What’s your favorite book about loneliness?

Asked by Austin Kleon

What’s your favorite book about loneliness?

Save
Share on Twitter Copy link
Recommended by Sweeha Saba Kirti Punia and 4 others
What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens? When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting
www.goodreads.com
Sarah Curtis 7mos

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing is pretty definitive IMHO

Recommended by Liz Heather and rob
From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This--a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society. There is a silent epidemic in America: loneliness. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from the most major of
www.goodreads.com
Recommended by Brian McCann and Minh
From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, a startling challenge to our thinking about depression and anxiety. Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking antidepressants wh
www.goodreads.com
Brian McCann 7mos

This book changed how I saw the world and interact with other people.

TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Haňťa - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts are his own and which
www.goodreads.com
Wiktoria Dalach 7mos

"Too Loud a Solitude" by Bohumil Hrabal. It starts with "For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story". It just grabs your heart and doesn't let go until the end.

Recommended by Michael Edwards and bobfronk
Walker Percy's mordantly funny and wholly original contribution to the self-help book craze deals with the Western mind's tendency toward heavy abstraction. This favorite of Percy fans continues to charm and beguile readers of all tastes and backgrounds. Lost in the Cosmos invites us to think about
www.goodreads.com
Recommended by MJ and Madeline Zima
In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters—an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind R
www.goodreads.com
MJ 7mos

Letters to a Young Poet and The Book of Ebenezer Le Page immediately come to mind

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson - or anyone else - has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced, and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well, that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appe
www.goodreads.com
"I am here alone for the first time in weeks," May Sarton begins this book, "to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened." In this journ
www.goodreads.com
Maxima Kahn 7mos

The only book I can think of about loneliness is May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. If you collect some good titles from this thread, you might share some in another thread.

The former Sex & Relationships Editor for Cosmopolitan and host of the wildly popular comedy show Tinder Live with Lane Moore presents her poignant, funny, and deeply moving first book. Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage—whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being
www.goodreads.com
Recommended by Arman Khodadoost
*Description from Goodreads:* The heart of Anthony de Mello's bestselling spiritual message is awareness. Mixing Christian spirituality, Buddhist parables, Hindu breathing exercises, and psychological insight, de Mello's words of hope come together in Awareness in a grand synthesis. In short ch
www.amazon.com
Recommended by Roy Sarkar
Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo y
www.goodreads.com
Roy Sarkar 7mos

The Midnight Library was a great read

Recommended by Kipodisco
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an in
www.goodreads.com
Load More
Personalize your experience

Join our community of people discovering and sharing the best content out there.

Sign in with Twitter