100 books like The Book of Margery Kempe

As a sucker for beautiful writing, this book had me from the first page, and I couldn’t put it down. So many issues that had been part of my childhood culture resonated with me while it also showed me many others from a part of India that I had never even visited. 

Though sweeping in its scope, it drills down into a very human story with all its pain and love. It weaves myth, story, real life, love, loss, and the meaning of family. It was one of the first novels by an Indian woman that transcended cultures, gender, and any preconceived notions.

I admire the storyline and the defining incident of this novel, which is why I’ve included it here, even though it’s an overly long and baggy book...

The novel tells the tale of a teenager whose world is torn apart when he and his mother visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a terrorist bomb goes off, killing his mother and many others. When a dying old man persuades our young hero to take off with a priceless seventeenth-century painting, The Goldfinch, he obliges and off we go...

I read this play first aged sixteen, and connected strongly with it, because of the young motherless shipwrecked heroine. 

I spent significant periods of time with my grandfathers when I was growing up, and I read Prospero more as a grandfather figure than a father one.

When Freud and I were in the studio for days and weeks and months together, I felt like Miranda on Prospero’s island. The same created world. The same isolation. 

With Lucian as the Prospero figure, summoning a few other characters that came and went to his studio.

No one can go to a fictional island of course, but yet Shakespeare takes us there.

Another 13-year-old boy protagonist, Kimball O’Hara. No relation. 

I read parts of Kim to Lucian in the studio, he liked the epigraph at the beginning of chapter five: the prodigal son does not stay comfortably in his father’s forgiving embrace, but returns ‘to the styes afresh.’

Kim is a magnificent adventure: the orphan boy who belongs but does not belong to two nations, and a description of the peoples, the ways, the mountains, and the plains of India. 

A vicarious journey around a world of the past, and a particularly male world, which Kipling takes us to.

This book is not about marriage or relationships, but until we recognize who we are in Christ, we will never be 100% satisfied in any relationship.

This book is not an easy, feel-good-about-yourself read, rather a challenge to step into who God created you to be and to embrace the full grace of Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful reminder of the gift of Jesus and what a life lived fully in him can look like. 

I loved this book! It’s easy to get stuck on being busy with many tasks and responsibilities, and not move forward in our lives and careers.

This book helped me learn systems to become more efficient (in life and work), identify what was holding me back from being more empowered with my choices, and recognize when to say yes, and when to say no. Leaving the military – where “no” isn’t as much of an option, this is a good skill for veterans to embrace.

I read this book with my journal nearby, and it was heart-changing.

It’s refreshing to have time solely focused on God without trying to figure out how to apply Scripture to my life as if He was a puzzle piece that I try to fit into place. None Like Him examines ten descriptions of God, and the more we get to know Him, the closer we feel. 

I constantly struggle with negative thoughts and anxieties and what-ifs. They trap me. And it’s ridiculously difficult to find a way out. Jennie Allen seems to be a natural-born encourager, and she draws on her own faith crisis to teach us how to replace negative thoughts with God-given positive ones. She shows that approaching anxiety is often a matter of consistent mental work, and I can attest to that! Having a strategy in place goes a long way, and that’s what I found in this book.

This is a bible study by Mrs. Guthrie. She takes each of the ten weeks to look at Christ in a different way throughout the book of Genesis.

For example, she sees him as the agent of creation, the offspring who will crush the head of the serpent, the ark of salvation, the source of the righteousness credited to Abraham, the substitutionary sacrifice provided by God, the Savior to whom the whole world must come for life. Some of these are prophecies and some of these are types and shadows.

The book is focused on small groups and comes with a leader’s guide. Christ in the Old Testament can be used in small groups, but it’s just as fitting for personal study.

A wonderful must-read about femininity and womanhood as God defines it. Elisabeth Elliot (a woman worth reading about herself) wrote this as a wedding gift to her daughter. Thankfully we can all learn from the wisdom in those pages now! Drawing from the Bible, Elisabeth addresses many different topics related to marriage, masculinity and femininity, and what it means to be a woman. If you want to know more about God’s design for women, definitely give this a read!