On occasion, people will ask me for book recommendations & while I’m willing to oblige, it’s not without slight reservation. To me, books fall into the same categories as food & music. What I like, piques my interest, or resonates within me can be vastly different than what another would find deeply satisfying & fulfilling. It’s also no different than when someone has avidly recommended a book to me, which I read only to be left wondering what was so great about that? It’s neither right or wrong & just symbolizes our differences.
This can occur within ourselves, as well. Sometimes while rereading a book I once considered life changing & profound, I’m left wanting more & missing the sense of awe & wonder, like I first experienced. Similar to trying to recreate a memory in that it simply doesn’t hold the same wonder-filled significance. Conversely, there are books that didn’t impact me so much whilst reading them, but months & sometimes years later, I find myself surprised at how often I revisit it in my thoughts.
- Open House, Katie Sise
- Like Brothers, Mark Duplass & Jay Duplass
- Antiracist Baby, Ibram X Kindi
- The Last of the Moon Girls, Barbara Davis
- Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
- Hadley & Grace, Suzanne Redfearn
- A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, Joyce Carol Oates
- Love’s Executioner, Irvin Yalom
- Hallelujah Anyway, Anne Lamott
- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw
- After Alice Fell, Kim Taylor Blakemore
- Best Friends Forever, Jennifer Weiner
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski, DMA
- The State of Affairs, Esther Perel
- Shrill, Lindy West
- Inheritance, Dani Shapiro
- What Happened To You? Conversations On Trauma, Resilience, & Healing, Bruce Perry, MD, PhD & Oprah Winfrey
- Tears of Amber, Sofia Segovia
- Last Couple Standing, Matthew Norman
- The Problem of Alzheimer’s, Jason Karlawish, MD
- Mating In Captivity, Esther Perel
- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
- Stories To Tell, Richard Marx
- Mercy, Jodi Picoult
- Fire Shut Up In My Bones, Charles M. Blow
- The Housekeeper, Natalie Barelli
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
- Plenty: A Memoir of Food & Family, Hannah Howard
- The Weight of Ink, Rachel Kadish
- Beneath Devil’s Bridge, Loreth Anne White
- Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho
- Night Road, Kristin Hannah
- The Seven Day Switch, Kelly Harms
- Apples Never Fall, Liane Moriarty
- Unbound, Tarana Burke
- Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle
- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
- The Menopause Manifesto, Dr. Jen Gunter
- The Four Seasons of Marriage, Gary Chapman
- The Storyteller: Tales of Life & Music, Dave Grohl
- The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
- Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley C. Ford
- No Cure For Being Human: And Other Truths I Need To Hear, Kate Bowler
- A Familiar Sight, Brianna Labuskes
My favorite five: (In no order of favorites, but read chronologically)
Fiction: “The timing of of the thing had to be just so in order for me to become the person I am. Delay the act by an hour & you change the gene selection.”
Collection of short stories: “How do you make love to a physicist? With your whole self, quivering, lush, unafraid.”
Nonfiction: “Even if you’ve accumulated a house full of nice things & the picture of your life fits in a beautiful frame, if you’ve experienced trauma, but haven’t excavated it, the wounded parts of you will affect everything you’ve managed to build.”
Memoir: “That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people & they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.”
Memoir: “Everybody pretends that you only die once, but that’s not true. You can die to a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.”
“It takes great courage to live. Period. There are fears and disappointments and failures every day and, in the end, the hero dies. It must be cinematic to watch us from above.”
TheCompanySheKeeps 