A Reflective Reading Guide offers a meeting between literature and life, reading as reflection, presence and quiet discovery, across poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction and fiction.
Each guide opens a gentle doorway into the heart of the story you are reading.
Reading note:
These guides include selected passages from the original book.
For the fullest experience, you may like to read the book in its entirety alongside the guide.
Each Reflective Reading Guide includes:
An audio story, poem or essay written and read by Dr Susan McLaine
A Reflective Reading Guide with background and gentle reflection invitations
A Carry Forward line to walk beyond the page
You simply need the original book in the format that feels right for you.
Each guide can be experienced on its own.
If you are new to The Reading Way, you might like to begin with the Reflective Reading Tips and Program Foundations pages.
Be Your Own Bibliotherapist
Each guide is an invitation to be your own bibliotherapist, to meet story as a mirror for your own life and to find what you need through presence, reflection and care.
Browse the Guides
Begin anywhere
Each guide opens a doorway to reflection and gentle discovery through story, poetry and presence.
Each includes an audio piece by Dr Susan McLaine and a reflective reading guide.
Reading note
The guide includes selected passages; reading the full book will deepen your experience.
How it works
Read alongside the original book in the format that feels right for you — buy, borrow or listen to the book or audiobook.
The price of each guide is AUD$20.
Joy Street
by Laura Foley
AUD$20
Form: Poetry
Mood: For tenderness and softening
For times when tenderness softens the heart and invites openness.
To Bless the Space Between Us
by John O’Donohue
AUD$20
Form: Poetry
Mood: For thresholds and transitions
For life’s thresholds, beginnings, endings and everything quietly in between.
Blue Horses
by Mary Oliver
AUD$20
Form: Poetry
Mood: For wonder and renewed seeing
For returning to wonder and seeing the world with fresh, grateful eyes.
Oliver Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
AUD$20
Form: Short Stories
Mood: For connection and ordinary grace
For reflecting on connection, ageing and the grace of ordinary lives.
The Songs of Trees
by David George Haskell
AUD$20
Form: Creative Non-Fiction
Mood: For belonging and attentiveness to the living world
For listening to the living world and the threads that hold it together.
The Wild Places
by Robert Macfarlane
AUD$20
Form: Creative Non-Fiction
Mood: For grounding and belonging through landscape
For rediscovering belonging through stillness, landscape and the pull of place.
Anam Cara
by John O’Donohue
AUD$20
Form: Creative Non-Fiction
Mood: For friendship and presence
For exploring friendship, presence and the quiet meeting of souls.
Foster
by Claire Keegan
AUD$20
Form: Novella
Mood: For tenderness and care
For noticing tenderness, trust and the quiet power of care.
Orbital
by Samantha Harvey
AUD$20
Form: Novel
Mood: For grounding and belonging through landscape
For rediscovering belonging through stillness, landscape and the pull of place.