99 Books Like The Heavenly Table

This book could almost be a study on psychology.

The writing itself is so stunning that I could get lost in the words themselves. But at its heart, the novel captures something about mistakes and ego and lifelong consequences that makes me want to cry. The progression over the course of the protagonist Briony’s life is painfully beautiful.

It’s one of those books that are so great that it’s hard for me to even describe how it makes me feel.

It’s rare that I find a book that plunges me so deeply into the psychology of a character.

Grace is the protagonist of Alias Grace. She’s cunning. She’s bold. She’s possibly a murderess. The most fascinating aspect of Grace to me is that she is based on a real-life character from Canada in the mid-1800s.

Throughout the whole book, I kept wondering about her—not just the fictional character, but the real one too—was this what she was really thinking? Was this how she really behaved?

I found her voice in the novel to be absolutely undeniable. You want to believe everything she says, but at the same time, you mistrust her...

This book had me spinning from page one.

It felt like historical fiction—until I found out that it wasn’t. I thought I knew where it was headed—until I didn’t. I thought it was realism until—sorry, no spoilers.

The Haddesley siblings are a truly messed-up bunch. Each of them has their own quirks, and each of them has their own extreme dysfunction. But I couldn’t help identifying with them, even in their weirdness.

I hoped they could make it out of the swirling vortex of their history and the lies surrounding them. And then everything took a twist.

This has been my favourite book since I read it as a child.

I love Jane’s courage in the face of adversity, both in her childhood and as a woman. It is her moral compass that guides her through her life, determining the rightness and wrongness of situations. She grows up in a world that believes she should be silent and accept the single path offered to her.

The message in the book emboldened me as I grew up and had to make decisions to challenge the expected norms. I can’t help but find joy in the cyclic nature of the love story here. In patience, in steadfastness, she finds love and does not lose herself in the process.

There cannot be a more brilliant or more shattering evocation of what it feels like to gradually realise you are forgetting yourself and vanishing from your own life: the mind observes the mind’s deterioration. Bernleff’s pioneering novel, published in 1984, follows the journey of its narrator Maarten from the first days of confusion into a darkness of self-loss. A beautiful, poignant masterpiece about memory and forgetting. 

I only discovered the world-renowned author Clarice Lispector in 2015, when the excellent edition of her complete stories was published.

Her capacity for keen and idiosyncratic observation penetrates the human heart and mind and makes her tales simultaneously shocking, amusing and thought provoking. Imagine to read the story of a chicken and feel yourself being almost passionately involved in its short life! Or think of the birthday party of an 89-year-old woman, who despises her family that surrounds her in barely veiled hostility!

These stories are amazing in every way; they are rooted in a deep understanding of the human mind, and their psychological grasp is eye-opening. I find them much more accessible than Lispector's novels and enjoy rereading them from time to time.

The first edition of this book is visually stunning, and I like it, first, for that reason—chakras need color and beauty and imagery and vitality, not black and white prose. They are, after all, the animation of the life force itself viewed through a prism. How that could possibly ever translate into just words on a page, I’ll never understand. Second, her practices are simple and exemplary with Archetypes, Altars, Physical Exercises, Crystals, Meditations, Daily Questions/Journaling, and Affirmations. They touch on all four aspects of each of us: Body, Heart, Mind, Spirit. Information about chakras is fine but useless. Working with your own chakra system is the entire point as far as I’m concerned.

I've always heard there are two sides to every story. Generally, this means a good side and a bad, or at least one with some sort of a redeeming perspective. But what does a person do when both sides are equally hellish? For Maiya, it means she truly is Daydream's Daughter and Nightmare's Friend. It seems as though the insufferable miseries will never end. This book is deeply emotional and compelling. The author describes the events in vivid detail creating a sense for the reader of being there in the midst of it all. The book immediately captures your attention, and page after page keeps you wondering what will happen next. An excellent story by an excellent author.

In this book, a little girl named Sarah is worried about starting her first day at school. She can’t help but imagine all the terrible things that could happen. Her friend named Benny helps her to change her perspective by showing her all the things that could go right instead of wrong. I really enjoy this book because it’s so easy to let our minds wander to the negative possibilities. I like how this book reminds us to see the good that can happen in situations and also encourages us to find good positive friends like Benny that will help give us a boost when needed! 

You know those books that stick with you years after you read them? Well, this is one. Rich characters that feel so real. The anguish of losing a child and the hope that even fifteen years down the road, you might be reunited. Parents who act as I would. A situation so plausible, you are right there with them. Love it when I can’t put a book down.