Here are 100 books that Lessons fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m no particular expert on anything, but I know what I love in a book, and I’ve read approximately a million books, plus or minus. I’ve written novels with the hope that they will be funny and poignant in about equal measure, I value humor in books more than just about anything, and here I have listed books that I cherish.
Okay, but here’s the thing: It takes about 30 pages for Niall Williams to hit his stride. There’s a lot about weather at first, the whole Irish rain situation. Stick with it. Once Christy comes on the scene in this small Irish town, Faha, and is hoping to have a meeting with a woman he left at the alter 30 years before, and once our young narrator gets involved in his plan—BAM.
The reader is fully in the world of Faha as electricity is introduced into the village, as Noel begins to figure out love and the insanity that is normal around him—well, I did not want it ever to end, even as at the beginning I was waiting for it to begin. Another book to clutch to the heart.
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…
I have always believed in the power of journalism to tell stories of people: the powerful as well as the ordinary and disenfranchised. In the hands of the right writer, such stories can have as much dramatic sweep and be as engrossing as any work of fiction. I have read literary nonfiction since before I became a journalist, and as a foreign correspondent, while breaking news is a key part of my job, longform narrative writing is where I really find gratification, as a writer and a reader. It’s a vast genre, so I focused this list mostly on stellar examples of foreign reporting. I hope you enjoy it.
This is a master class in investigative journalism and in nonfiction storytelling. Radden Keefe is one of my journalistic role models, and this book about the troubles in Northern Ireland is gripping from page one as it investigates the 1972 murder and abduction of Jean McConville in a way that probably only a foreigner could do, given the sensitivity of the topic. It is a vital historical document, a gripping thriller, and an empathetic social observation all in one.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review
I’m no particular expert on anything, but I know what I love in a book, and I’ve read approximately a million books, plus or minus. I’ve written novels with the hope that they will be funny and poignant in about equal measure, I value humor in books more than just about anything, and here I have listed books that I cherish.
Should there be an afterlife and if there’s someone greeting me in the sweet hereafter, let it be Willa Cather.
Maybe you read her in high school and did or didn’t fall in love, but in any case, no one in school readsThe Professor’s House. As always, Cather looks down upon her characters with severe compassion, the sharp eye of someone who has seen all, and she’s wryly amused by her people.
Professor Godfrey St. Peter is going through a mid-life crisis, he’s got a wife, two daughters, and he’s trying to see the way ahead. The center of the novel is devoted to a former student of St Peter’s, Tom Outloud, now dead, who it also happens was his daughter’s fiancé.
At the center: Tom Outland’s experience of an ancient cliff city in New Mexico. It’s not a snooze, I promise! St. Peter’s recollection of Tom’s spiritual…
From Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, The Professor's House is a vivid look into the domestic life of a 1920s Midwestern town and its people. Godfrey St. Peter, a professor at the unnamed Midwestern university near Lake Michigan, is preparing to move into a new home with his wife. As he looks upon the shabby house he's grown comfortable in, St. Peter muses about his life and his scholarship, philosophizing particularly on the people whom he's loved. His relationship with his wife and his daughters have become more and more strained over the years as St. Peter has alienated himself…
I’m no particular expert on anything, but I know what I love in a book, and I’ve read approximately a million books, plus or minus. I’ve written novels with the hope that they will be funny and poignant in about equal measure, I value humor in books more than just about anything, and here I have listed books that I cherish.
This beautiful short novel about various matters, including chickens, house cleaning, idiosyncratic neighbors and parents, is funny—really, how can you not laugh at a hen named Miss Hennepin Country. (Her owners live in Minnesota.)
Also, the novel goes to the heart of the grief of infertility. At the same time, Jackie Polzin is very, very funny in a remarkably quiet way. Her writing is spare, eloquent, and precise. She is, as we say in the biz, The Real Deal. I can open this book at any page and marvel and be filled with happiness.
An exquisite new literary voice—wryly funny, nakedly honest, beautifully observational, in the vein of Jenny Offill and Elizabeth Strout—depicts one woman's attempt to keep her four chickens alive while reflecting on a recent loss.
“Full of nuance and humor and strangeness…[Polzin] writes beautifully about everything.” —The New York Times
Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for another creature entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she…
Growing up, I hardly ever saw books written by people who looked like me, about people who looked like me. When I did, the Asians were often side characters, typecast as nerds (and not in a good way). I didn’t get to see Asians being “cool” kids, and I definitely didn’t see them as love interests. When I went to a performing arts boarding school, it was the first time I wasn’t the only Asian student in my class, and it was life-changing. I think if I had had these books when I was a kid, it would’ve been easier to be confident about who I was.
I savored every sentence of this book about Ruth, a thirty-something who moves back home to help care for her father with Alzheimer’s. Reading it made me feel like I was in the company of someone delightful: there’s humor and unexpected quirkiness on every page.
The book includes snippets of Ruth’s dad’s diary chronicling moments in her childhood, which are both winning and poignant. Khong is great at choosing moments and helping me see the hilarious or odd in the everyday.
'Khong is a magician ... Brilliant' Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
'Khong's first novel sneaks up on you - just like life, illness and heartbreak. And love. A million small, human and often deeply funny details gather force to tell a tale that is ultimately, incredibly poignant' Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man
Ruth is thirty and her life is falling apart: she and her fiance are moving house, but he's moving out to live with another woman; her career is going nowhere; and then she learns…
I’m a storyteller. I’ve told stories through journalism, theater, film, and comics. When I was the editor of a film magazine, Scenario: “The Magazine of the Art of Screenwriting” I interviewed filmmakers about the craft of telling a great story. As a journalist, I love original sources and voices, for the way they tell a personal version of history. They say history is told by the winners. I prefer the reverse angle—history told, not by the “losers” but by true, strong, authentic voices. I somehow want to read, reveal, recommend, and illuminate marginalized voices.
This book is quietly hilarious. I loved being “inside” Patricia Lockwood’s mind. As a fellow lapsed Catholic, I resonated with her upbringing and living in the strange shadow of religion. Lockwood weaves a contradictory coming-of-age story with profound wit and lyricism.
She also explores the complexities of what she calls “The Portal”—the internet of things that boggle the mind even as they bring solace. I loved how Lockwood used “the portal” to understand her conservative upbringing and eventually find her own irreverent path in the world.
The book led me to follow her online presence too, and helped me learn new ways to “be” online. As Lockwood writes in Priestdaddy: “Part of what you have to figure out in this life is, who would I be if I hadn’t been frightened? What hurt me, and what would I be if it hadn’t?”
'Glorious' Sunday Times 'Laugh-out-loud funny' The Times 'Extraordinary' Observer 'Exceptional' Telegraph 'Electric' New York Times 'Snort-out-loud' Financial Times 'Dazzling' Guardian 'Do yourself a favour and read this memoir!' BookPage
The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed' The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas' by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing,…
I'm an archaeologist and addicted to reading and writing historical fictions. My first big love is history and I prefer Victorian Era. I’m interested in women’s lives and their habits and relationships in the old times. I was born and raised in Hungary, I’m often stay in London. I was working for years in museums in different cities while I was writing historical short stories and my first novel. School of Ladies – The Debutantes is a historical romance which has won an Audience Award in my country.
I can’t forget my very talented compatriot, Magda Szabó’s great writing. I am very proud of her and her success. It was hard work and lasted a lifetime for her to reach as Hungarian her books became popular worldwide. I hope one day I can follow her… This book is set in a religious school in the middle of World War II. The protagonist is young Gina, the daughter of a Hungarian General. The novel analyzes important social problems, teenager problems. At first, Gina is an outcast then we can see how she tries to fit in the class, and she makes friends. Friendship and togetherness are in the spotlight in this novel.
A teenage girl's difficult journey towards adulthood in a time of war.
"A school story for grownups that is also about our inability or refusal to protect children from history" SARAH MOSS
"Of all Szabo's novels, Abigail deserves the widest readership. It's an adventure story, brilliantly written" TIBOR FISCHER
Of all her novels, Magda Szabo's Abigail is indeed the most widely read in her native Hungary. Now, fifty years after it was written, it appears for the first time in English, joining Katalin Street and The Door in a loose trilogy about the impact of war on those who have…
As a kid, I didn’t identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. Even without the language to describe who I really was, I was always on the lookout for stories about other people who felt like I did—for stories, in other words, like the ones on this list. But I never found them. As the books below beautifully illustrate, the spectrum of transgender experience, and our childhoods in particular, are so rich and diverse. My hope is for these and other books like Cactus Country to encourage more trans and queer people to tell their stories so that kids like us can find characters that represent them.
Will Betke-Brunswick’s book is a gem of a graphic memoir that skillfully navigates both hope and loss.
As much a story about coming of age in a queer body as an illness narrative, I was struck by the playful tone of the illustrations (Betke-Brunswick depicts themself and other human characters as penguins) juxtaposed against the serious nature of the subject matter—the slow goodbye and ongoing grief of losing a mother to cancer. It’s a combination that doesn’t seem like it should work, but the resulting story is resonant and unforgettable.
A Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Comics
A Modern Mrs. Darcy's Best Book of Fall
A Shondaland Best Book of November
“Filled with moments of tenderness and humor.” ―Library Journal, Starred Review
An unexpected and poignant debut graphic memoir about a close-knit family approaching loss, and the wonder and joy they create along the way.
During Will Betke-Brunswick’s sophomore year of college, their beloved mother, Elizabeth, is diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. They only have ten more months together, which Will documents in evocative two-color illustrations. But as we follow Will and their mom…
Catherine Adel West was born and raised in Chicago, IL where she currently resides. She graduated with both her Bachelor and Master of Science in Journalism from the University of Illinois - Urbana. Her debut novel, Saving Ruby King, was published in June 2020. Her work is also published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Five2One, Better than Starbucks, Doors Ajar, 805 Lit + Art, The Helix Magazine, Lunch Ticket, and Gay Magazine. The Two Lives of Sara is her sophomore novel.
A both excruciating and hopeful look into the bonds between four men: JB, Jude, Malcolm, and Willem, this phenomenal book delves into the love, hate, trauma, and acceptance filtered through male friendships. From young adulthood into manhood, Yanagihara takes us through the huge moments and small intimate moments shaping these lifelong relationships ultimately defining these characters and guiding them throughout their lives.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2015 Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction 2016 Winner of Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2016 Finalist for the US National Book Awards 2015
The million copy bestseller, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance.
When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted,…
I was a teenager in the late sixties, born into a conservative household, with a huge rebellious streak. Starting with Woodstock, I was obsessed with hippie culture. Communes in particular held a special fascination for me, and later, as places of potential depravity. My sister-in-law lived in a commune in Oregon in the late 60s/early 70s. Many of the details in my novel are pulled from her life, and though she is no longer alive, her adult children shared stories from their childhoods. Her oldest daughter, whom I fictionalized as Shoshanna, became the character and voice I used to recount the family’s escape and eventual safe landing. The story still feels like uncovered family history.
I love The Age of Miracles because I was so taken with Walker’s scientific premise, that by the “slowing” of rotation, the world would come to its inevitable end. This scientifically grounded plot point was something I found arresting; it fascinated me immediately. I also loved Walker’s eleven-year-old protagonist, Julia. Julia is genuine, believable, set in her strange but also eerily recognizable nearing-the-apocalypse world. Julia also has a rich, and I felt very authentic, inner life. Her emotions rang true, and the plot not only riveted me, it broke my heart.
'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...'
What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..?
One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along…
