100 books like Every Woman Knows This

Although I had not read anything written by Susan Hunter, I’m glad I bought this one. I liked this story based on the mindset the author gave Leah Nash. I sensed Leah’s hesitancy in the beginning (a well-thought-out reason), but her determination to help a friend get answers in an old death case drove her onward and led her to places of best-kept secrets.

The case resonated with me because, like Leah, once I sense the truth within reach and find it, I hold on and never let go. The evidence shouted at me (my background helped me see it). I became concerned Leah might not ever see it until she did.

The Fishers’ nonfiction book is a starting point for understanding why and how matriarchies have evolved, succeeded, failed, endured.

It’s a scholarly work, meticulously researched, and can be heavy reading at times. But it’s also engaging and fascinating. I used it while researching my book to give me a better understanding of how matriarchies work and why they still work – or don’t work - today. 

The most scholarly and detailed book of our five choices, this book by Candice Savage, now in a revised edition, considers in depth not just the tallgrass prairie, but the entire sweep of North American grasslands. Savage recounts details that most people will never have thought of – such as how the bison were an integral part of the prairie ecosystem by creating buffalo wallows that persisted for years and provided shallow and temporary wetlands in what, to the west, was an otherwise dry environment. Start your exploration of prairie with this book or finish with it, but do not skip it. Its overview of the entire region puts the information in the other books into context.

Part of the challenge of writing my novel was trying to study the various cultures, people, rituals, economies, beliefs, and ways the locals survived. This anthology had a bounty of information and a variety of stories that were written by northern authors who knew the area, some of them living there for prolonged periods of time.

The word “Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—which seems appropriate. With story titles like “Insinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard” and “Wheetago War II: Summoners,” you can see that the native POV is important to these stories. It is so important that I hired one of the authors, Repo Kempt, to be my Arctic advisor on my book—to help me get the details right. 

George Manuel was once asked by a white coworker, “Does Indians have feelings?” Refusing dehumanization, Manuel reveals the ongoing colonial relations between First Nations and the Canadian settler state. He charts his political journey from Secwepemcúl̓ecw to the National Indian Brotherhood to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples.

Manuel argues that the victories of the anti-colonial independence movements of the twentieth century did not end colonial domination of Indigenous Peoples—what he calls the Fourth World. The Fourth World is not a destination but the right to travel on your own road in your own way.

With a new insightful introduction, foreword, and afterword, the book's latest edition shows how Manuel’s analysis of colonialism and vision for solidarity continue to be relevant to contemporary struggles for decolonization. 

I was very much taken with this novel’s blend of romance, mystery, and exploration of whether you can ever go home again. Raddall doesn’t get much mention and is largely remembered for his other novels when he does. That’s a shame.

This 1956 work stands up very well against more recent works. It features unadorned yet persuasive prose that many modern writers can only wish for. Raddall quite evidently intended it as a loving, almost lyrical, description of rural Nova Scotia. He succeeded.

Rick Mercer is an authentic storyteller because all his stories are true. He has fought against the odds because he didn’t know he shouldn’t. He’s like a self-cleaning oven. He just shimmers every time he tells a tale of his climbing over the shards of a prior failure. They are his gold, that and his sharp wit and clear-eyed understanding of the human condition. He’s laugh-out-loud funny and deeply relatable as he doesn’t know to cover up any of the disasters that could have felled almost everyone else. All that and he is also whip-smart.

I am a dress designer, actress, author, and ‘inspirational’ speaker whose major talent is in revealing my failings. There are many… They are also what have given me a measure of success. I didn’t know any better not to. I like people who have taken chances against all odds. Rick Mercer is one of those… show more.

Not-so-secretly I wish I lived in a fairy story (maybe other writers feel like this too?) This novel is a fairy story for adults in the bravest and most beautiful way. The book begins with a meteor shower and features a real centaur and a love story at its heart that spirals out and impacts the survivors of the end of the world. At least, it’s the end of one world. The characters in The Centaur’s Wife are vivid and true, and the gorgeous, strange story lingers with me all the time, reminding me to be braver on the page and in the world.

This book was a safe haven for me. I was feeling uninspired to write nonfiction and unable to focus on the memoir that I had tasked myself with writing. I wanted to write something meaningful and vulnerable yet somehow keep my power and agency to myself. 

Truthfully, this book felt like a safety net. Habib manages to write about her upbringing as a Muslim woman and her relationship to her queerness while also allowing the story to meander between power and vulnerability. It taught me a lot, and I am thankful I got to read it. 

I LOVE the author’s voice in this memoir: she is eloquent, funny, and blisteringly honest about the dehumanization that has plagued medical training from its inception to this day.

I found it enlightening to see that a woman who is a concert pianist and turned down a full scholarship to Oxford to go to medical school suffered the same level of self-doubt as a medical student and resident that I did! I found her descriptions of sleep deprivation, the anxiety of being on call, and the pager as “the box of pain” highly relatable, even as I laughed out loud—or sometimes shed a tear.

I was inspired by her redemption through what she called “Doctor Rehab,” a Zen mindfulness retreat which gave her a whole new take on her calling.