be there. I can donate, raise awareness, and tell others about this book, but I still wonder if that’s enough.

4. Last Summer Boys by Bill Rivers

When I look back, I can see where childhood slowly gave way to growing up, and part of me still misses that sweet girl I was. I miss her wonder, her freedom, her simplicity.

This book pulled me back into that time, where the main character, 13-year-old Jack is on that same divide. He doesn’t want anything in his life to change, but he can feel the ground shifting beneath him and his older brothers.

You can’t stop growing up.

But over one unforgettable summer, Jack learns that even as life changes, a family’s love doesn’t.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have. What books have changed your life?

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