When a person succeeds, he or she will often point back at a specific mentor in their life: a teacher who believed in them, a parent who was always supportive, or a boss early on in their careers. These stories are often beautiful and touching.

My story is different. I grew up seeing no one in my family nor town whom I wanted to be like. I started traveling very young and met many adults during the first eighteen years of my life but I still found no one in particular to guide me. So I turned to books. I read voraciously. Books were (and still are) my mentors.

Through books, I learned success, love, life lessons, valuable history lessons, and diversity that I would never have had access to in real life. I read the words of Nobel Prize winners, ex-convicts, people who had suffered terribly, and billionaires. Tell me what you’ve read, and I’ll tell you who you are. Books play a huge role in forming young and old minds alike. It is sad for me to hear about a decline in reading today because I know the power of it firsthand.

Here are some of the key lessons my book mentors taught me (and continue to teach me):

1/ True Courage Isn’t Always Rewarded In The Moment But Will Never Be Forgotten. Truth and Justice Always Triumphs in the End

The history books are tainted in blood. Unfair treatment has always occurred. Books taught me about people who went through incredible injustice yet showed pure character. Their testimonies to the wrongs they suffered are priceless lessons for future generations that must never be forgotten.

Winston Churchill wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

-Courage: Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

-Injustice: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Rozanne Dunbar-Ortiz and A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

-Hope: The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by Elie Wiesel

-Suffering of the Poor and Innocent: Germinal by Emile Zola and Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

-Repression: The Gulag Archipelago By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsy and

-Horrors of Colonization and Slavery: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

-Horrors of War: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

My takeaways: We must never forget history. I have made a point in my life of trying to read as much as possible about the various first-person encounters of people who were there and witnessed or experienced it.

2/ We Owe It To The World to Fight For Freedom of Thought and Speech, Fair Government, and Equal Human Rights. Without These Rights, The World Is a Dark and Terrible Place

Many books exposed me to the dangers of conformism and authoritarian regimes. These book mentors instilled in me the need to fight for freedom and cherish it as of top importance.

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” — Nelson Mandela

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell

Conversation in the Cathedral by Vargas Llosa

Schindler’s List by Steven Zaillian

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and

The Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela

My takeaways: While it isn’t my intent to be political and I generally avoid politics, I feel strongly about certain values like living in a country where I know people’s rights of speech are protected and discrimination is against the law. My book mentors taught me just how important these rights are and worth fighting for.

3/To Bring Love and Joy To Ourselves and To Others Is The Ultimate Motivation and Only Reason for Living

Why are we alive? What is the ultimate reason for living? What defines a good life? Some of the book mentors who exposed the purpose of living are really the most simple ones: to love and be loved, to spread kindness to others, and to appreciate the Earth.

Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

La Nausée by Jean-Paul Satré

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda

The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Have You Filled a Bucket Today by Carol McCloud

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Gilead and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Siddhartha, written by Hermann Hesse

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost

At Blackwater Pond: Poems by Mary Oliver

The Essential Rumi by Rumi

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it” writes Gabriel García Márquez

My takeaways: All these books reinforced beliefs about life’s purposes: to love, be loved, and live in line with nature. We humans often overcomplicate things and that is what creates unhappiness. True happiness lies in simplicity, appreciation, and awareness of our surroundings and the people we encounter.

4/ Nothing Is Impossible; Humans Are Truly Capable of Anything and Stronger Too

When you think of successful people, you may think of luck, advantage, talent, or privilege. But my book mentors are of a different category. They are people who overcome extraordinary circumstances and were able to survive, thrive, and succeed despite their initial setbacks.

“I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.”

―Pablo Casals

The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray

What I Know for Sure by Oprah Winfrey

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

On My Own Two Feet: From Losing My Legs to Learning the Dance of Life by Amy Purdy

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Tough As They Come by SSG Travis Mills

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston

The Endurance by Caroline Alexander

John Paul Dejoria: From the Backseat to Billionaire by Michael Andrews

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl

My takeaways: People are incredibly resilient. If you ever want to be inspired, you will never have to look very far to find the proof. Whenever I feel my circumstances are tough or the cards are stacked against me, I seek out these mentors to prove me wrong and motivate me to try anyway.

5/ Live Outside of the Box and Go Against the Mainstream; Normal is Boring, and Life is Art

The people who I seek out as mentors are those who went against the grain. I am naturally drawn to and fascinated by the innovators, the rebels, and those seeking deeper meaning to leave their mark during this short time we call life.

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. … You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. … They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs

4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walther Isaacson

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkins

Leonardo da Vinci by Walther Isaacson

Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future by Ashlee Vance

Marie Curie: The Life and Legacy of the Legendary Scientist Who Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize by Charles River Editor

Becoming by Michelle Obama

My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future by Indra Nooyi

Never Give Up: Jack Ma In His Own Words by Suk Lee

My takeaways: Changemakers are those who follow their hearts and are relentless in the pursuit of success. They don’t want a career; they want to change the world. These are the people I love learning from and can never get enough of reading about.

Conclusion: Not everyone is privileged to find a real-life mentor and even if you do, their experience and knowledge is limited. Why wait? Why limit yourself? Real-life mentors are great but book mentors are immediately accessible to you today and you can seek their advice 24/7. Not only that but they share generously their knowledge, unlike many real-life mentors who are too busy or only answer a couple of specific questions. I highly recommend to everyone to seek out a couple of book mentors. If you don’t know where to start, you can download my mentor book list here.