Books like Dirt Music — picked by fans

Both my books have a survival theme. Whether it’s foraging for mushrooms, wild camping, or trying to survive lockdown, I’ve always been interested in the relationship between endurance and creativity; what happens when humans are pushed to their limits. After teaching English in a secondary school for 25 years, I decided that I wanted to write a book of my own. I hid away in my caravan in West Wales, living off tomato soup and marshmallows, to write The Island. The books on this list represent the full gamut of survival: stripping yourself raw, learning nature’s lore, healing, falling, getting back up again. Ultimately, to read is to escape into story. To read is to survive.

I’ve always been a reader. I love nothing more than to leap between the pages of a book and forget the rest of the world. The books I love take the world today and imagine it evolving into something slightly twisted and terrifying. Years of devouring this type of book led to me imagining my own dystopian worlds, and eventually, writing about them. As a woman who believes in equality, I’m naturally drawn to books which feature strong female characters or are written by women. The books on this list are among my favourites from the last four decades. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

The child’s immersion into nature is a most relevant theme for me as an environmental educator, but it is critical to America as a whole. Our future depends upon it. We continue to live in a culture that shoves nature into the background, something viewed as pleasant scenery but not truly interactive in our lives. The “store” has become the source of things to many young people. The current generation of American parents is not equipped to teach children about nature and its indelible place in our survival as a species; therefore, books must become surrogates in this mission. 

Growing up in the seventies in the UK was a fertile time for lovers of the uncanny, with memorable children’s dramas like Children of the Stones, The Changes and Ace of Wands. Like many others, I keenly collected junkshop editions of Herbert Van Thal’s horror anthologies. Occultism was in the air in the troubled, economically stagnating Age of Aquarius, and though too young to see them, we schoolboys all knew of The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. A friend gave me a Lovecraft biography for my 18th birthday, and though I’d read none of his work, I went on to become fascinated by him and his Weird Tales compadres.

I wholeheartedly believe that embracing your geeky side is an important part of life and self-discovery. When romance novels incorporate nerdiness, it gives characters (and therefore readers) the ability to understand themselves and what they want on another level, and to gain the courage to pursue what they want. I know that my own forays into TTRPGs, LARPing, Ren Faires, and other such interests have helped shape me as a person. I’m more confident and embodied because I embrace my inner geek, and I want that for my characters and my readers, too. That’s why I want to read and write as many of these stories as possible!

I grew up in Alabama studying a curriculum full of Twain and Faulkner. I’ll never forget opening To Kill a Mockingbird and reading about a girl from Alabama written by a woman from Alabama. I wanted to be Scout Finch and write like Harper Lee. That’s the power of a good story – creating relatable characters that let readers imagine a different version of their lives. The books listed here feature strong, southern female characters written by talented, female writers. I feel inspired by their journeys and heartbroken by their struggles. I only wish they were real people so that we could share a pitcher of sweet tea and chat like old friends.  

I love to make people laugh and cry and I love to read novels like this too, as I find they reflect life’s ups and downs so well. I like to read books that take me by the hand into a character’s world and leave me with more compassion and understanding towards the human race. As well as my novel called Are My Roots Showing?, I have done lots of stand up comedy and have some funny films on my YouTube channel (search Karola Woods) that I hope you can enjoy too. I studied physical theatre, mask and clown at Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris. 

I love writing about families and what makes them tick: the minor dramas being played out behind every front door, make for intriguing reading. As a journalist, I have interviewed so many people with fascinating stories to tell, and with my fiction I throw my characters into a tricky situation and see what unfolds. Inevitably, if you pull one playing card from the bottom, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. When faced with unexpected challenges, my characters often behave badly, make poor decisions and get themselves into the kind of mess that makes you want to read one more chapter before turning out the light at night. 

I grew up in a family that avoided expressing any emotion. A happy house was one where anger and frustration were unheard of. Even laughter was suspect. Books allowed me to experience joy and sorrow. Books allowed me to express my feelings, even though it was behind my closed bedroom door, clutching a handful of sodden tissues, exhausted from the novelty of letting my emotions out. These books are not the books of my childhood. Instead, they are the books of the grown-up me who no longer has to hide behind her bedroom door. I think you will love them just as much as I do.

Mid-life for women is many things, including greatly underrepresented in the stories around us. I am forever in awe of the women around me as they continue to rise to each crazy occasion that life presents, managing and coping with wisdom, humor, and strength. This is why I am recommending these books about kickass middle-aged women. I wrote a novel inspired by some of my own challenges in mid-life. It was published by Atria Books, Simon & Schuster. I hope you love the recommendations as much as I do and that you’ll be inspired to check out my book as well.