100 books like The Bell Jar

By Sylvia Plath,

Here are 100 books that The Bell Jar fans have personally recommended if you like The Bell Jar. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Man’s Search for Meaning

Ricardo Sunderland Author Of The Energy Advantage: How to Go from Managing Your Time to Mastering Your Energy

From my list on non fiction mastering your energy.

Why am I passionate about this?

My purpose is to help leaders connect to and manage their energy. I help them bring coherence to how they lead and reach their full societal impact. For more than a  decade, I have coached 300 of the most senior leaders at some of the largest and most recognizable companies in the world. My recommended to-read book list represents crucible moments in my life and my calling to learn about human energy. Representing different lenses, which are key to adding to a mix of ingredients, allows the reader to drink a potion that will exalt all your buckets (physical, mental, emotional & spiritual) of energy holistically. 

Ricardo's book list on non fiction mastering your energy

Ricardo Sunderland Why did Ricardo love this book?

Besides being one of the best psychologists in mankind's history, Viktor is a masterful storyteller. It's as if I was transported to Auschwitz at the time, where Viktor was imprisoned along with thousands of Jews; in a very compelling way, he leaves no hint of a doubt that it was thanks to his meaning in life that he was able to survive, and the minute that others let go of theirs, they let go of life itself.

In addition, Viktor also shares his logotherapy framework and how it was updated after his terrible experience. If you doubt the power of doing the work to search for your life’s meaning, this book is a must-read. 

By Viktor Frankl,

Why should I read it?

43 authors picked Man’s Search for Meaning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.


Book cover of An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Steven J. Kolbe Author Of How Everything Turns Away

From my list on read after a mental breakdown.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been fascinated with mental health since long before I was officially diagnosed with Bipolar I. Even as an elementary schooler, I recognized that I was different from my peers: I thought more deeply and often more darkly, I experienced higher highs and lower lows, often beyond my control, and I very rarely discussed my home life. Writing became a logical and perhaps life-saving outlet as soon as I learned to put words into letters (mostly the wrong letters, but thank God for spell-check). 

Steven's book list on read after a mental breakdown

Steven J. Kolbe Why did Steven love this book?

I loved this book, which I read shortly after recovering from my first major manic episode. I remember sitting on the patio of the LSU student union and thinking, “Yes, this!” again and again.

Written by a medical doctor (a psychiatrist), this memoir offers a unique view of bipolar disorder as Jamison herself has bipolar. I needed to know more about my diagnosis, and I needed to hear it from someone who had experienced it herself. 

By Kay Redfield Jamison,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked An Unquiet Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An Unquiet Mind is a definitive examination of manic depression from both sides: doctor and patient, the healer and the healed. A classic memoir of enormous candour and courage, it teems with the wit and wisdom of its writer, Dr Kay Redfield Jamison.

With an introduction by Andrew Solomon, writer and lecturer on psychology and culture.

'It stands alone in the literature of manic depression for its bravery, brilliance and beauty.' - Oliver Sacks

I was used to my mind being my best friend. Now, all of a sudden, my mind had turned on me: it mocked me for my…


Book cover of Anna Karenina

Zhanna Slor Author Of Breakfall

From my list on most compelling affairs in literature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born in Ukraine and moved to the Midwest in the early 1990s. I am the author of two novels: At the End of the World, Turn Left, which was called “elegant and authentic” by NPR and named by Booklist as one of the “Top Ten Crime Debuts” of 2021, and the domestic thriller Breakfall (April 2023). Perhaps one of the oldest literary tropes, affairs up the ante in literary works while simultaneously exploring human nature. Throw an affair into a novel, and most likely, some characters will be blowing up their lives; add it into a mystery novel, and murders are likely to happen. 

Zhanna's book list on most compelling affairs in literature

Zhanna Slor Why did Zhanna love this book?

The literary gamut is filled with shamed women from across the ages; but Tolstoy’s poor doomed heroine, Anna Karenina, who is so tormented by public humiliation following an affair with Count Alexei that she famously throws herself in front of a train, is perhaps one of the better known tales.

One has to wonder why, across the centuries, only women are scorned for getting involved with the wrong guy. If it’s an issue of morality, then the man should get thrown under the bus too; and yet, generally, they’re not, and the men in this novel just went on with their lives like nothing happened, while Anna was shamed out of Imperialist Russian society. (Same with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, who also kills herself at the end!)

By Leo Tolstoy,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Anna Karenina as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.

In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization,…


Book cover of Slut: The Play

Leora Tanenbaum Author Of I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet

From my list on being a young woman in the USA.

Why am I passionate about this?

I coined the term “slut-bashing,” the precursor to “slut-shaming,” and am passionate about exploring the ways that girls and young women behave and cope in a culture of slut-shaming. I also am curious about how they face other unique challenges—such as the risk of harassment and assault, the pressures to achieve an impossible beauty ideal, and others. All girls and women experience sexism, while many girls of colorand lesbian, queer, and trans girlsface numerous intersecting pressures. The works I recommend here are aching, powerful, and unforgettable.

Leora's book list on being a young woman in the USA

Leora Tanenbaum Why did Leora love this book?

This play, inspired by the experiences of a racially diverse group of New York City teenage girls, explores the intersection of slut-shaming and sexual violence. At its core, the play questions the wisdom of girls embracing the “slut” label for themselves. “Slut” may seem like a carefree term of endearment, and it is—until the moment Joey, a member of her school’s dance team, informally known as the Slut Squad, is sexually assaulted by two boys from school. She brings charges against them, and every sexually provocative thing she previously has done is used as evidence that she is lying. If you want to understand the pressures teenage girls face today, this play breaks it down for you.

By Katie Cappiello,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Slut as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This edition of SLUT features the play only.

SLUT: The Play offers communities and individuals the real-life insight into rape and bullying culture necessary to inspire change in the attitudes and practices surrounding girls and sexuality. The story and the performance creates much-needed space to discuss—openly and honestly—experiences with shaming, sex, and violence, thus providing a crucial antidote to slut-shaming culture.


Book cover of Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan Author Of Big Girl

From my list on LGBTQ+ folks of color getting free.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a novelist and a professor of black queer and feminist literature at Georgetown University. But the truth is, my connection to these books goes deeper than that. These books give me life. When I was a little girl, I spent more days than I can count scouring my mother’s small black feminist library in the basement of our home in Harlem, poring over the stories of girls like me: fat, black, queer girls who longed to see themselves written in literature and history. Now I get to create stories like these myself, and share them with others. It’s a dream job, and a powerful one. It thrills me every time. 

Mecca's book list on LGBTQ+ folks of color getting free

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan Why did Mecca love this book?

This book is so expansive, Audre Lorde invented a whole new genre for it. She terms it “biomythography,” bringing together autobiography, mythology, fiction, poetry, and other forms of writing to tell her story of queer life.

I fell in love with Zami in college back in the day and have been re-reading it ever since. From her childhood in 1930s and 40s Harlem to her coming out as the self-proclaimed fat black lesbian “warrior poet,” who would come to shape black feminism in the late 20th century and beyond, Zami charts the life, loves, and transformative ideas of one of our most important writers.

Zami is both muse and guide, showing us how the iconic feminist writer came to be, and how pleasure, power, creative expression, and community are indispensable to our own freedom today.  

By Audre Lorde,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Zami as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem, weak and half-blind. On she stumbles - through teenage pain and loneliness, but then to happiness in friendship, work and sex, from Washington Heights to Mexico, always changing, always strong. This is Audre Lorde's story. A rapturous, life-affirming autobiographical novel by the 'Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet', it changed the literary landscape.

'Her work shows us new ways to imagine…


Book cover of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

J. Nicole Jones Author Of Low Country: A Memoir

From my list on voice-driven, suck-you-in narrations: both memoir and fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

Writers often get labeled as either nonfiction or fiction writers. In grad school, it was very difficult to study across genres, which I found very frustrating: To me, the most important thing about a book has always been the voice. A novel? A memoir? Essays? Stories? Don’t pin me down, just give me something with a voice that propels me forward, that is unique and sparkling and unputdownable. When I find books with voices so singular and propulsive, I return to them over and over. 

J.'s book list on voice-driven, suck-you-in narrations: both memoir and fiction

J. Nicole Jones Why did J. love this book?

There is nothing like this groundbreaking memoir—it is as good as it getsand it has probably influenced every memoir since (including my own).

Kingston is a poet, and I find it impossible not to sink into the striking, gorgeous language and imagery as she describes growing up between multiple worlds: the China her parents emigrated from, the California of a first-generation daughter of immigrants, the ghost-filled China of her mother’s “talk stories,” and her inner life and growing awareness. She weaves family stories, famous myths, and her own girlhood experiences into a beautiful and unforgettable narrative.

I probably re-read it once a year.

By Maxine Hong Kingston,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Woman Warrior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. 

“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…


Book cover of The House on Mango Street

Jennifer De Leon Author Of Borderless

From my list on Latina latine authors I wish I had read as a teen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am convinced that my life would be better if I had read more books by Latina/Latine authors while growing up. To be able to see oneself in a story is powerful. I didn’t have that for a long time. It made me feel invisible. It made me feel like being an author was as realistic as becoming an astronaut or a performer in Cirque du Soleil. Now, as a professor of Creative Writing and author of several books (and more on the way!), I dedicated my life to writing the books I needed as a young Latina. I hope others find something meaningful in my stories, too.

Jennifer's book list on Latina latine authors I wish I had read as a teen

Jennifer De Leon Why did Jennifer love this book?

This is the first book I ever read by a Latina author. I was nineteen years old and a student at a small private liberal arts college in Connecticut. My professor assigned it to my American Literature class. I thought she’d made a mistake because some of the words in the book were in Spanish. I didn’t know you could do that—write in English but have some words in Spanish peppered throughout the dialogue and text. I was stunned.

I remember reading about Esperanza and her experiences in her Mexican neighborhood in Chicago, meeting characters on Mango Street, and falling in love with both the story and Cisneros’ playful, vulnerable, poetic writing style. After reading this book, I knew I also wanted to be a writer.

By Sandra Cisneros,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The House on Mango Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.

The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.

“Cisneros draws…


Book cover of 1984

Pedro Domingos Author Of 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire

From my list on satires that changed our view of the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.

Pedro's book list on satires that changed our view of the world

Pedro Domingos Why did Pedro love this book?

This book taught me the meaning of the word “totalitarianism.” It’s like a horror movie you can’t escape from, but instead of a zombie fungus eating your mind, it’s the state controlling every little aspect of your life, down to—and worst of all—the words that you think with, and therefore what you can even conceive of.

Few books have stayed in my mind like this one. Even today—or more than ever—its images come to my mind over and over again when I see what is happening in America and the world.

By George Orwell,

Why should I read it?

48 authors picked 1984 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU . . .

1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…


Book cover of An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

John E. Dowling Author Of Understanding the Brain: From Cells to Behavior to Cognition

From my list on healthy and compromised brains.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began research as an undergraduate at Harvard College, initially studying the effects of vitamin A deficiency on the photoreceptors in the eye that capture the light and initiate vision. After receiving my PhD and starting my own laboratory, I became fascinated with the other four classes of cells/neurons found in the retina, which begin the analysis of visual information: two being in the outer retina and two in the inner retina. We mapped out the synaptic interactions among the neurons, recorded from them, and began to put together the neural circuitries that underlie the visual messages that are sent to other parts of the brain. 

John's book list on healthy and compromised brains

John E. Dowling Why did John love this book?

One of Oliver Sack’s delightful books containing stories of individuals with various neurological disorders. I read the first one, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, back in the 1980s  when it first came out and was hooked, now having read almost all of them.

The one I am recommending is, I believe, more relevant to an understanding of brain mechanisms. One criticism I have had of Sack’s books is that there is little in the way of neurobiological explanations for the conditions described. In my book, most chapters begin with a Sack-like story about a specific neurological condition that is then explained, as far as possible, neurobiologically in the chapter.

By Oliver Sacks,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked An Anthropologist on Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As with his previous bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, in An Anthropologist on Mars Oliver Sacks uses case studies to illustrate the myriad ways in which neurological conditions can affect our sense of self, our experience of the world, and how we relate to those around us.

Writing with his trademark blend of scientific rigour and human compassion, he describes patients such as the colour-blind painter or the surgeon with compulsive tics that disappear in the operating theatre; patients for whom disorientation and alienation - but also adaptation - are inescapable facts of life.

'An…


Book cover of In Praise of Shadows

Erik Mortenson Author Of Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture

From my list on staring into the shadows.

Why am I passionate about this?

Who hasn’t caught themselves staring at a shadow? I certainly have. I have always found shadows fascinating. They are both there and not there, present and absent, and this in-between, fleeting nature keeps me staring. Shadows open a space for contemplation, and the list presented here traces a range of responses to the enigma they represent. Transitory images that exist on a fleeting border between light and darkness, shadows seem to invite me to make sense of their vague and shifting outlines, leading to both the joy of imagination as well as to that unsettling but pleasurable feeling of the uncanny as I struggle to fill in their outlines.

Erik's book list on staring into the shadows

Erik Mortenson Why did Erik love this book?

I find this book's range amazing. This slim but engrossing volume reveals new and invigorating ways of “reading” shadow images as the author discusses topics as diverse as food, cosmetics, architecture, jade, and even toilets.

Tanizaki also tackles the sociological differences in shadow interpretation across cultural divides, lamenting the loss of a more traditional interest in the ambiguous shadow as darkness gives way to a Westernization of Japanese culture that brings illumination in its wake.

While I didn’t always agree with his conclusions, they were always interesting, and got me thinking about why I look at shadows the way I do.

By Junichirō Tanizaki,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In Praise of Shadows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.


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