96 Books Like Charting Stars

As a child, one of my favorite places was in the top branches of a tree. From up there I could watch the world pass by, remaining invisible. I could make up stories about the world below and no one would challenge me. The second best place for me was inside the story of a book, the kind that took you to magical places where children always found a way to win the day. I knew when I “grew up” I would write one of those empowering books. I became a middle school teacher and have since read many wonderful books for this age. Enjoy my list of favorites.  

I was born in Scotland. I grew up in Scotland. The family house contained no television, but it did contain a vast wealth of books, music and life. As a result, I learned to read at a really young age then set about working my way through my father’s myriad books. Stories, songs and Nature have always been my solace. In addition to being Scottish, the five books on my list are so innovative that they transcend mere words on a page; there’s a lyrical quality to the lines, music in their cadence, and animals (non-human ones – the best kind!) infusing the stories with deeper significance and subtext.

Who knows why, but I have always been enticed by absurdities, paradoxes, incongruities — I use them in my talks, articles, and books — of everyday lives, our humanity, and mysteries of our ‘going on.’ Reflections on being human can be triggered by humour such as Cambridge’s Beyond the Fringe and New York’s sitcom Seinfeld — within which I wallow — as well as by lengthy philosophical works and novels. My work draws on bafflements: for example, shampoo instructions “Lather, rinse, repeat” (making shampoo-ing infinite?); Barmaid to Peter Cook, “Bitter?”, reply being “Just tired”— and Samuel Beckett’s “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Yes, I go on.

I have a passion for this because I feel that books nowadays focus more on being dark to shock, and while everyone deserves to read what they like, I don’t want people to lose sight of things such as happy endings. There’s enough darkness in the world and reading should make people smile.  

J.D. Foslan is the author of Loki’s Saga: A Novel of the Norse Gods and has been a practicing Polytheist and mystic for over a decade. The author’s other interests include the Frisian language spoken by roughly a half-million people in the Netherlands.

I write cozy mysteries about a house flipper turned sleuth in fictional Crocus Heights, Minnesota. My father was a carpenter, and I was his helper. My childhood was spent on a farm, with the biggest event of the week being a trip to the local library, where I checked out seven books. I would prop my library book in front of my school book and read in class whenever I could. My favorites were mysteries, and later romances, and now cozy mysteries, which combine a bit of both. I am always fascinated by people and their motivations, and that is what I enjoy in all the authors I recommend.

I've always loved reading romance, and something about those jealous, possessive, alpha males just always got my heart racing. I love a hero who's all in from the get-go and will do anything for the woman he loves. He knows what he wants and goes after it. I also get how crazy busy we can be. I don't know about you, but I don't always have time to sit down and read a super long novel. Insta-love romances are short and spicy and don't take more than an hour or two to read. You can count on my insta-love stories to be filled with heat, passion, and happily ever afters.

I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.

I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.

I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.