100 books like Heartburn

This book is a beautiful tale that demonstrates the ugliness of first impressions when it comes to viewing others. When Vivienne is looked down upon by the local mayor for being a single mother and nomadic traveler, he is making assumptions based on his own narrow-minded authority. 

I love how, despite his attempts to harm her financially, she continues to show how being an individual who is true to oneself means more than trying to fit the mold of what someone else might think you should be. 

I love this book because it is not afraid to look at deep sadness and disappointment in an honest and complex way. This novel is a collection of short stories that all take place in a coastal Main town and are connected by the large presence of Olive.

Olive is intelligent, acerbic, and abrasive. She is anything but easy. I appreciate the compassion Strout gives her imperfect characters as they struggle with their messy lives. I grew to care more for Olive as I traveled her rocky path with her, even as she was often the one to throw down the rocks before her.

This is a quiet book, which I read in a quiet way. It brought me comfort in its illumination of uncomfortable things. 

I love this book about seriously kickass women. Mi-Ja and Young-sook are part of a collective of women who live on the Korean Island of Jeju and support their families and communities, such as Haenyeo, sea divers. They dive without the aid of scuba equipment.

The story covers several decades, from 1930s Japanese colonialism through WW II and the Korean War to the present day, so we get to see our protagonists grow from young girls through middle age and into old age. In this world, the men raise the children while the women work, and as women age, they are held higher in all regards. 

I was so blown away by the fierce determination, athleticism, and girl power that these women share. Admittedly, The Island of Sea Women is an outlier here, as it doesn’t just focus on their middle-aged years, but I couldn’t miss this opportunity to recommend… show more.

Sent to me by a dear friend just when I needed it, this delightfully cheeky book about writing gave me the push to be courageous and truthful both in life and in my written endeavors.

Full of candid advice, hilarious anecdotes, and helpful information, this book is half manual and half a memoir of Lammott’s escapades in authorship. It speaks directly to the part of us that holds our deepest stories and silently longs to make them into something useful, beautiful, and meaningful–whether or not we plan to share them with the world. 

This is a beloved book for many, but I love it so much because both of the characters are so unlikeable—yet you fall in love with them. I also love the conflict and the dueling, strong personalities of Scarlet and Rhett.

The plot is full of emotion and passion, and yet there are no sex scenes, which is another reason why I like it so much.

I loved this book because I could relate to the tough, emotional place the author was in when she made this epic journey. Her rucksack was extremely heavy. It felt like it represented the burden she was carrying at the time. I loved the unfolding of both her physical and emotional journey, how much she learned about herself, and how much she was eventually able to let go of to enable her to move forward.

Reading this book motivated me to go on a similar journey, hiking many of the Camino Pilgrimage routes. This was a book I thought about long after I had finished reading it. It had the kind of truth about it that stays with you. 

On Monday, a tiny, very hungry caterpillar ate through one apple. 

"But he was still hungry." 

On Tuesday, he ate through two pears, on Wednesday, three plums, and so on through the week. 

When he gets to Saturday, he eats way too much, starting with one piece of chocolate cake and ending with one slice of watermelon. 

That night he has a stomach ache! The caterpillar recovers on Sunday and, no longer tiny and no longer hungry, he builds a small house around himself called a cocoon.

In time, he becomes a beautiful butterfly.

With cutout pages and gorgeous Eric Carle art, this book is a joy to share with young children. 

Bernadette can be difficult to like, but that's partly why I love her character. She's unapologetically authentic with sharp edges and a serious dislike of Seattle. Rather than grimace at her put-downs of my hometown, I laughed because she included inside jokes only Seattlites would understand, and there was a granule of truth in all of it.

I'm intensely interested in the challenges and rewards of motherhood. Portraying it as something emotionally draining and frustrating, utterly consuming and ultimately wonderful, Maria Semple captured what many of us experience using Bernadette as her medium.

This book is indeed a “creation of comic genius,” as Nick Hornby blurbed. The movie didn’t do anything for me; I found Renée Zellweger quite blah, and Hugh Grant was playing the British cad as usual. However, the book was so funny I had a hard time putting it down.

Basically, it is about Bridget, a British “Everywoman” who falls into the clutches of her slimy boss, Daniel, while on a quest for the traditional Holy Grail of womanhood—true love. One of the things I most enjoyed about this chick-lit classic was the rather graphic booze-and-smoking sessions, as well as the eccentric minor characters, especially Bridget’s mother. My mother is also a maverick and very much a free spirit, so this really resonated with me.

I return to this book time and again because of the captivating connection Elizabeth and Darcy share. It’s not just the tension on the surface, but it’s what goes on emotionally and psychologically with them that has me enchanted.

Austen does a fantastic job of portraying how love will sneak up on you when you’re not even looking for it, how it will push you to face the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding for too long and to stand boldly in your authentic character while holding compassion for another’s perspective.

Every time I read this book, I feel I know the characters at a more intimate level as new fractals of their personalities and behaviors shine through.