100 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. 

I found Suber’s book eye-opening about film. His insight into the true meaning of films was enlightening. I liked the way he examined film, sometimes minute by minute, to reveal their true meaning. He reminded me of the true influence that films have on society and society’s influence on film.

His writing was clear and concise, and he inspired me to add more depth to my own writing. 

If you feel inhibited about making up stories and telling them to children, this is the book for you. Encouraging you to spin golden tales, Nancy Mellon shows how you can become a confident storyteller and enrich your family with the power of story. Children love the unique and human quality of storytelling, and parents and teachers alike can learn this practical, magical art with Nancy’s methods, tips and resources. This book may help give you storytelling wings - even if you didn’t think you could fly this way! It is a must for any adult who seeks to enrich and deepen communications with the young ones in their life.

I’ve been recommending Larry’s book for decades! This book got me hooked on plotting and helped me to see clearly how novels have specific scenes in specific places. It’s all part of expected, time-tested storytelling.

I love how Larry uses architecture and engineering phraseology because that’s what fiction writers are doing: constructing a story. And that story needs to be solid, on a well-built foundation. If you don’t learn and master the six core competencies (you’ll have to check out the book to learn what these are), your novel won’t hold together. 

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. 

Elements of this book feel made for me – a woman, alone on her sheep farm on a remote British island, faces predatory danger that straddles the line between real and imagined, internal and external. The writing is pure poetry, each detail telegraphing threat.

A stark natural world surrounds and encroaches on the home that strong, complex, reclusive Jake shares with her dog named Dog (as soon as this good boy was introduced, the stakes ratcheted). I can’t shake this frightening and moving exploration of misogyny, patriarchal terror, and trauma.

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.