100 books like Goodbye Without Leaving

Wild Africa is romantic and daring and I loved the danger and inspiration of 1920s Africa, when British born real life woman Beryl Markham becomes one of the first female pilots. It’s a bit of Out of Africa and riveting.

Markham encounters many obstacles and has several disastrous relationships but eventually she overcomes and succeeds. She becomes the first person (not woman) to fly solo from Britain to North America. 

I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.

When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.

Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!

Indigenous singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is a music legend in Canada. When illustrator Julie Flett decided to turn one of Sainte-Marie's iconic songs, Still This Love Goes On, in a picture album, it was like the song was brought to life in a whole new way. Readers (or the small children the book can be read to) are able to travel through Buffy's poignant lyrics and Julie Flett's moving, evocative illustrations and truly feel what the song is about. Plus, you can listen to the song while you look at the book and hear Buffy's haunting, heart-breaking voice. Seeing music while hearing it? Sounds like a perfect introduction to me. 

The 7-to-10-year-old set will love this one. My own rock-loving son, who inspired the character of Truffle in our book, was addicted to this series of books (which also includes Black Music Greats: 40 inspiring icons), originally published in France. Both informative and filled with fun facts about the 40 artists selected by the authors (readers will learn about Mod culture through The Who, about how ABBA got their name, or how the Wu-Tang Clan influenced hip hop), the book reads like a cheat sheet on pop and rock music, with vivid and colorful illustrations.   

A wonderful graphic novel for and about teens, Operatic follows Charlie, a teen girl who must find "her song" for a school project, and embarks on an emotional journey about the meaning of music, friendship, love, and opera. The book, gutting and uplifting all at once, is also an homage to the great Maria Callas, while peppered with pop and rock references. A perfect book for readers 12 and up, by which I mean: up to 30, up to 45, up to 99 years old, as music ties us powerfully with our life story, no matter our age. 

The McGarrigle Sisters are Montreal legends, and I was raised on a steady diet of their brutally honest folk music. It was only natural that I fall for the music of Kate McGarrigle's daughter, singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright (her father is American songwriter Loudon Wainwright) early on. Her memoir, Stories I Might Regret Telling You, is as compelling, lyrical and candid as her songs and stage presence are. A truly rock-and-roll story filled with adventure and struggle, Martha's journey is also a testament to women's resilience and a plea for leading a creatively fulfilling career without sacrificing family and intimate relationships. Obviously not aimed at teen readers (although I would have devoured it had it fallen into my hands at, say, sixteen), this book will crack any music-loving heart right open.  

Anthropology of an American Girl is the beautiful tale of Eveline, who lives on Long Island with her barely-making it divorced mom in a wealthy Hamptons town in the late 1970s and 1980s.

It’s a coming-of-age story of finding her independence and need, best described in her own musings: she reveals that her parents loved her but were unaware of her need in the world to be shepherded and helped; to be supported.

They needed her to be instantly independent, even as a teenager, but that didn't make it so; because they didn’t have the bandwidth to see she needed direction, didn’t mean she knew where she was going.

Living through her love of a working-class boxer—a true love that she can’t quite put aside, even as he leaves her for a career—then moving in with a man she’s settled for—a hip, rich, self-centered man that she’s let herself fall… show more.

This book is one of a four-part Pride and Prejudice sequel series that continues the romantic lives of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy into their sex lives and family life.

It is, absolutely, an adult romp, and brilliantly written. Make no mistake, there are tons of sequels to Pride and Prejudice, but most only achieve wispy attempts at vanilla romance. If you love sensuality, these are the books to read.

The reason Jane Austen’s stories are is stellar is this: she knows how to build tension. Just like in love, she starts building a conflict, a distance between two hearts that has obstacle after obstacle to overcome, then teases us with little bits of promise, dashes our hopes, then raises the stakes and takes us to the edge of what we can stand, then lets us have a taste.

It takes the whole book to give us… show more.

For my money, the film version of this short novel is the greatest rock and roll movie, but the book itself is no slouch either. A bunch of working-class misfits from north Dublin are molded into a white soul band through the efforts of their manager, Jimmy Rabbitte, and their veteran trumpet player, Joey The Lips Fagan.

Told mostly in the hilariously bawdy demotic of the characters, it takes off from the first page and zips through the band’s rise and demise at the speed of, well…sound itself.

Scottish author Cosgrove wrote probably the ultimate trilogy of books covering the 1967-69 period of soul music, of which the ‘68’ tome dealing with the Memphis sound and southern soul is one. Cosgrove is another author that looks at all the cultural and social aspects of music with an easy and understandable writing style that keeps you turning the pages with ease.