Here are 100 books that My Friends fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a novelist and journalist who has been writing about war and refugees for nearly two decades. In 2018, I went to the Greek island of Samos, which held one of the most inhumane refugee camps in Europe, to talk to people there about their lives and hopes. Out of this, I wrote several articles and later two books, including The Good Deed. My hope is to counteract the demonization of refugees, so rife in the world today, by bringing out all that we humans have in common, such as our need for shelter, food, family, safety, and love.
I listened to this book because I wanted to understand more about the history and people of Palestine as the 2023-24 war between Israel and Hamas was escalating to ever more deadly heights.
Abulhawa is a renowned Palestinian author, and this book was an international bestseller back in 2010, but I knew nothing of it at the time. I found the novel, a family saga stretching several generations from 1941 to 2022, so immediate, eye-opening, and moving that it was as if I were reading about the current war in real-time.
I loved it so much that I bought the actual book to keep forever.
A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that does for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan.
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to…
I am a novelist and journalist who has been writing about war and refugees for nearly two decades. In 2018, I went to the Greek island of Samos, which held one of the most inhumane refugee camps in Europe, to talk to people there about their lives and hopes. Out of this, I wrote several articles and later two books, including The Good Deed. My hope is to counteract the demonization of refugees, so rife in the world today, by bringing out all that we humans have in common, such as our need for shelter, food, family, safety, and love.
I read this book a few years ago and have never forgotten it, it affected me so profoundly.
It tells the story of two Kurdish brothers in a mountain village in Iran who are forced to flee persecution and slaughter, one of whom ends up in California. Khadivi, Iranian herself, tells this with such haunting beauty and honesty that it still gives me chills to remember it.
It's part of a trilogy, and I've read all three, but this is my favorite volume.
Two brothers from a small Iranian mountain village-Saladin, who has always dreamed of leaving, and Ali, who has never given it a thought-are forced to flee for their lives in the aftermath of a political killing. The journey is beset by trouble from the start, but over the treacherous mountains they go, on foot to Istanbul and onward by freighter to the Azores.There, after a painful parting, Saladin alone continues on the final leg, on a cargo plane all the way to Los Angeles. He will have a new life in California, but will never be whole again without his…
I’ve been fascinated with the topic of immigration since childhood. My father is an immigrant, and my mother grew up overseas. My first job after college was working for a youth program for immigrant and refugee kids in Chicago. Now, I am a professor who teaches and writes about migration law. I find stories about how moving across borders shapes people’s lives to be endlessly interesting, bringing up themes of belonging, home, memory, trauma, and identity. I also think that the topic of global migration is intimately linked to questions of justice and equality and requires us all to reckon with the ways in which the colonial past shapes the present.
I couldn’t stop listening to this book. This autobiographical tale of a girl who flees Iran, grows up in the United States, and migrates to Europe is powerful and poignant in a way only a really good story can be. It perfectly captures the sense of being from multiple places but never truly at home. Nayeri has also written excellent nonfiction on the topic of migration and refuge, but this book has stayed with me and remains one of my favorite novels.
“Rich and colorful… [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy, atmosphere.” –New York Times
The moving lifetime relationship between a father and a daughter, seen through the prism of global immigration and the contemporary refugee experience.
An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays behind. Over twenty years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer they are…
I am a scholar of international politics and history who has taught in Northern Uganda, spent years interviewing political and military elites in Congo, Eritrea, and Sudan, and worked on climate agriculture and water in Ethiopia and Somalia. In my work on the continent and at Oxford, Cambridge, and Columbia University, I try not only to understand the material realities that define the options available to diverse African communities but also the ideas, in all their potential and contradictions, that give shape to how African societies interact internally and engage the outside world. I hope the books on this list will inspire you as much as they did for me.
By a considerable distance, the most gripping novel I have devoured on gender roles in the long shadow of the loss of home. Several of the book’s characters and defining scenes in the refugee camp remain haunting years after I first encountered them.
Suleiman Addonia’s dissection of the entangled shocks wrought by cultural change, war, and displacement drips with emotional contrasts. This book feels, at times, unbearably intrusive, as the reader is exposed to the most privately held fears and embarrassments of its protagonists.
Simultaneously, the book beautifully underscores how valuable (at least some) intimacy remains for those who feel that the future has already bypassed them.
A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos.
For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced…
After 37 years of being undiagnosed with ADHD, I was so grateful to get my diagnosis! Once I had an inkling that I had ADHD, I began devouring books about it :-) The books in this list are five of many that have helped me understand myself and my brain, and I want to help others have access to them and to the inspiring, affirming, and empowering self-knowledge they provide! These books will help you figure out if you might have an ADHD brain and then, from there, help you work with and celebrate that brain.
This book is a fun way to get inside the head of a teen girl with ADHD! I love reading books with characters with ADHD, and I love reading romance, so this book is my happy place. :-) Mazey Eddings does an awesome job of portraying the mental loops an ADHD brain can get into and how to overcome them through connecting with the right others and working towards becoming one's authentic self.
Tilly in Technicolor is Mazey Eddings's sparkling YA debut about two neurodivergent teens who form a connection over the course of a summer.
Tilly Twomley is desperate for change. White-knuckling her way through high school with flawed executive functioning has left her burnt out and ready to start fresh. Working as an intern for her perfect older sister’s start up isn’t exactly how Tilly wants to spend her summer, but the required travel around Europe promises a much-needed change of scenery as she plans for her future. The problem is, Tilly has no idea what she wants.
My graduating class in high school once designated me as “the most likely to start a feminist revolution.” That was a lot to live up to, but I’ve made a very small stab at it by writing about women who have changed our world. I love to bring awareness about the contributions great women have made in history, but I also want modern women to see themselves in these struggles. I always say that Historical Fiction is an exercise of empathy, and I hope my work encourages women today to get involved and make a difference in the world, too.
I loved this tale about the extraordinary Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley.
Thoroughly researched, this novel delves deep into the complex relationship of a daughter who never knew her infamous, trailblazing, rule-breaking, feminist mother and how that same daughter breaks the mold in her own way by inventing the science fiction genre in writing Frankenstein.
From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to Frankenstein, a tale of two literary legends—a mother and daughter—discovering each other and finding themselves along the way, from USA Today bestselling author Stephanie Marie Thornton.
1792. As a child, Mary Wollstonecraft longed to disappear during her father’s violent rages. Instead, she transforms herself into the radical author of the landmark volume A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she dares to propose that women are equal to men. From conservative England to the blood-drenched streets of revolutionary France, Mary refuses to bow to society’s conventions and instead supports…
As a queer speculative fiction writer, I often find myself drawn to themes of identity. Reckoning with identity and defining your own (and redefining, and redefining, and redefining) is a critical part of the queer experience in the cis-hetero norms of the real world. Fantasy and science fiction have always given readers a lens to see themselves through, and many queer readers have found their own definitions between the lines of a book. The protagonists and stories in these books couldn’t be more different, but each offers a unique and compelling vision of discovering—or making—a place for themself in their magical world.
Thirsty for more buff orc lesbians? Legends & Lattes serves up a mug of warm, cozy queer fulfillment. Viv was an adventurer, but she no longer wants to be. Despite her battle scars and intimidating looks, she longs to open her own quiet coffee shop.
The journey to small-business success has challenges, but her determination to live on her own terms brews up a staff of misfits that become a queer-found family. This quiet, low-stakes novel is as sweet as an almond croissant and will leave you hungry for more.
High fantasy, low stakes - with a double-shot of coffee.
After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream - for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can't go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune's shady underbelly could make it all…
Maybe it was too much reality TV growing up, especially being raised on figures like Tiffany "New York" Pollard or A Different World's Whitley Gilbert, but bad girl protagonists are insta-buys for me. I love them, and I have a particular fondness for when they're black girls. We're already seen as so angry, but bad girl books show you not only why a girl could get to be so angry but also that you ain't seen nothing yet. I need more people to see how much joy there is in rage, and I chose to explain it with YA horror because it's a genre so driven by catharsis and mood that it's a perfect fit.
This book was Beautiful Gowns but make it horror—and I loved every second of it. While more of a thriller than horror, the kills in this one stick with me like its comparative film, Ready or Not did.
Our main character is the resident bad girl of her private school, and once she's lost everything she worked for, she's not afraid to be the villain for the bag. I love reading about ambitious girls who leave scratch marks behind them, and Adina practically plows through the book, telling everyone, "This is not America's Next Top Best Friend." Not afraid to lie, cheat, or steal your man, I’m still glad she got everything she wanted - especially because she took it for herself.
“A brutally honest and haunting cautionary tale…exposing the lie that is meritocracy and the unrelenting toll that being a final girl takes. A bloody tale spun masterfully…a dark delight.” —Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, New York Times bestselling author of Ace of Spades
A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren’t just high, they’re deadly, in this “spine-chilling thriller” (Publishers Weekly).
You must work twice as hard to get half as much.
Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for…
I love humans. My clients and colleagues tell me that my profound love for humans is my superpower—that I make people feel safe and seen. I also understand that loving humans isn’t effortless. I wasn’t always in the loving-humans camp. While I was doing a doctorate at Harvard, I studied with the marvelous Robert Kegan, whose theory and methodology helped me see the fullness of the diverse people I got to interview. Ever since, I have been totally enthralled by what makes us unique—and also connected. If you are a human or have to deal with humans, your life will be much improved if you love them more!
This is my favorite book by my favorite author. Beware, this is seriously more addictive fiction than I’ve ever read before—I don’t know anyone who reads this one who hasn’t plowed through the rest of Goddard’s list and then reread them all.
I loved the characters in this book and loved the premise—that the world (like ours, but different) has gone through a cataclysmic event, and now the work is to make it better than it ever was before. Fundamentally, it is a book about friendship and goodness. This and the rest of Goddard’s books will have you believe that we can create a better world together. (The first pages are slow, but stay with them, and you will have dozens of hours of delight as you move through the whole set of her books.)
A simple act of friendship can change the course of history.
Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god.
He has spent more time with the Emperor of Astandalas than any other person.
He has never once touched his lord.
He has never called him by name.
He has never initiated a conversation.
One day Cliopher invites the Sun-on-Earth home to the proverbially remote Vangavaye-ve for a holiday.
Becoming a mother rocked my world in countless ways, drawing me to books that explore the raw, unfiltered truth about how challenging motherhood can be. The complexities—the love, guilt, and frustration—resonate deeply with me. Motherhood is also why I started writing; initially, I wanted to process the overwhelming emotions I was feeling. When I began sharing my writing with friends, their “Yeah, me too's” made me realize I wasn’t alone. I have deep respect for authors who can capture the messiness of motherhood so honestly, and I’m inspired by their ability to put into words what so many of us experience.
I loved this book'sraw, unflinching exploration of a taboo topic: the quiet regret some mothers carry. Through Sadie, a fierce Broadway star and feminist icon, and her daughter Jude, an actress on the brink of her own fame, Reimer paints a portrait that's complex and so intimate it’s almost uncomfortable at times.
I appreciated how neither woman was cast as the villain, and in their struggle, I found I could relate to both of them at different moments. Cleverly structured as a play in six acts, this novel is a beautifully written, compulsive read that asks the hard question: can a woman truly be both a devoted mother and a devoted artist?
Set against the sparkling backdrop of the theater world, this propulsive debut follows the relationship between an actress who refuses to abandon her career and the daughter she chooses to abandon instead.
Sadie Jones, a larger-than-life actress and controversial feminist, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this more deeply than Jude, the daughter Sadie left behind. While Jude spent her childhood touring with her father’s Shakespearian theater company, desperate for validation from the mother she barely knew, Sadie catapulted to fame on the wings of The Mother Act—a scathing one-woman show about motherhood.
