100 books like Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Look, you’re often going to feel like life is meaningless. Maybe you’re right. But don’t give up.

Like Quixote, you have the power of your noble heart, and the wealth of your imagination. But you also have your Sancho Paza, to keep you moving practically forward. It all will likely come to a ridiculous end. But that’s okay, so long as you’re laughing at yourself along the way.

It is funny. We’re allowed to be funny. We’re supposed to laugh at ourselves and at each other.

Candide is wonderful for many reasons, but above all because it is an equal opportunity parody.

Voltaire spares no one as he spoofs the usual suspects, such as religion, colonialism, and the nobility, but also the Enlightenment’s excessive optimism, philosophical speculation, and rationalism. Voltaire’s greatest setups are favored upon young Candide’s mentor, Dr. Pangloss who, in the face of every monstrous, absurd tragedy that befalls Candide, insists that all is well in this “best of all possible worlds.”

I also love that this crazy, tragic farce ends with a cautiously optimistic invitation to “cultivate our garden,” – to leave philosophical speculation to the philosophers, and instead to focus on concrete efforts to make the world a better place

It was thick book, a satire, and new translation from Czech, and I loved the illustrations, the setting, and that the new translation was restoring all of the salty language excised from the original/bowdlerized translation.

It’s the story of a simple dog breeder, presumed to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), drafted into the army and his adventures making his way to WWI—always outwitting his (imbecilic) superiors and betters along the way.

It’s satirical, hilarious, often scatological, and the best part is that the book ends (because the author died) before he gets to the actual war, so we get to imagine Švejk surviving the war and moving to Florida in the ‘20s to raise Greyhounds or whatever.

It’s really good, in fact, I might just read it again.

The author’s voice captured me.

Once again, I’d never read anything like it before. He was having a conversation with me. I was now a character in an Amsterdam bar with him, the war had just ended, we were smoking cigarettes and drinking gin.

He would respond to my silent questions, and wax and wane philosophically, metaphysically, morally, ethically, and occasionally comically. 

And the beauty was that it had happened so randomly—a roommate had thrown the book in the trash, declaring it to be “bullshit.” I knew the lad to be an imbecile (an acceptable term at the time), so I fished the book out of the trash, read the first sentence, and loved it.

It was the quantumly entangled counter particle to Candide: one particle from the age of reason, the other particle from the age of existentialism.

Both Jennifer Ward and Diana Sudyka are two of my favorite kid lit creators, and this brilliant collaboration begs to be read aloud. Ward’s lyrical text sings as an introductory guide for the littlest bird watchers, showing them where to look for birds: up to see them fly and roost—but not just up—down on the ground where birds nest, straight ahead where they blend with bark, on and under the water. And if you put out a birdfeeder, all you need is a window-view. But what’s the best way to find a bird? To listen—birdsong is all around us! Sudyka’s gorgeously intricate art paints the avian details of all the found birds. Don’t miss the back matter for bird-watching tips.

While researching my most recent book I wanted to explore the various ways people have interacted with wildlife throughout history. Mooellam’s book proved exactly what I was looking for. Fun and readable, it was a pleasant counterbalance to some of the hefty tomes I consulted, and yet it left me with much to think about.

Michelle Nijhuis tells the history of conservation over the last three hundred years with compelling narrative and fascinating detail. She shines a new light on the context and stories of familiar as well as lesser-known, pioneering conservationists. I loved it and learnt so much.

Beloved Beasts explores different perspectives of an increasingly desperate human story. Cutting to the underlying narrative… "people are still killing too many animals and destroying too much habitat" Nijui urges that as our societies become ever more connected, perhaps there is hope that we humans can sort ourselves (and our planet…) out. Let’s hope so.

A novel about a young woman who worked on the atomic bomb and fell in love with one of the other scientists on the project who breaks her heart into a million pieces so she abandons her career and takes up as a shop-girl? Add in an FBI agent who is on the tail of the cad and wants her help in finding him? Count me in!

Fields is terrific at creating mood and the 1950s milieu. And the unexpected romance between Rosalind, the one-time scientist, and Charlie, the FBI agent, is both moving and immensely satisfying—these are two wounded souls who manage to find each other and by the end, you’re out of your chair and cheering.

It’s impossible to talk about action-adventure thrillers without recommending something by Graham Greene. It could have been any one of his great novels, but I’ve settled on this book as one of his shortest and most easily accessible stories.

It’s quirky without being obscure, full of atmosphere and intrigue, and wonderfully witty in its portrayal of its central characters. For sheer panache, this book is hard to beat.

The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley is a book that, well, the first time I read it my mind was blown. This is a self-help book for all humans in a picture book. It takes our thirst to live forever, to always want more, be more, see more, do more, look better, and compares that with the wonderful Riley, who is happy with some fruit and maybe a couple of slugs on Tuesday or Friday.

He likes a little stick that can scratch his back.
He looks like Riley. Why would he want to look like anything else?

This is a beautifully written and illustrated book on being grateful for what we have.