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The Books That Changed My Life with Nina Karnikowski
13/03/26
Author: RIISE Team
DOCUMENTED BY: ELIZABETH ROBERTS
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RIISE presents, The Books That Changed My Life, an editorial series where we explore the ideas, art and cultural influences that shape who we are and how we view the world. In each instalment, we invite creative voices from our community to share personal literary touchstones that have profoundly shaped or moved them.
From remote landscapes to reflective pages, Nina Karnikowski has built a career on curiosity and connection. In this edition of The Books That Changed My Life, she shares the titles that influenced her path — and the ideas that continue to guide the way she sees the world. Thoughtful, lyrical and deeply personal, her reading life mirrors her approach to travel: slow, considered and rich with meaning. It’s an invitation to discover the books that shaped not just how she travels, but how she lives.
01. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen
As someone with a deep love for the Himalayas (I take a group of women trekking there each year and have spent many months travel writing in the region), this book has always been close to my heart. The blend of Buddhist wisdom, high-altitude adventure and reverence for what can’t be controlled or understood has shaped how I move through life.
02. Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
This book is a masterclass in listening. I return again and again to its teachings on reciprocity - the idea that if we love the land, it can love us back, and that so much of our global crisis has come from taking without giving anything in return.
03. Ancient Futures, Helena Norberg-Hodge
I now work closely with the incredible 80 year-old activist Helena Norberg-Hodge and write for her organisation, Local Futures. But before that, I was deeply influenced by her book Ancient Futures. It gave language to what my travel writing, especially to the more remote regions of the world like rural Namibia or the Mongolian steppe, had already been showing me: that “progress” is often not what we think, and that the future may lie in remembering what we once knew about connection, community and place.
04. When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön
The perfect companion in hard times. A reminder that nothing is permanent, that pain moves, and that tenderness can coexist with not knowing. One of my favourite lines: “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
05. The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer has long been one of my favourite travel writers. This book affirmed something I’d felt intuitively for years: that we can only really make sense of our movement through the world when we allow space for stillness.
06. Phenomenal, Leigh Ann Henion
Henion, a National Geographic writer, travels to witness moments of awe in the natural world - from monarch butterfly migrations in Mexico to lightning storms in Venezuela - as a way of reclaiming herself after becoming a mother. This book showed me how deeply wonder, travel and the natural world can bring us back to life during disorienting seasons.
07. Every Day Is a Poem, Jacqueline Suskin
This book isn’t about becoming a great poet (even though Suskin definitely is that) so much as learning to see life through a more poetic lens. It’s an invitation to notice more, find your own symbols, and bring a sense of magic and meaning back into everyday moments.
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Documented By: RIISE
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