The 10 Best “Spiritual Not Religious” Books to Put on Your Reading List

By Alison Lesley --
05 Sep 2015 --

Spiritual Not Religious Books

As numbers of religiously unaffiliated climb, books are being written to address the “Spiritual Not Religious” crowd.

More and more people are becoming religiously unaffiliated or secular. This trend is observed not only in the United States but on almost all countries as well especially the developed ones. But this doesn’t mean that unreligious individuals can’t be spiritual. And for those who are still searching for inspiration and answers to life’s biggest questions, here are 10 good books that would certainly be of help.

1. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

by Marina Keegan

This book is a compilation of the essays and short stories that Keegan wrote before she died in a car accident after graduation. Keegan’s failure in joining Yale’s secret societies caused her to divert her attention to writing. And as the title says, the book inspires readers to focus on the opposite of loneliness which is happiness, hope, and possibility.

2. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar

by Cheryl Strayed

Tiny Beautiful Things is a compilation of the great advices that writer Cheryl Strayed shared in her Dear Sugar column at the Rumpus site. The problems and solutions found in the book involved the common issues that struck everybody’s life from love and personal relationships up to concerns on addiction and poverty.

3. The Little Prince

by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This interesting storybook has been made available to almost all languages and countries in the world. It’s a short children’s storybook but is filled with numerous life lessons fit for the young ones and the adults.

4. The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking is a memoir as to how Didion coped up after her husband’s death. It can provide an inspiration especially for those pondering about their future even when faced with a life changing tragedy or incident.

5. Mortality

by Christopher Hitchens

The author of the book Mortality writes his experiences battling cancer and preparations for what he calls “ultimate unavoidability” which is mortality or death. Readers will notice how the author discusses the common questions that every individual suffering from illness will eventually ponder upon particularly the very meaning of life.

6. The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

This book is a story detailing the life of a family living in a society and culture of communism, caste system and discrimination. Based on reviews, the book will teach readers how the small and negligible things can actually affect and change an individual’s life.

7. How Should a Person Be?

by Sheila Heti

This novel tries to explain how the desire for fame makes the characters spend too much time and effort building their image in public. The novel is based on reality TV shows that according to critics show the shallowness of the culture.

8. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

by Allan Watts

Similar to religion, The Book tries to understand some of the largest questions mankind tries to discover such as the meaning of life and man’s relationship with the universe. It also tackles life and love, death and sorrow, and the fusion of Western Science with Eastern intuition.

9. Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

This essay describes the life and struggles of Frankl under the Nazi rule especially his time at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Destined to be executed, Frankl searched for reasons to live and in the latter part of the book, he believes that “man’s deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose.”

10. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

by Brene Brown

Daring Greatly is a book that tackles vulnerability. According to the author, vulnerability is something that every individual will encounter and can’t avoid but there are ways to eliminate the discomforts, uncertainties, risks and emotional disclosure associated with such vulnerabilities.