100 books like Litany for the Long Moment

By Mary-Kim Arnold,

Here are 100 books that Litany for the Long Moment fans have personally recommended if you like Litany for the Long Moment. 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 The Year of Magical Thinking

Michele DeMarco Author Of Holding Onto Air: The Art and Science of Building a Resilient Spirit

From my list on transforming your mental and spiritual health.

Why am I passionate about this?

Officially, I’m an award-winning author and specialist in the fields of psychology, trauma, and spirituality. I’m also a professionally trained therapist, clinical ethicist, and researcher. Ultimately, I’m an ardent believer that the same life that brings us joy also (sometimes) brings us pain. More importantly, that every aspect of life has a role to play in making us who we are today and who we’ll be tomorrow. We don’t always have control over the events in life, but the script we live by is ours to write—and write it we must, as only we can. I’m also a three-time heart attack survivor.

Michele's book list on transforming your mental and spiritual health

Michele DeMarco Why did Michele love this book?

Joan Didion’s book is heralded for its bravery, clarity, and confessional witness about grief and loss. Indeed, it’s all these things, but for me, more importantly, this book paints a masterful depiction of the loss of innocence that comes when you lose something meaningful—like a loved one.

Particularly, it shows, with exhilarating force, the fragmented sense of time of such an experience, moving from Didion’s darkest moments of despair at the loss of her husband in the present to treasured memories of her life before his passing and musings about what comes now—in the future.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is for the savoring soul who, like Didion, possesses an inherent human desire for a sense of coherence and wholeness after life has torn it asunder.

By Joan Didion,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked The Year of Magical Thinking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve -the Dunnes were just…


Book cover of Inciting Joy: Essays

Maddie Norris Author Of The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays

From my list on creative nonfiction books to gift your grieving friend.

Why am I passionate about this?

After my dad died, I didn’t know where to turn. People felt uncomfortable talking to a seventeen-year-old girl about her dead dad. They felt even more uncomfortable talking to me about it one, two, ten years later. Still, I couldn’t, can’t, stop thinking about it. I turned, then, to books. These books made and make me feel seen. They aren’t about “moving on” or “letting go” but the ways in which leaning into grief’s deep well connects us to love’s true depths. These books are honest and pure, and if you don’t know what to say to a friend who’s mourning, let these authors speak for you.

Maddie's book list on creative nonfiction books to gift your grieving friend

Maddie Norris Why did Maddie love this book?

Joy might not be the first thing you think of when considering grief, but then maybe you haven’t read Ross Gay.

Gay understands that joy exists because of grief, not as a counterbalance, but in a deeply reciprocal relationship. As his father is dying, he presses their faces together, and in his father’s freckles, he sees seeds, a garden. It is just one instance in this book where Gay recognizes that what grows from loss is love.

His book clarifies what I know to be true: that when we fall into the hole of loss, we find ourselves in a deep well of love.

By Ross Gay,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Inciting Joy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A collection of gorgeously written and timely pieces in which prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life's inevitable hardships.

In "We Kin" he thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come on) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in "Share Your Bucket" he explores skate-boarding's reclamation of public space; he considers the costs of masculinity in "Grief Suite"; and in "Through My Tears I Saw," he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying.

In an era…


Book cover of Stay True: A Memoir

Lio Min Author Of Beating Heart Baby

From my list on the transformative power of art.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m only a writer because I was a musician first. I worshiped music—as a performer, listener, and later a critic—for its ability to enshrine me in a purely emotional world. My favorite lyrics were poetry in motion; my favorite melodies escaped description. And through sharing my feverish acclamations of particular albums and songs, I found community with others who also pledged themselves to art that’d definitively split their lives into “before” and “after.” My writing career was born from cathartic devotion and remains devoted to recounting the rapture of self-formation, of being reflected in the mirror of something that saw you before you even knew to see yourself.

Lio's book list on the transformative power of art

Lio Min Why did Lio love this book?

I was so moved by Hua Hsu’s memoir, an elegy to a college best friend whose shocking murder forever haunts him, because it spoke to a certain kind of young friendship. One of the things that bound Hsu to Ken was the art they did (and didn’t) like but which they always talked about.

I was reminded of the chance encounters of my most important friendships—the Sunday nights spent watching Mad Men in a dorm room or the hours spent swapping Photoshop edits of anime characters—and transported back to those days of limitless dreaming. How big the world seemed then, and how much art we were so desperate to make for, and about, each other.

By Hua Hsu,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu

“This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose…


Book cover of When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back

Maddie Norris Author Of The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays

From my list on creative nonfiction books to gift your grieving friend.

Why am I passionate about this?

After my dad died, I didn’t know where to turn. People felt uncomfortable talking to a seventeen-year-old girl about her dead dad. They felt even more uncomfortable talking to me about it one, two, ten years later. Still, I couldn’t, can’t, stop thinking about it. I turned, then, to books. These books made and make me feel seen. They aren’t about “moving on” or “letting go” but the ways in which leaning into grief’s deep well connects us to love’s true depths. These books are honest and pure, and if you don’t know what to say to a friend who’s mourning, let these authors speak for you.

Maddie's book list on creative nonfiction books to gift your grieving friend

Maddie Norris Why did Maddie love this book?

This book is a cold-water plunge: shocking, disorienting yet grounding, a reminder of the body and its limits.

In recounting the death of her son, Naja Marie Aidt explicitly invokes Didion (as well as Anne Carson, C.S. Lewis, and Nick Cave), wrestling with the inability of language to hold grief. She returns to the death scene again and again, like a stitch through the book.

Each refrain adds more context and pushes us further into the moment before digressing, ruminating, and exploding the narrative. The book is a lyric essay, written in fragments, because Aidt understands this, in the end, is what we’re left with.

By Naja Marie Aidt, Denise Newman (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Extraordinary. It is about death, but I can think of few books which have such life. It shows us what love is.' Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny

'There is no one quite like Naja Marie Aidt' Valeria Luiselli

'Devastating, angry, challenging, fragmented and filled with the beautiful hope that the love we have for people continues into the world even after they're gone.' Culturefly

'Fragmented, poetic, informative and truthful, Aidt faces the greatest loss we can ever know with all the force of great elegy writers like Anne Carson and Denise Riley. Essential.'…


Book cover of Somewhere Out There

Cheri Krueger Author Of Thanks, Universe

From my list on strong women and the difficult choices mothers face.

Why am I passionate about this?

I wrote this book to give my mother an alternate life. She was a mother at age fifteen, mother of five by twenty-seven, and a grandmother by thirty-three. Being a parent defined her life, but she did not enjoy motherhood and was very frank on the subject. Thanks, Universe is my way of giving Mom her freedom and even though she never read anything I wrote, I like to think she would have approved of Pauline and the choices she made.

Cheri's book list on strong women and the difficult choices mothers face

Cheri Krueger Why did Cheri love this book?

A contemporary family saga, this book highlights the struggles of mothers and the difficult choices they face to keep their children safe.

A nature vs. nurture story that contains shocks and surprises and will bring you to tears. The structure is interesting as the reader knows more about what’s going on than the three main characters, creating suspense and tension.

By Amy Hatvany,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

What happens when two sisters who were torn apart when their young mother abandoned them-and grew up in tragically different circumstances-reunite thirty-five years later to find her? For readers who love Jodi Picoult, acclaimed author Amy Hatvany fearlessly explores complex family issues in her gripping, provocative new novel.

Natalie Clark knew never to ask her sensitive adoptive mother questions about her past. She doesn't even know her birth mother's name-only that the young woman signed parental rights over to the state when Natalie was a baby. Now Natalie's own daughter must complete a family tree project for school, and Natalie…


Book cover of Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours

Catherine Ricketts Author Of The Mother Artist: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity

From my list on smart and artful books about motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Parenting books bore me. I don’t like reading instruction manuals, and don’t have time to weigh others’ opinions about how to raise my kids. But when I read books about motherhood forged in self-reflection and told with literary elegance, I become a more self-reflective parent and have the eyes to see beauty in my ordinary maternal experiences. Books like this are few and far between. It’s hard for mothers to make art; when our resources are spread thin in parenthood, why do work that may not pay? How to find time for creative rumination? But here’s a list of books written by mothers who persisted in their creative work to show us motherhood in all of its mundanity, mania, and magic. 

Catherine's book list on smart and artful books about motherhood

Catherine Ricketts Why did Catherine love this book?

In my reading, I seek to surround myself with experiences of motherhood that are different from my own. In this memoir, Sarah Sentilles tells the story of fostering a child with the hopes of adopting her while shedding light on the injustices and inefficiencies of the American foster system.

I loved the tender descriptions of maternal love and the way that Sentilles writes about maternal grief. While chronicling her experience of loving a child that isn’t her own, she urges all of us to extend mother-like love beyond our own families, even to the children of strangers.

By Sarah Sentilles,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • “A powerful, heartbreaking, necessary masterpiece.”—Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild
 
The moving story of what one woman learned from fostering a newborn—about injustice, about making mistakes, about how to better love and protect people beyond our immediate kin
 
May you always feel at home.
 
After their decision not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, decide to adopt via the foster care system. Despite knowing that the system’s goal is the child’s reunification with the birth family, Sarah opens their home to a flurry of social…


Book cover of With Just One Wing

Lynne Kelly Author Of The Secret Language of Birds

From my list on books for bird-loving kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m fascinated by our connections to animals, our similarities and differences, and how we communicate. Large mammals have always been my favorites, but like many people, I started noticing birds in my backyard during the pandemic lockdowns. As an author of middle-grade novels, my stories have been inspired by something interesting I’ve learned about a particular animal. I started writing my novel after learning that whooping cranes had nested in Texas for the first time in over a century. I knew I had to give that momentous nest sighting to a bird-loving girl who’d appreciate the visitation by these rare and majestic birds! 

Lynne's book list on books for bird-loving kids

Lynne Kelly Why did Lynne love this book?

This book has so many of my favorite things—laughter and tears on the same page, a character with a strong connection to an animal, and a funny, caring, resilient kid who’s wrestling with a difficult decision.

I enjoy seeing characters who cause their own problems, like Coop does when he derails his basketball plans by climbing a tree to check out a bird's nest! I also love it when antagonists aren’t villains; Coop and his family might be at odds about what he should do with his mockingbird, but they’re loving parents and grandparents.

I cheered for Coop to discover where he fits in, and he's a character I’ll remember long after closing the book. 

By Brenda Woods,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked With Just One Wing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

Coretta Scott King Honor winner Brenda Woods's poignant, heartfelt story of an adopted boy and the bird he rescues

Everyone expects Coop to be musical like his beloved parents, but he's not. That's one of the few things he finds awkward about being adopted-well, that and the fact that he sometimes wonders why his birth mother didn't love him enough to keep him. This summer, he's stuck at home with a broken arm after falling out of a tree trying to get a closer peek at a mockingbird nest. Later, when the eggs in the nest have hatched and the…


Book cover of The Primal Wound

Polly Hall Author Of Myrrh

From my list on capturing the experience of adoption.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was adopted as a baby, so I have first-hand experience of the emotions and challenges this presents. I am passionate about shining light on this often misunderstood and complex family trauma through my writing. My memoir Blood and Blood, an emotive exploration of the search for my birth relatives, was shortlisted for the Mslexia Prize. My research extends to fiction and non-fiction, where the psychological effects of adoption are referenced or highlighted. I am always keen to chat with fellow care-experienced people. I hope you find the books on this list helpful.

Polly's book list on capturing the experience of adoption

Polly Hall Why did Polly love this book?

I consider this the adoptee's "bible," and it has been described like this by others for good reason. It is not an easy read, but like most well-researched non-fiction, it offers a brutal truth that somehow heals.

Reading this book was like going through therapy. The way it lays out the experience of family through the eyes of the adoption triad is not for the faint-hearted. I love this book because very few books address the trauma of adoption so directly through psychological research and offer ways of empowerment to help heal a misunderstood or unacknowledged life experience for many.

By Nancy Newton Verrier,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Primal Wound as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Primal Wound is a seminal work which revolutionizes the way we think about adoption. It describes and clarifies the effects of separating babies from their birth mothers as a primal loss which affects the relationships of the adopted person throughout life.. It is a book about pre-and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding, and loss. It gives adoptees, whose pain has long been unacknowledged or misunderstood, validation for their feelings, as well as explanations for their behavior. It lists the coping mechanisms which adoptees use to be able to attach and live in a family to whom they are not related…


Book cover of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

SunAh M Laybourn Author Of Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants

From my list on family belonging.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Korean transracial adoptee, it seems like I’ve always been thinking about family, or even if I didn’t want to, other people’s intrusive questions about my family makeup forced me to. More than solely thinking about my own family–whether my Korean biological family or my white adoptive family–it led me to be curious about the broader systems, policies, and practices behind something that seems so personal and private. It’s no surprise that I formalized my inquiry into the social world by becoming a sociologist and professor. As a sociologist, my primary research interests are race, identity, and belonging, and yes, Korean transnational transracial adoption is part of that focus. 

SunAh's book list on family belonging

SunAh M Laybourn Why did SunAh love this book?

I vaguely remember hearing about the tragedy of the Hart children–six Black and mixed-race children who were adopted out of foster care and killed by their two white adoptive mothers. I wasn’t aware of all of the intricate details of their case or the foster care system that allowed this to happen.

I am in awe of Roxanna’s investigative journalism and the nuance and empathy in which she tells this story. While it is the Hart story that’s at the center of this book, I learned so much more about the child welfare system overall and how it’s set up to promote child separation. Heartbreaking.

By Roxanna Asgarian,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked We Were Once a Family as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” ―Robert Kolker, The Washington Post

“[A] moving and superbly reported book.” ―Jessica Winter, The New Yorker

“A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children―and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.

On…


Book cover of Divisadero

Rosalind Brackenbury Author Of The Lost Love Letters of Henri Fournier

From my list on set in France with themes to match.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m fascinated by these themes – love, France, mystery, women’s lives, war, and peace. My parents took me to France when I was 12 and I’ve spent years there in between and go back whenever I can. I started reading in French when sent to be an au pair in Switzerland when I was 17. My own novel, The Lost Love Letters Of Henri Fournier was absorbing to write as it contains all of the above. I found an unpublished novel of Fournier’s in a village in rural France a few years ago and decided I had to write about him and his lover, Pauline, who was a famous French actress. 

Rosalind's book list on set in France with themes to match

Rosalind Brackenbury Why did Rosalind love this book?

Although it begins in California, this novel develops into a story set in France. Two sisters, separated by their father after a violent incident, search for each other and eventually connect via a French recluse, whose life one sister is researching. I love Michael Ondaatje’s writing and this book in particular for its daring sweep of geographical and emotional territory. 

By Michael Ondaatje,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

It is the 1970s in Northern California. A farmer and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work the land with the help of Coop, the enigmatic young man who lives with them. Theirs' is a makeshift family, until they are riven by an incident of violence - of both hand and heart - that 'sets fire to the rest of their lives'. This is a story of possession and loss, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. Written in the sensuous prose for which Michael Ondaatje's fiction is celebrated, "Divisadero" is the work of a master story-teller.


Book cover of The Year of Magical Thinking
Book cover of Inciting Joy: Essays
Book cover of Stay True: A Memoir

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