Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level (1996)

This collection of essays spoke to me in a manner so profound and so rarely discovered even in the best reading encounters. 

The themes that occupy these essays—feminism, politics/living politically, togetherness, loneliness, marriage, (female) friendship, academic social dynamics, work and creativity, independence, solitude—are ones that I return to time and again in my own considerations of my life, my ambitions, my conceptions around what makes a happy and/or successful life, my capacity to hold onto scholarship outside the academic institution, my vulnerabilities and my relationships. 

An extremely precious book.