Here are 97 books that Swell fans have personally recommended if you like
Swell.
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I come from a family of born storytellers but grew up to become an archaeologist, sensible and serious. Then, my parents’ deaths brought me to my knees. I knew I would not survive their loss in any form recognizable to me. My grief set me on a journey to understand and rekindle the special magic that they and my ancestors had brought to my life. Eventually, through reading books like these and learning to tell my own stories, I, the archaeologist and life-long rationalist, made my greatest discovery to date: the healing power of enchantment.
This is a book you wouldn't want to lend to a friend, but you might want to buy it for a friend! It’s a genre-defying memoir of a grieving daughter that I found inspirational and validating in the wake of my own parents' deaths. Helen MacDonald loses her father and embarks on a journey to find, adopt, and train a goshawk, one of the fiercest and most feral predators on Earth...a remarkable metaphor for her own wild grief.
As her relationship evolves with the goshawk, Mabel, they learn together the beauty and terror of being alive. I found great inspiration here because it taught me that you can talk about hard things in a lyrical, uplifting way, leaving your readers to soar on the last page, not jumping out of windows.
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of…
Growing up, my mother often shared stories of her evacuation to a small Wiltshire village during World War Two. Far from a warm welcome, the local children viewed the newcomers with suspicion, and they were made to feel unwanted. My mother did, however, form one lifelong friendship that was very important to her. Her tales inspired me to write a novel about an evacuee’s experience for my Creative Writing MA. Living in Dorset at the time, I set my story there. The research was fascinating, allowing me to weave together historical insights with my own memories and experiences of today’s rural life.
The thought of walking around an occupied town in France during WWII terrifies me. The prospect of running into Nazis, looking for any excuse to arrest me, is the thing of nightmares.
But my fears shrink to nothing compared to the experience of blind sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure attempting to navigate war-torn Saint-Malo from the memory of a handmade tabletop model. The strength of courage she shows in this story has never left me.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION
A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.'
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic…
I've penned 11 novels and numerous essays, and if there's one thread that ties them all together, it's rawness. I gravitate towards reading books and watching films where writers peel back the layers of their lives, exposing past wounds and delving into what they've learned from them. As an entrepreneur with a master's degree in marketing, I’ve found that this kind of vulnerability is not only compelling but essential in any form of storytelling. Whether I’m crafting a narrative for a new startup or reflecting on my own experiences for a novel, it’s this unfiltered honesty that resonates deeply with audiences.
This isn’t your typical feel-good, “I found myself on a hike” memoir. Strayed is brutally candid about her flaws, mistakes, and the emotional wreckage she carried along the Pacific Crest Trail. It's like she brought you on this grueling journey to confront her demons, and somehow, you end up confronting your own.
Her vulnerability is so palpable that you can practically feel the blisters forming on your feet. It’s raw, it’s real, and it makes you want to hug your inner mess a little tighter.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
As a queer/bi girl labeled as a tomboy from early on, I ached for a sense of belonging in my life that I only found in books. The adventurous women and girls that I looked for in the pages of books that were like friends to me spanned from Anne of Green Gables to Harriet the Spy. As I got older, I realized that important and awesome adventurous women had been left out of my history books, and only now are we starting to find out who they were, and how many women like myself were erased, and are now being redeemed through these wonderful stories.
Nur Jahan was one of the great queens of India, but I had never learned about her even in my studies at university.
I felt absolutely transported into her life, ambitions, and loves through this riveting novel that is so poetic you’ll want to read it in your bath with the door locked and a candle lit. This book feels like a window into the life of a woman you wish was your mother, your sister, your best friend.
It’s the first of the trilogy, and a magnificent journey into ancient India and the history of the Taj Mahal.
An enchanting seventeenth-century epic of grand passion and adventure, this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India's most legendary and controversial empresses -- a woman whose brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles, and whose love shaped the course of the Mughal empire. She came into the world in the year 1577, to the howling accompaniment of a ferocious winter storm. As the daughter of starving refugees fleeing violent persecution in Persia, her fateful birth in a roadside tent sparked a miraculous reversal of family fortune, culminating in her father's introduction to the court of Emperor Akbar. She…
I spent more than 10 years and 25,000 nautical miles voyaging as the captain of my sailboat, Swell. My desires for life did not fit the common mold and context of where I grew up in Southern California– I sailed away wanting to understand the meaning of life, live simply and closer to nature, experience and learn from other cultures, be in solitude and ask life’s bigger questions. I chased my big, unlikely ocean dream and succeeded, but not without radical challenges, learning, and growth.
This is the book that sparked my desire to see the world by sailboat and made me believe that I could chase my big ocean adventure dreams.
I love the authenticity of Robin’s storytelling and his courage to brave the ocean despite being so young and inexperienced. I related to his curiosity for the world, his desire for true love, and his voyage as a rite of passage in the modern age. I definitely had a crush on him by the end of the book, and I sure wished his companion Patty had written a book too!
2
authors picked
Dove
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
12,
13,
14, and
15.
What is this book about?
In 1965, 16-year-old Robin Lee Graham began a solo around-the-world voyage from San Pedro, California, in a 24-foot sloop. Five years and 33,000 miles later, he returned to home port with a wife and daughter and enough extraordinary experiences to fill this bestselling book, Dove.
Scotland has a proud tradition of philosophical enquiry and I studied closely the work of most of these authors and benefited from almost all of them for my own Ph.D. work. Pirsig uses the old Scots word “gumption” for know-how and initiative and, in his honour, I use his related term “gumptionology” as my handle on social media. I also write my own mystery books series set in Scotland (the Bruno Benedetti mysteries) and they are often inspired by musing on philosophical and metaphysical matters but even my books on ethics contain some philosophical fiction. Our shared stories are fundamental to our humanity—and to our philosophy!
I recommend the sequel to Pirsig’s more famous bestseller because I’ve never owned a motorcycle (and I find bicycle maintenance hard enough), but now I own a sailboat—where his second story is set—so when he describes hearing people walking on the cabin roof, or checking the knots on the mooring ropes, I know exactly what he means because I’ve experienced this. Some of his fans felt this sequel was a betrayal of the magical mysticism of undefined Quality he described in the first book. For me, although problematic, it was a necessary clarification and one I not only used for my academic work on a range of controversies from abortion to transgender but also in my life-coaching practice: to inspire holistic transformation on all levels of wellbeing.
Phaedrus - a character familiar to readers of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' - is sailing down the Hudson River when he meets Lila Blewitt, an unapologetically sexual, psychologically unstable woman whom a mutual friend warns him against. But Phaedrus is drawn to her physically, and interested in her intellectually, finding her a culture of one in whom he discerns an unexpected Quality. Sailing with him to Manhattan, where her mental state deteriorates further, Lila promps Phaedrus to explore conflicts of values, such as those between Native Americans and Europeans, or between the insane and the normal.
As an avid trail-runner and mountain-biker who’s done a ton of outdoorsy things, from sailboat racing on the Chesapeake Bay to rockclimbing to backpacking in the Pacific Northwest, I’m convinced that nothing gets you closer to someone’s experience than a well-told first-person account. The best personal narratives make you feel the cold, glow with the exhilaration, and burn with ambition to go, to do, to see for yourself — and can even make you look at the world, and yourself, in a new way. These books, different as they are, have all done those things for me.
Building your own sailboat from scratch, then sailing it from California down to Baja, camping, and surfing along the way: how can that not be a cool story? Christian Beamish manages the perfect blend of introspection and backstory with descriptions of sea, sky, land, and the people he meets along the way.
Christian Beamish, a former editor at The Surfer's Journal, envisioned a low-tech, self-reliant exploration for surf along the coast of North America, using primarily clothes and instruments available to his ancestors, and the 18-foot boat he would build by hand in his garage. How the vision met reality and how the two came to shape each other places The Voyage of the Cormorant in the great American tradition of tales of life at sea, and what it has to teach us.
I have lived on or around sailboats for over thirty years. I had never sailed before meeting my husband. Many people dream of sailing off but few actually go. In 1996, we sailed away to the Caribbean with our seven-year-old daughter. Although I didn’t want to go, by the end of the voyage I found an inner strength that has stayed with me. The books I chose are all about making huge changes, taking leaps of faith. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!
Gaige’s writing is terrific, insightful, fresh, and fast-paced. As I read about the fictional couple and their conflicts at sea, I was struck by the similarities to our real-life sailing experience. In a fabulous first scene, the wife hides in a closet, unable to deal with reality. She reluctantly goes on a voyage with her husband and their lives change, much as ours did. I never hid in a closet, but before the voyage, I was someone who if I didn’t like reality, ignored it. At sea, that’s not possible.
'A gripping tale of survival at sea - but that's just the beginning' Jennifer Egan
'A smart, swift and thrilling novel' Lauren Groff
From the highly acclaimed author of Schroder, a smart, sophisticated literary page turner about a young family who escape suburbia for a year-long sailing trip that upends all of their lives
Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her anemic dissertation when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. The couple are novice sailors, but Michael persuades Juliet to say yes. With…
I am a spy aiming to uncover hidden documents, private journals, and secret messages penned in the distant past. I am a detective racing to reveal the world’s most dastardly deeds and daring escapades. I am an adventurer zooming around the planet along with history’s bravest heroes and most despicable villains. I am an artist whose illustrations transform ancient stone-cold statues by turning them into living, breathing human beings that laugh and cry, win and lose, love and hate, and spring vividly to life. And I am a storyteller striving to lure readers of all ages, whether they are children or adults.
High atop a cliff overlooking the sea sits the battered remains of a sailboat. But how did it get there? An old man insists that the waves had tossed it all the way up during a storm a very long time ago, although this clearly seems to be impossible. Or is it? In this magical tale of adventure, a young boy had aimed to prove that he was the most brilliant sailor his villagers had ever seen, so he set out to prove it. What happened when he was blown to a brand-new land, and did he survive? I have always enjoyed Chris’s artwork and you may have overlooked this particular book, so pick it up and check it out.
At the edge of a cliff lies the wreck of a small sailboat. How did it get there? "Waves carried it up in a storm," says an old sailor. But is it possible that waves could ever go that high?
There is another story - the story of a boy and his desire to be the greatest sailor, the story of a storm that carried the boy and his boat to a place where boats glide like gulls high above the water.
I'm a man of the sea. From my early days as a boy growing up on the coast of southern California, I became a fisherman at age 5, when my dad took me fishing at the pier in Redondo Beach. In my teens, I bought my first boat that I used in and around King Harbor for fishing. After owning other small boats, I moved to Catalina Island where I worked for 32 years as Harbormaster, earning my 100-ton Masters License and broadening my ocean experiences. Eventually I wanted to share my stories and experiences through writing. My first book, Between Two Harbors, Reflections of a Catalina Island Harbormaster, tells my Catalina story.
When a man sets sail on an extended ocean voyage, there is usually purpose, determination, and a goal to reach. Donald Crowhurst likely held these objectives when he embarked upon his round-the-world sailing adventure…but somewhere along the way, he lost sight of those goals, and seemingly with the basic truth of reality. Crowhurst’s story is a sometimes dark and disturbing account of what the voyage was all about, and what may have actually taken place on this strange and bizarre odyssey. As a man who has felt the pangs, insecurities, and unknowns when on the ocean, miles from land, scared, and facing the challenges that both nature and humanity tossed our way, I can somewhat understand how a man at sea can become so lost, so confused, and so vulnerable.
The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst helped me to understand some of the odd feelings and thoughts that I have…
'Wholly riveting, brilliantly researched.' Evening Standard
'A meticulous investigation into the seeds of disaster... fascinating, uncomfortable reading.' Sunday Times
In 1968, Donald Crowhurst was trying to market a nautical navigation device he had developed, and saw the Sunday Times Golden Globe round the world sailing race as the perfect opportunity to showcase his product. Few people knew that he wasn't an experienced deep-water sailor. His progress was so slow that he decided to short-cut the journey, while falsifying his location through radio messages from his supposed course.
Everyone following the race thought that he was winning,…
