Here are 100 books that Original Sins fans have personally recommended if you like
Original Sins.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I am a nonfiction writer who aims to bring heart to my writing. If I can move the reader and enable them to connect to their inner world, then I consider that I have been successful. As I consider my purpose is rehabilitating women whom history has mistreated, my way into these misunderstood women is to examine their inner lives. What moves them and how they manage to survive and surmount their own heartbreak is the question that I am most interested in.
This book became a lifeline for me when I was going through an unhappily difficult and extremely stressful time. I felt as if it was written for me as a form of salve for my lack of trust in myself and my life at this point.
Rilke is wise, knowing, and reassuring about the vicissitudes of our emotional journeys. He encouraged me to hold onto myself in an emotional sense. To seek my own inner counsel and to not panic when my life seemed to unravel. I love his discourse on faith, solitude, trust, and his dissection of what it is to be an artist.
I found this a profoundly important and moving book when I was wavering about the bigger picture of life.
Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle…
I am the creator of an online magazine that features conversations between my gullible self and my moody, hissy, know-it-all cat, Marcy. Marcy the Cat even has her own snarky but popular advice column on the site. Obviously, I have a penchant for the absurd. I love the humor that skewers our utter ridiculousness as humans and even calls us out. Tough love, audacious advice, and brutal hilarity are my forte. With just a bit of inappropriateness. Basically, advice and stories that encourage us to shape up or ship out. But with giggles.
This is no pithy or glib advice column book bound by word counts and editorial edits. Her advice is lengthy and considered and beautifully interwoven with her poignant personal stories. Her advice is raw and poetic. Not flowery or pretty poetry, but punch you in your soul, pierce directly into your heart truth bombs.
It’s tough love to the extreme. Every single entry took my breath away with its unflinching rawness. And, at the same time, delivered with compassion and care that I felt somehow … loved. There’s humor in this book, but it’s subtle, and it captures the wonder and madness and beauty and crazy courageousness needed to live in our bizarre world.
NOW A HULU ORIGINAL SERIES •NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • An anniversary edition of the bestselling collection of "Dear Sugar" advice columns written by the author of #1 bestseller Wild—featuring a new preface and six additional columns.
For more than a decade, thousands of people have sought advice from Dear Sugar—the pseudonym of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed—first through her online column at The Rumpus, later through her hit podcast, Dear Sugars, and now through her popular Substack newsletter. Tiny Beautiful Things collects the best of Dear Sugar in one volume, bringing her wisdom to many…
I am a nonfiction writer who aims to bring heart to my writing. If I can move the reader and enable them to connect to their inner world, then I consider that I have been successful. As I consider my purpose is rehabilitating women whom history has mistreated, my way into these misunderstood women is to examine their inner lives. What moves them and how they manage to survive and surmount their own heartbreak is the question that I am most interested in.
This book is a fearsomely clever collection of essays on love, marriage, and adultery, all written through the lens of trying to better understand the complexity of the human heart. Touching and tender, these explorations of relationships are wincingly honest and clearly written straight from the writer’s heartfelt experience
There is a purity of emotional intelligence to the book, which I find reassuring. Reading about the writers' relationship f*ck-ups, which they stumble into as if falling into potholes, made me feel okay about my own stumbling efforts to navigate my emotional life.
This book is for the once, never, and much married. For believers and skeptics, love's fools and love's thieves. It is for people with long memories and long histories and for people who reinvent themselves in every new town, new decade, new relationship. This book is for everyone whose heart lies where it should, where it shouldn't, and, in the end, where it must. -Amy Bloom, from the Foreword In these intensely personal essays, contemporary writers probe their experiences in and thoughts about one of our most enduring social and cultural institutions. Husbands and wives celebrate marriages that work, mourn…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I am a nonfiction writer who aims to bring heart to my writing. If I can move the reader and enable them to connect to their inner world, then I consider that I have been successful. As I consider my purpose is rehabilitating women whom history has mistreated, my way into these misunderstood women is to examine their inner lives. What moves them and how they manage to survive and surmount their own heartbreak is the question that I am most interested in.
I can not praise Edward St Aubyn highly enough. He is one of my favourite authors; I love his writing because it is heart-stoppingly true and affecting.
He portrays dysfunctional family dynamics with blistering accuracy, and I felt less alone reading this because I have been haunted by my own ancestral patterns repeating themselves through generations. I not only find St Aubyn laugh-out-loud funny, but he is also a brilliant observer of social mores.
Somehow, this book manages to be anti-spiritual while being one of the most spiritually aware books I have read. I love that St Aubyn does not try to make himself likable as a writer. There’s a ruthless fearlessness to his truth that I admire, which adds to his humanity.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mother's Milk is the fourth of Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.
The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Caught up in the wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery and assisted suicide, Patrick finds his wife Mary consumed by motherhood, his mother in thrall to a New Age foundation, and his young son Robert understanding far more than he should. But even as the family struggles against the pull of its ever-present past, a new generation brings…
I’ve been fascinated by nonfiction since my teens, by the idea of books about things that really happened. Fiction gets all the kudos, all the big prizes, all the respect. But as far as I’m concerned, trying to wrestle the unruly matter of reality onto the page is much more challenging – imaginatively, technically, ethically – than simply making things up! My book The Travel Writing Tribe is all about those challenges – and about the people, the well-known travel writers, who have to confront them every time they put pen to paper.
“Middle-class academic writes nonfiction about homeless substance abuser” – that sounds like a recipe for overweening earnestness at best, or at worst an exploitative catastrophe. But right from the first line of this astonishing book you know that the author isn’t entirely in control, that the subject, his troubled friend Stuart Shorter, has agency in these pages in a way he seldom did elsewhere in life. It’s a gut-crunchingly sad story, but also often very funny – which, you get the feeling, is exactly how Stuart would have wanted it.
A unique biography of a homeless man and a complete portrait of the hidden underclass. 'So here it is, my attempt at the story of Stuart Shorter, thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopath street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of this century: a man with an important life. I wish I could have presented it to Stuart before he stepped in front of the 11.15 train from London to Kings Lynn.' Stuart Shorter's brief life was one of turmoil and chaos. In this remarkable book, a masterful act of…
I am a teacher, a college professor, and a lifetime reader. I came from a small town, went to college to study writing, ended up getting graduate degrees in theatre, became a theatre director, and then went back to my first love, writing. Throughout my childhood, I bonded with my siblings, and we often feared our mother, who was a fascinating creature but often rough on us. She expected perfection and wasn’t in tune with her childhood. So even then, stories of children in danger—abandoned or scolded or shamed—have resonated with me.
I’ve read it multiple times and also listened to an audiobook. Of course, there are movies, too. I read it on my own out of pure interest as a young woman and then again repeatedly as an adult.
I get wildly involved in Dickens’ plots. (Most of his novels would fulfill my category of children overcoming odds.) David is bereft, having lost his father. He has a loving but weak mother. He experiences beatings, hunger (Oh, I hate hunger), and loneliness as he is tossed about the world. And yet he never loses his humanity, that is, his native kindness.
Somehow, Dickens finds ways to leverage all the pain with comedy. Amazing. I love his strange characters (Peggoty, Mr. Dick) and thrill to his evil characters (Uriah Heep) because Dickens has the gift to often make them comic.
Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw
'The greatest achievement of the greatest of all novelists' Leo Tolstoy
In David Copperfield - the novel he described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew on his own experiences to create one of his most moving and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. It is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
I got interested in long-distance backpacking in my mid-twenties, looking for an escape from the messy life I had created for myself. I wanted to reinvent myself, and a blog about the Appalachian Trail suggested a perfect solution. After 650 miles on the trail and the death of my mother, I knew I would never be the same. In the years since, I have hiked the Wonderland Trail (as featured in Alone in Wonderland) and the Colorado Trail. Backpacking has become more than an escape – it has become home.
Vanessa O'Brien recounts her journey from busy businesswoman to badass mountaineer. She is now the fastest woman to complete the seven summits (both versions just in case you had anything to say about that!) She's brash and gutsy, doesn't hold back what she really thinks, and addresses some of the human and environmental issues facing the world's biggest and ever increasingly popular peaks.
When Vanessa O'Brien was made redundant in 2008 as part of the recession, she moved to Hong Kong with her husband for his career and resigned herself to being 'just the wife'. There she was, aged 46, bored, uninspired, unemployed. Was this going to be how she was going to live the rest of her life?
One night in the infamous Kee Club, over shots of tequila, a friend suggested O'Brien climb Everest, and that was the start of an epic journey she never looked back from as she climbed Everest, K2 and many other mountains.
I’m a public health research scientist who writes humorous historical mysteries set in 1900s Los Angeles among the police matrons of the LAPD. Like you, I read. I love smart, well-researched historical fiction with strong female protagonists and a good romantic subplot. Extra points if the book is funny because studies show laughter is good for you.
In 1940 London, Maggie Hope, a brilliant mind who graduated top of her class, is recruited by Number 10 Downing Street to be…a typist. Of course. She’s a woman. She’s also a crackerjack code breaker. I think you know where this is going. The character is wonderful, the writing strong, the story tight. A highlight for me was when Maggie –a young, virginal, cerebral type—pulls off a daring motorcycle jump with a man on the back because she has to. I don’t know, I think there’s a life lesson somewhere in there.
BARRY AWARD WINNER • Heralding the arrival of a brilliant new heroine, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary captures the drama of an era of unprecedented challenge—and the greatness that rose to meet it.
“With any luck, the adventures of red-haired super-sleuth Maggie Hope will go on forever. . . . Taut, well-plotted, and suspenseful, this is a wartime mystery to sink your teeth into.” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
London, 1940. Winston Churchill has just been sworn in, war rages across the Channel, and the threat of a Blitz looms larger by the day. But none…
I became fascinated with history when I moved to Gloucester in the nineties. The city is hugely historical from the early Roman settlers through to the industrial age of the nineteenth century. What is more fascinating is that many of the streets and buildings I write about still exist in the city today. I carried out extensive research when writing my first historical fiction novel to immerse myself in the medieval city as it would have been in 1497. When I came to write my second novel, listed below, the first book in the Hebraica Trilogy, I already had a good idea of the layout of the city.
I loved this book because the story and characters in it were so fascinating, and I learned a lot about the history of the time and how ordinary people lived.
Although the book is a hefty tome, I really didn’t want it to end. I couldn’t put it down and read the whole book in a couple of days. I was so delighted when Ken Follett wrote a sequel.
I loved how Follett weaved the stories of ordinary people around what was happening with the kings and queens of the day.
I also loved how he created strong female characters in an era where you would not expect to find such characters.
Pillars of the Earth inspired me to write historical fiction and lit a passion for history within me.
The "extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece" (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett's already phenomenal career-and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended.
"Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner," extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett's unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal.
The Pianist's Only Daughter
by
Kathryn Betts Adams,
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist…
I am Karen Slater the author of My Journey Through Hell. It’s a memoir of addiction and generational abuse. A story about my dysfunctional childhood and the negative consequences that took me to hell and back. The books I love the most are the stories that inspire me. The true stories of real people overcoming tragedy and adversity give me such hope and motivation to keep on doing what I do and reach other people still struggling. I like to think these are the books that radiate courage and optimism and let others know that we all have our crosses to bear but we can bear them nonetheless.
The thing I love about Tyson's story is he makes it so relatable to ask questions that others are too afraid to answer. He talks about his triumphs but especially his tribulations. He single handily put mental health on the horizon up for discussion and this man being a giant and talented boxer showed men in particular that it was alright to hurt at times to get lost and to fall apart. Up to then, most celebrities were too proud to go deep and talk about their struggles. Not Tyson, this is the greatest gift you can give.
Honesty and integrity. Not being afraid of being shamed or judged but allowing the world to know that it's ok to talk about this. Not only OK but necessary. I admired the man and his family even more from that very read. It was fabulous looking into the mind of the best…
THE UNDEFEATED HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, IN HIS OWN WORDS ________________________________ The UK's bestselling boxing book since records began. WINNER of the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year. ________________________________ 'One of sport's most heart-warming stories' SUNDAY TIMES, SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A must-read for any boxing fan.' WORLD BOXING NEWS 'If you know someone who's a fan of the People's Champion, then they'll love this.' TALKSPORT
The extraordinary story of the rise and fall and rise again of Tyson Fury...
THE GYPSY KING.
A Manchester lad from Irish Traveller stock, born three months premature and weighing just a pound at birth,…
