Books like Burning Brightly

During a plague that killed a quarter of Florence’s citizens, Boccaccio crafted an exuberant, entertaining, death-defying work of literature. In this book, seven young women and three young men taking refuge in a country villa swap 100 tales of love, lust, mischief, and treachery. 

I read a translation of The Decameron during a sabbatical in Italy and was swept back in time. In every village, I’d look around a piazza and see characters straight from its pages: wily merchants, corrupt politicians, clever wives, henpecked husbands, bumbling fools. This book still resonates in the 21st century—a tribute to Boccaccio’s skill as a spell-weaver. Some of his stories are shamelessly, laughably bawdy. But all remind us that, even as everything changes, our shared humanity remains the same.

The Jewish stories I know best were first told in Yiddish, but there is so much more to Jewish storytelling.

This little book is a treasury of stories told by Moroccan Jewish immigrants to Canada, who spoke Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Spanish, and French. The author introduces each storyteller and includes photos of them. Most of their stories happen in Morocco, but some in Montreal, including a bitterly humorous first impression, and an amazing miracle.

Many of these stories have a fairy-tale feeling – including the personal experiences. The Jnun (Jinns), also known as “our friends from the underworld” are very real to these storytellers, though they no longer bother people in Canada because there is so much metal around, keeping them away. 

Stories can be dangerous. People who love storytelling are fascinated by Newfoundland, where isolation nourished a rich oral culture (in a distinct English dialect).

Barbara Rieti introduces many colourful Newfoundlanders and the stories they have to tell – but not about long-ago times. These stories are about witches who live among us, or who are dead but well-remembered.

You can imagine how dangerous it might be to be called a witch, even with witch-burning gone out of fashion. (In its place, people cast spells to give witches the burning pain of bladder infections.) But “witches” could also use their reputations to get things they needed.

The author is very scholarly and does not believe there is any real witchcraft or magic behind these stories – but some of them left me wondering!

This is a book about stories of the land I live on.

My home is in Winnipeg, on the edge of the flatland called “the Prairies” in Canada and “the Great Plains” in the United States. But the land doesn’t care about the Canada-US border. And that border is nothing but an imposition on the older nations whose territory I live in: the Red River Métis, and the Anishinaabeg.

These Indigenous Peoples have ancient living traditions of oral storytelling, and this book, by Anishinaabeg scholars, celebrates their stories’ spiritual, practical, and political power.

A teaching shared by storyteller Kathleen Delores Westcott tells us “the story is a living being. It’s alive.” That teaching has helped me to understand how stories attract us, get inside us, change, and move across boundaries. 

As the title suggests, Williams’ book focuses on identifying the Moral Premise at the heart of your story idea and building around it. It’s a very thematic approach to storytelling. This Moral Premise essentially breaks the story into four components: a positive “virtue”, a negative “vice”, desirable consequences (success), and undesirable consequences (defeat). You can use this to create a simple structure of “Vice leads to undesirable consequences (defeat), while Virtue leads to desirable consequences (success)”. I'm admittedly oversimplifying it, but it's a great tactic to get to the heart of your story's theme and strengthen your narrative. 

Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, is brutally honest, deftly observant, and at times frighteningly visceral.

The skill with which he brings a bad ear appointment or the eating of too many eggs to life is a reminder to me that to be a writer doesn’t mean to live as a celebrity. It means to take the mundane pieces of an ordinary life and invest them with purpose and excitement.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it allowed me to look at my life, at my weird relationship with eggs, and my tendency to sing out loud in shopping malls, as the very essence of my next story.

Equally compelling were the snippets of writing advice layered into King’s story, another reminder that advice, as well as inspiration, can be found just about anywhere. 

I feel deeply connected to this book because it helped me navigate the break-up of my marriage.

It puts into beautifully poetic words what I was feeling on an intuitive level about the transformative power of telling our own stories and the importance of ‘storying out’ unarticulated experiences.

Becoming a "storycatcher" and taking ownership of my story pulled me through a dark time and set me on the path toward a more empowering narrative. 

This is not even a motherhood-focused book, but it absolutely had to make this list. It completely transformed my motherhood journey. It helped me find my new identity in motherhood. It allowed me to recognize that I have stories to tell - about my experience as a mother and also about myself separate from motherhood.

It allowed me to take life a little slower and be more intentional and mindful in my living and parenting. It’s essentially what moved me to start writing my poetry book in the first place. It helped illuminate my life in a way I never noticed before. I am a better mother because of this book. 

Why do we tell stories? What power lies within storytelling? From the great myths and legends to enchanting fairy tales, parables, fables, and folk tales, stories can have a great healing and educative power. They come from our subconscious and imagination, deep inside us. They have much to teach us about ourselves and the world we create around us.

Described as a manual for ‘soul ecology’, in his book Kornberger first explores this ‘story power’, then explains how to apply it to help a child develop, or to heal and transform a child with difficulties. He then discusses the art and practicalities of creating new stories to help children with particular needs.

This is a valuable and inspiring book for teachers, parents, creative writers, and students of literature.

I love how the wonderful illustration of the tree with three children on the book's cover evoked my imagination to read this story. This feeling was reinforced when I opened the book and read the quotation on the first page: “So much world all at once” by Wislawa Syzmborska.

It is, indeed, a fascinating story that immersed me in a rich plot and introduced me to a diversity of characters who gained life in the little town of Blackbird Tree.

In this story, I could see the mastery of creating a tapestry, with the written words as the threads that bring together different worlds, feelings, and emotions, like love, friendship, and forgiveness.