An eco-terrorist has been ordered to read a book by Malcolm Gladwell as part of her sentence. Rebecca Rubin received her five-year prison sentence in Portland, Oregon on Monday from US district court judge Ann Aiken, Canadian press reported.

Rubin, an animal and environmental rights activist, had admitted participating in a number of arsons and attempted arsons, including the burning of wild horse corrals, between 1997 and 2001. She learned she had been charged with the offences in 2006, "was alarmed and terrified to see herself compared to Osama bin Laden in the news", her defence reads, and went on the run. In late 2012, she handed herself in.

In a letter to the judge, Rubin wrote that ever since she was a child, when her favourite books were Charlotte's Web and Beautiful Joe – "both of which centre on mistreated non-human protagonists" – animals and the natural world "have always been for me a source of profound joy, wonder and solace, and their mistreatment and destruction a source of indescribable pain".

"I reached a point in my early twenties when I could longer contain or appropriately channel the grief, despair, and powerlessness I felt in response to the mistreatment of animals and the natural world," wrote Rubin. "Although at the time I believed my only motivation was my deep love for the earth, I now understand that impatience, anger, egotism and self-righteousness were also involved. In retrospect, I recognise how immature my actions were."

Rubin had feared being sentenced to life in prison, she wrote. Aiken gave her five years, reported the Associated Press, saying she "showed contrition" and had lived in "an emotional prison cell" during her seven years as a fugitive in Canada.

Rubin was also ordered to make payments towards more than $13m in restitution when she is released, to perform 200 hours of community service – and to read two books, reported the AP. The first, Gladwell's new release David and Goliath, would teach her "non-violent means to protesting systems she perceives as unjust", Aiken hoped.

Gladwell's book pitches itself as a look at why "underdogs succeed so much more than we expect", taking the biblical story of David defeating the giant Goliath as its theme. But a review in the Guardian found it flawed. "The strong are often surprisingly weak, if looked at from the right angle. People who seem weak can turn out to be surprisingly strong. Don't be a Goliath. Dare to be a David," wrote David Runciman. "Gladwell illustrates these lessons with a characteristically dizzying array of stories, the subjects of which range from high school girls' basketball to child murder and the Holocaust. Most of them are great stories. The trouble with the book is that they are not great illustrations of his chosen theme."

The second book Rubin was told to read was Nature's Trust by Mary C Wood, a book that "exposes the dysfunction of environmental law", proposing a new approach following the ancient and enduring principle "of the public trust doctrine, which "empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources". Wood is environmental law professor at the University of Oregon.