100 Books Like Like Water for Chocolate

This book is a beautiful tale that demonstrates the ugliness of first impressions when it comes to viewing others. When Vivienne is looked down upon by the local mayor for being a single mother and nomadic traveler, he is making assumptions based on his own narrow-minded authority. 

I love how, despite his attempts to harm her financially, she continues to show how being an individual who is true to oneself means more than trying to fit the mold of what someone else might think you should be. 

This book is part odyssey, part ghost story, and part passion play. Toni Morrison is one of the patron saints of American literature whom I was fortunate to discover at an early age. This is her masterpiece, an example of what is possible when a writer’s heart, mind, and spirit are aligned.

The fact that the unfathomable sacrifice around which Beloved is imagined is based upon an actual event speaks volumes about the innate horrors of slavery. In matters of race, America’s skeletons are buried in shallow graves.

A collection of myths, fairy tales, and folk stories about the wild woman archetype told and analyzed by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

The result is a powerful exploration of the female psyche and experience, of women’s power and knowing, of intuition, femininity, and the ways in which we can reconnect to that power within each of us.

A favorite quote: “There is no 'supposed to be' in bodies. The question is not size or shape or years of age, or even having two of everything, for some do not. But the wild issue is, does this body feel, does it have right connection to pleasure, to heart, to soul, to the wild? Does it have happiness, joy? Can it, in its own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust? Nothing else matters.”

I think more than anything, I loved the way she described everything. Her language is as if her words were first sent to her heart and then to her soul before they came onto the page. The warmth and the power are overwhelming in her style. It is obvious she loved grandly Africa and its denizens, and as a reader, I couldn’t help but feel the same.  

I love heroines in exotic places and situations, especially if it is much of their own makings or seemingly destiny. This book is a memoir of a tomboy girl in East Africa, so even though it is all true, it feels epic.  

I could really relate to Beryl as a girl with her animals. (Growing up, I loved and collected animals from nature, too.)  Beryl grew up with a zebra for a pet, horses for friends, and, of course, the most loyal dog.… show more.

Though I have always been an unashamed ancient history nerd, ancient Egypt never quite grabbed me as strongly as Greece and Rome. However, I read this book as a callow 17-year-old traveling to Poros to row as part of the crew of a reconstructed ancient Greek trireme. The story utterly captivated me: it is packed full of action, tragedy, historical detail, and heroism, and I could feel the heat of the Egyptian sun on my skin as I read it.

I recently bought a first edition in honour of this memory, and I want to choose the right moment to revisit it. There is an odd footnote, though. The author bizarrely claimed that his book is based upon a set of scrolls discovered in an 18th-century BC Egyptian tomb and that the lead archaeologist passed the translations onto him to transcribe into a novel. Smith discarded this claim in the… show more.

This was the first fiction book I read after completing my Master’s degree (aka an intense diet of scientific research). I can still feel my heart opening up as I was in Lily’s heart and head, facing her abusive father in the only world she had ever known.

When she branches out and finds a place of beauty and love among three sisters who keep bees, she starts to understand the rhythms of love and I started to feel love again. I gradually picked up the clues I needed to rebuild a life with beauty.

This book took me into a world of unconditional acceptance, so wonderful I actually wept with a longing I didn’t even know I had. I hated leaving Lily behind, but I think I hold a bit of her in my heart.

I read this for a women’s study class and LOVED it. The telling of a story back in the biblical times from a woman’s perspective… sign me up.

This one took me through an emotional journey, blending fact with fiction to the point where I didn’t know where one ended and the other began. My heart was put through the ringer. I cried. I laughed. I fell in love. I felt the bond between mother and daughter and the rage of the oppression the FMC went through. It made me take a look at these biblical stories in a whole new light. 

I love this book because of Katniss Everdeen's depth. She’s not just another “kickass hottie”, she’s complex, with a powerful character arc driven by a deep sense of responsibility.

The book’s commentary on mental health and Katniss' parentification resonated with me personally. The story world of all the districts and President Snow's iron grip on them is well-drawn and has parallels to our own, too. 

I love the idea that books have souls, and I adore this quotation from Zafon’s classic novel: “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.”

I was thrilled to find this novel after I’d written my book because it shows that there are others who sense the soulful quality of old books. I also love it because it is written by a Spanish novelist, and it is in the Spanish-speaking world that we find the true literary origins of my most-loved genre of writing – magical realism.

Jonas is our youngest protagonist on the list. He is destined to be the receiver of memories in a futuristic utopian society. Those memories are to be passed down to him by an old man, the Giver.

Jonas lives in a society where people are innocent—innocent of emotion, pain, and suffering. He must lose his innocence to experience the joys and pains of humane experience. 

That’s a heavy responsibility. And it’s Jonas’ thoughtfulness and curiosity that draws me to him. He faces difficult ethical choices. His awakening is unique to the fictional world he inhabits, but it is universal in theme. His quest to gain knowledge, his willingness to question authority to get to the truth, and his ability to make tough choices to experience the depth of what it means to be human make him someone I would want in my corner.