4 Books That Will Change Your Life

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Listening to a book counts as reading

  Mel, who led the 'Great Books' discussion program as a kid, settles the debate: she says research on which parts of the brain are used when reading versus listening shows 'it all counts.' She values books for escape, perspective and calm. She notes that at a time when people average six hours a day on social media, it thrills her that people are excited to read again.

• 02

  Pick #1, The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo, is the book she gives most

  It's a collection of one- to two-page daily meditations organized by date, so you can start on any day without losing your place. Mel brings it to dinner parties instead of wine. She has read it since 2016 and says Chris reads it daily and gives it to the men at the retreat he leads. Its message matches hers: the power is inside you, in your attitude, focus and how you process emotions.

• 03

  Nepo wrote it after nearly dying of cancer in his 30s

  Nepo had tumors in his brain and back, and calls that brush with death 'the opening through which I stared into eternity.' Mel tears up reading his introduction, about building a fire and staring into life. She ties it to 2016, when Chris was struggling with depression and she was trying to earn their way out of debt, and the book gave her hope. She reads a passage Chris highlighted: 'Resisting this process doubles our pain.'

• 04

  A book as a gift works as a stand-in for you

  Mel says a book on someone's nightstand, especially one with an inscription, tells them they're not alone and that you cared enough to choose it. She sees the same thing when people share a podcast episode, or when listener Aaron and her mother read The Let Them Theory together on a four-day vacation, stopping each night to discuss chapters.

• 05

  Pick #2, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, is about trusting your inner compass

  It follows Santiago, a shepherd in Spain, on a quest for treasure through setbacks and epiphanies. Mel's key quotes: 'When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,' and 'One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.' She also takes a caution from it: you tend to get what you ask for, just not the way you expected. She has read it repeatedly for over 20 years.

• 06

  The Alchemist first flopped

  Mel reads the 25th-anniversary foreword she quoted on page 217 of The 5 Second Rule. In Brazil, one bookseller sold a single copy the first week and a second copy six months later to the same buyer. The publisher cancelled Coelho's contract. 'I was 41 and desperate,' he wrote, and Mel notes that was exactly her age when she found the 5 Second Rule. A new publisher and word of mouth followed, then an American translator, HarperCollins, and a sitting U.S. president seen with a copy. She cites 65 million copies sold and more than 300 weeks on bestseller lists.

• 07

  Pick #3, A Court of Thorns and Roses, is permission to read just for fun

  Her daughters pushed the fantasy series (ACOTAR on TikTok) on her, insisting on the dramatized audio with actors and sound effects, which Mel calls 'a movie in your ear.' She listened for about six months while doing dishes, folding laundry and walking, and Chris listened to the whole series too. She says fantasy is good for creativity, emotional intelligence and problem solving, and it revived a fantasy book idea she and her daughters started riffing on ten years ago.

• 08

  Pick #4, The Firm by John Grisham, showed her she wasn't stuck

  Mel read the 1991 thriller in one night as a miserable first-year at Boston College Law School. She had applied only because people around her did and hated it immediately. Realizing a lawyer had written a page-turner opened her eyes: your degree or profession doesn't lock you in. She didn't think she would write books then, only that she didn't have to practice law.