Here are 100 books that Say Nothing fans have personally recommended if you like
Say Nothing.
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I have been studying Celtic myth and history since I was in college and took a class on Arthurian literature. Drawing heavily from Irish and Welsh lore to build my “land beyond the veil” known as the Five Quarters, I have always been intrigued by the Celtic view of the land of the dead as a distinct world to which we go and then return, like two sides of the mirrored surface of a well. I hope you enjoy these mythic fantasy books as much as I did!
I read this book so many years ago, but it has stayed with me. It struck me then, as it does now, as revolutionary in that it was one of the first retellings of the Arthurian myth from the female perspective.
I took a class on Arthurian Literature in university, and the tales of the period are obviously male-dominated. But The Mists of Avalon showed me a way into the female characters in the tale, and they are fascinating.
Here is the tragic tale of the rise and fall of Camelot - but seen through the eyes of Camelot's women: The devout Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen; Vivane, High priestess of Avalon and the Lady of the Lake; above all, Morgaine, possessor of the sight, the wise, the wise-woman fated to bring ruin on them all...
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.
It took me a while to get to this part of Orwell’s oeuvre, but once I did, I was engrossed. The crispness of the writing and the precision of his observations are unmatched. Admittedly, due to Orwell’s own political persuasions, you should not base your views of the Spanish Civil War on this book alone, but as a piece of honest journalistic writing with a clear point of view, it deserves its status as a classic.
Homage to Catalonia remains one of the most famous accounts of the Spanish Civil War. With characteristic scrutiny, Orwell questions the actions and motives of all sides whilst retaining his firm beliefs in human courage and the need for radical social change.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Helen Graham, a leading historian on the Spanish Civil War.
I am a French-American writer with a passion for young adult stories and flawed female characters. Born and raised in France in a household without a TV, I spent my entire childhood reading avidly, which in turn led me to study Literature and Film. In fact, most of my life, I have been inspired by novels that offer windows into new worlds that open up possibilities. Some of the novels from the list below feature some of my favorite characters, and provide insights into other worlds and other times.
Madame Bovary is the story of a woman who endlessly struggles to escape the banalities of her provincial life.
This novel makes you feel like you’re in the head of its main characters: first Charles Bovary, then Emma, his second wife and the novel’s eponymous hero. It is so realistic that upon its release, the author was taken to court for public offense against morality.
Still very modern, Emma’s drama is, to me, the discrepancy between illusions and reality. Her quest for happiness outside of her own condition and her inability to be satisfied with what she has are themes that, I believe, still resonate today.
Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of a married woman's affair caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. Its heroine, Emma Bovary, is stifled by provincial life as the wife of a doctor. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations, the consequences are devastating. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for…
Joe Pardavila has produced over ten thousand hours of audio content over the course of his career in podcasting and terrestrial radio. Joe was a radio personality and producer on the legendary New York City radio station, 95.5 PLJ, where he was part of the iconic Scott & Todd in the Morning. He studied sketch and improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade and was a founding member and actor in the New York-based sketch comedy group, Clip Show. He is the codirector, writer, and producer of the award-winning horror satire, The Witches of Bushwick. Currently, he serves as the director of podcasts for Advantage Media Group | Forbes Books.
Business books tend to be stuffy and over technical, but Iger’s book was the model I was going after when writing my own book. Iger shares the hits and misses (but mostly hits) of his time running one of the most prestigious brands the world has ever seen. But even though they’re mostly showbiz and Disney-focused, any human can relate and learn from his stories.
'One of the best business books I've read in years.' BILL GATES THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 _____________________________
The CEO of Disney, one of Time's most influential people of 2019, shares the ideas and values he embraced to reinvent one of the most beloved companies in the world and inspire the people who bring the magic to life.
Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company in 2005, during a difficult time. Morale had deteriorated, competition was intense, and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company's…
I am passionate about the selected books because they have a unique way of broadening one's horizons and inspiring change in life. Their diverse narratives and profound insights invite all of us to discover new perspectives, challenge our beliefs, and deepen our understanding of the world.
I was deeply captivated by Rutger Bregman’s book. In a world that often feels dark, this book was like a beam of light.
What resonated with me the most was how Bregman masterfully combines compelling stories with solid scientific research to argue that empathy and cooperation aren’t just societal constructs; they’re imprinted in our very nature.
His optimistic view of the human behavior was both surprising and reassuring at the same time. This book left me feeling hopeful not just for the present but for the future as well.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year
'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari
It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have…
I love character-driven, roller coaster ride stories. As a young reader, I gravitated to the “choose your own adventure” books which relied on invoking knotted stomachs, and cold sweats in children as they struggled to make the right decision before reading on; turn to page 105 if you want to face the ravenous bear or page 23 if you wish to flee. Thus, the love of reading emerged and, eventually, the joy of writing followed. These books are just some of the stories that bring similar nostalgic tones when I delve into their pages. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
I’d categorise it as a dark thriller that created some of the tightest knots in my stomach. The concept alone was enough to generate terror, anxiety, and anger from the first page onward. But anything that involves the endangerment of children does that to me.
A gripping tale that puts the victims, both the kidnapped and the kidnappers, in peril from an unseen syndicate who controls their actions with a phone call.
When a mother is targeted by a dangerous group of masterminds, she must commit a crime to save her kidnapped daughter—or risk losing her forever—in this "propulsive and original" award-winning thriller (Stephen King).
It's something parents do every morning: Rachel Klein drops her daughter at the bus stop and heads into her day. But a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything: it's a woman on the line, informing her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a…
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 am a scholar of global politics, and I am drawn to psychoanalysis because it studies the unseen in politics, or rather, those things that are often in plain sight but remain unacknowledged. For example, why is it that, especially in this information economy, we are well aware of the inequality and environmental destruction that our current capitalist system is based on, but we still continue to invest in it (through shopping, taking out loans, using credit cards, etc.)? Psychoanalysis says that it's because we are unconsciously seduced by capitalism—we love shopping despite knowing about the socioeconomic and environmental dangers of doing it. I’m fascinated by that process of disavowal.
This is one of the first books that “blew my mind” when I was a young university student: it remains the one I constantly return to because it seeks to understand the psychoanalytic foundations of racism under French colonialism.
Fanon was only 27 when his book was first published in 1952, but his reflections provide a stunningly passionate and layered view on how anti-Black racism (de)forms the subjectivity of both white and Black people, locking them into constructions of whiteness/blackness that require constant questioning.
His arguments on the psychoanalytic and political underpinnings of racism remain as relevant today as they were in his time.
Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a…
I just looked this up. The word is Hibernophile. I love all things Irish even though I'm American, and distantly, Irish American. My inspiration for the Brigid of Ireland trilogy met at the intersection of genealogy research and discovering druids. The novel Druidsby Morgan Llywelyn whichI read soon after The Mists of Avalon impacted so much of my future writing I love research, too. Finding my family roots—immigrants to the New York marble quarries during the Famine—was the impetus for tying these two things together. This—researching Catholicism in Ireland—led me to Patrick and Brigid. I live, teach, and write in the mountains of Virginia.
This was the first book that made me realize druids had been real, and that entire belief system was nearly—in historical chronology—stamped out by the Roman Empire. The story focuses on a young druid, Ainvar, who befriends Vercingetorix, the Celtic warrior who was brought to Rome in chains by Julius Caesar. While the setting is in Gaul, I began to understand the beliefs of the druid life that was very nearly lost. Where Rome’s war with the druids of Gaul was bloody and decisive, the Irish conversion took a different path. I wanted to find out why the two histories, the change from druid to Christian, was so dramatically different.
The tale of one man who has the vision and genius to save his Celtic people from destruction at the hands of Julius Caesar, this fantasy novel tells the story of the General's invasion of Gaul from the unusual point of view of the invaded.
I just looked this up. The word is Hibernophile. I love all things Irish even though I'm American, and distantly, Irish American. My inspiration for the Brigid of Ireland trilogy met at the intersection of genealogy research and discovering druids. The novel Druidsby Morgan Llywelyn whichI read soon after The Mists of Avalon impacted so much of my future writing I love research, too. Finding my family roots—immigrants to the New York marble quarries during the Famine—was the impetus for tying these two things together. This—researching Catholicism in Ireland—led me to Patrick and Brigid. I live, teach, and write in the mountains of Virginia.
Kate Horsely’s writing is exquisite. Every word, every detail is carefully chosen and her language has a beauty all its own. The novel is about an Irish nun, Gwynneve, who was raised pagan. She sought refuge in Saint Brigit’s and is welcomed because of her literacy. She is to transcribe the words of St. Augustine and St. Patrick. She observes the crossroads of paganism and Christianity and witnesses the positive and negative of both sides. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Gwynneve becomes caught up in the conflict as she records her diary of observations and pays the price for honesty. Again, I’m fascinated by the two belief systems, pagan and Christian, side by side, and searched for how that transition occurred.
A druid-turned-nun writes of faith, love, loss, and religion in this “beautifully written and thought-provoking book” set at the dawn of Ireland’s Christian era (Library Journal)
Cloistered in a stone cell at the monastery of Saint Brigit, a sixth-century Irish nun secretly records the memories of her Pagan youth, interrupting her assigned task of transcribing Augustine and Patrick. She revisits her past, piece by piece—her fiercely independent mother, whose skill with healing plants and inner strength she inherited; her druid teacher, the brusque and magnetic Giannon, who introduced her to the mysteries of the written language.
