The most recommended books about authors

Just last year, a well-known publication unveiled its list of best books about writing—all by male authors. Talk about a missed opportunity!

I’m Still Writing compiles ideas about writing and creativity from a wide assortment of women authors. Some were new to me, but all are brilliant.

Two sections accompany each passage: A “Listen” passage encourages personal reflection, and a “Write” passage prompts you to pick up a pen. Designed as a weekly study, you could work through it and end up so much wiser after a year. Or just dive in and be inspired.

There are many historical novels about the Great Depression but Sold on a Monday moved me in particular. Perhaps I was drawn to it because it is a fictional account of actual circumstances. More likely, though, it is because, in one single story, Sold on a Monday is a lesson in the heart-wrenching decisions hundreds of thousands of people made to ensure their survival. As far-fetched as it sounds to us now, the notion of children being sold, or simply deposited on the front doorstep by their parents, was not uncommon during the Great Depression. The author was incredibly creative and thoughtful in the way she decided to tell the story, and that is perhaps the book’s greatest strength.

Guide is the fourth book in Cooper’s George Miles Cycle. This short novel is packed with so much to think about, even if what that includes will make your skin crawl.

If you are unfamiliar with Cooper’s work, this isn’t the book I’d recommend you start with, but his language is so precise that it’s hard to imagine the sentences being written in any other way. The shifting POV chapters take readers on a tour of the seedier parts of L.A., forcing us to examine and interrogate not only how we all tell our own stories, but also how some people then use those to erase or justify their complicity. 

This is a fascinating biography of Agatha Christie, who emerges as truly exceptional.

She is the daughter of wealthy Edwardian parents, destined for a good marriage, but all that changes when the family's money is lost. Agatha dares to become a nurse in World War I – it's grueling work. She trains as a pharmacist, where she learns all about the poisons she would use in her books. She marries a dashing pilot who betrays her with another woman.

Despite the sadness and difficulties she encounters, Agatha makes her name as the 'Queen of Crime,’' the most famous crime writer in the world. Whether you read Christie or not, you'll find this story of a woman's life throughout the upheavals of the twentieth century compelling.

Stories about women in radio are few and I was thrilled to find Radio Girls. Although it’s fiction, there is a real sense that the author did their research combining fact with fiction in the very early days of the BBC. In 1926, American-born Maisie Musgrave meets the challenges of rising from a secretary in a predominated male industry to become an unexpected heroine at a time when very few women were given the chance.  

Sixty-year-old Sophia Gregory feels that life has passed her by, until meeting three new friends who introduce her into the ‘Old Ducks’ Club’.

This book helps us realise that fun doesn’t have to stop when grey hair starts – and dancing til dawn isn’t just for the young ‘uns.

Jim Thompson’s novel is arguably San Diego’s greatest classic noir work.

While not a crime novel, it captures wartime San Diego through the glass darkly, and I was moved and unsettled by Thompson’s unsparing forays into the alienation of those who were the most exploited in the city.

Kit and I share some life similarities, she’s a working-class girl with a Birmingham background, published later in life, and I was keen to read her story. Written as scenes from childhood with sharp observation and wit, her book illustrates an unpredictable childhood. The daughter of an Irish mother and Caribbean father in a large and sometimes chaotic family, where there is love in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but not always at home. There are the familiar places, the family dynamics observed with the clarity of a child, and the tit-for-tat games her parents play - dad buys a new car, the next week, mum a harmonica and Davy Crockett hat. All quirks observed and challenging situations related with a lightness of touch and wit, a genuine pleasure to read.

Writers often struggle to think of themselves as “writers” because the world has us believing that we can only carry that title if we are successfully published, and of course words such as “success” and even “published” can be fraught with subjective controversy. One of the lessons I learned from Brenda Ueland, among other great thinkers, is that we need to focus first on our own authenticity and only much, much later dare we think about what the world might have to say. This allowed me to let go and move on and trust myself on my writing path. It wasn’t easy, but as emphasized in If You Want to Write, we will be all right if we believe in our inner richness.  

Who doesn’t love a good coming-of-age story—especially one set on the beautiful, summery, and storied beaches of Cape Cod?

It’s the type of location I find irresistible. Set in the 1980s, the book centers on a young, aspiring novelist named Eve who crosses path with a literary power couple at their Cape Cod home. She lands a job as a research assistant, falls in love with their intriguing son, and scores an invitation to their famous book party.

This novel made me nostalgic for the time I was Eve’s age, full of dreams and waiting for the world to open its arms to me! So atmospheric and evocative!

I was transported back to a time that I don’t often think about, a time that was magical while it lasted. I didn’t want the book to end!