79 books like The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy is considered a master storyteller with an unmatched grip on presenting the inner emotional struggles of mankind.

This novel presents the stress caused in the lives of people and society when French General and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte attacked Russia. The book had a deep impact on future generations. I read the book in my early 30s and found it fascinating. 

I have a deep interest in the evolution and reaction of societies to crises, both natural and man-made. The discussion on leadership, whether it is by birth or upbringing, was fascinating for me. 

People who read The Master and Margarita will tell you that it is one of the greatest books they have ever read, but few can tell you why. It defies description.  It is truly unique. 

It opens on a blistering hot day in Moscow, a paradox in itself. The devil, seemingly out of Goethe’s Faust, is on a visit to the town. He and his strange entourage would be laughable, if they were not so lethal. Only the madness of Stalin’s paranoid Communism could have created such a story.

Bulgakov has an uncanny way of investing even the most unlikely scenes with intense realism. You never doubt him.  At times hilarious, at times terrifying, the book shows us what a fragile hold we have on reality.

Set in 1820s Russia, Eugen Onegin is a novel written in verse, a story about love, loss, and repentance, where bored, superfluous Onegin lives to regret his rejection of the shy young dreamer Tatyana and to feel remorse for his fatal duel with his best friend Lensky. Eugene Onegin is the masterwork of Pushkin, whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature, and is an amazingly engaging piece of writing, ironic and passionate, full of suspense, and rampant with political satire and philosophical digressions that make for the most beautiful read. Honestly, I never thought I would fall so hard for a novel written in another language and in verse.

I love Akhmatova for her talent and her immense courage. Considered to be the ‘Soul of the Silver Age,’ the greatest modernist Russian woman poet, Akhmatova was a brilliant master of conveying raw emotion in her portrayals of everyday situations. She began to write poetry at age eleven and was first published in her late teens. Her father considered this to be an unsuitable and even shameful occupation and forbade her to write using the family name so she chose the surname of her great-grandmother, Akhmatova. Her works range from short lyric love poetry to longer, more complex poems, such as Requiem, a tragic depiction of the Stalinist terror, and written as a testament to the hardship and suffering of the people during this time, particularly women whose husbands and sons were imprisoned and executed. 

History is just “one damned thing after another” is a common phrase. For me this is the book which has led me to my next project. Cahill traces the story of the women who went to Russia in 1916 with the voluntary outfit the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Set up by a Scottish surgeon, Elsie Inglis, the SWH became the biggest women’s medical organisation serving abroad in the war. The SWH women ran hospitals in France, Serbia and Russia. Here Cahill tells the story of their astonishing adventures in Russia – driving ambulances close to the firing line, retreating with the Serbian and Russian armies, surviving the cold, food shortages and the Russian Revolution – through the women’s own words. It’s staggering stuff – and great material for my next book about one of those incredible women pioneers.

This is another fictional diary but different again. To say I enjoyed it is an understatement. This is a witty, engaging, satirical romp of a journal with laugh-out-loud moments, an empathetic everyman protagonist, a full cast of colourful supporting characters, and a rich background, mainly in Amsterdam.

I whipped through the book in a couple of days and was left hoping that we might find out what happens to Gerard "next year." All in all, thoroughly entertaining.

It’s not possible that Tolstoy died and lived to tell about it, but that's what this book feels like.

As Ivan Ilych’s illness progresses, the reader sees how shallow his relationships are, and how fruitless is his striving to “get ahead.” As I read this book, I felt the vast chasm between the living and the dying, how alone Ivan is in his suffering. Ivan Ilych is no hero: he is an everyman. He squarely faces the pointlessness of his life, and ultimately throws off the things of no importance.

Through his experience I anticipated my own death, and felt how important it must be to live my life remembering that all the stupid stuff doesn’t matter. What does matter is my relationships with God and with other humans. Everyone who expects to die someday should read this book.

There are loads of great picture books that feature Australian animals but one of my favorites is Diary of a Wombat. It’s a very simple story told from the perspective of a wombat and it highlights their adorable, but also irascible and fairly destructive personalities. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off an ‘animal voice’ without it sounding like a person or a bit patronising, but Jackie French really nails it in this book, probably because of her extensive experience with looking after wombats. And the illustrations by Bruce Whatley are full of fun and joy. It makes me laugh every time I read it.

If wombats read books, I think this is the one they would love best, and what book about animals needs a better endorsement than that? 

Granted, nobody would call a castle a small space, but the world of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain—the narrator of this full-of-life novel-in-journal-form—is hemmed in by her father’s writer’s block and his innate dislike of neighbors, resulting in their family’s life of dwindling gentile poverty in a dilapidated rented castle.

Much of the novel’s long-lasting enchantment is how Cassandra makes the best of the stone walls that contain and border her life. Cassandra has a wonderful imagination and a knack for seeing her life as a story. A very funny and wise coming-of-age story about how our homes shape our world-views.

This three-volume epic that begins in 1918 and ends shortly before its author’s death in 1957 gives an unrivalled picture of the social and political mores that governed a certain section of English society.

Channon, a conscientious Member of Parliament for much of his life, was a crashing snob with a gift for observation and occasional piercing insights into his own character. He knew ‘everybody’ and his accounts of their intimate behavior – and his own – is compelling.