5. Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Okay, maybe I shouldn't include this one here, since I started it before I started the 50-book challenge, but I've been reading it in little sips between other books and I only now finished it. (This is my second reading of it, by the way--I got a lot out of it at age 23, and I got a lot--a different lot--out now at 40.)

Pinkola-Estes is a Jungian psychologist  and cantadora who looks at the fairy tales of different cultures, deconstructs them and mines them for archetypal wisdom.  Her premise is that many women in Western culture have allowed ourselves to be "domesticated," losing touch with our primal instincts and inherently wild nature, and that the journey to wholeness requires a re-connection with this wildish nature.

It's a fascinating book, and one which completely changed my outlook on my own life and growth 17 years ago the first time I read it, and now again as a woman on the other side of youth. Highly recommended.
--J