Here are 100 books that Notes on a Silencing fans have personally recommended if you like
Notes on a Silencing.
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I have such a passion for people that share powerful stories. Growing up was particularly rough for me due to the depression, anxiety, and isolation that I endured. When I wasn’t throwing myself into books to escape my reality, I wrote poetry. My love for mental health and cathartic stories didn’t start until about 2017 when I was trying to figure out the next chapter of my life. I had exited survival mode and entered into a thriving part of my life where my old habits and way of thinking did not serve me. I hope this list of book recommendations touches your soul as they have mine.
Do you need a good cathartic cry? This book serves as a pillar to remind the world of the atrocities that happened in December of 1937. I remember having to stop after reading certain chapters and engage in self-care, as to take a break from the pain and suffering that it retells. I paused to reflect that I had been glad that the Nazis were occupying certain parts of the city which in-turn provided relief to the Chinese. I can’t fathom the amount of destruction this Capitol endured between contests to see who can be the first to kill 100 people with a sword before the capture of the city to the systematic rape and mutilation of women and young girls.
In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered,a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written the definitive history of this horrifying episode.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I used to love dystopian books, but recently, I’ve become increasingly interested in hopeful narratives. I’ve been a climate activist in a couple of movements, and I care deeply about the world, but with all the challenges and negativity we are facing, it’s easy to fall into despair. That’s why I think stories that show cooperation, community, respect for nature and each other, working for a better world, and making it happen are so important. We need those stories to get inspired to act instead of thinking that we’re all doomed anyway. They are also healing—a refuge for a tormented mind.
This is such a beautiful, gentle and cozy book that I couldn’t put it down. In this story, people were left with no choice but to completely rebuild their society, and they did something wonderful.
This book is like a breath of fresh air, like a quiet, healing journey that doesn’t rely on action—it’s an exploration, a celebration of nature, and society, and connection. It touched me in a profound way. It made me go outside to check if it was raining and stand with my bare feet in the grass, enjoying the coldness and softness of the sensation.
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
I have always been fascinated by religion from an intellectual perspective—the way it can be such a powerful force for both good and evil and is such a constant facet of humanity, regardless of the time or place. I’m also interested in community and the complexity of human relationships, so it’s only natural that I’m particularly excited about books set within religious communities. And, as much as I appreciate a true crime cult expose, I am a lover of great fiction first and foremost, so novels that explore religion with intelligence and artistry are my personal holy grail.
This immediately immersed me in another time and place. Apparently, I’m very clear in my bookish likes, because it was recommended to me multiple times due to the combination of nuns and sapphic content. Luckily, it lived up to the recommendations!
It is very well written and extremely atmospheric, and it drew me right into its medieval world. Groff managed to create characters who feel appropriate to their era but who are also accessible to a modern reader, which is not an easy task. This helped me to become emotionally invested in the book.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS AN OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Gorgeous, sensual, addictive' SARA COLLINS 'Brightly lit' NAOMI ALDERMAN
Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.
Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.
'A propulsive, captivating read' BRIT BENNETT 'Fascinating, beguiling, vivid' MARIAN KEYES 'A dazzlingly clever tale' THE TIMES 'A thrillingly vivid,…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I have such a passion for people that share powerful stories. Growing up was particularly rough for me due to the depression, anxiety, and isolation that I endured. When I wasn’t throwing myself into books to escape my reality, I wrote poetry. My love for mental health and cathartic stories didn’t start until about 2017 when I was trying to figure out the next chapter of my life. I had exited survival mode and entered into a thriving part of my life where my old habits and way of thinking did not serve me. I hope this list of book recommendations touches your soul as they have mine.
This book gave me permission to be human. In a world that demands perfection and largely being a perfectionist because of this culture. This book reminded me that I can be a feminist and I can like songs that “a real feminist” (however a real feminist is defined) would rage against. If I’m a bad feminist or bad at being a feminist…that still makes me a feminist and I can still be a part of the movement and culture. I’m not looking to be the top feminist. Roxane is a gorgeous soul, and this book is cathartic in the way that it gave me peace to be myself. I’m very thankful that she chose to write this book. It really challenged me to be kinder to myself.
'Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink - all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.'
In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of colour (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains)…
Hollywood and celebrity gossip can be a fun diversion, from their fabulous clothing and closets to their ability to influence a worldwide audience. It is something I have long been drawn to and love to be immersed in. The idea of fame has always intrigued me. Is it good? Bad? Somewhere in between? Sometimes, the very pop star who the world is idolizing can be tortured behind the scenes—maybe even by fame itself. I am intrigued by the ways one goes from anonymity to notoriety, as well as the ways fame can change one’s life.
This was a compelling, fascinating read. Davis shares the story of her life, from her experiences with childhood poverty, abuse, and racism to her path into acting.
I loved following along the steps she took to emerge from a challenging childhood to winning an Academy Award. It was also amazing to listen to the audiobook and hear Davis tell the story in her own voice. It is easy to see why this book was awarded a Grammy. It was one of my favorite books of the year.
'A breathtaking memoir...I was so moved by this book.' Oprah
'It is startlingly honest and, at times, a jaw-dropping read, charting her rise from poverty and abuse to becoming the first African-American to win the triple crown of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony for acting.' BBC News
THE DEEPLY PERSONAL, BRUTALLY HONEST ACCOUNT OF VIOLA'S INSPIRING LIFE
In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls,…
I have been moved by women’s stories that are buried in time (but not quite gone!) since I was a young girl. As a college student and now professor (I teach writing and gender studies), much of my work is focused on telling hidden stories for the first time and stories where the record needs correcting. This is probably to do with my childhood; I am the oldest daughter in a loving but difficult Irish-Catholic family where women were often shamed for many reasons. When I was 15, I read Sylvia Plath for the first time and knew—there was more to this story, and I meant to find it out.
I love nothing more than a book that unsettles me, that I grasp almost bodily in the reading but have to return to again and again to truly understand. Lose Your Mother is that kind of book. In Chapter Seven, Hartman tells us that, while working in the archive of the Atlantic slave trade, she came across a scandal: on board the slave ship Recovery, two African girls—one named Venus—are murdered by the captain, John Kimber.
A trial ensues. A mate is put on the stand, who admits there was a book on the ship, a list of all its horrors, The Dead Book, but it’s lost now. Lose Your Mother is Hartman’s attempt to write her version of The Dead Book without committing the same violence against the girls that they endured in their short lives. How she wonders, can we reimagine life for Venus when all we know…
In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman journeys along a slave route in Ghana, following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast. She retraces the history of the Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy.
There were no survivors of Hartman's lineage, nor far-flung relatives in Ghana of whom she had come in search. She traveled to Ghana in search of strangers. The most universal definition of the slave is a stranger—torn from kin and country. To lose your mother is to suffer the…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
I have been moved by women’s stories that are buried in time (but not quite gone!) since I was a young girl. As a college student and now professor (I teach writing and gender studies), much of my work is focused on telling hidden stories for the first time and stories where the record needs correcting. This is probably to do with my childhood; I am the oldest daughter in a loving but difficult Irish-Catholic family where women were often shamed for many reasons. When I was 15, I read Sylvia Plath for the first time and knew—there was more to this story, and I meant to find it out.
Likely the origin of my love for books within books, especially those lost or deliberately destroyed, this is the third book in the Emily Starr trilogy, the lesser-known series by Canadian author L.M. Montgomery, of Anne of Green Gablesfame.
In it, budding novelist Emily decides against going off to college in the city with her three best friends to remain on her aunt’s Canadian farm, New Moon, and write. She finishes her first novel, A Seller of Dreams(what a title!), in a fit of creative joy but struggles to find a publisher.
Close to despair, she gives it to her bookish friend Dean Priest, an older man who’s in love with her, asking if it’s any good. Aware that her devotion to writing will keep her from him, he lies that the book is “artificial” and the characters “wooden.”
From the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables comes the story of Emily Starr, L.M. Montgomery's own favourite character, in the Emily of New Moon trilogy.
There are two things in life Emily Starr is certain of - that she will be a great writer and that she and Teddy Kent were destined to be together. School is over and one by one her friends leave to follow their dreams, including Teddy, who goes to art school in Montreal. Emily chooses to stay at New Moon, and though she misses her friends, she knows the path of a writer…
I have been moved by women’s stories that are buried in time (but not quite gone!) since I was a young girl. As a college student and now professor (I teach writing and gender studies), much of my work is focused on telling hidden stories for the first time and stories where the record needs correcting. This is probably to do with my childhood; I am the oldest daughter in a loving but difficult Irish-Catholic family where women were often shamed for many reasons. When I was 15, I read Sylvia Plath for the first time and knew—there was more to this story, and I meant to find it out.
Emma Tennant was one of Ted Hughes’s lovers in the 1970s, at the height of Sylvia Plath’s early fame. I arrived at her memoir as research for Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, but I stayed because Tennant’s writing is so witty and clever, full of riotous anecdotes of her time publishing chic literary magazines in 1970s London (she tries to steal, and sell, a family snapshot of Princess Margaret, nude on a French beach, for seed money, which ends in hilarious disaster).
Tennant never descends into self-pity or high drama in describing the dark and mysterious Hughes, who believes a random fox on the road is his dead wife returning to him and tries to convince Tennant that frozen salmon at a third-rate London restaurant is fresh and delivering life force to him. Instead, she sneaks in the violence done to her by Hughes in moments drenched in myth…
Burnt Diaries is Emma Tennant's third volume of memoirs, set mostly during the 1970s, in which she lays bare the experience of her affair with Ted Hughes while she was editor of the avant-garde literary magazine, Bananas. Tennant's insights are engaging and honest - she offers perceptions of the writers that contributed to her magazine - from Angela Carter who was commissioned to write The Company of Wolves for it, to JG Ballard who was supportive of the magazine from its inception and wrote a story for each issue. Running a new literary magazine brought Tennant into contact with a…
When each of our older boys were in the midst of the college admissions process, our husbands suffered life-threatening health crises. It was such a bizarre coincidence that we both experienced intense brushes with mortality during this time of high anxiety. The juxtaposition between health and college admissions gave us a unique perspective and led us to explore the impacts of college admissions anxiety on families, friendships, students, and school communities. We had entirely plottedGirls With Bright Futuresand were nearly through the first draft when the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal broke in March 2019. We felt like the headlines had been ripped from our manuscript!
This well-researched non-fiction book by powerhouse investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte of Fast Company provides a fascinating look at some of the behind-the-scenes, real-world parenting dynamics that set the stage for Operation Varsity Blues. In addition to all the juicy details LaPorte reveals about Los Angeles’ elite private school ecosystem, we particularly love the way she traces the origins of college admissions mania all the way back to kindergarten. If you’ve ever wondered how community group-think can lead to lawlessness and a total abandonment of ethics and values, Guilty Admissions takes readers on a tantalizing journey into the competitive-parenting abyss, LA-style.
GUILTY ADMISSIONS weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with pre-school; non-stop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.
Investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte lays bare the source of this…
I am a medical thriller author who, during a brief stint in residency after medical school, saw up close what the world of medicine is really like, from the level of the patient at the bedside to the industrial level with big corporate players such as pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. I am in a position to curate what books can inform the general public about such topics.
When dishonest companies are willing to cut corners for profit, they are essentially akin to criminal organizations.
This book explores such an example with one particular drug startup company. I liked getting a front-row seat for looking at the great lengths that corporate crooks would go for profit.
It provides another unique perspective on the pharma industry, nicely complementing the other pharma books in this list of mine.
'A tour de force' - Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
From the doctor's office to the opioid crisis, The Hard Sell is the story of a pharmaceutical company that got Americans hooked on fentanyl - and how it was finally held to account. Now a Netflix Original Movie, Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.
In the early 2000s, John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. A boom time for painkillers, he had developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.
