Here are 100 books that Vow fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a therapist, and I work with people from all walks of life and with all manner of suffering. I am drawn to memoirs because I consider it the real self-help genre of literature. Like good therapy, a good memoir will make sense of a story: how it happened, why it happened, how it affected the person, and what they did (do) to face it, and thrive in spite of it. As a writer, I take pride in bringing that same quality to my work. I have been asked many times, “How can you bear to reveal all that stuff about yourself, especially when it’s unflattering?” The answer is always “Isn’t that the part that matters? Isn’t that the part where the growth occurred? Isn’t that what makes the story worth telling?”
At sixteen years old, Darin Strauss had just received his first driver’s license and was on his first unsupervised drive, when a classmate, on a bicycle, swerved in front of his car. She was killed instantly. There was never a question of actual culpability: bystanders described the girl on the bike as literally driving in front of his vehicle, as though intentionally (a theory corroborated by suicidal thoughts recorded in her last diary entry the night before the accident). But this did not alleviate the trauma of killing someone, and the anguish and guilt that Darin Strauss carried forward for many, many years into his adult life, and probably always will. “Half a Life” refers to how he lived thereafter; halfway in his own existence, and the other half in constant preoccupation with the girl whose life was no more. This book will fill you with such empathy and compassion…
In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father.…
I am a psychiatrist-novelist. As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen many patients struggling with infertility and miscarriage. As a novelist, I became intrigued with the idea of having false pregnancy (pseudocyesis) be a key element in a character’s life. My primary goal was to create an engrossing good read. I also wanted to show the psychological trauma of infertility/miscarriage. Another goal was to portray psychiatric patients, the psychiatrists who treat them, and psychiatry in a realistic way. I’m so gratified by the reader reviews: “gripping”...“spell-binding”...“rich, satisfying read”...“a page-turner”...“Illuminating”.
This extraordinary book combines a lived experience with the powerful writing of an accomplished author. Unexpectedly, in her mid-thirties, she finds a man to love and a baby is on the way. But then, the agony: the baby dies in utero in the ninth month. She tackles head-on the deepest feelings and questions this brings. I like the way she unsparingly describes her experience and her grief, and then how she processes this and finds a way to move on.
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from…
My name is K. E. Garland, and I am a recovering female sex addict. I didn’t know it until I was 42. In 2014, I had a rock-bottom moment that forced me to confront my compulsions. I self-therapized through writing. As a blogger, I described ways I’d buried interrelated traumas. During the nine years it took for me to research and write my memoir, there were few books about female sex addiction. Now, there are several! The books I’ve recommended not only provide a well-rounded understanding of a little-known phenomenon, but they also help to demarginalize stories of how women live with behavioral addictions. I hope you’ll find them useful.
I really enjoyed this book because it was the first narrative I read about a woman who was only a sex addict. Sex addiction is primarily viewed as something men (and out-of-control celebrities) deal with. I thought I was alone as a female sex addict until I read about Cohen’s life.
Her book helped me feel less alone, and it showed me that I shouldn’t be ashamed to tell my story. I saw myself in each of her experiences, especially when she described being a sex-craved teenager.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction-not just to sex, but to male attention-Loose Girl is also the story of a young woman who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning.
For everyone who knew that girl.
In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a you try to control someone by handing over your body, when the touch…
I grew up reading books that featured strong women, including Little Women and Anne of Green Gables so it only made sense that I would go on to write a book featuring four strong women. As much as I love reading fiction, since I am a professor, my writing is mainly academic and/or non-fiction and I aim to make research translatable and interesting to all – including mainstream audiences. Currently, I am working on a new book about evangelical Christian women and politics, which I started in 2020 right before the presidential election. No matter where I live or work, exploring the various facets of women’s lives will remain my driving pursuit.
Karr's memoir diverges from my other recommendations insofar as it’s a memoir and features just one woman’s voice.
I found this book while living in Madrid over a decade ago and remember sneaking out into the living room late at night to read it. Karr is a master storyteller and a master memoirist – highly relatable even if you’ve never struggled with alcoholism.
The long awaited sequel to the beloved and bestselling 'The Liars' Club' and 'Cherry' - a memoir about a self-professed 'blackbelt sinner's' descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness, and her astonishing resurrection.
'If you'd told me, even a year before I start taking my son to church regular that I'd wind up whispering my sins in the confessional or on my knees saying the rosary, I would've laughed myself cockeyed. More likely pastime? Pole dancer. International spy. Drug mule. Assassin.'
Mary Karr's prizewinning 'The Liars' Club' chronicled her hardscrabble Texas childhood and sparked a renaissance in memoir, cresting…
I’m an English professor, a poet, a lover of reading, and a happy husband and father. How did all this happen; what historical processes made my good fortunes possible? I get answers to these questions from great fiction and great nonfiction. It’s hard to find two more sensitive and beautifully written novels about marriage’s personal and social dimensions than Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and E. M. Forster’s Howards End. Their psychological insights are complemented by two marriage historians and one sociologist with broad knowledge about love’s evolution over the centuries. I’ve read these books multiple times and shared them with many students (and friends)! They never get old.
This book got me thinking about the future with its bold claim that today's best marriages are the best ones the world has ever known—because (some) spouses are freer and more compatible than those of earlier eras. But it also got me thinking with its claim that for the less fortunate members of today’s societies, including people struggling with poverty, marriage can be very hard.
The book also ranges back in time to show what marriages were like—and what people expected from them—in past eras. These history lessons are super-valuable. Also, even though this isn’t primarily a self-help book, it gave me lots of food to think about my marriage and why it’s so valuable to me.
“After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss.
The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be…
I’m a Ph.D. clinical psychologist and tenured associate professor at The City College of New York, where I teach couple and family therapy, multicultural issues in psychotherapy, and research methods. I've conducted research on a couple's distress prevention program. I’ve been a licensed therapist for 30+ years working primarily with “last chance couples” – those on the brink of dissolving their relationship. I attended the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, where I received my B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy, and obtained my doctorate at Duke University. I have also been on the faculty of Bellevue Hospital/NYU Medical Center, and the Ackerman Institute for the Family. I lecture internationally.
This bestselling classic book is designed especially for happy, newlywed or otherwise newly committed couples to teach them research-based communication and problem-solving skills, how to address “hidden” or broader issues like power and control, closeness and caring, respect and recognition, integrity, commitment, trust, and acceptance, which fuel specific conflicts around money, sex, childrearing, housework, in-laws, and others.
I trained with Drs. Markman and Stanley way back in the 90s and brought PREP to NYU Medical Center and ran many couple workshops, and I’ve seen how effective these relationship tools can be for happy couples eager to…
A thorough revision with a new DVD of couples in action, using the PREP method for strengthening marriage and avoiding divorce court The third edition of the best-selling classic on marriage enhancement and divorce prevention, features the latest research and changes of heart in our culture and society. New and revised, Fighting for Your Marriage is based on the widely acclaimed PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program) approach. Groundbreaking studies have found that couples can use the strategies of this approach to handle conflict more constructively, protect their happiness, and reduce the odds of breaking up. The book is based…
I’m an author and a romantic. Put the two together and it makes sense for me to write love stories. I’ve always been interested in relationships and fascinated by how complex our feelings make us when we fall in love. There’s a love story in all my books, but for the last three novels, a love story has been thestory. I’m a Londoner too, and I like it when a city becomes another character in a book, as I hope London has in The Central Line.
This is a slow-burn of a novel about two couples. Each character struggles to maintain their marriage under the pressure of children and modern life. Each tries to hold on to their own identity while existing inside a family. The novel looks at mental health, infidelity, cooking, and Black culture; it has a soundtrack, with songs that mean something to the characters and capture the essence of the time. The story is resonant with images of modern London. It asks a question about the centrality of the city and the anxiety that comes from leaving it.
Hailed as a "lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart" (Naomi Alderman), London-based author Diana Evans received international acclaim for Ordinary People. In a crooked house in South London, Melissa feels increasingly that she's defined solely by motherhood, while Michael mourns the thrill of their romance. In the suburbs, Stephanie's aspirations for bliss on the commuter belt compound Damian's itch for a bigger life. Longtime friends from the years when passion seemed permanent, the couples have stayed in touch, gathering for births and anniversaries. But as bonds fray, the lines once clearly marked by wedding bands…
I am a professor of American literary history. Still, as an undergraduate, I studied with a charismatic, postmodern French-American fiction writer, Raymond Federman, who, in a theatrical accent, called me by my last name, “Pel-tone.” Atop the Kurt Vonnegut I’d read in high school that gave me my taste for crazy, socially-conscious novels that I have tried myself also to write, I imbibed the books Federman sent my way: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett. In years since, I’ve championed innovative novels through my own small press, Starcherone Books. I am an artist whose greatest passion is discovering writing that makes me see in new ways.
What a breathtaking scope Tokarczuk gives us! This Polish novelist was new to me when I first picked this book up, but even though she won a Nobel Prize, I think she will be new to most U.S. readers.
This book begins as a meditation on travel and human movement, moving episodically through different fictional and historical plots, investigating sexualities, artificial humans, geographies, and the human compulsion not to sit still. But this just scratches the surface, as she has a kind of Garcia Márquez touch for identifying stories where bodies (both real and fake) exert their magic, even as the stories she tells are purportedly historical.
Did an 18th-century noblewoman during wartime smuggle a jar that contained Chopin’s heart in her undergarments? Tokarczuk answers: Is this so unbelievable?
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A visionary work of fiction by "A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald" (Annie Proulx)
"A magnificent writer." — Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize-winning author of Secondhand Time
"A beautifully fragmented look at man's longing for permanence.... Ambitious and complex." — Washington Post
From the incomparably original Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin's heart is carried back to Warsaw in…
My obsession with decision-making books began in elementary school, when I read tons of Choose Your Own Adventure books. When I realized they wouldn’t prepare me for life (turns out, dragons are rare), I began reading others. I got an MBA at Stanford, where I took a class taught by labor economist Myra Strober that changed my life by helping me navigate the money and love decisions I encountered while climbing the corporate ladder at Gap Inc. and raising two young kids with my husband. My former professor and I wrote Money and Loveto empower more people to live more intentional lives and feel more confident about their big life decisions.
Dual-career couples are on the rise – chances are, if you plan on having a long-term relationship or even getting married at some point, you will have to navigate this two-person high-wire act. Jennifer Petriglieri offers a useful take on the three big questions all couples need to grapple with over time for their careers and relationship to flourish jointly: How can we make this work? (handling the logistics of combining two busy lives and often raising young kids); What do we really want? (navigating the inevitable questions that arise in mid-life); and Who are we know? (once our identities and bodies are much changed from the ones that first attracted our partners). I loved the data, stories, and exercises in this book, and have applied them to my own life.
Every couple wants a happy relationship and a meaningful career but how do we balance both?
In Couples that Work, Professor Jennifer Petriglieri shifts away from the language of sacrifice and trade-offs and focuses on how couples can successfully tackle the challenges they will face throughout their lives--together. The book explores key questions like:
- Can you and your partner have equally important careers or must you prioritise one over the other? - How can you juggle children or family commitments without sacrificing your work? - Does every decision require compromise or can you find solutions that benefit you both?…
I am invested in how women juxtapose the day-to-day with the bizarre. I am curious about how women balance their lives with the insoluble and how this contributes to the fluidity of their identities. I live with women, I work with women, I shop with them, eat with them, sit next to them on the bus, I am friends with women, laugh with them, I pray with them, I am these women. In whichever format my work takes shape–whether subtle or direct, either as a performer, writer, designer, or community catalyst, I am committed to intentionally making space for womanhood. Please enjoy my book list.
I am in love with Lesley’s writing, and everyone should be. Period. I will recommend this book a thousand times. The first time I read it, I was left feeling hopeful–hopeful that stories are soft, intentional, deliberate, magical things that can shift people and places enough to make a difference or change minds. With each story in this collection, Lesley peels away the layers (sometimes softly, sometimes jarring) of lives, relationships, and women.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE LEONARD PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home.
In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker, A woman desperate for a child weaves one out…
