100 books like Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related

The masterpiece memoir by Elie Wiesel is an astonishingly short autobiographical of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. His account of surviving a concentration camp is important as any other, a narrative that is chilling, yet with compassion put into each word. Night is a book that has to be read. Elie would become an important human rights activist and this continued beyond the subject matter of the Holocaust. During the refugee crisis on the Thai-Cambodia border in 1980, he and several other notables (such as Joan Baez, Liv Ullman, and Bayard Rustin), mobilized to bring relief assistance for Cambodians fleeing the dangerous borders of their country. When asked by a journalist why help Cambodia, he replied, “When I needed people to come, they didn't. That's why I am here.” It demonstrated Elie’s resolve and will to prevent the next genocide from happening somewhere else.

I identified with Tara Westover while reading her memoir because of her secluded and restrictive upbringing. Like her, my upbringing made me feel left out, “other,” different from normal kids, not allowed the usual activities that other kids could do and kept from learning and growing in my own way.

I didn’t understand how these rules affected me until I saw my angst in her own words of isolation, yearning, and rebellion. It gave me hope that our desire for self-fulfillment and actualization is universal and stronger than the people who try, for good reasons or bad, to keep us down.

It is an amazing book. I could barely put it down. 

In this book, I saw my dysfunctional family mirrored back at me, but his writing was so good it made me laugh at the absurdity of it at the same time.

As a child, I also looked for the ‘why,” as in “Why am I being treated like this,” but with this book, I finally saw that there was no why. It just is…and that made me feel less to blame and more like a victim of circumstance…of other people’s problems.

Although that was still a lot to handle emotionally, it opened a door for me to stop blaming myself, get professional help, and see my troubled childhood as the product of my parent's mistakes. And that was huge. 

For forty years, David Sedaris kept a diary filled with his successes, failures, overheard conversations, and secrets confessed by strangers. He adds humor to his memories which is a wonderful change from the traditional memoir. Even a boring day can make us laugh. This is the first of two volumes and is the better of the two.

The protagonist, Ariadne, is also a stressed-out lawyer—are you sensing a theme?

In this case, her becoming a law firm partner is not only her aspiration, but the dream of her dad—and she doesn’t want to disappoint him. But Ariadne begins to question this goal upon meeting Jihoon. He’s her roommate’s cousin come to recover from a breakup. Ariadne creates a walking map for him, with all her favorite places in her Toronto neighborhood, sharing her delight in creating travel itineraries.

I loved the swooniness of the romance (I’m addicted to Korean romance dramas so this novel hits those heartwarming moments) and Ariadne’s journey figuring out her future. This book’s message—that in the end, you have to live your life for yourself—definitely resonated with me.

Of course this title will catch anyone’s attention, but I’m including it here because of how mundane the plot is. It’s just people people’ing and therefore experiencing and learning. They just happen to be all the things they are. It’s a fun and funny ride living in a small Parisian apartment with these characters, eating their food, and laying with their friends. 

Wallace—a history professor, librarian, and bookseller—was one of Canada’s first true crime writers. This collection of sixteen stories of murder and mayhem, first published in 1931, is a trove of long-forgotten tales. Some of the crimes he chronicles made international headlines. Harry and Dallas Hyams, identical twin brothers from New Orleans, were accused of killing an employee in Toronto in 1893 to collect on insurance policies. Adelard Delorme, a Catholic priest in Montreal, stood trial four times for the 1922 murder of his brother and was ultimately set free. Wallace apologized for straying from mainstream history into the realm of the gruesome and sensational to record, as he put it, “what God in His wisdom saw fit to permit to happen.”

To Speak for the Trees is one of my favorite books ever, partly because I love trees, and partly because of my own Celtic heritage from my maternal line. Diana Beresord-Kroeger, a scientist in biochemistry and botany, begins with her childhood in Ireland. After losing her parents at a young age, she is raised in the ancient Celtic nature wisdom and Druid beliefs by an entire community, and literally taught the language of trees: Ogham. Blending scientific discoveries about trees and the importance of forests to our species' survival, this book is a fast and delightful read that I won’t forget. I feel enriched from having been blessed to spend time with such a brilliant woman through the pages of her book. 

Tegan and Sara zero in on their high school years to perform an autopsy on that formative period where we find our passion, discover ourselves, and fall in love in sometimes unexpected ways. I’m around the same age as the authors and this book was like walking back in time to those weird years where everything was both exciting and scary. It skimps on the normal musician bio tropes to give an honest look at being a teenager in the 1990s. I also couldn’t help but think of My So-Called Life while reading High School. If you’re unfamiliar with this series, trust me, it’s a compliment. 

Saul Indian Horse narrates this heartbreaking, rich story about a youth who is a prisoner in a government-sanctioned boarding school, surrounded by violence and cruelty, and yet speaks in a resilient and courageous voice as he struggles to find salvation from the destruction of his family.

I love it because Saul’s voice to tell his story brings me, the reader, so close to him in empathy that I feel him in my heart. In the midst of his daily reality in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by institutional and personal cruelty. At the urging of a priest, he finds tentative salvation in hockey, where he proves himself undeniably gifted.

His intuition, speed, hard work, and determination are remarkable against the indignities, taunts, racism, and hatred he encounters in the ruling white world. The voice of this protagonist is so authentic, so moving, and so spare, and yet the… show more.