100 Books Like Before & After You & Me

Jodi Picoult and Jenny Boylan have created a masterful novel on teenaged love and injustice.

Like an onion, the radiating relationships provide a platform for deep-dives into social issues. Woven throughout the book are detailed subplots on everything from beekeeping to gender discourse.

I love the story behind the book's title. There actually is Mad Honey, which can muddle people's thinking, and has been used to win battles in history. 

I especially appreciated the authors' notes. "What do I want the reader to take from this book?" Jodi asks rhetorically. "Nothing. I don't want the reader to take anything. But to give something, to give to the world." What an accomplishment, what a treasure.

Before even finishing the book, I'd ordered a copy for my beekeeper sister-in-law!

Want to spend 10 glorious hours with Meryl Streep?

I loved her audiobook performance of Tom Lake. Her intonation mirrors the exact qualities that the main characters, who are actors, strive for: neither underacted nor overacted. Just genuine. 

Ann Patchett is a treasure, and in Tom Lake, she effortlessly navigates two timelines: one in which Lara tells her daughters about meeting famous actor Peter Duke in a long-ago play. These scenes are just as compelling as the flashbacks in which we learn about her time with Duke before he became a famous movie star.

It's a talent, the ability to tell a mostly ordinary life in a page-turning way. Her imagery is magnificent. Every scene is wondrous. Touching. So real.

I adored the intertwined storylines in The Magnolia Palace. 

Fiona Davis is famous for her historical fiction which unearths little-known true stories. She sets this book in dual timelines, between 1919 and 1966, until the two characters meet in the present day. Her heroine’s gripping drama takes her from losing her mother, to being sought for questioning in her landlord's death, to landing a job as a private secretary in The Frick House. Along the way, we get an insider's view of art, architecture, and the rich inner lives of colorful characters.

Davis depicts the world of fashion and modeling, taking inspiration from real-life model Audrey Munson. I loved learning about Munson, whose likeness can be found on statues around New York City. 

The Magnolia Palace is magnificent!

The Chao’s are a mother-daughter duo who have created an absorbing, beautifully-written story.

Each scene is brought to life with well-wrought details. This time period is personally meaningful for me, as my grandparents were a well-off family in Shanghai who left everything behind to forge a new life in the U.S. 

Impressively, Claire Chao strikes the perfect balance between keeping the authenticity of the Chinese names and vernacular while making the storyline clear for an English-speaking audience. I loved being transported to this long-ago world, and am glad that Remembering Shanghai has captured this time and place for posterity.

Brown is the author of the New York Times bestselling Red Rising saga, and Dark Age is his fifth novel in the series. Set in a dystopian world where humans have been genetically enhanced and conquered the solar system, the fifth book takes you through the joys of battle to the crushing agony of losing friends on the battlefield. To punctuate just how little time there is to grieve while in battle, he kills beloved characters with a stroke of the pen and almost an afterthought, focusing more on the effort than people. Many veterans found the devastation of losing a friend in combat only to have to return to battle moments later within the pages of this book, and Brown specifically interviewed combat veterans to ensure his depiction was accurate. The result? A gripping page-turner that has you riding high on adrenaline, only to be crushed under the weight… show more.

Stallings was there, on the frontlines, fighting. He was wounded, lost a leg. He received the Croix de Guerre from the French government and the Silver Star and Purple Heart from his government. Reading his book, you’re right there with the first Americans landing in France and then following them and those who came after right up until the armistice on November 11, 1918. He also published an award-winning photographic history of the war, wrote a novel about his experiences and, in 1924, with playwright Maxwell Anderson, co-wrote the famous play that twice was turned into a movie, “What Price Glory.” If you want to know what World War I was like for America, it’s well worth the read.

I was especially interested in the Great Depression years of this biography. Joe Dew graduated from Redfield, Iowa, two years after my mother graduated from the neighboring rival town of Dexter. Joe Dew’s father was a blacksmith, which was needed less and less during those times. Joe needed to find work. He had such drive and determination to find work, even eventually following the sweep of wheat harvesting from Texas and into the Pacific Northwest.

During Joe Dew's WWII years, he survived the Battle of the Bulge as a tank commander--with a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and a Distinguished Service Cross. The G.I. Bill enabled him to finish college in Ames, Iowa, then enjoy a career with General Motors.

I read this book shortly after returning home from Iraq and remained haunted for months. Despite the novel being a work of fiction, it details the modern veteran's struggle to find his place in society and his unadulterated embrace of violence and camaraderie that permeates each corner of his life. Powers’ explanation of combat is similar to the suspended moment before a car crash is told in prose that sings, and probably why he won the PEN/Hemingway Award for this work of art. 

I love books that inspire me and remind me that there is a way to overcome every hardship, if we will just keep our heads up and make the right choices. Tess Wakefield makes me remember too, that no matter what, there is always someone who will want to help, in the best way they know how. Her main characters, Cassie and Luke, do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, or maybe all the wrong things, for all the right reasons. They do suffer the consequences of those choices, but they learn a lot about themselves along the way. My favorite thing about Purple Hearts is how it teaches us that life is short and that we shouldn’t live with regrets. 

It is an old book that was popular when I first started training in crystal healing. The course I was on brought up many issues that I needed to work on, especially a particular fear of being the center of attention and appreciating my talents. It came into my life at a time where I could put into practice the concepts in the book.

It has become a classic to support people who are in the process of spiritual and personal development, as the two usually go hand in hand, and it is a book I still recommend to students.