10 books like Bones

In the late 1990s, Sally Fallon (now Sally Fallon Morell) and Mary Enig ignited the modern-day traditional foods movement by publishing the now immensely popular Nourishing Traditions.

This book taught us that it was okay to eat butter, lard made the best pie crusts, and if you were going to fry food, frying was best done in tallow. And that was just the beginning! The subtitle of the book says it all: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats.

This book vindicated everything my mother had taught me. Eat real food—not just vegetables—but all real food, including animal foods, and make sure that you eat from the nose to the tail and everything in between. Additionally, don't forget that you must always properly prepare food through slow cooking, culturing, fermenting, or souring to aid in proper digestion.

Oh, and while you're at it, make sure you use… show more.

This is the bible of fermentation.

Once again, being a Polish cook, I felt I knew a fair bit about fermentation, yet this book opened my eyes to so many different traditions and processes. This is the kind of book everyone needs in their kitchens because if you are at all interested in fermenting (and you should be because it’s one of the best things you can do for your health), then you will come back to it again and again.

When I first read Tamar's original book, An Everlasting Meal, I knew I had found a kindred home-cook spirit in her. And to be honest with you, I thought that book couldn't be topped. But then she wrote The Everlasting Meal Cookbook!

This cookbook is the definitive guide on how to use up every imaginable leftover in your kitchen so that almost nothing will go to waste. Chances are, when you begin to implement Tamar's leftover recipes, you will see very little going into your kitchen garbage can. You'll gaze upon every scrap, every crumb in your kitchen in a new light.

Next thing you know, you will be taking the heel of a loaf of bread, a sliver of a parmesan rind, and a few vegetables from your crisper (that look a bit past their prime) and turning it all into a dinner that friends and family alike will… show more.

Any modern pioneer in the kitchen worth their weight in salt—sea salt, that is—needs to learn how to preserve food through home canning. And if you want to learn how to can pretty much any type of food, the Ball Company's Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is the best book they have released to date.

Yes, they have more modern editions, such as The All New Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving, but the book I chose for my list is clearly the winner and one that should be on every traditional foods cook's kitchen bookshelf. From how to get started for the newbie to solving home canning problems at all skill levels, this book has you covered.

Plus, this book is packed with a wide variety of water bath canning recipes, including jellies and jams; a wide selection of condiments, such as salsas, relish, and chutneys; plus home… show more.

While I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, it was only after I’d digested it (pun intended) that I really came to appreciate its value. I think one of the real measures of an artwork is how much it sits with you in the months and years after the initial read/watch/listen, and this is one I think about often. The story follows a documentarian attempting to serve the corporate hierarchy and produce an asinine show about American wives and the meat-filled dinners they serve their husbands, but the novel gradually unfolds as a complex critique of misogyny, corporate control, Japanese and American culture, and the brutal nature of the modern livestock industry. 

Charming artwork, with a touch of the silly, like all of Catrow’s books. Catrow gets into the head of his adorable mutt main character as he searches the house and backyard, coming up with all sorts of household and garden items that have no remote connection to dinosaurs. Undaunted, our hero continues his search, interpreting tools and toys for dino body parts, until miraculously his creature comes to life!

Let me emphasize how gorgeous this book is. Imagine a Tim Burton world filled with bones and two skeletons having a heart-wrenchingly beautiful love story. That is the landscape of The Bone Valley by Candace Robinson. This book gets quite gory and dark but is absolutely my favorite of her books for its sheer originality and incredibly unique world. Not to mention the horrible villain who literally takes over the underworld just so she can torture people. Yeah, it’s dark. Robinson is known for her incredible balance of romance and horror nestled within a beautiful world, and this book is the epitome of that.

 This book almost killed me! The tension is incredible and I found myself rooting for Ailesse and Sebastion to figure out the mystery behind the matron, and their attraction to each other. This plot is so twisted that it will keep you guessing all the way through. With every character determined that they are right, you’ll wish you could jump in and prove that you know it all, but you’d be wrong! It kept me on pins and needles and kept me from sleep. 

The world in Chalice isn’t flat. Or spherical. Or any particular shape. This is a world of little bubble domains embedded in surrounding chaos and the story is all about protecting one of those domains. This book is like a dream. It’s slow and graceful and, well, dreamy. I like the bees. And the honey. I’m not especially fond of honey in the real world, but I love the honey in this story. Some stories are instant “comfort reads". Chalice is one of those. It’s like wrapping up in a fuzzy robe in front of a fire with a mug of hot chocolate. If you’re in the mood for a warm story, beautifully told, you could hardly do better.

Bone was the first book I ever read on my own as a 5th grader. For the first time, I didn’t use an audiobook or need a parent/teacher to read it to me. For that alone, I’ve put it at the top of the list. Bone follows the story of three wayward brothers as they each find their way to a fantastical valley filled with mythical dragons, bizarre creatures, and a lost princess. What starts off as this fun and goofy comic, spirals into this adventure of epic proportions as the author-illustrator takes young readers into a world they never imagined before. 

This fast-paced saga helped captivate me from the first page to the last and I personally owe a lot to this book for helping me overcome my dislike for reading as a young person. This book helped me on my journey to becoming a reader and it… show more.