Here are 100 books that Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake fans have personally recommended if you like
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake.
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I had zero interest in creative writing until a remarkable family story gripped my heart 30 years ago and wouldn’t let go. Years later, I decided to jump in at the deep end and write this story as fiction, but I had a problem: I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I worked hard to learn the craft of writing fiction, and my award-winning historical novel, Of White Ashes, was published five years later. These five books inspired and helped me to understand the essentials of writing and build my confidence. I hope they’re helpful to you as you bring the novel only you can write to life!
I love that Bird by Bird doesn’t read like a reference book.
Lamott’s words feel personal. The book is personal to me because my daughter gave me her college copy of Bird by Bird when I began my writing journey. Lamott’s plain, honest, and affirming words, like first drafts are “shitty” and “writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop,” resonate with me. Bravo to Lamott for this great metaphor!
Writing can be solitary, but Lamott reminds us we’re not alone. So, I heeded her words. I joined the party and became an active literary citizen. It’s there that we writers find our people, supporters, and dear friends.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).
“Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review
For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom…
A haunting portrait of what happens when ambition, grief, and guilt collide. Some books break your heart. Others help you pick up the pieces. A Fine Layer of Dust does both.
After one irreversible moment tears two families apart, everyone must confront the impossible choices that shaped them. This is…
In today’s world, where negativity and dire situations can easily bombard us, I need to consistently ground myself in hope and light. Real stories about transformation and unconditional love are not only uplifting and hopeful, they are also around every corner. Every one of us is capable of transformation and the giving and receiving of unconditional love. It’s through transformation and unconditional love that we may better understand what it means to be human and, thus, build our capacity for compassion for one another. Through compassion, we can create a better world.
Strayed’s personal transformation through nature and challenge is what I loved in this memoir.
Wild starts off in crisis. The gritty detail throughout doesn’t shy away from the depths of human experience like grief, addiction, and loss (of unconditional love). The narrator has an incredible plan to get herself out of the mess of her current life. Could she do it?
I love a story of someone who is lost, in despair, and goes on a mission to change herself through a connection with nature. Wild delivers. Strayed’s writing brilliantly weaves together her journey in nature with her backstory of how she came to crisis.
This memoir made me fall in love with California’s topography all over again.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the…
As a writer, wife, and mom, I love reading novels and memoirs about women who are navigating parenting, relationships, and careers simultaneously. My favorites are those that make me laugh out loud while presenting a relatable picture of all this juggling act entails. Smart and witty heroines who approach life with a can-do spirit and the ability to laugh at themselves as the world tosses one curveball after another their way capture my heart every time.
It’s hard to match Nora Ephron’s wit and wisdom. In this novel, which mirrors events from the novelist and screenwriter’s real life, cookbook writer Rachel Samstat learns that her husband is cheating on her while she’s pregnant. Even as her life is falling apart, Rachel maintains her sense of humor while dropping the “everything is perfect” routine and speaking her mind.
In this tale of love and loss, Ephron serves up hilarious and heartbreaking moments in equal portions alongside mouthwatering recipes.
If I had to do it over again, I would have made a different kind of pie. The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess, but a blueberry pie would have been even better, since it would have permanently ruined his new blazer, the one he bought with Thelma ... I picked up the pie, thanked God for linoleum floor, and threw it' Rachel Samstat is smart, successful, married to a high-flying Washington journalist... and devastated. She has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Thelma Rice, 'a fairly tall person with a neck as long…
Six months ago, Tom Halliday left his job. Two days after that, his wife left him. Now, with his mother seriously ill, he is forced to return to his childhood home and rejoin the family he has worked to avoid for the past twenty years.
My version of a gutsy life journey was to find work abroad, buy a one-way ticket, and not look back - one place after the next. Long ago, girls didn’t do this, but I did. A struggle and worth it. Great memoirs have a geographical and an inner journey. They make me laugh and cry, both. This is what I love to read, and it’s my aim as a writer. My books are love letters to these adventures, plus some joking around in order not to scream or weep at some of what’s out there. I’ve been a teacher, a film editor, a comedian, a librarian, and now a writer.
I was deeply affected by this, like she was confiding in me.
Whether her memories were tragic, ugly, hilarious, witty, classy, silly, poignant, or just plain practical, it was like we were sharing a glass of wine and she was telling me everything.
I loved that she sent me every feeling of the rainbow, and each was felt deeply. I love when a story makes me laugh and cry. It was inspiring and beautiful to spend some time with this poet, reminiscing about her early years, before she was the Maya we know now.
Also, I feel schooled in what it was like to be black in America at that time, and what a gutsy journey she was on. It was an important eye-opener, as well as a warm invitation.
Maya Angelou's seven volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy,achievement and celebration. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother's lover.
I’m the author of two novels, a memoir, and numerous essays and humor pieces. As a reader, I’ve always been drawn to strong, flawed, funny female characters and voices. The pull is even stronger now that I’m at midlife, a phase that’s equal parts misery, hilarity, and night sweats. I read a wide range of books, from literary fiction and classics to psychological thrillers to graphic novels that I steal from my teenagers when they’re not looking. But I have a special place in my heart for books that explore the many facets of what it means to be a woman “of a certain age” today, while making me laugh—and sometimes cringe—with recognition.
I love it when stories are told through the lens of contemporary issues but still manage to be deeply personal and funny. Impersonationfits the bill, taking place against the backdrop of #MeToo and the Trump presidency, and starring sharp-witted forty-year-old single mom Allie Lang, who you root for right from the start. Allie is hired ghostwrite the memoir of a high-powered feminist with political ambitions, to make her seem more maternal and relatable. It’s a nearly impossible task—until Allie starts bringing herself to the page.
"By turns revealing, hilarious, dishy, and razor-sharp, Impersonation lives in that rarest of sweet spots: the propulsive page-turner for people with high literary standards." --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers TOGETHER, THEY MAKE THE PERFECT FEMINIST MOTHER
Allie Lang is a professional ghostwriter and a perpetually broke single mother to a young boy. Years of navigating her own and America's cultural definition of motherhood have left her a lapsed idealist. Lana Breban is a high-profile lawyer, economist, and advocate for women's rights with designs on elected office. She also has a son. Lana and her staff have decided she…
One of the main things I do for work is encourage parents to awaken their playful and empathic hearts and play with their kids—roughhousing play, dramatic play, games—and really listen to their kids. The connection this brings is unmistakable, and irreplaceable. Because so many adults, myself included, seem to have forgotten what it was like to be a child, I am always amazed when someone gets it. These are five books that brought me back there, from writers who somehow remembered, and share that understanding with compassion. (I was limited to books, but if I could have included a movie I would recommend C’mon C’mon.)
Korczak was a pediatrician, an educator, a champion of children’s rights, the director of orphanages, and much more.
He said, “A child has a right to grief, even if it is for the loss of a pebble.” And he knew about grief.
He cared for orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto, and he accompanied the children to a concentration camp, even though he was offered the chance to escape.
He said, “They children will be scared without me there with them.” He marched with them to the train, carrying a green flag, which was the symbol of his beloved character King Matt, a child king who tried to unite all the children of the world in peace.
He did not survive, but we are very lucky to have his writings. He is my biggest hero, and my biggest inspiration.
How to Love a Child and Other Selected Works is the first comprehensive collection of Korczak's works translated into English. It contains his most important pedagogical writings, journal articles, as well as private texts. Volume 1 comprises three pedagogical works, the first being How to Love a Child. This is a tetralogy presenting the life of a child in a family from birth to puberty, the challenges of raising children in childcare institutions, Korczak's first practical experiences gained while working at summer camps and a detailed account of his work at the Orphans' Home--the orphanage where he was the headmaster.…
The Pianist's Only Daughter
by
Kathryn Betts Adams,
The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir is an authentic, poignant, and sometimes humorous exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Only daughter and geriatric social worker Kathryn Betts Adams brings to life her colorful, emotionally volatile parents, an English teacher/poet and a music professor/concert pianist, from their early…
Joanna Faber is the daughter of Adele Faber, a pioneer of the internationally acclaimed best-selling How To Talk series that has helped millions of parents worldwide. Joanna joined forces with her childhood friend Julie King to provide support for parents and educators of the 21st century. Each draws on her own experiences – Joanna as a bilingual teacher in West Harlem, Julie as a specialist in helping parents of children on the autism spectrum – to lead workshops and speak to parent groups, teachers, doctors, and librarians worldwide, including online sessions to support parents during Covid lockdowns and afterwards. Together, Joanna and Julie have written two best-selling How To Talk books.
The most frustrating and sometimes enraging moments for me as a parent have been when one of my kids hurts the feelings (or the body) of another. Why can’t they just get along??
This book will tell you why! And also, what you can do about it. It’s chock full of humorous and relatable true stories that will give you insights and solutions for your own family.
Already best-selling authors with How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish turned their minds to the battle of the siblings. Parents themselves, they were determined to figure out how to help their children get along. The result was Siblings Without Rivalry. This wise, groundbreaking book gives parents the practical tools they need to cope with conflict, encourage cooperation, reduce competition, and make it possible for children to experience the joys of their special relationship. With humor and understanding-much gained from raising their own children-Faber and Mazlish explain how and…
I had a very distinct vision of what kind of mother I would be: patient, kind, and creative. And I can be all of these things, but so too can I be frustrated, furious, and exhausted beyond belief. This contradictory experience of motherhood was what I wanted to explore in Spilt Milk and is the motherhood exposed in these five books which, while very different in form, share a willingness to acknowledge the darker and less curated aspects of a relationship that can be as stifling as it is wonderful.
It was McNish’s poem Embarrassed – a reflection on society’s inability to cope with a mother breastfeeding her child in public – that first led me to her work. I shared it with everyone.
Part diary, part poetry collection, Nobody Told Me is born of the same honesty and documents her experience from the moment she discovered she was pregnant at Glastonbury and through the first two years of her daughter’s life.
There’s an immediacy that comes with the pieces being offered exactly how they were written, whether that was “at four AM, some on the loo...[or] at work”. Motherhood, especially early motherhood, has little time for polishing (of furniture or of words), and this lack of editing is, I think, what allows me to see myself reflected in the poems.
There were many things that Hollie McNish didn't know before she was pregnant. How her family and friends would react; that Mr Whippy would be off the menu; how quickly ice can melt on a stomach. These were on top of the many other things she didn't know about babies: how to stand while holding one; how to do a poetry gig with your baby as a member of the audience; how drum'n'bass can make a great lullaby. And that's before you even start on toddlers: how to answer a question like 'is the world a jigsaw?'; dealing with a…
I’ve always been drawn to babies and toddlers and fascinated by the development that happens in the early years of life. This fascination led me to become a teacher, parent, and emotional development expert with a master's degree in early childhood education. Eventually, my passion for this field led me to co-create the Collaborative Emotion Processing method and research it nationwide. The research results were compelling, and so began my mission to share it with the world.
I love this book because it explains how a child’s brain works and what they need to access self-control. It gave me insight into why I saw challenging behaviors even when the child “knew better.”
I loved that when I finished reading it, I felt like I had actionable strategies for supporting my child’s mental well-being while navigating tantrums and meltdowns.
In this pioneering, practical book for parents, neuroscientist Daniel J. Siegel and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson explain the new science of how a child's brain is wired and how it matures. Different parts of a child's brain develop at different speeds and understanding these differences can help you turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child's brain and raise calmer, happier children.
Featuring clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child will help your children to lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives using…
These are the books that changed my life and were the catalyst for a change in career from litigation attorney to life coach. I am also a Friendship expert who is currently traveling the US, meeting a stranger in every state to share a meal with. These books align with the way I live and the energy and lessons that I hope to share with everyone I meet. These are not just books to entertain but also books that have helped me get through some difficult times in life and have helped me find real purpose and meaning in the way I move through life.
This book singlehandedly changed the way I parented my children, especially my daughter who is very different than me in the way she processes information and how she moves through life.
Through this book I learned to not only understand that her journey is her own and whenever I’m upset about her choices or the way she is doing things it often is because I’m inserting my own journey and fears into her life instead of letting her be who she is gloriously designed to be.
This book brought me a realization that my fears were often the motivator behind my parenting and helped me to redirect my focus to the joy and the wonder of the differences my child has and look for ways to support her strengths rather than focusing on changing what I deemed her weaknesses – thus, I was able to empower her in a way…
'Parents ... you will be wowed and awed by [Dr. Shefali].' - Oprah Winfrey
Become the awakened parent you've always wanted to be and watch your children thrive.
All parents have aspirations for their children but for some these hopes turn into unrealistic expectations. In many cases, this puts huge amounts of pressure on children and has the potential to cause real harm, hindering your child's development.
Challenging modern myths on how kids should be, Dr Shefali helps parents recognise children for who they truly are instead of holding onto society's impossible ideals.
