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 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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. I’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, I’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, she’d been carrying around in it. The sense of vulnerability—medical, economic, and otherwise—that she creates within the narrative is so felt that I couldn’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 freshly…


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 won’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. I’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 haven’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 won’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 can’t hire girls because they only have one toilet. Her plucky response—she could use the same toilet as the men—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 dreamsfor 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 and…


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 won’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. I’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 haven’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 won’t totally depress you

Katya Cengel Why did Katya love this book?

I have a fascination with countries that don’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 “first son of the first son” of a leader of a country that was “killed” in 1970, as his mother puts it. Chude-Sokei’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 Angeles—a searing memoir that adds fascinating depth to the coming-to-America story

The first time Chude-Sokei realizes that he is “first son of the first son” of a renowned leader of the bygone African nation is in Uncle Daddy and Big Auntie’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: “Is this the boy? Is this him?”

Chude-Sokei’s…


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 won’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. I’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 haven’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 won’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 Cylin’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 against…


Book cover of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

Wendell Affield Author Of Muddy Jungle Rivers: A river assault boat cox'n's memory journey of his war in Vietnam

From my list on the Vietnam war that explore waste and loss.

Why am I passionate about this?

As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. I’ve read many Vietnam War stories—praising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of blood—rivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.

Wendell's book list on the Vietnam war that explore waste and loss

Wendell Affield Why did Wendell love this book?

As a child, I lived in abject poverty on a little farm in northern Minnesota. By ten years old I was trapping raccoons and shooting squirrels to help put food on our table. When I was in Vietnam, I felt a deep empathy for the Vietnamese fishermen and farmers who lived in poverty complicated by the vicious war. Years later when I began reading Dang Thuy Tram’s diary, I couldn’t put it down. The loss and waste and love for her comrades struck close to home and made me feel guilty for my participation in the war. In her writing, Dang brings to life so many of her Vietnamese comrades who were killed—making one stop to consider the cost of war. In a way the book reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front written by a German soldier—the loss and waste.

By Dang Thuy Tram,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Last Night I Dreamed of Peace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'THE VIETNAMESE ANNE FRANK'

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist - Dang Thuy Tram - as a vibrant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions.

She…


Book cover of The Ravens: The True Story Of A Secret War In Laos, Vietnam

Thomas R. Yarborough Author Of A Shau Valor: American Combat Operations in the Valley of Death, 1963-1971

From my list on the Vietnam War (from an Air Force combat pilot).

Why am I passionate about this?

A decorated Air Force combat pilot, Tom Yarborough served two tours in Vietnam as a forward air controller. After leaving the Air Force he was a professor and department chair at Indiana University and history professor at Northern Virginia Community College. His writing background includes the books Da Nang Diary, winner of the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal for the best memoir of 2014, and A Shau Valor, a finalist for the 2016 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award.

Thomas' book list on the Vietnam War (from an Air Force combat pilot)

Thomas R. Yarborough Why did Thomas love this book?

The Ravens were young Air Force pilots, all volunteers, who flew tiny Cessna O-1 Bird Dog spotter planes through heavy groundfire to identify targets and call in air-strikes during the top-secret war in northern Laos. Their mission was so secret that they wore no uniforms and carried no identification. Fed up with the bureaucracy of the war in Vietnam, these young FACs accepted the 50% casualty rates of what was known as the Steve Canyon Program in return for a life of unrestricted flying and fighting. Devoted to the CIA-sponsored hill tribesmen they supported, the Ravens did their job with extraordinary skill and raw courage. This is their story, brilliantly told in Christopher Robbins. Based on extensive interviews with the survivors, it is a tale of undeniable heroism, blending real-life romance, adventure, and tragedy.

By Christopher Robbins,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Drawing on materials that were, until recently, classified, this account depicts the intense air war fought over Laos and profiles the "Ravens," the pilots who risked their lives in this little-known field of war.


Book cover of Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War

Ernest Hebert Author Of Whirlybird Island

From my list on creating empathy and self-knowledge in readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

For me, writing novels is an attempt in metaphor to clear the ledger of unfinished business in my crazy, contradictory, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always messy mind. All the books I've written have long and often intensely personal backstories. All of us live two lives, a life in the world of things, relationships, and time (needs), and a life in the world we create in our minds (wants). When needs and wants come into conflict we have the elements that make a novel. I see my job as a novelist to provide an exciting story and plot that carries a reader through the material world.

Ernest's book list on creating empathy and self-knowledge in readers

Ernest Hebert Why did Ernest love this book?

My book is a story about what often happens to some soldiers after a war, in today's lingo, PTSD. As one who is a veteran himself, I’ve always been conflicted about soldiering, war, the aftermath of war, and the American penchant for war. One book put it all into perspective for me, Enduring Vietnam by historian James Wright. Wright gives you the historical context that brought about the war; the politics that influenced the war; and the battles fought during the war. But he tells it all from the perspective of the soldiers who fought the war, from our fellow Americans and allies in South Vietnam, but also from the perspective of the enemy soldiers, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese.

By James Wright,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement. Orboth. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows. Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return. By 1969 nearly half of the junior enlisted men who died in Vietnam were draftees.…


Book cover of The Circle of Hanh: A Memoir

F. Scott Service Author Of Playing Soldier

From my list on emotional conflict and post-war survival.

Why am I passionate about this?

Living through the Iraq War compelled me to honestly challenge who I was, what I had believed in, and reshape who I am. One aspect to emerge from that is the belief that there is no good war. War is the worst of all endeavors, born from fundamentally weak minds that are blind to imagination and vision. But while I have had a passion for writing about war and speaking out against it, I feel it’s important for people to look beyond my work as just another veteran writing just another war book. In both of my books, the war is a character more than anything else. 

F.'s book list on emotional conflict and post-war survival

F. Scott Service Why did F. love this book?

This is a story of new beginnings and it shook my preconceived notions of what a memoir embodies. By going back to Vietnam years after the war, the author illustrates how love and time can change our opinions… that hate is the easy way out… that differences can allow us to understand how truly precious we all are… that we can come full circle, out of the darkness and into the light.

By Bruce Weigl,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

With all the breathtaking imagery and lyric fury that characterizes his acclaimed poetry, Bruce Weigl recounts his struggles in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which tore his life apart and in return gave him his poetic voice. Upon his release from duty he turned to alcohol, drugs, and women, living for years in a confused purgatory until he discovered salvation in poetry and in the love of his wife and their son. Yet it was only through a harrowing journey back to Vietnam, to adopt his eight-year-old daughter, that Weigl was finally able to heal himself. Moving from childhood…


Book cover of The Magnificent Bastards: The Joint Army-Marine Defense of Dong Ha, 1968

Wendell Affield Author Of Muddy Jungle Rivers: A river assault boat cox'n's memory journey of his war in Vietnam

From my list on the Vietnam war that explore waste and loss.

Why am I passionate about this?

As I write this, I massage aching bits of shrapnel still embedded beneath silvered scars. I’ve read many Vietnam War stories—praising the war, glorifying combat, condemning the war. My stories are 1st person limited POV, voice of a twenty-year-old sailor. My title is a spin-off of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. By the time I wrote my memoir, I realized that our national goals in Vietnam had been Muddy from the beginning. I too, traveled Jungle Rivers. During my time on the riverboat, I witnessed Rivers of blood—rivers of life, trickle across our deck. And yes, Jungle is a fitting metaphor for our life at that time.

Wendell's book list on the Vietnam war that explore waste and loss

Wendell Affield Why did Wendell love this book?

My river boat division (Mobile Riverine Force Division 112) patrolled the Cua Viet River just south of the DMZ between North and South Vietnam during the timeline of this book so I could very much relate to the events, though the Marines took much heavier casualties than our boats did. Keith Nolan does an excellent job documenting the battles—as I read, I relived the bomb and strafing runs done by the navy aircraft carrier F-4 Phantoms (which I also wrote about in my memoir) Nolan’s very detailed account of the Marine battles on the north side of the river answered many decades-old questions for me. His use of dialogue and insights into the Marines keep the reader engrossed. 

By Keith Nolan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

On April 29, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army is spotted less than four miles from the U.S. Marines’ Dong Ha Combat Base. Intense fighting develops in nearby Dai Do as the 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, known as “the Magnificent Bastards,” struggles to eject NVA forces from this strategic position.

Yet the BLT 2/4Marines defy the brutal onslaught. Pressing forward, America’s finest warriors rout the NVA from their fortress-hamlets–often in deadly hand-to-hand combat.At the end of two weeks of desperate, grinding battles, the Marines and the infantry battalion supporting them are torn to shreds. But against all odds, they beat back…


Book cover of Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965

Neal Thompson Author Of Reckoning: Vietnam and America's Cold War Experience, 1945-1991

From my list on America’s path through the Cold War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I entered the United States Army in August 1970, two months after graduation from high school, completed flight school on November 1971, and served a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot in Troop F (Air), 8th US Cavalry, 1st Aviation Brigade. After my discharge, I served an additional 28 years as a helicopter pilot in the Illinois National Guard, retiring in 2003. I graduated from Triton Junior College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University Law School in 1981. My passion for this subject arises, as one would expect, from my status as a veteran. My expertise is based on my own experience and 16 years of research and writing that went into the preparation of my book.

Neal's book list on America’s path through the Cold War

Neal Thompson Why did Neal love this book?

Moyar does an excellent job of debunking the myths surrounding this country’s failure to secure an independent, non-communist South Vietnam. From the “Bright and Shining Lie” of the vaunted Saigon press corps to the supposed incompetence of Ngo Dinh Diem, Moyar demonstrates that the orthodox narrative is false and that the loss of Vietnam was the result of decisions made in Washington rather than dysfunction in Saigon.  

By Mark Moyar,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken, first published in 2007, overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many insights into the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and feminism?

Vietnam 165 books
The Vietnam War 241 books
Feminism 359 books