The Library

Welcome to the Empathy Library search page. Use keywords to search for books and films, or browse the collection using filters (e.g. under Book Type select 'fiction' or under Theme choose 'love' or 'poverty'). Results are automatically ranked by popularity. Join the library to add items, comment and give ratings.

Displaying library items 41 - 50 of 392
book
0
No votes yet

Philip Larkin once wrote, ‘Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home, strangeness made sense.’ When I read this book, I was travelling on business, something I was used to doing. I was also dealing with grief.

book
5
Average: 5 (3 votes)

At fifteen, I discovered Raymond Carver in a book of short stories that two friends of my parents kindly let me lift from their house in the middle of a car trip. Carver writes wonderfully about empathy.

book
0
No votes yet

Graphic novels often have a way of getting across human pain and loneliness that can’t be replicated in quite the same way without visual accompaniment.

book
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)

‘When I think of autumn, I think of someone with hands who did not want me to die.’ Tenderness is in short supply in nine-year-old Claudia’s life, but as she lies ill in bed with her mother taking care of her, she is in no doubt that she is loved.

film
5
Average: 5 (5 votes)

What is empathy? And what makes a great empathy film? Perhaps one in which the medium itself creates an empathetic experience - puts you inside someone else's metaphorical shoes.

book
0
No votes yet

Keynes’s humanity is palpable, despite the superficially dry subject matter. His fundamental appeal is that we understand ourselves better.

book
4.666665
Average: 4.7 (3 votes)

With touching detail, Shaun Tan's picture book tells the story of a migrant family, seeking refuge and asylum in a strange new city. By depicting this new city as an alienating, science-fiction world, Tan performs a neat trick on our empathy glands.

book
4
Average: 4 (2 votes)

'Wide Sargasso Sea' is rightly considered by many to be one of the greatest pieces of writing of this or any time, so I naturally approach reviewing it with some trepidation. But it has to be in The Empathy Library, so here goes ...

book
4.5
Average: 4.5 (2 votes)

 

Does it make sense to “review” great poetry? The following is from Milosz’s Campo dei Fiori:

 

“In Rome, on Campo dei Fiori,

baskets of olives and lemons

cobbles spattered with wine

and the wreckage of flowers.

book
0
No votes yet

A story about dictatorship, in this case one which occurs within the family, and a young boy so entirely in the power of his father that he cannot speak the truth.

Pages