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Best Books on How to Write a Book-Read As I Wrote My 1st

lot of books neatly placed in rows in a book store display featuring travel memoir journeys beyond and within this photo is used as a feature image for article best books on how to write a book (1)

My Best Books on How to Write a Book: I Read These While Writing My 1st Travel Memoir

Not all the best books on how to write a book carry this tagline. So many titles, such as Bird by Bird or On Writing, fall directly into the list of best books about writing books. The other books for writers that I have dared to add here are those that have nurtured my growth as a human and a writer for over eight years. These titles aren’t promoted as the best books for writing, but by being so amazing and wholesome, they have slowly guided me along while I wrote my first book, one page, one day, and one breath at a time.

I had written about writers often drinking from the common wellspring of the greatest writing ever written in my favorite books from 2022. I have drunk the books listed here. While reading them, the book had become me, I was her, and everything else ceased to exist.

That afternoon when I learnt to bike and couldn’t believe what I was doing, or when I saw the Himalayas for the first time and was stunned by the pure mountains (more details in my book), and life had grown exponentially larger from what it had been in moments, these books have enlarged my life, too.

A lot of books have changed my life. The Little Prince and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance also belong to the same category. I am not including them here. This list of the best books on writing books is limited to those that directly helped me write better, especially travel and nonfiction, my travel memoir to be precise, made me see how to edit a nonfiction book, inspired me to write and keep pursuing art no matter the outcome, allowed me to feel what I was feeling as a lone writer at work might, and some are science books that enhanced my understanding of the human organism. To write about our species, we should understand the physics of our species.

Not a list is perfect, and not a list is suited to everyone. But this is mine. These titles run with my blood. They sit in my stomach. They shape each word my fingers type and my pen inks.

Enjoy my best books for creative writers. I hope that some of these storm you and cradle you as they have me.

Good luck!

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My Best Travel Books of All Time

a woman sitting holding best book about travel to read in her hands in clay color dress the book title shows journeys beyond and within it is a green cover and in the background you can see plants

Honestly, this piece on the best travel books of all time began as a list of the books I loved in 2023. As the number of books about traveling surpassed other categories, I decided to dedicate an entire blog post to the best travelogues. 

Here you will find all kinds of books about travel and adventure, including some on traveling within one’s room and another one on setting up a home in a foreign country. Some travel essays are as old as 1794 while others are from a couple of years ago. The list has solo walking adventures, solo mountaineering on horseback in the old-day Persia and current-day Iran, one travelogue is of a lone woman biker, another one of a tramp, and you will find even artists sharing their traveling experiences. I have also kept two of my best travel novels. They were so good that they belong here. Irrespective of the variety, all these books on travel have the same intention: to share the experience of exploring this wonderful, magical world and inspire us to open our senses to it.

I now have a handpicked list of the best books on writing too. These titles helped me write my first travel memoir, and some of the books here are delicious travel books to enjoy at any time.

I’m still to add many more books, but until then, enjoy. This is a complete collection of the best travel literature I have ever read. Enjoy.

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My Favorite Books of 2022

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This year I read about forty books only (apart from children’s books, online journals, and print magazines). As I don’t bother to finish the books I don’t like, most of those forty were strong books. I am sharing here my most favorite books of 2022: the ones that suffused me with courage and child-like wonder, showed me the beauty and the ordinary genius of everyday life, reaffirmed that we are shadows of our childhood, and equipped me with tools to understand life better.

Without these books I wouldn’t have been who I am today, I wouldn’t have known that ecstatic state of being out of this world that they rollerbladed me into, and my journey as a writer would have stagnated. (My all-time life-changing books are in the link.)

As a runnel of rainwater runs to meet the brook, writers run towards this common wellspring of inspiration, which is nothing else but the river of all great writing ever written. Like a thirsty tiger, we kneel, bend our knees, and drink from it every so often. Here, very humbly, I offer you some drops from that wellspring so not only you could make more sense of everything around you, but also see the beauty in all this.

Shall we?

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For more than eight years, I've read and written night and day to make On My Canvas—my sustenance and life's focal point—a place of inspiration, trial, adventure, and happiness. Everything here and my weekly newsletter, Looking Inwards, is free. No AI. No ads. No paywalls. No sponsors. No paycheck.

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