Love Girls Don't? Readers share 100 books like Girls Don't...

By Inette Miller,

Here are 100 books that Girls Don't fans have personally recommended if you like Girls Don't. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life

Margo Steines Author Of Brutalities: A Love Story

From my list on horrible things happening to your body.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated with bodies: the meaning we make of them; the suffering, joy, and indignities we receive through them; the outer limits of what we can do to and with them. Iā€™ve worked in careers that have asked a lot of my own body, and I write about the brutalities humans inflict upon our own and other bodies. My work is obsessed with questions of how and why we endure suffering. Also, Iā€™ve done a lot of dumb shit to and with my own body that has given me (in addition to a lifetime of medical problems) a highly specific perspective about intensity, hazard, and pain.

Margo's book list on horrible things happening to your body

Margo Steines Why did Margo love this book?

What if you got hit by lightning? What if the lightning came from inside your body? What if you are such an obsessive writer and researcher that you then had to trace the supply chain of the failed medical device that did that to you?

KS does body writing as a research quest, taking her battered heart back and forth across the Atlantic in pursuit of answers to the question of what, exactly, sheā€™d been carrying around in it. The sense of vulnerabilityā€”medical, economic, and otherwiseā€”that she creates within the narrative is so felt that I couldnā€™t shake it when I was done reading.

By Katherine E. Standefer,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.

In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshlyā€¦


Book cover of Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

Katya Cengel Author Of From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union

From my list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a journalist I have seen and experienced amazing things. As a memoirist my job is to make you shiver as I take you down a crumbling Ukrainian coal mine, laugh in frustration as I argue with a customs agent charging me $100 for a few bootleg CDs and smile with happiness when I finally locate my Ukrainian date after a classic miscommunication. Iā€™m recommending memoirs that will take you on adventures, tackle serious topics, but leave you with hope, and oftentimes a smile of understanding. Even if you havenā€™t covered a war, faced death, or disappeared, these writers speak to the universal hopes, fears, and disappointments of human life. 

Katya's book list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you

Katya Cengel Why did Katya love this book?

As a woman, I have experienced my share of sexism but it dims in comparison to what Lester faced in the 1950s and 1960s. When applying for a job at a bookstore, a young Lester is told the store canā€™t hire girls because they only have one toilet. Her plucky responseā€”she could use the same toilet as the menā€”is one reason I enjoyed this book so much. 

Lester is repeatedly pushed to the sidelines even as she takes up the fight for civil rights, devoting herself to bettering the lives of others while setting aside her own dreamsā€”for a time. Luckily Lester never completely loses her nerve. Her second act is a fun adventure to follow for those who have faced their own setbacks, no matter their gender.

By Joan Steinau Lester,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Committed to the struggle for civil rights, in the late 1950s Joan Steinau marched and protested as a white ally and young woman coming to terms with her own racism. She fell in love and married a fellow activist, the Black writer Julius Lester, establishing a partnership that was long and multifaceted but not free of the politics of race and gender. As the women's movement dawned, feminism helped Lester find her voice, her pansexuality, and the courage to be herself.

Braiding intellectual, personal, and political history, Lester tells the story of a writer and activist fighting for love andā€¦


Book cover of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir

Katya Cengel Author Of From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union

From my list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a journalist I have seen and experienced amazing things. As a memoirist my job is to make you shiver as I take you down a crumbling Ukrainian coal mine, laugh in frustration as I argue with a customs agent charging me $100 for a few bootleg CDs and smile with happiness when I finally locate my Ukrainian date after a classic miscommunication. Iā€™m recommending memoirs that will take you on adventures, tackle serious topics, but leave you with hope, and oftentimes a smile of understanding. Even if you havenā€™t covered a war, faced death, or disappeared, these writers speak to the universal hopes, fears, and disappointments of human life. 

Katya's book list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you

Katya Cengel Why did Katya love this book?

I have a fascination with countries that donā€™t fully exist and have visited a few myself. So when I learned that Chude-Sokei was from a country that really no longer exists, I was hooked. The country in question was not one I recognized. Biafra was a short-lived African state that declared independence from Nigeria in 1967. 

What kept me reading the book though was the humor Chude-Sokei uses to describe his unique situation as the ā€œfirst son of the first sonā€ of a leader of a country that was ā€œkilledā€ in 1970, as his mother puts it. Chude-Sokeiā€™s tales of growing up an African in Jamaica followed by his yearning to become a Black American in Inglewood, Los Angeles will resonate with anyone who ever struggled with their identity.

By Louis Chude-Sokei,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Floating in a Most Peculiar Way as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The astonishing journey of a bright, utterly displaced boy, from the short-lived African nation of Biafra, to Jamaica, to the harshest streets of Los Angelesā€”a searing memoir that adds fascinating depth to the coming-to-America story

The first time Chude-Sokei realizes that he is ā€œfirst son of the first sonā€ of a renowned leader of the bygone African nation is in Uncle Daddy and Big Auntieā€™s strict religious household in Jamaica, where he lives with other abandoned children. A visiting African has just fallen to his knees to shake him by the shoulders: ā€œIs this the boy? Is this him?ā€

Chude-Sokeiā€™sā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir

Katya Cengel Author Of From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union

From my list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a journalist I have seen and experienced amazing things. As a memoirist my job is to make you shiver as I take you down a crumbling Ukrainian coal mine, laugh in frustration as I argue with a customs agent charging me $100 for a few bootleg CDs and smile with happiness when I finally locate my Ukrainian date after a classic miscommunication. Iā€™m recommending memoirs that will take you on adventures, tackle serious topics, but leave you with hope, and oftentimes a smile of understanding. Even if you havenā€™t covered a war, faced death, or disappeared, these writers speak to the universal hopes, fears, and disappointments of human life. 

Katya's book list on big topics that wonā€™t totally depress you

Katya Cengel Why did Katya love this book?

When I was 10 I disappeared from my life for a while. I left school, home, and my family to live in a hospital for several months. This break in my own childhood narrative is what got me into the Busby story. Cylin Busby was nine years old when her dad, John, a police officer, was shot. Her father survives, but the family is forced to disappear for their own protection. 

While the book is written by a father and daughter, it is Cylinā€™s young nine-year-old voice that pulled me in, reminding me what it is like to be a child and powerless as the world around you falls apart. That sounds dark, but children have a way of finding hope. This story has a happy(ish) ending.

By Cylin Busby, John Busby,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Year We Disappeared as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

When Cylin Busby was nine years old, she was obsessed with Izod clothing, the Muppets, and a box turtle she kept in a shoebox. Then everything changed overnight. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his shift when someone leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed left John's jaw on the passenger seat of his car-literally. While clinging to life, he managed to write down the name of the only person he thought could have pulled the trigger. The suspect? A local ex-con with rumored mob connections. The motive? Officer Busby was scheduled to testify againstā€¦


Book cover of War Crimes in Vietnam

Alexander Sedlmaier Author Of Protest in the Vietnam War Era

From my list on the international dimensions of the Vietnam War.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a historian and someone who grew up in Cold War Berlin, I am constantly inspired by efforts to curb the devastating effects of industrialised warfare. I love learning about people who had the courage to speak up, and how their historical understanding of the military abuse of power enables us to think differently about present-day warfare. So much of my research has been inspired by social movements and their difficult efforts to improve the world. While I am no expert on Vietnamese history, I have been fortunate to have learned a lot about how ingenious the Vietnamese revolutionaries were in actively pedalling the global emergence of Vietnam War protest. 

Alexander's book list on the international dimensions of the Vietnam War

Alexander Sedlmaier Why did Alexander love this book?

This 1967 collection of essays and speeches by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell fascinates me because it seeks to reveal inconvenient truths while not shying away from a highly partisan intervention.

Russell discusses why he was making a global appeal to protest the US war effort in Vietnam. His book and the subsequent Russell-Sartre War Crimes Tribunal have often been dismissed as biased and uncritical of communist propaganda, but rereading this primary source illuminates an important chapter in the emergence of a global intellectual critique of US imperialism that ā€œmillions of Europeans, Asians, Latin Americansā€ came to share as it was debunking the official position of the Johnson administration and its allies in Vietnam.

By Bertrand Russell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked War Crimes in Vietnam as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this harsh and unsparing book, Bertrand Russell presents the
unvarnished truth about the war in Vietnam. He argues that "To
understand the war, we must understand America"-and, in doing so, we
must understand that racism in the United States created a climate in
which it was difficult for Americans to understand what they were doing
in Vietnam. According to Russell, it was this same racism that
provoked "a barbarous, chauvinist outcry when American pilots who have
bombed hospitals, schools, dykes, and civilian centres are accused of
committing war crimes." Even today, more than forty years later, this
chauvinist moralā€¦


Book cover of Vietnam: A History

Edward Greenberg Author Of The Copyright Zone: A Legal Guide For Photographers and Artists In The Digital Age

From my list on quintessential American History/Americana.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passions lean toward American history, Americana, and skepticism. My creed is that "Conventional wisdom is neither." I am a member of the Skeptics Society, and I often litigate and lecture on copyright and celebrity rights issues. I have been a trial lawyer for 45 years and try cases in front of flesh and blood judges and juries. My clientele runs from supermodels to celebrities, photographers, performers, directors, model agencies, photographers, and artists.

Edward's book list on quintessential American History/Americana

Edward Greenberg Why did Edward love this book?

Real, unbiased, definitive history of America's greatest debacle. This book teaches how the inflexible best and brightest set and maintained a course for disaster rather than pivot and admit to catastrophic mistakes.

The tragedy of losing 58,000 Americans and the destruction of LBJ. Elitists err, survive, move on, and the common man dies in rice paddies. Power intoxicates the otherwise reasonable person to be anything but.

By Stanley Karnow,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"A landmark work...The most complete account to date of the Vietnam tragedy." -The Washington Post Book World

This monumental narrative clarifies, analyzes, and demystifies the tragic ordeal of the Vietnam war. Free of ideological bias, profound in its undertsanding, and compassionate in its human portrayls , it is filled with fresh revelations drawn from secret documents and from exclusive interviews with participants-French, American, Vietnamese, Chinese: diplomats, military commanders, high government officials, journalists, nurses, workers, and soldiers. Originally published a companion to the Emmy-winning PBS series, Karnow's defining book is a precursor to Ken Burns's ten-part forthcoming documentary series, The Vietnamā€¦


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Book cover of American Flygirl

American Flygirl by Susan Tate Ankeny,

The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.

This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United Statesā€¦

Book cover of Dien Cai Dau

Doug Bradley Author Of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

From my list on the Vietnam War that strike a different note.

Why am I passionate about this?

Until todayā€™s multiple catastrophes, the Vietnam War was the most harrowing moment in the lives of my fellow baby boomers and me. Drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1970, I spent 365 days in Vietnam as a combat correspondent. That experience changed my life, because as the Argentinian writer Jose Narosky has pointed out, ā€œin war, there are no unwounded soldiers.ā€ I have spent the past five decades trying to heal those wounds, writing three books grounded in my Vietnam experience, and have devoted my life to listening to the voices of our veterans, distilling their memories (often music-based), and sharing their words. 

Doug's book list on the Vietnam War that strike a different note

Doug Bradley Why did Doug love this book?

ā€œI think of language as our first music,ā€ notes the celebrated poet Yusef Komunyakaa. His collection of Vietnam poems, Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for crazy) fuses images, sounds, and sights from Vietnam into a fearful, lyrical symmetry. Born James Brown in rural Bogalusa, Louisiana, he served in Vietnam as a correspondent and editor of The Southern Cross, the newspaper of the Armyā€™s 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). ā€œThe Vietnamese knew what was happening in the American psyche when it came to race,ā€ claims Komunyakaa, ā€œand sometimes they expertly played on it.ā€ The poem ā€œHanoi Hannahā€ in Dien Cai Dau is a perfect example of this: ā€œRay Charles!ā€ His voice/ calls from waist-high grass/& we duck behind gray sandbags./ ā€œHello, Soul Brothers. Yeah,/Georgiaā€™s also on my mindā€¦Hereā€™s Hannah againā€¦"

ā€œThat gets your attention when youā€™re out in the middle of nowhere,ā€ astutely observes Komunyakaa.

By Yusef Komunyakaa,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Poetry that precisely conjures images of the war in Vietnam by an award-winning author.


Book cover of The Bridge at Dong Ha

William W. Stilwagen Author Of VIETNAM War SPEAK: The Distinctive Language of the Vietnam Era

From my list on the Vietnam War from a Marone who served there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I served in Vietnam in 1969 carrying a radio on my back with the 12th Marines on the DMZ. In 1970, I was a door gunner with HMM-364 (Purple Fox Squadron) out of Marble Mountain. Beginning in 1996, I have led 68 tours for veterans, their family members, historians, active-duty military personnel, and others to the jungles, mountains, and battlefields of Vietnam. I currently serve as president and bush guide for the non-profit tour company, Vietnam Battlefield Tours. As an avid reader of non-fiction books on the Vietnam experience, this knowledge base has helped tremendously in my non-profit volunteer service.

William's book list on the Vietnam War from a Marone who served there

William W. Stilwagen Why did William love this book?

This short book depicts the actions of Vietnamese Marine Corps Advisor, John Ripley, and his heroic actions to stop the onslaught of the NVA tank invasion during the 1972 Easter Offensive. It provides a shining example of how one person can affect the outcome of a battle and to never, ever give up. 

By John Grider Miller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Bridge at Dong Ha as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the true story of the legendary Vietnam War hero John Ripley, who braved intense enemy fire to destroy a strategic bridge and stall a major North Vietnamese invasion into the South in April 1972. Told by a fellow Marine, the account lays bare Ripley's innermost thoughts as he rigged 500 pounds of explosives by hand-walking the beams beneath the bridge, crimped detonators with his teeth, and raced the burning fuses back to shore, thus saving his comrades from certain death.

First published in 1989, the book has broad appeal as a riveting tale of adventure. But John Millerā€¦


Book cover of Such A Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-1963

Christopher Goscha Author Of Vietnam: A New History

From my list on memoirs on the Vietnam Wars from a Vietnamese perspective.

Why am I passionate about this?

Who hasnā€™t seen the classic American movies on the Vietnam Warā€“Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, or Platoon? They are fine films, but have you ever asked yourself where the Vietnamese are? Save for a few stereotyped cameo appearances, they are remarkably absent. I teach the history of the wars in Vietnam at the UniversitĆ© du QuĆ©bec Ć  MontrĆ©al. My students and I explore the French and the American sides in the wars for Vietnam, but one of the things that Iā€™ve tried to do with them is weave the Vietnamese and their voices into our course; this list provides a window into those Vietnamese voices. 

Christopher's book list on memoirs on the Vietnam Wars from a Vietnamese perspective

Christopher Goscha Why did Christopher love this book?

If you like graphic memoirs and want one on the Vietnam War, Marcelino Truongā€™s Such a Lovely Little War is for you.

Itā€™s an autobiographical tale of Truongā€™s life as the son of a Vietnamese diplomat working for the South Vietnam government and a French mother. We see the war through his eyes, but we also see the world he encountered as a teenager in London, Washington, and then back in Saigon.

The dialogue and the graphics are superb. The juxtaposition between his family and this ā€œlovely little warā€ turning around it makes this memoir of the Vietnam War a highly original one. 

By David Homel, Marcelino Truong (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Such A Lovely Little War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This riveting, beautifully produced graphic memoir tells the story of the early years of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of a young boy named Marco, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife. The book opens in America, where the boy's father works for the South Vietnam embassy; there the boy is made to feel self-conscious about his otherness thanks to schoolmates who play war games against the so-called "Commies." The family is called back to Saigon in 1961, where the father becomes Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's personal interpreter; as the growing conflict betweenā€¦


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. BrenƩ Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,ā€¦

Book cover of Phase Line Green: The Battle for Hue, 1968

William W. Stilwagen Author Of VIETNAM War SPEAK: The Distinctive Language of the Vietnam Era

From my list on the Vietnam War from a Marone who served there.

Why am I passionate about this?

I served in Vietnam in 1969 carrying a radio on my back with the 12th Marines on the DMZ. In 1970, I was a door gunner with HMM-364 (Purple Fox Squadron) out of Marble Mountain. Beginning in 1996, I have led 68 tours for veterans, their family members, historians, active-duty military personnel, and others to the jungles, mountains, and battlefields of Vietnam. I currently serve as president and bush guide for the non-profit tour company, Vietnam Battlefield Tours. As an avid reader of non-fiction books on the Vietnam experience, this knowledge base has helped tremendously in my non-profit volunteer service.

William's book list on the Vietnam War from a Marone who served there

William W. Stilwagen Why did William love this book?

It is rare when an actual participant of a battle can produce such a chilling and accurate narrative that keeps a readerā€™s attention page after page. This was the Tet Offensive urban battle for the Citadel, a walled city containing a labyrinth of buildings and houses jammed around numerous narrow streets. This was city fighting at its worst. In the end, many thousands of the enemy lay dead.

By Nicholas Warr,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The bloody, month-long battle for the Citadel in Hue during 1968 pitted U.S. Marines against an entrenched, numerically superior North Vietnamese Army force. By official U.S. accounts it was a tactical and moral victory for the Marines and the United States. But a survivor's compulsion to square official accounts with his contrasting experience has produced an entirely different perspective of the battle, the most controversial to emerge from the Vietnam War in decades.

In some of the most frank, vivid prose to come out of the war, author Nicholas Warr describes with urgency and outrage the Marines' savage house-to-house fighting,ā€¦


Book cover of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
Book cover of Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White
Book cover of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and feminism?

Vietnam 170 books
The Vietnam War 248 books
Feminism 369 books