List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

This was the first memoir I’d ever read by someone with bipolar 1 disorder, and the first time that I didn’t feel completely alone except in fiction. A real person out there went through something and survived, even thrived. I needed that.

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

This book was the first I’d read as a teen who had been repeatedly hospitalized about teens in a similar situation, the first book about teens and the many reasons they make the choices they do. It had a huge impact on me at the time.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

This has been my preferred world to escape to whether I want to ponder places of unimaginable beauty like Valinor, the wisdom in the social commentary buried throughout, get lost in the books, or marathon the movies.

Little mental vacations are extremely important for me, and Middle Earth provides those.