100 books like The Scapegoat

Yes, I know this is a novel, but Mantel’s historical research is impeccable and no one has done more to bring to light the shadowy, intrigue-filled court of Henry VIII. Mantel explores the intersection of political power and personal ambition as she traces the career of Thomas Cromwell, a rags-to-riches courtier.

I could almost taste the food, smell the decay, and touch the damp walls of the buildings. She took me deep into the consciousness of the unlikeable yet sympathetic and lonely main character, as he serves his monarch and defeats his enemies.

The drama is gripping.

A story I read so often in my childhood that I could recite it nearly verbatim. I read it frequently to my son. Then my grandchildren. Although they were inexplicably drawn to Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss and, of course, their grandmother’s books, smart boys.

Here, a naughty boy, Max, runs away and enters a world of wild creatures and becomes their king. Max has a blast being king until he misses home. The transition from foe to friend to king moves quickly but is a topic worth exploring more in-depth.

Kids love the Wild Things dance scene done with rhythmic grunts and book shaking. I love its unique view on a child’s desire for independence and simultaneous need to come home. 

I was born in a fishing village in Yorkshire and although I live in the city now, I always feel the pull of the sea. This book is a memoir set in Orkney and London. It is about the writer’s struggle with addiction and her recovery – partly through reconnecting to the natural landscape again. Amy’s prose is clean and bright. She constructs sentences with no fat on them. Her descriptions are sharply accurate. I really related to her need to get away from London to find her way back to health. London life is intense and although I love it here, it is a constantly demanding city. Reading this novel reinforced my desire to look at things closely, notice them anew, and to remember to go and visit the sea, whenever I can. 

It was McNish’s poem Embarrassed – a reflection on society’s inability to cope with a mother breastfeeding her child in public – that first led me to her work. I shared it with everyone. 

Part diary, part poetry collection, Nobody Told Me is born of the same honesty and documents her experience from the moment she discovered she was pregnant at Glastonbury and through the first two years of her daughter’s life. 

There’s an immediacy that comes with the pieces being offered exactly how they were written, whether that was “at four AM, some on the loo...[or] at work”. Motherhood, especially early motherhood, has little time for polishing (of furniture or of words), and this lack of editing is, I think, what allows me to see myself reflected in the poems.

California-born Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher’s contribution to our culture was revolutionary. Before her, no man or woman wrote about food as they might about art: what was noteworthy in the meal, how the cauliflower was cooked or the paté presented, and how all of it made her feel. She is perhaps best known for her masterpiece The Gastronomical Me, her memoir about her sensory awakening around food, cooking, and love when she moved to Dijon, France. After returning to the States, Fisher moved with her two daughters to Aix-en-Provence following World War II. By now, the memoir of Provence—the farmhouse, lavender fields, and dappled summer light—have become a genre unto themselves. But as with everything this trailblazer wrote, few have ever done is as well or with such exquisite understatement as Fisher did in Map of Another Town.

It is a soulful and beautifully atmospheric chronicle of building… show more.

The first time I went to Paris, I found a copy of this book at a bouquiniste on the Quai de la Tournelle. I can honestly say it has never left my bedside. Colette, born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in 1873, was a ferocious talent, a novelist, memoirist, journalist, and colossal French cultural figure until her death in 1954. Earthly Paradise is an autobiography in essays, and hers is an extraordinary story. Born in small-town Burgundy, she was a showgirl at the Moulin Rouge, a traveling performer, was married twice, lived as a lesbian for a decade, had a facelift in the 1920s and at the height of her literary fame, opened a beauty salon in Paris. She was to the core a sensualist and though she claimed to dislike feminism, she was a tower of female strength. But the reason this book—just one of her fifty-five—endures is her achingly gorgeous writing.… show more.

“On the morning of its first birthday, a baby was found floating in a cello case in the English Channel.” From the opening line this is a story you will fall in love with!  Sofie, the orphaned baby in the cello case, is rescued from a shipwreck by an elderly gentleman called Charles who decides to raise her himself. He does an excellent job and I adore Sofie’s bravery, her love of knowledge, and her passion for adventure. Certain that her mother is still alive, Sofie and Charles set off for Paris to look for her, believing that you “never ignore a possible.” This is a fabulous book about pursuing your dreams and the power of hope. Plus the writing is just gorgeous!  

This is the most touching love story I have ever read. I do not tend to read period dramas, and so I was hesitant to read a book set during the first world war. However, this book had me in tears so many times. I read this book over ten years ago, yet it is still my favorite love story of all time to date. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Five-year-old Peony narrates the story of her life in Southern France and the imaginary world which she creates with the younger Margot. Known as Pea, she lives in a rundown farmhouse, where her recently bereaved and heavily pregnant English mother sleeps most of the time. Bold and brave, Pea’s ability to cope with absent parenting is beautifully imagined. She looks after herself and Margo and makes forays into the community her mother has rejected. The language she uses and her understanding of the world is delightfully quirky.

Hazan knows every nook and cranny of his city. He exults in the buildings and architecture, but his main subject is the people who wove the fabric of its diverse communities and their histories. He takes us on a historical journey that passes from the salons of the old aristocracy to the artisanal districts where popular, revolutionary activism was born. Hazan makes no attempt to conceal his left-wing sympathies, but he is equally at home admiring the Art Nouveau gems of the well-heeled 16th arrondissement as he is enjoying the vibrant, ethnically diverse northern districts of the city. Hazan’s love of the human life of Paris shines through.