Here are 100 books that One Long River of Song fans have personally recommended if you like
One Long River of Song.
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As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same.
For a book with no words, this gorgeous picture book tells its story better than a 50,000-word novel.
Beautifully illustrated, we watch a little girl collect flowers growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk as she walks through the city streets with her father. When they come upon a dead sparrow and she gently places a bouquet on his breast, I cry every time.
Grief speaks a simple language and this children’s book reminded me how powerful one act of kindness can be.
Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Illustrated Book
A New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year
In this wordless picture book, a little girl collects wildflowers while her distracted father pays her little attention. Each flower becomes a gift, and whether the gift is noticed or ignored, both giver and recipient are transformed by their encounter.
“Written” by award-winning poet JonArno Lawson and brought to life by illustrator Sydney Smith, Sidewalk Flowers is an ode to the importance of small things, small people and small gestures.
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 have always been fascinated by psychology and the science behind why people are the way they are. This is probably why as a journalist, I’ve always been drawn to writing personal profiles of fascinating people, digging deeper into how they overcame various obstacles and setbacks. I have read so many leadership books that focus on success, but really found a gap when it came to those in-depth stories, which is why I wrote The Setback Cycle, a career advice book that focuses specifically on that messy middle part of leadership. My goal was to share the stories of people who overcame setbacks while offering an actionable framework that guides us through our own.
I loved this book so much, not only because Susan Cain is such a beautiful writer but also because it explained why we love sad music and why listening to it can be so transformative. I truly appreciate books that teach me something new about why humans are the way they are and those that offer a new perspective on my life experiences, which this book certainly did.
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN'T STOP TALKING
In her inspiring new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet describes her powerful quest to understand how love, loss and sorrow make us whole - revealing the power of a bittersweet outlook on life.
Bittersweetness is a tendency towards states of longing, poignancy and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and…
As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same.
I found this book of poems on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. The author wrote this collection following the deaths of her son and her father. She writes with such aching precision of the pain of losing someone you love.
I read many of these poems through tears, but they were cleansing tears—sorrow accompanied by a feeling of being seen, of not being alone. It is a gorgeous collection.
In All the Honey, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer holds both fine, honest sensuality and slow explorations of soul. What is shared here is a way forward in life, a fierce openness that refuses nothing—that knows damage and healing, darkness and radiance, sorrow and winged resurgence, reflection and laughter and learning.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My first memory is of my father telling me about the cosmos, the Big Bang, and how the sun would burn out one day, expanding so big it would swallow the Earth. This memory haunted my dreams and waking hours, instilling a fascination with the life and death cycles of everything. Now I’m an artist, writer, educator and somatic coach devoted to helping people talk about and honor the things western culture doesn’t create space for–big emotions, messy love and the gifts of dying.
I was raised by a family and culture that taught me nothing about grief, mourning, or honoring the great heartbreaks of aliveness. This book raised me and taught me about the importance of ritual and community tending to our grief.
It taught me that naming the pain of the world is an act of love and that helping others do the same is a responsibility we all carry. I trained with Francis Weller years after reading this book and was so affirmed by sharing space with a person who embodies what he teaches in a deep and embodied way.
"It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." —Anderson Cooper, All There Is
The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive.
Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.
• The first gate recognizes—and invites us to accept—the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility—and an…
I’m a romance novelist who writes about otherwise smart people who deal badly with their feelings. Love, sorrow, jealousy, anger, hopelessness, and grief make appearances in my books because I write in a genre that centers the emotional lives of its characters. When I’m not wreaking havoc on fictional people, I take long walks and eavesdrop on conversations. I’m a recent transplant to Toronto, Canada, after having lived in New York City for more than 20 years.
James finds out that he has terminal brain cancer and starts to wind up his affairs, including looking for Andy, his lost love. This book takes place in the reality of James’s diagnosis with family and friends sometimes painful reactions to his illness and in the alternate universe of James’ increasingly real hallucinations of a life that could have been with Andy. This book both devastated and buoyed me with its intense and very real portrayal of someone grieving his own life, but who nonetheless seizes the chance to make give himself a happy resolution.
With one diagnosis, editor James Daniels learns that he's literally running out of time. Looking at his life, he sees one regret: Andy, the one that got away. Andy was the first man that James ever loved, but Andy has been gone for years, and might not want to be found.
But as his cancer progresses and James starts to lose his grip on time and memory, it might just be that time and memory are losing their grip on James, too.
It's the biggest and most important re-write of his life. Restoring love from nothing but memory might be…
Rachel is a heart-minded professional specializing in current and relevant approaches in support of individuals and workplaces following a loss or trauma. She is a best-selling author, seasoned keynote speaker, and business consultant. She began her career serving in management of Fortune 500 companies, overcoming her own adversity following the sudden death of her husband while raising a 2-year-old. She was immediately confronted with the see-saw created when personal and professional trajectories collide, giving her the opportunity to provide invaluable insights about loss. Her books include best-selling Living with Loss One Day at a Time, Finding Peace, and Grief in the Workplace: A Comprehensive Guide for Being Prepared.
This poignant memoir is beautifully written in short, powerful chapters that mirror the shock and heartache of caring for and losing a beloved spouse while showing the resilience of the human spirit. I like that it is written in such short, easy-to-digest chapters, since it is so difficult for most bereaved to focus attention and concentrate, especially early on. At the same time, Nancy manages to convey, with clarity and honesty, all the personal details of her journey through grief and what she learned along the way.
The past is simply part of our story; just not the whole story...On the very day that Nancy Sharp delivered premature twins, she learned that her husband's brain cancer returned after eighteen months in remission. Less than three years later, at the age of 37, she became a widow. But while many in that situation would crumble, Nancy had an innate ability to hold life and death in the same moment. She learned to "see beyond the frame's edge." In BOTH SIDES NOW: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Bold Living, Nancy shares her unforgettable journey - one that…
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
I think there’s a little voyeur in all of us, which is why we love reading memoirs. These stories typically are written by people who’ve wrestled with a life-changing event and emerged on the other side with wisdom to share. Whether they’ve grappled with a heartbreaking loss, a debilitating illness, or an unsettling change in circumstances that left them reeling, authors who temper their truth with humor are the ones who inspire me most. Finding hilarity in the midst of hardship is no easy feat, but it reminds us that humor is a great coping skill.
Actor and comedian Rob Delaney won my heart in the series Catastrophe. In this memoir, told with unflinching honesty, he shares the story of losing his two-year-old son, Henry, to brain cancer.
As a writer, I couldn’t stop thinking about how difficult this must’ve been for Delaney to do—to relive this all over and over again, putting it down and then rereading it countless times before it went to publication. But in doing so, he keeps his son close, and his humor amid the darkest days is an absolute inspiration. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Delaney, and his delivery and timing make this a must-listen.
New York TimesBestseller *New Yorker Best Books of 2022 *Entertainment Weekly Best Books of 2022 *USA TodayBest Books of 2022 *Time100 Must-Read Books of 2022 *Mother JonesBooks We Needed in 2022 *PeopleFall Must Read *2022BuzzFeedFall Reading Pick * New York Post Best Books of 2022 *New York Times Editors’ Choice
This is the story of what happens when you lose a child, and everything you discover about life in the process, by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe.
In 2018, Rob Delaney’s two-year-old son, Henry, died of a brain tumor. A Heart That Worksis Delaney’s intimate, unflinching, and…
I’m an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. My work has been widely staged in London, across the UK, and internationally. I’ve had the honor of receiving the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Michael Grandage Futures Bursary Award, and I was also nominated for Political Play of the Year. Before I began writing, I worked as an anthropologist. Happy Death Club is my first nonfiction book.
Flora Baker's nonfiction guide combines a heart-wrenching memoir detailing her personal experience of a form of grief rarely discussed: losing both your parents in early adulthood, with an intensely practical guide for what to do when someone you love dies or is going to die.
I met Flora when we were interviewed on BBC Women's Hour together, and I wish I'd had this exact book to help guide me after my parents died because it provides invaluable advice on how to handle the bureaucracy of death, how to plan a funeral, how to clear someone's house after they have died, and how to juggle the demands that death makes on the survivors while remaining gentle with yourself and other mourners.
A vulnerable, honest and deeply personal guide to finding your way through grief. Flora Baker was only twenty when her mum died suddenly of cancer. Her coping strategy was simple: ignore the magnitude of her loss. But when her dad became terminally ill nine years later, Flora was forced to confront the reality of grief. She had to accept that her life had changed forever. In The Adult Orphan Club, Flora draws on a decade of experience with grief and parent loss to explore all the chaotic ways that grief affects us, and how we can learn to navigate it.…
As a massive nerd from a very young age, I have always gravitated towards science and sci-fi stories. When it comes to YA and NA novels, most tend to be dystopian fiction or borrow heavily from fantasy. Hard sci-fi scenarios and real scientific speculation are hard to come by. When well-researched science meets an awesome storyline, that is my definition of perfection—what I love reading and also what I strive for as a writer.
This medical sci-fi thriller is an exploration of the darker side of biotechnology. It follows a med student as he unravels the strange mystery of multiple cases of medulloblastoma and how a prestigious medical center is claiming a 100% remission rate for this type of cancer. Readers sink into the medical world and are kept at the edge of their seats as this mesmerizing tale takes them on a wild ride from start to finish.
Sean, a highly motivated medical student in his third year at Harvard Medical School, is thrilled to take a two-month research post at the renowned Forbes Cancer Centre. But Sean is denied the opportunity to work on the cancer project and so he starts his own investigations into the centre.
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
Ultimately, I’m someone who enjoys a good adventure. Prior to the age of twenty, I had never gone on a vacation or been camping, and the only place I saw Mickey Mouse was on television. Determined to experience a more fulfilling life, I set my sights on becoming a world traveler. I’ve done almost everything to transform the dream into a reality. I’ve studied abroad, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, worked for an international NGO, served in the U.S. Navy, and done some off-the-grid exploring. After spending nine years abroad and visiting thirty countries, I’m finally a published author. Life Travel And The People In Betweenis my debut memoir.
I must admit that I didn’t know who Nicholas Sparks was prior to reading this book. Had he stuck to romance novels, I would’ve never discovered his amazing life story. Three Weeks with My Brother is so unique that it’s almost unfitting to call it a travel memoir. Instead, it’s a heartfelt international journey down memory lane as Nicholas and his brother Micah take the reader through the ups and downs of their lives. Readers not only get to experience an adventure around the world, but they also encounter a story filled with love, tragedy, success, and everything that makes a person who they are. In this case, that person is Nicholas Spark, a best-selling author, and screenwriter.
The story of two brothers deeply bound by love and tragedy and an extraordinary chronicle of a life-affirming trip
In January 2003 Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world.
An adventure by any measure, this trip was especially meaningful as it marked another milestone in the life journey of two brothers who, by their early thirties, were the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas and Micah travel the globe, from the Taj Mahal to Machu Picchu, the story of their family slowly unfolds.
