Here are 100 books that The Red Tent fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been thinking about spiritual things since I was around 9 years old, and as soon as I was old enough, I was off learning experientially in the world. This has allowed for deep learning and understanding of a wide range of subjects, particularly spirituality and ultimate reality. I teach philosophy, religious studies, and politics in my day job, and so, now on the cusp of 46 years, I can truly say I love spiritual and philosophical thought. I also think it’s hard to write books about these topics and I love how allegory and fable can be so accessible.
I think I learned the most about allegory and symbolism from this book. I also loved the protagonist's exciting and perilous journey, which inspired me to learn about spirituality and the unknown.
I loved the fact that this book is accessible to anyone, no matter what they believe, and I liked how you could take your own messages from its pages. I enjoyed the beautiful scenes the author creates, which on their own can influence faith.
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is…
T.K. Thorne became a police officer during the first decade of women policing in Birmingham, Alabama, retiring as a captain. Her background as a woman in a macho man’s world helped inform the writing of award-winning historical novels about completely unknown women in two of the world’s oldest and most famous stories—the tale of Noah’s flood and the burning of Sodom (Noah’s Wife and Angels at the Gate). An experienced speaker, T.K. shares the fascinating background research into the culture of those early civilizations, as well as the scientific discoveries behind the flood in the Mideast and first-hand information gained from her personal trips to the area.
This masterpiece is a story of the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Angelina—path-breakers in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements—interwoven with the story of Hetty, a young slave girl given to Sarah on her 11th birthday.
Hetty and Sarah find their way through the prejudice and barriers of a patriarchal society that views them as less than. Both learn to soar.
This book affected me deeply as a writer. Kidd is simply a master of words. But the story itself stripped away my naivety about what our society would look like had these women not taken on the patriarchal system. It is jolting to realize that the fight for women’s rights is not over, but ongoing.
We owe such a debt to those who struggled through the painful and sometimes deadly slings and arrows of culture to stand up for what was right. And we are not done.
From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and the forthcoming novel The Book of Longings, a novel about two unforgettable American women.
Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.
Hetty "Handful" Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke's daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something…
I have been studying Celtic myth and history since I was in college and took a class on Arthurian literature. Drawing heavily from Irish and Welsh lore to build my “land beyond the veil” known as the Five Quarters, I have always been intrigued by the Celtic view of the land of the dead as a distinct world to which we go and then return, like two sides of the mirrored surface of a well. I hope you enjoy these mythic fantasy books as much as I did!
I read this book so many years ago, but it has stayed with me. It struck me then, as it does now, as revolutionary in that it was one of the first retellings of the Arthurian myth from the female perspective.
I took a class on Arthurian Literature in university, and the tales of the period are obviously male-dominated. But The Mists of Avalon showed me a way into the female characters in the tale, and they are fascinating.
Here is the tragic tale of the rise and fall of Camelot - but seen through the eyes of Camelot's women: The devout Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen; Vivane, High priestess of Avalon and the Lady of the Lake; above all, Morgaine, possessor of the sight, the wise, the wise-woman fated to bring ruin on them all...
At the close of World War II, I was born into the peace and prosperity of mid-twentieth century America, but I longed to be transported to an earlier era and a simpler time. I grew up living in an apartment building in New York City, but my spiritual home was Central Park, which served as my wilderness. Clumps of bushes were my woods. Rock outcroppings were my mountains. Books like Heidi and Little House on the Prairie captured my imagination and warmed my heart. But when my beloved father died in my eleventh year, a shadow fell that changed the emotional landscape of my life.
I was trained in literary criticism and spent years reading the “Classics,” considered the greatest books of all time, so the fact that Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear, first published in 1980, to derisive and condescending reception is my absolute favorite read comes as a surprise, even to myself.
I’ve been so enthralled with this story of a little girl named Ayla who’s found and raised by Neanderthals following the massive earthquake that destroys the Cro-Magnon tribe into which she was born—that I’ve read Clan, along with its five sequels three times, all the way through. It’s probably not a coincidence that Ayla, who’s exiled from her adoptive tribe and finds ingenious ways to survive on her own—reminds me of Karana from Island of the Blue Dolphins.
I love the way Auel’s saga imagines our anthropological origins in scrupulously researched detail and dramatically displays the…
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love.
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear.
A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by…
We all read (or write) fiction for a bit of escapism, don’t we? To come face-to-face with the good, the bad, and the ugly of bygone days… The ancient Mediterranean is the place I would most love to visit in a time machine (albeit fully armed and in a hazmat suit), and these writers are – for me – the best at transporting readers there from the comfort of a sofa. I’ve tried plenty of historical fiction set in other times and places - much of it very good, but the smell of olive groves, the chirruping of cicadas, and the Aegean sun always call me back!
Though I have always been an unashamed ancient history nerd, ancient Egypt never quite grabbed me as strongly as Greece and Rome. However, I read this book as a callow 17-year-old traveling to Poros to row as part of the crew of a reconstructed ancient Greek trireme. The story utterly captivated me: it is packed full of action, tragedy, historical detail, and heroism, and I could feel the heat of the Egyptian sun on my skin as I read it.
I recently bought a first edition in honour of this memory, and I want to choose the right moment to revisit it. There is an odd footnote, though. The author bizarrely claimed that his book is based upon a set of scrolls discovered in an 18th-century BC Egyptian tomb and that the lead archaeologist passed the translations onto him to transcribe into a novel. Smith discarded this claim in the…
BOOK 1 IN THE BESTSELLING ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SERIES, FROM THE MASTER OF ADVENTURE, WILBUR SMITH
'Best historical novelist' - Stephen King
'A master storyteller' - Sunday Times
'Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared' - The Times
'No one does adventure quite like Smith' - Daily Mirror
IN THE LAND OF GOLD WHERE THE WEAK PHARAOH RULES A NEW CIVILISATION WILL BE BORN
Taita is a humble slave; an expert in art, poetry, medicine and engineering, as well as the keeper of important secrets. He is the most treasured possession of Lord Intef. Yet when…
I’m passionate about the theme of this list because I’ve experienced a lot in life already, even though I’m only 24 years old, and I know about the different situations that these books describe well. I’ve experienced a few traumatic situations later in my life (after I read these books) that these books have, it has turned me into somewhat of a realist over time, and I like to use my own talent of writing and creating characters to create, teach, and make people aware of scary and traumatic situations that can happen to anyone in real life. I hope more people will see the valuable lessons in these books.
This book is nonfiction, so it’s about real people rather than fictional characters. I love this book because it gives a descriptive perspective on what was happening and what was going on in Nazi-occupied Germany and Poland during World War II, and the horrors of the concentration camps (mainly Auschwitz) that were built and used to kill everyone the nazis hated for whatever insane reasons they had.
I’ve always had an almost alarming interest in World War II. It was my favorite lesson from the history classes I’ve taken, and this book really put some of the evil things that were done during that time into perspective.
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of…
I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.
Mikki Kendall’s account of what Black women and girls are up against in America left me angry and devastated. Her description of how Black girls are sexualized at shockingly young ages and how portraying them this way enables sexual abuse absolutely gutted me.
For me, this book was a powerful reminder of why no woman is safe in a culture that says you have to be viewed as respectable in order to be worthy of protection from violence.
"One of the most important books of the current moment."-Time
"A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone."-Gabrielle Union, author of We're Going to Need More Wine
"A brutally candid and unobstructed portrait of mainstream white feminism." -Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist
A potent and electrifying critique of today's feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism
Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki…
I have had two careers and two lives. Beginning as a historian of American culture, I
have become a writer of fiction. That I have turned to fiction now is because I have so many of my
own stories to explore and relate. And what I love most about writing novels and the
short pieces I compose is the possibility to create living characters who sometimes
surprise me with what they believe and do, but always, I know, emerge from the very
deepest corners of my imagination and the issues that I feel compelled to examine and
resolve.
I love this novel for its ability to describe a very small world as if it were the most important place in the universe. It captures perfectly the way in which people, visited by enormous tragedy, are able to reconstruct lives that are full of richness and humor.
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed work is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the…
Growing up near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I was aware that the city had historical significance but also that it wasn’t particularly famous, at least to people from outside the region. I’ve always been drawn to these sorts of overlooked stories from history, which are, not coincidentally, often women’s stories. Women made up the majority of workers in Oak Ridge during World War II, and for decades afterward, their stories were generally viewed as less important than male-dominated narratives of the war. But I’ve always believed that women’s stories are no less interesting than men’s. These books look at history’s worst conflict from unique perspectives that foreground the female experience.
Though it is set just after the war, the characters in this novel cannot escape from their memories of the Holocaust or guilt at having survived. Yet they are also stuck in a comic scenario—through a complex series of events, the Jewish protagonist Herman has wound up with three “wives,” his first wife from before the war who he mistakenly assumed dead, the Polish Catholic peasant who hid him from the Nazis and he married out of gratitude, and his mistress and fellow survivor he met upon relocating to New York. The novel is both hilarious and heart-breaking—a potent reminder of the impossibility of ever leaving behind the worst horrors of this war.
Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom.
I’ve always believed that history isn’t a dry record of events; it’s a portal to the human soul, one that connects us to all the people who lived before. Diving into books about the history of the Jewish people connects me not only intellectually, but also emotionally.
I was inspired to write Rebel Daughter as soon as I learned of the ancient gravestone of a Jewish woman. I was so intrigued by the unlikely but true love story the stone revealed that I spent the next ten years with some of the world's leading scholars and archaeologists to bring the real characters to life as accurately as possible.
I have degrees from Princeton and Harvard and live in Israel.
Because how can you have a list of the greatest Jewish books of all time without this? (apologies for putting it in last place!). The one that has defined life as we know it yet so few of us have ever really read. Actually, "reading" seems too gentle a word for what happens when you dive into this ancient text - grappling, struggling, or wrestling seem more apt. The pre-eminent scholar Robert Alter renders the ancient Hebrew into a powerful, faithful English translation which soars.
A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David's flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job's incendiary questioning of God's ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter's generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of…
