Today, we are going to take a look at a few of the best Jenn Im book recommendations.
Jenn Im is a YouTuber, who’s videos mainly deal with fashion and beauty. Her most popular YouTube channel is called ClothesEncounters, which has over 3 million subscribers. She is also a fashion designer, and has her own clothing line called Eggie.
Jenn Im loves to read. In fact, she actually has many YouTube videos where she recommends a lot of her favorite books. That’s where many of these book recommendations are coming from. I watched all of her videos, and put this list together based on the books Jenn Im has recommended the most.
Jenn Im Book Recommendations List
Here is the full list of the best Jenn Im book recommendations:
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
- Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami was originally published in Japanese in 2002, English in 2005, and is 480 pages long. Upon its translation, the New York Times rated it as one of the best books of 2005.
Jenn Im recommended the book on a YouTube video titled “3 Books Millenials Must Read”.
She said, “He is one of my favorite authors by far because, although he usually has bizarre and very surreal plot lines, his writing is really crisp and clever, and just really sunk into my soul.
And I feel like I read this book at the right time of my life because the main character is kind of searching, discovering, and finding out what he’s missing in his life, and that’s kind of what I was doing when I was in my early twenties, and so this book really hit home.
If you’re into just really mind-bending, surreal works of art, definitely check it out.”
Kafka on the Shore follows two stories that intertwine.
The first is of Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old boy who loves to read books. One day he runs away from his father’s home to escape a curse, and goes on a journey to find his mother and sister.
The other story follows Satoru Nakata, an old, disabled man who has some kind of superpower – the ability to talk with cats. He has the job of helping people find their lost cats.
The two end up meeting, and Nakata finds himself drawn to Kafka, even though he doesn’t know exactly why. The book then takes you on a remarkable journey where it seems like anything is possible. I mean, cats can talk, what more can you ask for?
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One was written by Ernest Cline. He published the book in 2011, and it is 374 pages long. It was turned into a movie in 2018.
Jenn Im has quite a bit to say when she recommended the book. She said in a video, “This was actually recommended by a bunch of you guys, so thank you. You know me so well. This is one of my favorites now. This is a sci-fi dystopian novel, which is right up my alley.
I love books like this, and it is in a world where just everything is in shambles. Everyone’s living in poverty because global warming is just taking a toll and a lot of people just escape this world by going into this virtual reality called the Oasis.
It’s kind of like The Matrix. In it the main character is a teen named Wade, and he spends all his time in the Oasis, and he is dying to play this scavenger hunt game because the winner of that game is like winning the lottery, so a lot of people see that as their way out of poverty, and Wade just has to go through all these crazy adventures, and there’s so many eighties references, and I love it. It really takes you on a thrilling adventure.
I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for just like a fun adventurous read.”
As you have read, Jenn Im pretty much described Ready Player One already. It’s set in a dystopian world where everyone wants to escape and have a better life in the Oasis, a type of metaverse world where almost anything is possible.
Much of the modern world basically lives inside the Oasis. People work, hang out with their friends, go on quests, and even battle in arenas.
One day the guy who developed this world dies, and it sets off an event with a huge prize pool. All they have to do is find the Easter egg inside the Oasis. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Wade and his friends go on the adventure with other hunters all competing to be the first to find the egg and claim the prize.
It’s a very creative world, though it might seem a little too much like where our future could turn into.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray was written by Oscar Wilde, and published in 1890. The book is around 300 pages long.
In another video, Jenn Im recommended the book, “I mentioned this book not too long ago in my favorites, but it’s The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I love this book.
A quick summary – it’s about a man named Dorian. He’s very attractive, young, and he gets his portrait painted, and he meets this man named Lord Henry Wotton, and he lives just a super hedonistic lifestyle. He gives zero care for anyone but himself. So, Dorian gets very inspired by that, and he ends up selling a soul so he can look young forever, and he just lives this very materialistic life, and he’s just living for himself, just selfish, and he’s just like a big jerk.
I read this book when I was 18 or 19, and it taught me just to balance, not go overboard. It taught me the importance of not being so decadent and knowing my limit.”
Again, Jenn Im did a fantastic job of describing the summary of the book already. It does follow Dorian Gray, a selfish man who wants to remain young forever. In order to achieve this, he has a portrait painted so that his youth will be preserved forever.
However, later he ends up selling his soul for youth, and instead of him aging, his portrait does. The portrait becomes more rotten looking the more and more Dorian galavants around hurting and ruining other people’s lives for his own gain.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was originally published in a magazine, but has since become a classic of gothic literature.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Another Jenn Im book recommendation is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. This book was published in 1989, and is something like 380 pages long, depending on the version.
When Jenn Im recommended the book in a video on YouTube, she shared, “I also mentioned this in my monthly favorites, but I have to mention it again because this book has changed my life in such a positive way. I feel like I’m always trying to find ways to increase my productivity, my efficiency, and my self growth, and this book just hit all those targets for me.
Obviously, this book is about seven habits that make you more effective, but I feel like it’s beyond just that. This book has taught me to be more self aware, and to be a better person, and I can easily just tell you what the seven habits are, but they’re not going to make sense until you read the book. Read each of the stories attached with the lesson and then you’ll really absorb it.
I’m actually on my second time reading this book because it’s not one of those books that you just read once and you’re like ‘ah, I just I want to remember these lessons for the rest of my life and apply them that way.’”
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is considered one of the best self-help books of all times. It has sold over 40 million copies, and is recommended by many life coaches around the world including brain coach, Jim Kwik.
It aims to help people achieve balance, crush their goals, and receive successful results in their life by implementing the 7 habits listed in the book.
The 7 habits are be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand, then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw.
Even if you can’t manage to add all 7 of these habits into your life, just one or two will completely change your mindset and thinking, bettering your life.
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
Daring Greatly is a book written by psychologist Brené Brown, and published in 2012. It is 320 pages long.
In a video titled “10 Books You Need to Read” Jenn Im recommended this book. She said, “In 2019, Brené Brown became one of my most favorite inspirational people. If you have not seen her TED Talk on vulnerability, I highly recommend you go check it out, but I read Daring Greatly, which is just a deep dive of the vulnerability movement, and how you can live more wholeheartedly.
It had a huge impact on my self esteem, and the way I connect with people, and I especially loved the bit about empathy. So she describes empathy as ‘connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.’ A lot of the times when someone is opening up to us, or sharing an experience that they’ve had, I think a common misconception is, ‘oh, I can’t be empathetic to that because that has never happened to me.’ For example, let’s say your friend’s like, ‘oh my God, I went to work today, and I shat my pants.’ Maybe you have not shat your pants at work, however I’m pretty sure we’ve all felt the emotion of shame, and embarrassment, and that emotion is what we need to connect with.
This book gave me a glimpse on how I can live more unapologetically, and just live more freely, and it’s definitely a book that I want to re-read because it’s something that I wanna keep fresh on my mind, constantly.”
In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown argues that vulnerability is not a weak trait, and is actually a measure of courage. She believes that even though vulnerability is a combination of emotions like grief, fear, anxiety, and disappointment; it is also a mixture of positive emotions like empathy, love, belonging, and joy.
She wants you to be “in the arena”. Brené Brown says that even though putting yourself out there opens you up to criticism, that criticism will never feel worse than standing on the outside regretting and wishing you would have done the uncomfortable.
If you are a fan of Daring Greatly, we wrote a whole post about Brené Brown’s favorite book recommendations.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind was written by Yuval Noah Harari. He published the book, first in Hebrew, in 2015. It has since been translated to English, becoming the most popular book about human history. It is 464 pages long.
Another video had this Jenn Im book recommendation. She said, “So my next book is called ‘Sapiens’. It is actually the only book, the only real tangible book I have, because I read the rest on Kindle, or I listen to it on Audible, but I actually got this book at an airport, and it was truly the best decision I’ve made.
This is one very thorough book about the history of human existence. It’s like if all your history, and your anthropology classes had a baby, it would be this book. I absolutely love just the clear descriptions, and also the commentary, and it just really reminded me of all the things that I forgot in all those classes that I learned. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in school, so if I don’t have a refresher, I will not remember it.
It was just really nice to be re-informed about the history and the existence of Homo Sapiens, and it was very impressive to see how we, as a collective unit, were able to just completely dominate the planet. We have been killin’ it for a very long time. Literally and figuratively. We are the only species that know how to work as a unit, with tools, and to be able to expand and it explains why in such a short period of time we have been able to just bulldoze, and create this Agricultural Revolution, and Industrial Revolution.
We’ve been freaking on it, and this book just highlights all of that. It’s very alarming to see how rapidly this has all been going. We have the capacity to completely destroy the planet, however we have the capacity to completely save the planet.
It’s kind of like the Spider-Man quote, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ I have hope for us.”
Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a journey through the timeline of human history, starting from our hunter-gatherer phase, to the agricultural phase, to the industrial revolution, to the modern day, and even looks into a possible future.
The book answers every possible question you could ever have about humanity. How did we become the only human species left on Earth? How are we changing the planet? What will happen to humans in the future?
No matter who you are, you are guaranteed to learn something new in Sapiens.
Maybe you have already read Sapiens before and loved it. You can find some other books similar to Sapiens.