100 books like Falling in Love When You Thought You Were Through

By Jill Robinson, Stuart Shaw,

Here are 100 books that Falling in Love When You Thought You Were Through fans have personally recommended if you like Falling in Love When You Thought You Were Through. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Friend

MJ Werthman White Author Of An Invitation to the Party

From my list on aging, family, and relationships.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a kid, our public library in the basement of the Methodist church became my second home. However, I considered any visit a bitter disappointment that didn’t result in one or two dog stories in the stack I signed out. Big Red, Old Yeller, Lassie, Lad a Dog, Call of the Wild, White Fang (the occasional wolf was also okay), I loved them all. That experience has continued to affect the adult I’ve become. As I’ve turned to reading, and writing, stories of family, relationships, and, lately, of aging, it’s become clear to me that I’ve never found a story that wasn’t improved by the appearance of a good dog.

MJ's book list on aging, family, and relationships

MJ Werthman White Why did MJ love this book?

In Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend a terrible event (a dear friend and mentor’s suicide) results in the unnamed narrator’s acceptance, out of a sense of responsibility, of an unwanted burden (the heartbroken Great Dane, Apollo−the narrator admitting she is more of a cat person).

I love that by book’s end, that obligation turns out to be a precious gift that assuages both their griefs, serving to connect them to the departed one they both loved. Along the way we, lucky readers, get to eavesdrop on the literary discourse of an agile mind attempting to parse the unparsable as the narrator, a writer herself, addresses both the lost (her mentor) and the found (the dog).

Does the dog die? Don’t ask and I won’t tell.

By Sigrid Nunez,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Friend as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

'A true delight: I genuinely fear I won't read a better novel this year' FINANCIAL TIMES

'Loved this. A funny, moving examination of love, grief, and the uniqueness of dogs' GRAHAM NORTON

'Delicious' SUNDAY TIMES 100 BEST SUMMER READS

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has…


Book cover of Oh William!

Joan D. Heiman Author Of Life with an Impossible Person: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Transformation

From my list on by women grieving the loss of a quirky partner.

Why am I passionate about this?

My mom handed me one of those little girl diaries with a lock and key when I was in third grade. I wrote my heart into those diaries until I needed more space and shifted to regular-sized notebooks. Writing is my way to know myself and make sense of my life. The journal I kept in the last months of my husband’s life helped me reassemble the trauma-blurred memories of his dying, and then, it supported my emotional rebirth during the year of intense grieving. It is with surprise and delight that I hear from readers who say I articulate their innermost emotions related to love and loss.

Joan's book list on by women grieving the loss of a quirky partner

Joan D. Heiman Why did Joan love this book?

Even though the marriage in Oh William! ends in divorce while my marriage ended (without my consent) in my husband’s untimely death, the book brought me back to the unconventional nature of my marriage. Elizabeth Strout’s uncanny ability to say much in a single sentence had me traveling back in time and heart to the many moments that made our marriage. The tendernesses and fears, the deep trust and insecurities that quietly but forcefully bound us together made up the subtle mysteries of our uncommon relationship. What makes people move apart yet remain forever close, as in Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, or what holds two people together when there are many factors that might drive them apart, as in my marriage? These questions made reading this book a thought-provoking and enriching experience.

By Elizabeth Strout,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Oh William! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of…


Book cover of Through the Shadowlands: The Love Story of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman

Maggie Kast Author Of Side by Side but Never Face to Face: A Novella & Stories

From my list on finding or losing love in old age.

Why am I passionate about this?

Widowed at age fifty and now eighty-four, I know first hand the search for love in late life. I have three adult children and can't avoid bringing baggage to any new relationship, whether with humans or the cats I adore. Coming to writing seriously only after my husband’s death, I remain fascinated by questions of craft, how the story is told (as my recommendations show), and I’ve published several essays on aspects of that subject. My first career in dance, my conversion to Catholicism, and my psychoanalytic therapy have been major parts of my life and play significant roles in my memoir, my novel, and my more recent novella and stories.

Maggie's book list on finding or losing love in old age

Maggie Kast Why did Maggie love this book?

As a Catholic convert myself, I have long been interested in the spiritual journeys of these two, a middle-aged, conservative English professor and a young divorcee with two sons. Actually, two unlikely loves play out in this non-fiction biography: first young Lewis with Mrs. Moore, thirty years his senior (who may or may not have been his lover), and much later Joy, a Jewish convert to Christianity and former communist. Her death, just four years after their marriage, is mourned in Lewis’ own book, A Grief Observed, the only book I found comforting after my husband died. 

By Brian Sibley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Through the Shadowlands as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At first glance, they were an unlikely couple: C. S. Lewis, a distinguished author and Oxford scholar, and Joy Davidman, a Jewish-American divorcée, converted Christian, mother of two, and former Communist Party member. But together they walked through life's challenges, persevering despite having their faith tested in the face of suffering and death. This amazing true story reveals the many events that occurred in the lives of two astounding Christians to bring them together and spark their love for each other. Readers will experience both their tender moments and the darkest hours where faith was tested and shaken to its…


Book cover of Love Medicine

Anna Bliss Author Of Bonfire Night

From my list on historical stories with interfaith love stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

After graduating with a BA in English, I moved to England to pursue a master’s in Literature and Visual Culture. My focus was on women artists working in London during the Blitz and I wrote my dissertation on Lee Miller, who went on to photograph (and doggedly publish) the liberation of German concentration camps. Later I worked in arts administration and marketing, and didn’t start writing my debut novel until I was thirty-five. My work is inspired by my favorite authors from the 1940s: Elizabeth Bowen, Patrick Hamilton, and Penelope Fitzgerald. I’m also drawn to historical fiction about ordinary people in difficult social conditions, especially when there’s a love story involved.

Anna's book list on historical stories with interfaith love stories

Anna Bliss Why did Anna love this book?

I used to moderate a book club for museum members at what is now the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Love Medicine was chosen by one of our exhibition artists. This astonishing debut is a masterwork about family, poverty, and passion.

The book is set where my grandparents came from, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and illustrates how settlers from Europe (my ancestors) continued to disrupt and destroy Native lives well into the 20th century. Ojibwe spiritual beliefs and Catholicism tangle as tightly as the characters that embody them. Spanning from 1934 to 1985, this novel should not be missed by anyone interested in Native American history.

By Louise Erdrich,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Love Medicine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power.” — Toni Morrison

Set on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine—the first novel from master storyteller and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich—is an epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter of this stunning novel draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses…


Book cover of Take Me With You

Kathleen Basi Author Of A Song for the Road

From my list on finding beauty in the crap life throws at you.

Why am I passionate about this?

I suspect my passion for this topic was born when my doctor came into my C-section recovery room and uttered the words “chromosomal abnormality.” My daughter has Down syndrome, and full disclosure: I had zero interest in being a disability mom. Yet as I fell in love with this beautiful, funny, sassy girl, my whole worldview shifted. I am a far better person than I was when she entered my life. She has taught me the beauty and the blessing wrapped up in the things that first appear to be the most difficult. 

Kathleen's book list on finding beauty in the crap life throws at you

Kathleen Basi Why did Kathleen love this book?

I love this book because it showcases the essential goodness of people. In these times of hate-filled words and dishonesty, that’s an affirmation we all need. August is a teacher on an RV trip to national parks to scatter his son’s ashes—a trip he wants to take on his own, in grief and bitterness. Instead, because he’s just a good guy, he ends up with three tag-alongs—a pair of boys, wounded by their father’s neglect and self-absorption, and a dog. The trip—and the kindness they inspire in each other—helps them all heal. It’s a trip that changes them all forever for the better.

By Catherine Ryan Hyde,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Take Me With You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

August Shroeder, a burned-out teacher, has been sober since his 19-year-old son died. Every year he's spent the summer on the road, but making it to Yellowstone this year means everything. The plan had been to travel there with his son, but now August is making the trip with Philip's ashes instead. An unexpected twist of fate lands August with two extra passengers for his journey, two half-orphans with nowhere else to go.

What none of them could have known was how transformative both the trip-and the bonds that develop between them-would prove, driving each to create a new destiny…


Book cover of The Lost Weekend

Richard Vetere Author Of The Writers Afterlife

From my list on writers and how being a writer changes their lives.

Why am I passionate about this?

Richard Vetere’s screenplay Caravaggio won The Golden Palm for the Best Screenplay at the 2021 Beverly Hills Film Festival. He co-wrote The Third Miracle screenplay adaptation of his own novel. The movie was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Ed Harris and Anne Heche and directed by Agnieszka Holland released by Sony Pictures Classics. His teleplay adaptation of his stage play The Marriage Fool starring Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett is the most-viewed CBS movie ever and is currently running on Amazon. He also wrote the cult classic film Vigilante called by BAM as one of the “best indies of the 1980s.”

Richard's book list on writers and how being a writer changes their lives

Richard Vetere Why did Richard love this book?

This book is also a semi-autobiographical and painful exploration of a writer’s addiction to alcohol.  It is the story of a talented writer, Don Birnam. Birnam lives in a rundown neighborhood in Manhattan and is praised for his realism in his writing but he drinks to numb himself to his struggle with his homosexual feelings. The novel follows him on a five-day binge as he uses all kinds of ingenuity to get a bottle of rye to sustain him. He contemplates murdering his selfless, dedicated girlfriend’s maid to get a key to a liquor cabinet. He bangs his head in frustration and winds up in an ‘alcoholic ward.’ Enjoying quoting Shakespeare and confident as a writer, his worst enemy is not a blank page but the need to drink. It was adapted into a brilliant film.

By Charles Jackson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lost Weekend as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Lost Weekend - directed by Billy Wilder as an all-time classic Oscar and Cannes winning film, starring Ray Milland in his most famous role - is one of the most important books ever written about addiction. No novelist had ever so honestly, and vividly, described the torments, tricks and temptations of an alcoholic. In the character of writer Don Birnam, Charles Jackson both exposed his own struggle with the bottle, and eloquently expressed the demons faced by millions of others, anonymous or known. The book and film have inspired and influenced countless writers, artists, musicians, and the title itself…


Book cover of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

John Howard Matthews Author Of This Is Where It Gets Interesting

From my list on characters who encounter the extraordinary.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a fiction and humor writer whose imagination was initially sparked by superheroes and comic books. The idea of an otherwise average person who could turn themselves into a superbeing was transformative and powerful. As a teenager, these early heroes faded, and I became fascinated by The Twilight Zone’s compact and poignant storytelling that contained moral messages. This eventually led me to the fiction of Stephen King where the idea of average people encountering the supernatural and overcoming obstacles was a recurring theme. In my own work, I have tried to carry forward the idea that our everyday lives are more absurd, complex, and magical than they appear.

John's book list on characters who encounter the extraordinary

John Howard Matthews Why did John love this book?

A master class on “less is more,” the stories in this collection are set in everyday, locations: a suburban front yard, an airport lounge, a kitchen, and are populated by working-class people in the midst of one or more traumas such as alcoholism, divorce, or financial trouble.

Though Carver doesn’t employ fantasy, the tight, accessible writing lures you in and immerses you in a comic-tragic world that is uniquely his own. This collection taught me the power of economical prose and that writing about the kinds of people you encounter at the supermarket can be just as transportive and resonant as stories that involve characters who live in exotic places, or universes.

By Raymond Carver,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This powerful collection of stories, set in the mid-West among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK. With its spare, colloquial narration and razor-sharp sense of how people really communicate, the collection was to become one of the most influential literary works of the 1980s.


Book cover of Recovery

Corey Mesler Author Of Memphis Movie

From my list on by poets.

Why am I passionate about this?

Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain, is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. I have a fondness for novels written by writers who are primarily poets. These five books are my favorites in that contracted genre.

Corey's book list on by poets

Corey Mesler Why did Corey love this book?

This book is more autobiographical, based on his struggle with alcoholism. Berryman had already written a book of poems, The Dream Songs (my favorite book of poems), which practically reads like a novel. It’s full of wit and playfulness and jerry-rigged syntax. Recovery is also witty but not quite as playful. It’s darker, of course. Perhaps one’s perception of it is colored by the knowledge that Berryman had committed suicide in 1972, a year before its release. So, it’s a melancholy book, yet its difficulties are human and common and, here, well-wrought by a poet’s grace.

By John Berryman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Recovery as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the author's words, Recovery is a novel about "the disease called alcoholism, recognized by the American Medical Association only in 1964."


Book cover of Ham on Rye

James Tyler Ball Author Of Matita: The Tragic Tale of a Writer's Pencil

From my list on the outrageous but still have serious meaning.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by absurdist comedy and ideas for as long as I can remember. At sixteen, I wrote my first book, Mr A, which followed a man who would turn into a superhero after taking LSD and his talking dog. As an adult, I continue to revel in these types of stories. I brought this passion to my chart-topping debut non-fiction book, where I interviewed several people who believe McDonald’s has interdimensional properties. Now, I hold no bars in fiction writing, having authored a ‘genius of a book’ that follows a talking pencil.

James' book list on the outrageous but still have serious meaning

James Tyler Ball Why did James love this book?

Many of us writers are subject to the terrible cliché of substance abuse, none so much as Charles Bukowski. Having dabbled in the debauched myself, Ham on Rye sadly reflects what life could be like if the idiocy of adolescence continues into adulthood. This book is hilarious, vulgar, shocking, and oddly insightful. Not only is this my favourite Bukowski book, but it’s the book that introduced me to his work and changed my writing forever.

By Charles Bukowski,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Ham on Rye as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INTRODUCTION BY RODDY DOYLE

'He brought everyone down to earth, even the angels' LEONARD COHEN

Charles Bukowski is one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. The autobiographical Ham on Rye is widely considered his finest novel. A classic of American literature, it offers powerful insight into his youth through the prism of his alter-ego Henry Chinaski, who grew up to be the legendary Hank Chinaski of Post Office and Factotum.


Book cover of There There

Rajat Narula Author Of Azalea Heights

From my list on race, ethnicity, and belief system collisions.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an immigrant in the United States, I have been fascinated by the dynamics between races and cultures—both in the country and globally. As I travel extensively (63 countries so far), I experience some of the biases firsthand—sometimes in the unlikeliest places. I have come to realize that despite the difference in the color of our skin—and the clothes we wear—we are more alike than different.  

Rajat's book list on race, ethnicity, and belief system collisions

Rajat Narula Why did Rajat love this book?

I loved the book because it’s an insightful window into the challenges of a troubled community, the native Indians, who are still haunted by the painful past and face an uncertain future. I loved how the writer picks the thread of stories of many characters who have chosen to live outside reservations and then knits them all together in the end.

Unique characters with unique stories and strong evocative writing make There There a remarkable debut.  

By Tommy Orange,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked There There as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award **

One of Barack Obama's best books of 2018, the New York Times bestselling novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice

'A thunderclap' Marlon James
'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
'Pure soaring beauty' Colm Toibin

Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance.

All of…


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