Personal growth

Reading change: three books that think aloud about personal growth

A journalist who grows as his city grows, a television reflection on the need for certainties and the testimony of a man who returns from himself after illness: three recent books allow us to think of personal growth as literature, not as a formula.

By Pedro J. Pérez · 27 October 2026

Reading change: three books that think aloud

There are books that are read in a hurry and books that are read the way one walks down a familiar street: slowly, looking at the windows. Personal growth, that territory where memory, reflection and the desire to live differently converge, belongs to the second kind. It does not always offer answers, but it almost always proposes useful questions. And it is worth approaching it without the arrogance of those who believe they have everything resolved, nor with the distrust of those who reduce it to a shelf of slogans.

Three recent news items allow us to observe that territory from different angles. The first is the appearance of «Solos», a book that, according to its press presentation, intertwines a journalist’s personal growth with the progress of Santa Cruz. The second gathers a television reflection by Iker Jiménez on motivation books and the search for certainties. The third announces Luis Vaquero’s first book, «Crónica de un hombre que volvió de sí mismo», an account of illness and personal overcoming.

«Solos»: when personal growth is told alongside a city

«Solos», the book presented by Asuntos Centrales, proposes an unusual structure: a journalist’s personal growth and the progress of Santa Cruz advance at the same time, like two stories that sustain each other. The news item describes it as an intertwining, and that word is the key. It is not a manual of advice or a conventional local chronicle, but a text in which intimate transformation seems to be measured by the same clock as the transformation of a community.

This narrative decision has consequences for the reader. When personal learning is told alongside the place where it happens, the story gains texture: the city ceases to be scenery and becomes an interlocutor. It is also a lesson in modesty, because it suggests that no one grows in a vacuum. The available information does not detail the book’s contents, but the approach —journalism, territory and biography— invites us to read it as an inquiry rather than as a recipe book.

Motivation books and the search for certainties: Iker Jiménez’s reflection

Iker Jiménez’s reflection, reported by Cuatro, can be summed up in a phrase highlighted in the headline: «La gente busca certezas». Little more can be stated with certainty from that statement, but it is enough to frame the debate. Someone who turns to a motivation book is not always looking for formulas; often they are looking for firm ground, a way of ordering uncertainty. Reading it this way changes the diagnosis: there is no naivety, there is a need for orientation in a life that does not come with instructions.

It is worth distinguishing, however, between the need and the response. The existence of a demand for certainties does not guarantee that any given book offers them with rigour. The very gesture of reflecting on the phenomenon admits two readings: it may be a warning against the easy shortcut or a compassionate acknowledgment of our fragility. Both are possible, and both invite us to read attentively and to demand something more than enthusiasm: an argument, an experience, a recognizable voice.

Returning from oneself: illness, narrative and overcoming in Luis Vaquero’s book

Luis Vaquero’s first book, «Crónica de un hombre que volvió de sí mismo», is presented by the Academia de Televisión as a story about illness and personal overcoming. The combination is not accidental: illness forces one to reorganize one’s entire life and, with it, the idea one had of oneself. That «volver de sí mismo» in the title describes well the double movement of those who go through an ordeal: they move away from their centre and return, though not exactly to the same place.

Here personal growth does not appear as a project of continuous improvement, but as a consequence of loss. This is a substantial difference from manuals that promise optimization. The literature of overcoming, when it rests on a concrete experience, avoids abstraction and gives the reader something that methods rarely achieve: the sense that knowledge is paid for with something. We do not know the scope of the work, but its premise places it within a noble tradition.

How to read a personal growth book without losing your judgement

To read this kind of work without losing one’s judgement, it is worth starting by asking what experience sustains the text. A book born of an illness, of a city or of a reflection on certainty has a point of support; one built only on promises does not. It is then worth distinguishing between what the author lived, what they interpret and what they generalize. All three can be valuable, but they do not weigh the same, and confusing them is the quickest way to be disappointed.

Another useful criterion is the usefulness of disagreement. A good personal growth book does not demand faith: it allows the reader to argue, underline and close the volume with reasonable doubts. If a proposal only works when it is accepted without questions, we are dealing with something else. Finally, it is worth alternating these readings with fiction, essay and history, because personal change is rarely nourished by a single shelf. Variety protects against short-lived enthusiasm.

The page that follows

The three news items, read together, draw a reasonable map of the genre: a book that joins biography and territory, a reflection on the demand for certainties and a testimony of return after illness. None promises happiness in ten steps; all three, by contrast, offer something more interesting: a way of looking at one’s own life as a story that can be revised. This is, perhaps, the most honest service that personal growth literature can provide to those who read it.

A warning and an invitation remain. The warning is that no book replaces the work of living: reading accompanies, it does not resolve. The invitation is to frequent these works with the same demand we would apply to a novel or a reportage, and to value them for what they contribute, not for what they promise. Personal growth, when it is well written, is not an empty fashion: it is an old conversation about how to become who one is.