Here are 100 books that My Grandfather's Blessings fans have personally recommended if you like
My Grandfather's Blessings.
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My life was altered forever when my family moved from California to Suffolk, England. I attended an English school and was exposed to English literature, music, and history. I visited Poet’s Corner in Winchester Cathedral in London, Shakespeare’s home and grave in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and numerous English villages and gardens. Through these experiences, I fell in love with words and rhythm and how they can be used to tell stories. In college, I took a trip across Europe that further transformed my life as I encountered the art and history of Italy and France and the fascinating tableau of cultures across the continent, a trip that further expanded my appreciation of art, architecture, and creativity.
An engaging story of how a person can transform her life through travel and formal education.
While teaching English at a community college, I assigned this memoir to my students. Many of my students came from disadvantaged backgrounds and could identify with the childhood hardships and abuse experienced by Tara Westover.
I was delighted to share a story that resonates with my own life and demonstrates how a young person, even against overwhelming obstacles, can overcome insecurities, transform personal views, and navigate beyond the limitations imposed by one’s childhood.
Since I spent part of my childhood living within an hour of Cambridge University, I also enjoyed the part of the story that transpired in the halls and turrets of an old English institution.
Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE
'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day 'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill 'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times
Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve always been drawn to the connection between the physical and the mental and how small, repeated actions shape who we become. I started searching for meaning because life knocked me to my knees and left me with questions I couldn’t ignore. Everything I thought I was certain about came undone, and I was left trying to figure out what to do with the pieces.
What I learned the hard way is that real change doesn’t come from answers; it comes from what we survive and who we decide to become afterward. I write from inside those lessons, where purpose is discovered through experience, missteps, and the resolve to keep going. These books will shape you—enjoy!
This book was one of those books that hit me at just the right time.
Warning: this book is going to make you reevaluate your life in the best possible way. In this fast-paced, ego-centric world, this book made me hit the pause button and reflect on how I wish to be remembered when my life has passed.
Where other books on this list show purpose through leadership, service, confinement, or revenge, this one is shaped by letting go. Morrie reminds me that meaning isn’t found in what is accumulated or accomplished but in how I show up for others. It’s the kind of reminder that makes me question whether what I’m working so hard for is actually worth working for.
THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT HAS TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF OVER 9 MILLION READERS
'Mitch Albom sees the magical in the ordinary' Cecelia Ahern __________
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague? Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it? For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to…
"Two tickets to ride!" Most people get only one life.... and on only one coast. This book is an overview of an era 1948-2020 of cultural shifts and expectations for "girls". At seventeen I left my family and NYC for college, a commune, and then art school on the West coast.Visual artist, woman, mother, and descendant, Joan describes the lifetime challenges that she has met with creativity, humor, and resilience. Two NW cities, two marriages, and two sons born 23 years apart inspire many of her stories.
Rummer Godden’s autobiography A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep offers the stories, context, and sense of place for many of her novels. I so enjoyed her ability to write like a bright child thinks about the world, as well as how she is feeling. It is laugh-out-loud funny in spots, despite describing the dislocation of war.
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
"Two tickets to ride!" Most people get only one life.... and on only one coast. This book is an overview of an era 1948-2020 of cultural shifts and expectations for "girls". At seventeen I left my family and NYC for college, a commune, and then art school on the West coast.Visual artist, woman, mother, and descendant, Joan describes the lifetime challenges that she has met with creativity, humor, and resilience. Two NW cities, two marriages, and two sons born 23 years apart inspire many of her stories.
Kadya Molodowsky’s book of stories, A House with Seven Windows are stories mostly set one half of a generation off of my own, just far enough to be recognizable. There is one story about parents investing in a stylish winter coat for their daughter in order to render her more marriageable in appearance for the “market.” My own parents did the same for me when I left for college!
A House of Seven Windows by Kadya Molodowsky is the famed Yiddish poet's only collection of short stories. Written in simple prose, these stories are subtle portraits - tragic-comic, bittersweet, always generous spirited - of ordinary people: Jews in pre-World War II Eastern Europe and Jews struggling to adjust to life in America. A traditional-minded husband is defeated by his wife who wants only the latest fashion. A community leader's position is supported and maintained by his more energetic and political-minded wife. A couple, ardent supporters of the newly formed state of Israel, nevertheless find themselves at odds with their…
"Two tickets to ride!" Most people get only one life.... and on only one coast. This book is an overview of an era 1948-2020 of cultural shifts and expectations for "girls". At seventeen I left my family and NYC for college, a commune, and then art school on the West coast.Visual artist, woman, mother, and descendant, Joan describes the lifetime challenges that she has met with creativity, humor, and resilience. Two NW cities, two marriages, and two sons born 23 years apart inspire many of her stories.
How to Make an American Quilt is a novel stringing together wonderful interconnected stories told across a couple of generations and incorporating descriptions of sight, smell, and touch. “I am not the kind of person to throw something away just because it is broken. I would not waste what could still be of use,” says one of the main characters who goes on to explain that quilts are made of “spare time” and “excess materials.”
“Remarkable . . . It is a tribute to an art form that allowed women self-expression even when society did not. Above all, though, it is an affirmation of the strength and power of individual lives, and the way they cannot help fitting together.”—The New York Times Book Review
An extraordinary and moving novel, How to Make an American Quilt is an exploration of women of yesterday and today, who join together in a uniquely female experience. As they gather year after year, their stories, their wisdom, their lives, form the pattern from which all of us draw warmth and…
"Two tickets to ride!" Most people get only one life.... and on only one coast. This book is an overview of an era 1948-2020 of cultural shifts and expectations for "girls". At seventeen I left my family and NYC for college, a commune, and then art school on the West coast.Visual artist, woman, mother, and descendant, Joan describes the lifetime challenges that she has met with creativity, humor, and resilience. Two NW cities, two marriages, and two sons born 23 years apart inspire many of her stories.
Mothers Matter Too is an extraordinary compendium of stories, thoughts, and statistics about women at home with children. Her helpful chart of the “rules” applicable to each stage and “role” of a woman’s life (from girlhood to cronehood) is still revelatory even years after the resurgence of the Women’s Movement. This book is also about the active listening skills critical to supporting a new mother as she struggles to regain her confidence.
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I am a Full Professor of Leadership within the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. I am the recipient of the 2020 Research Excellence Award. My research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, is international in scope. I am also the founder of the Equitable Leadership Network at the University of Ottawa.
I can relate to anaesthesiologist Overton’s skillfulness in a crisis, her inaptitude in identifying and selecting good male companionship, and her accepting that no one can be good at everything. She presents her stories with a refreshing sense of humour while emphasizing the need to enjoy life and empowering her readers to come to terms with our own experiences of loss of life and love.
'Hilarious ... This memoir of how grieving makes us behave like lunatics is wonderful on friendship and motherhood and brutally honest about the rest' Psychologies '[A] grimly hilarious journey ... brutally funny reading about midlife coming of age' Kirkus My story begins with a divorce. During the four years of physician Margaret Overton's acrimonious divorce, she dated widely and sometimes indiscriminately, determined to find her soulmate and live happily ever after. But then she discovered she had a brain aneurysm. She discovered it at a particularly awkward moment on a date with one of many Mr Wrongs. Overton, an anaesthetist,…
I am a Full Professor of Leadership within the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. I am the recipient of the 2020 Research Excellence Award. My research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, is international in scope. I am also the founder of the Equitable Leadership Network at the University of Ottawa.
Fung writes a powerful story about survival, her captivity, and her indomitable spirit under the most perilous of circumstances that she lived through in Kabul, Afghanistan after being grabbed by the Taliban. As the Canadian reporter describes her bone-chilling account of the horrific twenty-eight days, I am left in awe of her strength and courage.
In October 2008, Mellissa Fung, a reporter for CBC’s The National, was leaving a refugee camp outside of Kabul when she was kidnapped by armed men. She was forced to hike for several hours through the mountains until they reached a village; there, the kidnappers pushed her towards a hole in the ground. “No,” she said. “I am not going down there.”
For more than a month, Fung lived in that hole, which was barely tall enough to stand up in, nursing her injuries, praying and writing in a notebook. Under an Afghan Sky is the gripping tale of Fung’s…
I started studying Judaism as an adult in 1982, and in the 40 or so years that have passed since then I’ve read voraciously on the subject and have discussed it at length with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis from Boston to Tampa. I’ve come to see over that time that Judaism’s objective is to shape conscientious, caring human beings who will bring light and compassion to the earth in spite of all the forces that want to keep trouble and insensitivity there. The books that I’ve listed are among the best in communicating the Jewish vision for the planet. I think you’ll learn much from them.
In a conversational and, at times, anecdotal style, Telushkin describes what a compassionate, righteous life might look like.
There are chapters on good manners, charity, forgiveness, and humility along with considerations on anger, envy, hatred, and the instinct of revenge. Telushkin backs up his suggestions with references to Torah, Talmud, and Commentaries, and he includes some delightful stories to illustrate his points.
I can’t imagine a more comfortable guide to living conscientiously.
A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 1: You Shall Be Holy is the initial volume of the first major code of Jewish ethics to be written in the English language. It is a monumental work on the vital topic of personal character and integrity by one of the premier Jewish scholars and thinkers of our time.
With the stated purpose of restoring ethics to its central role in Judaism, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin offers hundreds of examples from the Torah, the Talmud, rabbinic commentaries, and contemporary stories to illustrate how ethical teachings can affect our daily behavior. The subjects dealt with…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
I have been a Professor of Communication Studies for decades and I strongly believe that the quality of our communication is inescapably tied to the quality of our lives. For me, communication and intercultural experiences have always been marked by serendipity. Serendipities are unexpected finds or discoveries that eventually turn out to be insightful, pleasant, and stimulating even when they are difficult at the time. My time interacting with others in different regions of the U.S., Europe, and Asia has provided for surprising, scary, joyful, and frustrating experiences that have been full of serendipity. I hope that in reading these books you will also harvest serendipity.
This book shares insights and short vignettes that really bring home the power of words and it always leaves me inspired to see and treat others with greater respect. I also appreciate that it goes beyond just pointing out the many problems that can exist in our communication with others, but provides some ideas for how to communicate in ways that can help us, and others, heal from words that have done damage to our sense of self.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rebbe comes this newly revised edition of Words That Hurt, Words That Heal—an invaluable guide in how choosing the right words can enrich our relationships and give us insight to improve every facet of our lives.
“I don’t know anyone whose life would not be blessed by this book.”—Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life
Joseph Telushkin is renowned for his warmth, his erudition, and his richly anecdotal insights, and in Words That Hurt, Words That Heal he…
