Here are 100 books that The Book of Dares fans have personally recommended if you like
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In 2015, I had a meltdown. I was finishing my PhD, teaching two classes, consulting, and was the “alpha parent” to two small children. It was overwhelming, and I was pulling away from work to survive. As a gender specialist, I knew all the data around gender norms and inequality. And here I was, falling into the same trap! Long story short, my husband and I made many changes at home. And I altered my work. I still do international projects, but I also do research and writing about gender inequality in North America, using my expertise to address inequality in my community and helping others with their own meltdowns.
I am a wee bit obsessed with mysteries. This is my genre of choice for vacations, plane rides, and the occasional lazy afternoon. And I love the way that Barbara Neely blends a classic whodunnit with the topic of gender equality. Barbara Neely, who is now deceased, left the world with a gem of a 4-book series about Blanche White, who is a domestic worker by profession—and an accidental sleuth on the side.
But what I love most about this series is the way Neely weaves huge issues like misogyny, racism, classism, and violence through her story while delivering a smart, page-turning mystery. In her own words, “fiction is a good place to do activism.”
Award-winning author Barbara Neely presents the first in a series of novels featuring Blanche White, bla ck domestic worker extraordinaire and accidental sleuth. '
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
In 2015, I had a meltdown. I was finishing my PhD, teaching two classes, consulting, and was the “alpha parent” to two small children. It was overwhelming, and I was pulling away from work to survive. As a gender specialist, I knew all the data around gender norms and inequality. And here I was, falling into the same trap! Long story short, my husband and I made many changes at home. And I altered my work. I still do international projects, but I also do research and writing about gender inequality in North America, using my expertise to address inequality in my community and helping others with their own meltdowns.
There are not many books that I can say with confidence that this book changed my life. But honestly—this book by Orenstein CHANGED MY LIFE. Orenstein put into words so many feelings and emotions I had over the years about growing up as a girl and reconciling my own internal feelings and interests in sex with society’s expectations of me.
I still recommend this book to every parent in my life. And here’s another tip—don’t say, “My kid isn’t there yet,” and dismiss it. Kids grow up faster than you realize! If you’re a parent, read this whenever you can find time. It will be so helpful in framing all conversations (even the early ones) around sex and sexuality.
A Time Top 10 Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year
The author of the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage—high school through college—and reveals how they are negotiating it.
A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth…
In 2015, I had a meltdown. I was finishing my PhD, teaching two classes, consulting, and was the “alpha parent” to two small children. It was overwhelming, and I was pulling away from work to survive. As a gender specialist, I knew all the data around gender norms and inequality. And here I was, falling into the same trap! Long story short, my husband and I made many changes at home. And I altered my work. I still do international projects, but I also do research and writing about gender inequality in North America, using my expertise to address inequality in my community and helping others with their own meltdowns.
You can’t talk about gender equality without tackling care—that women are expected to do it all, that somehow, we don’t think men are capable. Kate Washington (who has become a personal friend of mine and is a lovely human) takes on this topic with grace and humility.
The book is an easy-to-read story about Kate’s personal story of taking care of her husband through his fight with cancer. But she also manages to sneak in data points and teach an overall lesson about gender and caregiving. I listened to this book over several Sunday afternoons, folding laundry and cleaning—and I highly recommend the audiobook. The narrator had a soothing and familiar voice that made me miss her when I finished.
The story of one woman’s struggle to care for her seriously ill husband—and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.
Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
In 2015, I had a meltdown. I was finishing my PhD, teaching two classes, consulting, and was the “alpha parent” to two small children. It was overwhelming, and I was pulling away from work to survive. As a gender specialist, I knew all the data around gender norms and inequality. And here I was, falling into the same trap! Long story short, my husband and I made many changes at home. And I altered my work. I still do international projects, but I also do research and writing about gender inequality in North America, using my expertise to address inequality in my community and helping others with their own meltdowns.
A critical component of the gender equality booklist is trans rights, which is why I recommend this autobiography. I hesitate to say too much about it—because I just think the best thing to do is dive in and read this for yourself. I will say that the words Chloe chooses and the way she talks about her own transition—it was surprising, and heartbreaking, and insightful, and beautiful—all at the same time.
Chloe has also become a friend of mine, and I can say that she is every bit as tenacious and lovable in person as she is on the page. I often give this book as a gift to people who are thinking of, in the middle of, or are supporting a loved one through a gender transition.
SELF-ish is a narrative drawn from an international life, beginning with some early glimpses out at the world by a girl in a boy's body. Chloe Schwenke was raised as Stephen in a Marine Corps family, and was sent off at age fourteen to "man-up" at a military academy. Later-and still embodied as a man-she ventured abroad to work in some of the roughest regions of Africa, the Gaza Strip, Turkey, and many other locales. Her far-flung global journey was matched in intensity by an inner identity and spiritual struggle and the associated ravages of depression, before she came to…
I’m a philosopher and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University, where I teach students and conduct scholarship mainly for my colleagues and policymakers. But my popular writing is driven by the belief that many of the things I find interesting to think and write about are interesting not because I’m an academic—but because I’m a human, and so it’s likely that other humans would find them interesting too. So, while I enjoy dissecting esoteric scholarship as much as the next professor, my passion is exploring important ideas in a format that everyone can enjoy. This has been the goal of my first two books and will hopefully be the goal of many more.
I was shaken by the power of Setiya’s writing. Academic philosophers are not exactly known for the beauty of their prose, but this book is, indeed, beautiful. And sad. And a bit dark. So basically, it was exactly what I look for in a book.
I was drawn in by Setiya’s early disclosure that he lives with chronic pain and that this would be part of his window into exploring suffering. As someone who also lives with pain (and who has tried to write about it), I found his reflections powerful.
His chapter on grief, too, stayed with me, so much so that I went back to it after experiencing a loss in my life. Perhaps that’s the greatest compliment I can give this book—that it truly made philosophy matter to me when I needed it to.
“Life Is Hard is a humane consolation for challenging times. Reading it is like speaking with a thoughtful friend who never tells you to cheer up, but, by offering gentle companionship and a change of perspective, makes you feel better anyway.” —The New York Times Book Review
There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.
In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help…
As a kid, I rarely spoke up, and I certainly didn’t think I had much influence. As a young adult, though, I came across true stories of kids who stood up for what they believed in. These kids inspired many of my own books, and now whenever I’m looking for something to read, I look for novels about kids who screw up their courage to speak up for a fairer, more inclusive, richer world.
Katherine Hannigan creates quirky characters that I love, so when I saw True (… Sort Of)in our apartment building’s book exchange box, I snatched it up. Delly Patterson is an unlikely hero. She starts the book as the town troublemaker, bold in a way that I never dared to be as a child. Reading this book was like catapulting myself into a wilder, more adventurous childhood of my own without getting into trouble myself. Delly eventually uses her boldness to stand up for someone with more bravery than many adults might have. (I’d also like to give a shout-out to Katherine Hannigan for including a nonbinary character at a time when hardly anyone else – in society, and especially in children’s books – acknowledged nonbinary people.)
Can friendship save you? The day Ferris Boyd moves to town, Delly Pattison is sure a special surpresent (a present that is a surprise) is on its way. Instead, Delly ends up in even more trouble than usual. The Boyds' arrival in River Bluffs means big changes for Brud Kinney, too. He can't believe who he's hanging around with. Ferris Boyd isn't like anyone Delly or Brud have ever known. Ferris is a mystery and a wonder. Through friendship, though, Delly, Brud, and Ferris discover truths that will change their lives. And bring them the best surpresent of all. Includes…
I am passionate about giving people the benefit of good intentions and my faith calls me to care and serve others. Today, I believe my purpose is to help inspire leaders to trust in the inherent good in people while caring and serving them in intentional ways that leads to high performance. I have been blessed immensely and want to give back to others so their journey can be one of significance. As former CEO of my company, I had no roadmap which made our journey even more difficult. Now, I have experienced the joy, the fulfillment, and the abundance of building a people-first culture. Together we can make a difference for so many people.
We are in an exponential world today and we grew up in an incremental world for businesses.
Daniel not only helps us understand how to anticipate more of the future, he teaches us how to anticipate which is one of the most important skills for business leaders today. After reading his book, I also worked through his anticipatory leader course.
By understanding the power of being anticipatory, I have used his techniques to lead our firm to bigger opportunities. In the future of work, anticipating what people will want and need, provides a distinctive advantage.
A rousing 7-step plan for living a life filled with hope and possibility from an inspirational speaker who survived a near-fatal fire at the age of nine and now runs a successful business inspiring people all around the world. When John O'Leary was nine years old, he was almost killed in a devastating house fire. With burns on one hundred percent of his body, O'Leary mustered an almost unimaginable amount of inner strength just to survive the ordeal. The insights he gained through this experience and the heroes who stepped into his life to help him through the journey, his…
As a clinical psychologist, I listen to thoughts all the time. I’m also having my own, constantly. We rely on our thoughts to help us navigate the world. However, our thoughts can also be a source of suffering. At times, they're not such reliable guides or helpers. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a way of thinking about thinking. ACT captured my imagination early in my clinical career. I trained with ACT’s originator, Steven Hayes, in the early 1990’s. I’ve come to believe that being more aware of our own thoughts, and our relationship to them is key to creating positive change and living a life grounded in our values.
This poetic book by a literary scholar looks at the way we think about and experience not only the lives we lead, but those alternative lives that we do not lead.
Our thoughts can lead us to obsessively regret our choices or focus on “the road not taken.” Miller looks at the sense of loss that can accrue as the potential transitions to the actual.
He describes our unled lives as “part of this world as shadows are part of things…”
A captivating book about the emotional and literary power of the lives we might have lived had our chances or choices been different.
We each live one life, formed by paths taken and untaken. Choosing a job, getting married, deciding on a place to live or whether to have children-every decision precludes another. But what if you'd gone the other way? It can be a seductive thought, even a haunting one.
Andrew H. Miller illuminates this theme of modern culture: the allure of the alternate self. From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, Jane Hirshfield to…
Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.
This is a sweet picture book for kids that gets them thinking about the concept of gratitude in ways that they can understand.
Through the story of Betsy and her magic stone, they learn, for example, that there are lots of things in life to be grateful for, and sometimes the little happy moments are just as powerful as the big ones. As a picture book, it’s appropriate for children who are not reading on their own yet. Available as a hardcover, paperback, or audiobook.
Do you want to teach your children how to be grateful for the things they already have?
Little Betsy will learn that happiness is made up of simple things in life, both small and big. With the help of the magic stone, she will begin to feel gratitude for her parents, friends, and toys. But what happens when little Betsy forgets to use the magic of her stone? She will realize that the power of gratitude is hidden in her heart.
"Gratitude is my superpower" will teach your little ones to appreciate the warmth of home, time spent playing with…
Meg Jay, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist, and an Associate Professor of Human Development at the University of Virginia, who specializes in adult development and in twentysomethings in particular. She earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, and in gender studies, from the University of California, Berkeley. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and on NPR and BBC. Her TED talk “Why 30 Is Not the New 20” is among the most watched of all time.
An Ordinary Age is an antidote. It is for twentysomethings everywhere who are sick and tired of being sick and tired that the lives they wake up to everyday don't match the ones they see on Instagram. It is a book for real twentysomethings, that is, ones who deserve to know that their lives and their efforts aren't just good enough: They are well and truly good.
"A meticulous cartography of how outer forces shape young people’s inner lives." —Esquire, Best Books of 2021
In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a “best life” has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across our personal and professional lives—and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life.
Young adulthood: the time of our lives when, theoretically, anything can happen, and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social media…
