100 books like Better, Not Bitter

I found further courage to face the difficulties in life through Dr. Eger’s book, which highlighted truth, love, faith, courage, and, most importantly, true, authentic healing. 

Dr. Eger's personal account of the Holocaust was like no other. She took me on a journey from her horrendous capture and captivity to her gritty survival and ultimately to her personal and professional redemption. As a clinician, I especially loved the creative strategies she used in psychotherapy; they were insightful and inspiring. 

Edward Tulane is a vain, selfish, coldhearted toy rabbit. And, except for the toy rabbit part, I am Edward Tulane. That’s why I needed this book.

Whilst the family is on the Queen Mary, Edward is cast overboard, like Jonah. Outside the bosom of his family, Edward is largely unloved and disrespected. Through many trials and tribulations, he is reunited with his family. It’s classic Odyssey territory, except that Edward’s trials broaden his perspective and enable him to appreciate – and, yes, love – those who love him.

Edward may be merely a toy rabbit, but he stands in for all of us who need to die in order to live.

There’s something special about Kate Bowler. At 35, diagnosed with cancer, she started questioning our culture of positivity that emphasizes can-do achievement.

Her insights are beautiful, and her buoyant humor is icing on the cake. I feel like we’re soul sisters, my friend Kate and me (we’ve never met). Her words resonate with my belief that life is a mix of beauty and bummers, and sometimes there is even beauty within the bummers. I believe we should show up for life and appreciate all of it. So, I’m drawn to Kate Bowler’s account of how her hard-won uncertainty has shifted her perspective.

Shame is a big piece of the mental illness puzzle; it can be both a symptom and what keeps us from reaching out when we struggle. I didn’t really understand that until I read Brené Brown’s extensive work on the subject of shame. 

I recommend Rising Strong specifically because in addition to helping to understand the shame piece, it gave me a useful tool. Brown talks about the stories we tell ourselves that are often rooted in our fears. For me that resonated because when my depression gets worse my brain tells me darker and darker stories about everything.

This book helped me see that and communicate it. Learning to say “the story I'm telling myself right now is” was a relationship game changer, especially during dark times.

This is how good Mosley is: I couldn’t escape the feeling that I knew his protagonist the whole time I was reading this. I swear I had met the guy somewhere. I walked those same Brooklyn streets, and Mosley’s portrait of them was strong enough and real enough to make me miss the place, even though Brooklyn is overrun with lawyers and stock brokers these days.

And Mosley’s secondary characters are just as real, and if you screw up, you just might meet some of them. One last thing: when Mosley writes about race, he does it in lowercase. That way, the story sneaks under your defenses and hits you much harder than if it was all in caps. Walter Mosley is not just a writer; he’s an artist.

When Kim Williams overdosed, Leigh Stubbs and Tami Vance sought help and performed CPR on her until paramedics arrived and took her to the hospital. The doctors who examined Kim said that she had been sexually assaulted. Police focused on Leigh and Tami, mainly, if not exclusively, because they were lesbians.

Leigh and Tami were wrongfully convicted of the assault and sentenced to 44 years in prison. Beety, an innocence litigator, highlights how medical malpractice, unscientific expert testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, problematic judicial rulings, and, above all, homophobia led to Leigh and Tami’s (and other manifestly unjust) convictions.

This book is unique in the world of wrongful conviction books because it is written by a former prosecutor. Mark Godsey gives readers an inside view of how innocence often gives way to winning trial records and promotions based on successful prosecutions in the competitive world of prosecutions. 

Godsey tells this story from the perspective of not just a former prosecutor but also the current Director of one of the most successful innocence organizations in the world, where he has exonerated dozens of innocent people. The stories of his clients and his career transition are insightful and heartbreaking. 

When Tracy Beaumont’s father is convicted for a murder he didn’t commit, she refuses to accept the verdict. Her unwavering determination to fight the long-standing racism in her small town shows the depth of its hateful history and its horrific impact on her father and family. This unforgettable, heartbreaking, and hopeful novel provides a mirror and window into the courage needed to fight against injustice.

Social work students are people people, so even with the interactive cases and vignettes that connect policy knowledge to practice, it can be difficult for students planning for a career in interpersonal therapy or crisis intervention to connect emotionally to complex policy topics like Social Security reform, net-zero carbon emissions, or criminal justice reform.

Barnett’s non-fiction title on the latter topic is page-turning and infused with heart. It also relates her activism and community organizing, in service of advancing justice in policing and corrections.

This part of her story helps students see how they, too, can take actions—even as an individual—that bear witness to our values and advance toward a vision of social change.

Much as I enjoyed the film based on this novella by Stephen King (which I now understand is a standalone book—I read it as part of a story collection long ago), I enjoyed the novella more.

Why? Because of its extraordinarily likeable narrative voice, which has caused people worldwide to find themselves rooting for its narrator. How can you not want to know what’ll happen next to someone so candid and down-to-earth—who has experienced homicide and love so intensely? Especially when he wants intimacy yet also feels threatened by it.

In fact, just after I finished reading the Shawshank novella, I vowed to write a novel about someone in NYC who exuded those same attributes: candor, humility, and understated yet solid wisdom about murder and affairs of the heart. And after several years of writing with this goal, I finally tapped into the voice of Matt Connell, the narrator of… show more.