100 books like Speak

Dr. Irvin Yalom is a writer and clinical practitioner who is beloved by many in the field of mental health and therapy. I, like many, admire the way in which he tackles the most difficult human dilemmas through intimate stories highlighting the universality of many of these topics. It was difficult for me to pick which of Dr. Yalom’s books to recommend, as I have thoroughly enjoyed each one I’ve read. However, The Schopenhauer Cure is particularly about confronting mortality—the realization of the ephemerality of life and the limitations and acceptance of what we can achieve. Through Dr. Yalom’s adroit depictions of Philip Slate and Julius Hertzfeld, we see the blurred edges of philosophy and psychology, where some of our most basic questions may best be addressed by the melding of the two.

This was one of the first books I ever loved as a teenager and it has always stayed with me.

A professor recommended it to me, and I didn’t know that it would heavily reference Beethoven’s last string quartet, which I was working on at the time.

I love the way Kundera can weave so many disparate things together, including Beethoven’s fate motif and the fate of the character’s relationships. It’s something I find very inspiring and try to do in my own works.

In this novel in verse, Elizabeth Acevedo beautifully evokes the landscape and feel of Harlem through the observant character of Xiomara Batista.

Having lived in upper Manhattan for years, I recognized the neighborhood in the vibrant descriptions. I identified with Xiomara’s need to express herself, how she fills the pages of her notebook with what she feels she can’t speak aloud. Her emotions as she confronts the challenges of friendship, romance, and family feel very real.

When a high school teacher opens up for her the world of spoken word poetry and a whole new set of possibilities for self-expression, I find myself rooting for Xiomara to be brave and take the steps she must take on her personal and artistic journey towards sharing her voice.

Markus Zusak’s book is definitely not for the faint of heart or those easily bored: its narrator is Death, and the book is over 500 pages long. Not really the kind of book you’d think of for those aged 12 and up (as it’s listed). But it is one that really ought to be universally read.

The book follows two young children battling for survival in Nazi Germany. Entropy hangs in the air like Death’s shadow. Life’s harsh realities—like evil, heartache, pain, and mortality—are ever-present. In Max's (the young boy) dreams, he is boxing with Hitler and lands a punch, knocking the Fuhrer down, but soon he’s overtaken by the crowd.

This is one of the reasons I appreciate this book: winners sometimes lose; bad things happen to good people. And yet, the response to this existential injustice isn’t to become a mere survivor, victim, or martyr. It’s to… show more.

Okay, as a middle grade novel, this one may seem a little strange to have on this list, but bear with me.

The protagonist, Khosrou, tells the story of his Iranian family stretching back decades. Woven throughout the story are descriptions of the foods they enjoyed, many of which, as refugees to America, they cannot find anymore. Several times throughout this book I turned to the internet to tell me how to make something Daniel Naveri described.

A beautiful book that also contained more about using the bathroom than I ever expected!

Puck is doing all she can to keep her and her brothers together after their parents die from an attack by bloodthirsty waterhorses surrounding their island home of Thisby. I admire how this one fantastical element changes a ‘normal’ life to an ‘otherworldly’ one, and makes the island a strong character in the story. Raising and racing waterhorses is Thisby’s livelihood, and dire circumstances lead to Puck competing for the annual Scorpio Race prize money as the first girl to race, against great odds by riding her beloved island pony. 

I love the feel of the small Thisby and its quaint community of characters. Some are mercenary, some tough, but, like Puck and love-interest Sean, most love the wild nature of the ocean and waterhorses, which is magic to me.

This book has had many mixed reviews, but in my opinion, it is an excellent story for adults of teens and mature teens to read.

Hannah, a teenage girl, commits suicide. She leaves her classmate a package with a cassette tape in it, explaining the 13 reasons why she decided to end her life. This novel demonstrates the cruelties of teen life, from rumors, to reputations, to rape. It shows the reader: “in the end, everything matters.”

Hopefully, people who read this book will better understand how much their actions affect one another, and they’ll think twice before causing even the littlest amount of harm to someone else. We all need to have more empathy for one another, because this world is cruel enough as it is. 

I taught primary school children for many years, including children with a variety of learning difficulties.

It just so happened that at the time I was reading The Curious Incident I was also teaching a young boy with autistic spectrum disorder. The main character in the novel, Christopher Boone, shared so many character traits with the boy in my class that I pictured him the whole way through.

It’s not easy to write about neurodivergent people, you have to get it right as the last thing you want to do is patronize or stereotype. In my opinion, the author did an incredible job. I laughed and I cried, and I’m sure you will do the same.

I was obsessed with this novel when it first came out, and every time I go back to it, it offers me another gift.

The writing is lean yet elegant, a perfect combination to tell such a heartbreaking story—of three women connected through time by Virginia Woolf’s singular novel Mrs. Dalloway.

It’s a book about how to sustain ourselves through challenging times—how to literally survive—but it’s also a treatise on creating remarkable characters, the call to be an artist, and a rare glimpse into the imagined writing process of one of the English language’s greatest wordsmiths. (I’m referring to Woolf, but I could just as easily be talking about Cunningham.)

The structure is inventive and compelling, but it is really what he shows us of the characters, how he opens their hearts and whispers their secret sorrows into our eager ears, desires they barely understand themselves, that makes this… show more.

Janet Fitch achieved a miracle with this novel about a girl rambling through a flawed foster care system after her mother is convicted of a heinous crime.

In a predictable set-up, the mother would be supportive despite her incarceration. She would be a wise person offering the girl advice. But the author had the confidence and skill to make the mother a beautiful monster, a brilliant, malignant poet whose attempts at controlling the girl are frustrated by the physical distance between them.

The girl’s growing awareness of her mother’s destructive potential is set against a series of foster families. I highly recommend White Oleander for the honesty of the mother-daughter conflict. The novel expertly depicts the epic struggle to create an identity in relation to a charismatic, narcissistic parent.