OK. I’m terrible at picking winners. I want everyone to win. So when I polled my Twitter and Facebook friends for the book they would take with them to a desert island, I should have know that I would be awful at editing the list down to just ten, especially with all of the wonderful suggestions. Many of my friends had a hard time picking just one and suggested multiples. One even mentioned she may have to go to a desert island just to catch up on her reading!

In the end, there are 26 selections on this list. Really, there is something for everyone on here and doing this has reinforced my love of these paper friends (or electronic or audio).

So here you are! Those with numbers after them had more than one mention:

1. Yoga Sutra by Patanjali (5)
   1. Swami Satchidananda
   2. Bryants translation
   3. Desikachar’s “Heart of Yoga” (which also has the Yoga Sutras!) (5)
2. Sivananda Companion to Yoga (2)
3. The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita & Bhagavad Gita (2)
4. Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates (2)
5. Erich Schiffman’s Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness
6. Jivamukti Yoga: Practices for Liberating Body and Soul
7. The Journey Home by Radhanath Swami
8. Your Yoga Bodymap by Jenny Beeken (Inner Yoga Trust)
9. Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Lasater
10. Yoga Nidra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati
11. Hatha Yoga Pradipika
12. Light on Life by BKS Iyengar
13. Bringing yoga to life by Donna Fahri
14. Downward Dogs and Warriors: Wisdom Tales for Modern Yogis by Zo Newell
15. Yoga Psychology by Swami Ajaya
16. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
17. Jiddu Krishnamurti “Any book, Any page. Always”
18. “My ISHTA TT manuals”
19. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
20. The Gift: 250 Hafiz poems trans by Daniel Ladinsky
21. Any book by Jack Kornfield
22. Wonder by RJ Palacio
23. For The Benefit of All Beings by  His Holiness The Dalai Lama
24. The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope
25. Running with the Mind of Meditation by Sakyong Mipham
26. Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Paul Reps & Nyogen Senzaki

Not bad, eh? I’d say this is a nice representation of the yoga and mindfulness literary world. I was pleased to see some of my own favorites and learn of new books too, not that my stack of “to-be-reads” needs to be any higher. However, reading provides me with a nice escape, to sit and enter a different space absorbing new thoughts, new ideas. A time to simply be.

What are your thoughts? Are there any books you add to this list?

Addendum from Twitter:
How Yoga Works by Geshe Michael Roach

From comments below:
Art of Attention by Elena Brower & Erica Jago

From me:
Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

Meredith LeBlanc is the Pondering Yogini, blog author of The Scarlet Sutras, & facilitator of the Twitter Yoga Book Club #YOBC . She is a Yoga & Meditation teacher in Newport, RI, wife, Pug enthusiast, beader, reader, and gardener wanna be.