Here are 100 books that A Long Way from Paris fans have personally recommended if you like
A Long Way from Paris.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I’ve been fascinated with living life on my own terms since I was a child and drew pictures with inspirational quotes such as ‘go your own way!’ and ‘aim for the moon!’ Fast forward to my thirties and I quit my 9-5 career to embrace what it means to live out my wildest dreams. I was terrified but, aren’t we all? I can’t get enough of inspiring books that teach me how to live big, believe in myself, and push far beyond what society tells us we should do. All of which helped me to build my dream life and live it. Now get out there and make your dream life happen!
Driving Over Lemons is a quintessential travel book that inspired me to throw away my regular life and start exploring the world.
This classic tale takes you to far-flung shores bathed in sunshine, filled with misadventures, and bursting with glorious food. What more could you need to start dreaming, take a leap, and make your perfect life a reality?
This is my go-to for the start of any big project and always gives me the courage to go for it and laugh in the face of adversity on the way.
A special anniversary edition with an updated chapter set 25 years on by Chris Stewart.
Over two decades ago we set up Sort of Books to help our friend, the some-time Genesis drummer Chris Stewart, bring his sunlit stories of life on a Spanish mountain farm to print. Ever the optimist, Chris hoped to earn enough money to buy a second-hand tractor for his farm. He got his tractor, as the book spent a year on the Sunday Times Top 10 charts and went on to sell a million and a half copies.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Linda is an award-winning author and travel enthusiast. Her two-book memoir series, French Illusions, is based on her diaries from 1979 and 1980. She has completed an adaption of these books into a screenplay and is currently seeking representation. Originally from Seattle, Linda now resides in Saint Petersburg, Florida with her longtime husband near her youngest daughter and grandchildren. To this day, she tells people that she is thankful for her storybook life.
With humor and grace, Valerie describes her trials and tribulations as she transitions from a divorce and corporate job in Johannesburg, to renting and eventually purchasing an old barge in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. As she points out, “one of the first things you learn about living on a barge is that an awful lot of stuff is going to end up in the water.”
In this account of her first year of living on a barge in Rotterdam's Oude Haven, Valerie Poore’s overriding impression is that “one of the first things you learn about living on a barge is that an awful lot of stuff is going to end up in the water”.The year in question is 2001, and at forty something, the author takes the plunge to exchange her life in the corporate fast lane of Johannesburg, for life on a historic Dutch barge. Every month brings new challenges, obstacles and experiences. She meets a whole world of fascinating people, not least of…
I’m a writer, living in southwest France since 1995, and previously in Kenya for 20 years. Travel has always been my passion. I’ve written about hiking across France in Best Foot Forward, touring the perimeter by camping car in Travels with Tinkerbelle, cycling through the Marne Valley in The Valley of Heaven and Hell, and a Kenyan safari in Safari Ants, Baggy Pants and Elephants. Recently, due to COVID and with an elderly dog that suffers from separation anxiety, I couldn't leave for any length of time; I satisfy my wanderlust by reading other people’s adventures. My taste is for tales that include plenty of humour, and I’ve selected five which I have particularly enjoyed.
This made me laugh until I cried. It blends a harebrained idea with a social experiment. Two men decide to cycle from the southernmost tip of England to the far north of Scotland. They have no bicycles. They also have no clothes, food, or money.
Barefoot, wearing nothing but Union Jack boxer shorts, off they set in a freezing gale. The outcome of their journey will depend entirely on the kindness and generosity of strangers.
"...spent last night laughing so much my coffee came out my eyes..." "...this book is quite simply the best I've read in years..." "...a completely bonkers challenge and a brilliantly funny read, I couldn't put it down..." "...it reminded me of some of Danny Wallace and Dave Gorman's best bits..." "...this wonderful story had me crying with laughter more often than not..." "...inspiring, uplifting, need I say more? Quite brilliant..." "...funny, totally engrossing and actually quite moving..." "...one of the most heart-warming, genuinely funny books I have read in a long time..." …
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
The concept of whether a woman can truly be the subject of her own life has always fascinated me. It was an invisible struggle I didn’t know I had. Until I set out to finish the 54 unmet dreams of my late father, whose life had been cut short in a car crash. It wasn’t until I looked at the world through main character lenses, the kind that just seem to come more naturally to men, that I was able to see myself truly. This is just one lesson from my book. If you’ve ever felt different, remember: you’re not. You just haven’t seen yourself as the main character yet. These books will guide you.
This book was an integral resource when I began to write my book. It helped me shape the structure of my book.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.”
This, and other books I've read, did this. My favorite books of all time have inventive structures. And reading these helped me find mine.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
I have been to Europe a handful of times, exploring Paris, Italy, Malta, Spain, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Amsterdam. Europe lends itself perfectly to be immortalised in literature. The continent is steeped in thousands of years of charming history, oozing out of the cobblestoned streets and painted in layers on the buildings. Scratch the surface and a new, richer layer comes to the fore, exciting and amazing anew. Europe inevitably turns into one of the important characters in any book set there and many a writer have managed to capture its essence in their work. Alongside Peter Sarstedt, Europe inspired my work, taking the reader along on a wondrous journey.
John Baxter is a master at his craft. He describes his life in Paris in a vivid, easy-to-read style, never failing to delve into the history of the streets he is roaming. He has published a number of books on Paris and its historic neighbourhoods, all immersing the reader in the sights, sounds, and culture of Paris. This is probably the next best thing to living in Paris yourself.
From the incomparable John Baxter, award-winning author of the bestselling The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, a sumptuous and definitive portrait of Paris through the seasons, highlighting the unique tastes, sights, and changing personality of the city in spring, summer, fall, and winter.
When the common people of France revolted in 1789, one of the first ways they chose to correct the excesses of the monarchy and the church was to rename the months of the year. Selected by poet and playwright Philippe-Francois-Nazaire Fabre, these new names reflected what took place at…
Of the 16 books I have written, to date, every single one of them features strong women. I like to think I'm channeling a little bit of myself in there, or perhaps I'm simply projecting the sort of strength I'd like to possess. I don't know. What I do know is that with all that's going on in the world, it's more important now than ever before to remember how strong we can all be. To be strong women, to support strong women, to seek inspiration from strong women, and to inspire the next generation of women to do the same. And that's why I've chosen to recommend books on this subject.
This isn't a book I'd usually pick up, but after hearing rave reviews, I decided to give it a go, and I'm so glad I did! It's a slow-burn suspenseful crime novel, which would usually lose my attention as I'm more a fan of fast-paced reads, but Will's writing is so wonderfully rich and vibrant that it just wouldn't put me down! Yes, it had me that gripped.
The story follows Thanh, a young Vietnamese woman who has been trafficked into the country (England) along with her sister. They get separated, and Thanh is sold off as a 'wife' to a farmer in the Fenns who keeps her there, hidden from the rest of the world.
The story is told in first person, and it gives a pretty stark insight into the domestic horrors of human trafficking and the bleak options she faces. But it's also an incredible story of…
'Outstanding. The best thriller in years' MARTINA COLE 'One of the best thrillers I have read in years' THE OBSERVER 'I couldn't put it down. A visceral nightmare of a book with one of the most evil villains I've come across in a long time. Powerful writing' STEVE CAVANAGH 'Short, sharp shocker' THE TIMES 'an early contender for one of the best books of the year' S MAGAZINE
He is her husband. She is his captive.
Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.
She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I grew up on a small farm, expecting to return to it after college, but I was inspired by books and by a teacher to focus instead on alleviating hunger and poverty problems in developing countries and two years working with the rural poor in Colombia in the Peace Corps helped me understand the need to attack these problems at both the household and policy levels. I taught courses and wrote on agricultural development issues at Virginia Tech for forty years and managed agricultural projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I am passionate about improving food security and human health and treating people with respect regardless of their circumstances.
I love this timeless novel because it helps me picture, better than any book I have read, what it is like to struggle as the wife of a poor rice farmer in India.
Rukmani, the book’s main character, endures endless battles with nature, poverty, hunger, discrimination, and crime, yet remains optimistic about life and devoted to her husband until the end.
Reading this book in college was one factor that helped me decide to join the Peace Corps and devote much of my career to working with low-income farmers in developing countries.
The acclaimed million-copy bestselling novel about a woman’s struggle to find happiness in a changing India.
Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. With remarkable fortitude and courage, she meets changing times and fights poverty and disaster.
This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loves—an…
I grew up on a fifth-generation family farm, schooled around the dining table by stories of bootleggers, hoodlums, and environmental shysters. Raised by parents and grandparents who believed in the ancient wisdom of husbandry versus the growing use of chemicals and crop dusters. Those who believed what was good for all was good enough for one. The common good versus the selfish exploitation of land, animals, and labor.
I loved this book because it shows how class disparity still exists, how it complicates a teenage love affair and transcends family secrets.
As a reader, I found myself rooting for all of the main characters, though they are facing impossible choices, working against each other and their own best interests, which are mercurial and contradictory.
*****AMAZON'S BOOK OF THE YEAR ***** INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER REESE WITHERSPOON'S BOOK CLUB PICK FEARNE COTTON'S HAPPY PLACE BOOK CLUB PICK AMANDA LAMB BOOK CLUB PICK
'An unforgettable story of love, loss, and the choices that shape our lives . . . but it's also a masterfully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Seriously, that ending?! I did not see it coming' REESE WITHERSPOON
'This story of a love affair is so addictive it could be at home with the thrillers . . . A simmering book of secrets,…
I am an award-winning author and illustrator of 20 board books and over 20 picture books, who very occasionally illustrates books for other authors too. I was born in Czechoslovakia, but have spent the second half of my life in England.
I could choose any of Eric Carle’s books purely for his beautiful, timeless illustrations, but my choice this time is Dream Snow. It is a lift-the-flap book about a farmer who falls asleep on Christmas Eve and wakes up just in time to deliver Christmas presents to his animals. They are called One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. The book has a lovely festive atmosphere and anyone who has come home tired from playing in the snow and fallen asleep in front of the fire will immediately recognise the cosy feeling of this book.
It's December 24th, and the old farmer settles down for a winter's nap, wondering how Christmas can come when there is no snow! In his dream he imagines a snowstorm covering him and his animals—named One, Two, Three, Four and Five—in a snowy blanket. But when the farmer awakens, he finds that it has really snowed outside, and now he remembers something! Putting on his red suit, he goes outside and places gifts under the tree for his animals, bringing holiday cheer to all.
"Few in number are the parents who have made it through their toddler's years on just…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Most of my published titles are about animals or involve them in some fashion. My Cats in the Mirror alien rescue cat series has been winning awards for a decade, and the two dog companion books have won the hearts of middle-grade readers, with a third companion book due out in 2026. Even my science fiction books for adults are about half-tiger/half-human creatures. Cats are definitely my favorite, but give me a book about a cute animal, and I’m happy.
I mean, not sure how much I need to say about the delight this book has brought to children since 1952. After being asked to read it to a group of first graders recently, I dissolved into tears having to read the scene where Charlotte dies, alone. The students that day thought I was silly. Yeah, as a kid, that didn’t bother me much. As an adult, well.
There’s something in this tale of love, friendship, and courage for all ages. Excellent for read-aloud if you are willing to commit to using different voices and really hamming it up.
Puffin Classics: the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child.
On foggy mornings, Charlotte's web was truly a thing of beauty . Even Lurvy, who wasn't particularly interested in beauty, noticed the web when he came with the pig's breakfast. And then he took another look and he saw something that made him set his pail down. There, in the centre of the web, neatly woven in block letters, was a message. It said: SOME PIG!
This is the story of a little girl named Fern, who loves a little pig named Wilbur - and of Wilbur's dear friend,…
