Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, by Pema Chödrön (162 pages, 1994). Certainly not the first meditation book I encountered, but it lifted me from a sea of despondency when my practice was in the doldrums. The title itself was encouraging. I took it to heart.
She begins by declaring, “We already have everything we need.” And then she proceeds with seven slogans necessary for training the mind, I wish I knew them by heart.
Born in New York City, she became an American Tibet Buddhist and is the principal teacher at the Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. If you can, latch onto a recording of one of her seminars, for Pema is pithy and humorous.