Here are 100 books that The Mother I Could Have Been fans have personally recommended if you like
The Mother I Could Have Been.
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I have been writing fiction since an early age, and I naturally create central female characters that I hope are warm, funny, and in some way flawed. Modules of my university degree dealt with psychology and sociology, and I automatically studied other people to inspire elements of my character. Lee Child is quoted as saying readers remember characters more than the plot, so when compiling my list, I recalled five female leads that have made me laugh, cringe, and relate to in equal measure. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
I’ve never read a book as quickly as I read this one. Our eponymous lead character is quirky and odd, but the story is written with so much empathy, depth, and humor that I was rooting for her from the start.
I loved how the relationship between Eleanor and Raymond plays out and avoids the predictable ‘boy meets girl’ ending. It doesn’t surprise me that the book is ‘in development’ as a movie, as the story plays out like a film when you read it. Definitely read this one first before you see the film! (It probably won’t take long as I couldn’t put this book down.)
"Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" -Reese Witherspoon
No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of…
Realistic, contemporary fiction is my jam. I’m in love with the genre for many reasons, but the most significant is this: In life, we often find it difficult to reveal our struggles to others, for fear of being exposed, seen as weak, “crazy”, or incapable. However, in the magical world of contemporary fiction, we allow ourselves to relate without fear of judgment or shame and because how we relate is different for all of us, these raw, emotional stories are some of the most powerful ones to be told. Why? Because it is in these stories that we see ourselves, and in them, we find hope.
This story is a work of family saga art, honestly. In discovering the ins, outs, ups, and downs of Marilyn and David’s loving relationship, we come to know their four adult daughters who are each experiencing life-changing events of their own.
It is both a beautiful and heartbreaking depiction of family dynamics, coming of age, parenthood, and finding one’s way. It’s reconciliation with the past and finding the courage to face the future. It’s a love story, in the traditional sense, but also one between parents and children and among the sisters themselves…all intricately woven into one truly intriguing family story.
No skipping pages for me in this one: I didn’t want to miss a thing!
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “A gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory.” —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
In this “rich, complex family saga” (USA Today) full of long-buried family secrets, Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest.
Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant…
Realistic, contemporary fiction is my jam. I’m in love with the genre for many reasons, but the most significant is this: In life, we often find it difficult to reveal our struggles to others, for fear of being exposed, seen as weak, “crazy”, or incapable. However, in the magical world of contemporary fiction, we allow ourselves to relate without fear of judgment or shame and because how we relate is different for all of us, these raw, emotional stories are some of the most powerful ones to be told. Why? Because it is in these stories that we see ourselves, and in them, we find hope.
Oh, sweet, southern goodness! Set in Bon Dieu, Louisiana, this is the story of three childhood best friends, Carrigan, Ella Rae, and Laine—each a character which is expertly crafted with their own quirks, mannerisms, goals, and faults.
One of my favorite things about this novel is the way in which Bon Dieu, itself, becomes a central character in the story as we get to know its charm, humor, and yes, its not-so-great sides too. A wonderful read for anyone who enjoys a good Southern drama and a bond of sisterhood which prevails over everything else. Bring the tissues though…you’re going to need them!
Friends since kindergarten, Carrigan, Ella Rae, and Laine thought they'd been through everything together. But when cancer threatens to rip the trio apart, their world spins in a way they've never known before. Through it all, will they discover the secret to the divine taste of hummingbird cake-and to friendships that never end?
In the South you always say "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am." You know everybody's business. Football is a lifestyle not a pastime. Food-especially dessert-is almost a religious experience. And you protect your friends as fiercely as you protect your family-even if the threat is something you cannot…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Realistic, contemporary fiction is my jam. I’m in love with the genre for many reasons, but the most significant is this: In life, we often find it difficult to reveal our struggles to others, for fear of being exposed, seen as weak, “crazy”, or incapable. However, in the magical world of contemporary fiction, we allow ourselves to relate without fear of judgment or shame and because how we relate is different for all of us, these raw, emotional stories are some of the most powerful ones to be told. Why? Because it is in these stories that we see ourselves, and in them, we find hope.
A tale of two couples whose lives become forever intertwined, this one’s for those who enjoy books which span long periods of time, covering nearly the characters’ full life spans and all the messy, beautiful things they contain. Touching on grief, spirituality, and the church (though never in a “preachy” way), friendship, fierce parental love, and a quest to understand neurodivergence in the 1960s and 70s, it’s emotional and impactful in all the best ways.
"This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites ever." -Jenna Bush Hager (A Today show "Read with Jenna" Book Club Selection!)
"A thoughtful, beautiful multigenerational novel about love, God, jealousy, and friendship." -Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
"A moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of social change." -The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
"Here is the power of the novel in its simplest, richest form: bearing intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling in love. That Wall executes it so beautifully? Well, this is exactly…
I’m a food and travel journalist, raised by a Greek father and a British mother. I’ve always been obsessed with the fostering of my Greek culture, heritage, and identity and have been particularly interested in the duality of my two identities, since moving to England from Greece as a young girl. During my teenage years in grey and drizzly England, the food we ate as a family transported me to my grandmothers’ white-washed alleyway, dotted with geraniums and bursting with the colours and flavours of Greece. Since then I’ve become obsessed with what food and time-perfected recipes can tell us about our heritage.
This is a book that still makes me sob, even on the third, fourth, and fifth read.
Louis de Bernieres’ love story set during the second world war on the island of Kefalonia is more than just another beach read. It chronicles the tragedy of the events of the second world war, holding a microscope over the island of Kefalonia and homing in on an imagined love story between Pelagia, a local girl, and Captain Corelli, an Italian soldier stationed on the island as part of the Italian occupation of Greece.
Yes, this is a piece of fiction but I love that also it manages to paint a picture of life under occupation in Greece during the 1940s. De Bernieres captures the light, the scent, the very essence of this Greek island, and the fire of an incredible love affair in his beautiful prose, while also commenting on the atrocities…
25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
'A true diamond of a novel, glinting with comedy and tragedy' Daily Mail
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals but over time he proves himself to be civilised, humorous - and a consummate musician.
When Pelagia, the local doctor's daughter, finds her letters to her fiance go unanswered, Antonio and Pelagia draw close and the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable.…
For four decades, I have written about art for publications in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. I have interviewed, among other artists, Frank Stella, Mary Ellen Mark, Dale Chihuly, Deng Lin (the daughter of Deng Xiaoping), the most celebrated Vietnamese contemporary painters, and the leading Japanese ceramicists. My ideal vacation is to wander the cobblestone streets of Italy, walking into a church to see the art of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Bernini. On a trip to Venice, I saw the immense illusionist ceiling painting by Giovanni Fumiani in the church of San Pantalon. Looking up at angels swirling in heaven, the idea for my second novel was born.
For my high school sophomore history teacher, world history was only Greece under Pericles and England under Elizabeth I. I went to Greece under her spell, and ever since, I have been drawn to books about Greece—fiction and non-fiction.
This book is about a fictional Greek island at the end of the Ottoman empire, an English con man caught up in his archaeological con, a beautiful artist (played by a young Helen Mirren in the film version), greedy government officials, and an informer who fears for his life is our unreliable narrator. It makes for an engrossing novel of adventure and ideas that holds up on a second reading after over forty years.
Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…
I fell in love with Greece 50 years ago, when I had the good fortune of spending a summer on my father’s native island of Ikaria. I bagged my first writing job four years later when I wrote a guide to all the Greek islands. As a travel writer I tend to fall in love with all the places I write about! But Greece is where I feel most at home, and it has inspired some truly memorable travel books. I hope you like some of my all-time favorites.
I came across this book while researching my guide to Northern Greece. Kapka Kassabova is a Bulgarian writer now living in the Scottish Highlands, who returned to the land she knew as a child: the once heavily militarized border between Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Her account of the places and people she meets in this forgotten corner of the world are uncanny, full of wonder, tragedy and horror, comedy and beauty, in a place where even in the 21st-century magic and the supernatural still live on.
“Remarkable: a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free.” —Peter Pomerantsev
In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the “Red Riviera” on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose…
I'm currently an Honorary Fellow in Social Theory at the University of York, U.K. For more than five decades I've been working to promote more reflexive perspectives in philosophy, sociology, social theory, and sociological research. I've written and edited many books in the field of social theory with particular emphasis on questions of culture and on work in the field of visual culture. Recently these have includedInterpreting Visual Culture (with Ian Heywood), The Handbook of Visual Culture, and an edited multi-volume textbook of international scholars to be published by Bloomsbury,The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture. My own position can be found in my Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms.
If Gadamer is an important guide to the hermeneuticsof beginnings and the spirit of theorizing, Thomas Martin’s work is one of the most concise, readable, and comprehensive introductions to the social history of ancient Greece and the spiritual origins of Western culture. While there are many fine histories of the period, this book provides access to the whole sweep of Greek history from the beginnings of Hellenic civilization in Indo-European and Mycenaean cultures, to the Archaic age, the beginnings of democracy with the age of the city-state, the collapse of the Athenian Empire at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of Hellenistic Greece and the Hellenistic kingdoms that led to the hegemony of Rome and Latin culture. The work is an exemplary form of what I would call 'configurational’ history as his narrative interweaves military, political, religious, and social history with detailed discussion of the realm…
This compact yet comprehensive history brings ancient Greek civilization alive, from its Stone Age roots to the fourth century B.C.
"A highly readable account of ancient Greece."-Kirkus Reviews
Focusing on the development of the Greek city-state and the society, culture, and architecture of Athens in its Golden Age, Thomas R. Martin integrates political, military, social, and cultural history in a book that will appeal to students and general readers alike. Now in its second edition, this classic work now features new maps and illustrations, a new introduction, and updates throughout. "A limpidly written, highly accessible, and comprehensive history of Greece…
My passion for the Spartans and ancient history in general comes from the iconic idea that those men needed to have a lot of courage to face the battles they faced and survive that. These soldiers faced terrible deaths in every battle to defend their families, their lands, their cities. More specifically, the ability of the Spartans to understand that through suffering and lack they could become stronger even if that meant suffering it in their flesh or seeing their children suffer. The different ways of understanding the world by the Persians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Celts... is something incredible.
This series of three books are very exciting. From beginning to end the reader is immersed in Alejandro's life in an impressive way. A recommended reading both as entertainment and at the level of historical and cultural learning. The story is well documented and explained, helping you feel what the different characters feel.
The first title in an international blockbuster trilogy of brutal passion and grand adventure in ancient Greece.This is the story of a boy, born to a great king - Philip of Macedon - and his sensuous queen, Olympias. It tells of the stern discipline of Philip and the wild passions of Olympias, and how, together, they formed Alexander, a young man of immense, unfathomable potential, capable of subjugating the known world to his power, and thought of by his contemporaries as a god. Alexander's swift ascent to manhood, as a protege of Aristotle and close friend of Ptolemy and Hephiaston,…
On the run from her abusive husband, Kyra Smith hits the road. Destination unknown. With a dog she rescued in tow, she lands in the peaceful California mountain town of Gold Creek and is immediately befriended by an openhearted group of women who call themselves the Tattooed Ladies. They’re there…
Nataša Pantović holds an MSc in Economics and is a Maltese Serbian novelist, adoptive parent, and ancient worlds’ consciousness researcher. Using stories of ancient Greek and Egyptian philosophers and ancient artists she inspires researchers to reach beyond their self-imposed boundaries. In the last five years, she has published 3 historical fiction and 7 non-fiction books with the Ancient Worlds' focus. She speaks English, Serbian, all Balkan Slavic languages, Maltese and Italian. She has also helped build a school in a remote village of Ethiopia, and has since adopted two kids, as a single mum!
The Derveni papyrus (500 BC), an ancient Macedonian papyrus that was found in 1962, and was finally published, just recently, in 2006. Derveni Papyrus, is now at Thessaloniki Museum, Greece. This version was published in 340 BC and it is an Orphic book of mystical initiations.
The scroll was carefully unrolled and the fragments joined together, thus forming 26 columns of text. which was used in the mystery cult of Dionysus by the 'Orphic initiators'. It is a philosophical treatise written as a commentary on an Orphic poem, a Theogony concerning the birth of the gods, compiled in the circle of the philosopher AnaXagoras.
The scroll contains a philosophical treatise on a lost poem describing the birth of the gods and other beliefs focusing on Orpheus, the mythical musician who visited the underworld to reclaim his dead love. The Orpheus cult tells us of a single creator god, of the…
This is a comprehensive study of the Derveni Papyrus. The papyrus, found in 1962 near Thessaloniki, is not only one of the oldest surviving Greek papyri but is also considered by scholars as a document of primary importance for a better understanding of the religious and philosophical developments in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Gabor Betegh aims to reconstruct and systematically analyse the different strata of the text and their interrelation by exploring the archaeological context; the interpretation of rituals in the first columns of the text; the Orphic poem commented on by the author of the papyrus; and…
