Here are 100 books that The Inner Life of Animals fans have personally recommended if you like
The Inner Life of Animals.
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I am a former police officer who couldn’t find any use for his English lit degree until he lived as hard as he could for decades and found something worth writing about. My years with K9 Brag—the greatest, smartest animal I have known—became the key that unlocked my writing. Now I write screenplays, comics, historical fiction, crime stories, and even horror shorts. I am currently working on a novel trilogy about one of the most famous outlaws in history.
My stories almost always have an animal that lies at the emotional heart of the tale.
I sought out this book after watching the documentary that brought me to tears: My Octopus Teacher.
This book was every bit as inspiring. The narrator recounts her interaction with octopuses at an aquarium as she begins to recognize aspects that mirror human traits: curiosity, warmth, individuality, and humor. But the author never anthropomorphizes the octopuses; they remain a mysterious, complicated species.
This book happily left me with more questions than answers, which is why I love it and why I will never eat octopus.
'Sy Montgomery's The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk did for raptors' New Statesman 'Charming and moving...with extraordinary scientific research' Guardian 'An engaging work of natural science... There is clearly something about the octopus's weird beauty that fires the imaginations of explorers, scientists, writers' Daily Mail
In 2011 Sy Montgomery wrote a feature for Orion magazine entitled 'Deep Intellect' about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death. It went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I love telling stories that inspire readers to protect our precious world and all our fellow citizens. There isn’t much that’s more important. But I also want to share my wonder and awe about our wildly diverse kin. I’ve written four books of animal science for young adults—Daisy to the Rescue, Last of the Giants, Glowing Bunnies!?, and the latest, Love in Their Hearts. I particularly treasure that book, since it’s a collaboration with ethologist and advocate Marc Bekoff, who first opened my eyes to the fascinating inner lives of animals. Truth is, once we look, we realize we’re surrounded by worlds we can barely imagine.
I will read anything by Mary Roach because she’s hilarious.
But in particular, she’s an expert at uncovering the unexpectedly bizarre, surreal hidden side of any topic: death, astronaut training, digestion, and… human-animal conflicts.
Animals do what they do, and many a time, humans want to arrest (and even kill) them for it. And we have tried. For centuries. With wildly uneven results. And with each story of people going to battle—vainly, quixotically—with vandalous seagulls and crows, hungry bears, uninvited elephants, poisonous beans, and home-invading macaques, I think, Holy sh*t!
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets…
As an evolutionary biologist and an advocate for women, and in particular, mothers in the sciences, I love to read about the stories of other female scientists talking about their work and the challenges they’ve faced. We need more accounts of what it’s like to grapple with both the idea and the actuality of becoming a mother in a competitive, male-dominated field that requires so much of its scholars.
There’s a line near the beginning of Berwald’s book where she mentions that jellyfish came into her life “when the haze of sleepless nights” brought on by early parenthood had begun to lift, and she was beginning to once again have an existence beyond parenting. What follows is a chronicle of Berwald’s deep dive into all the fascinating aspects of her new passion and the people and places she experienced because of it.
I read this book while I was living in that very haze, and enjoyed both following Berwald’s adventures and imagining those that I’d have once my haze had lifted.
"A book full of wonders" —Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk
"Witty, insightful. . . .The story of jellyfish. . . is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." —New York Times Book Review
Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting—microscopic spears that pierce with five million…
AcClaim is a dark, high-society romance about Beatrix Winslow-Hale, a successful romance author who believes desire can be negotiated and controlled—until enigmatic billionaire Dorian Wolker crosses the line between consensual surrender and violation. Publicly humiliated and emotionally shattered, Beatrix turns to Manon de Rochemaure, her fiercely loyal best friend and…
I’m secretly eight years old inside. I love fascinating animal and science stuff, especially cool, weird, and gross facts. Readers of my children’s books see this passion in action. My best-selling and award-winning nonfiction animal books have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide since 2000. I focus particularly on reaching reluctant, struggling, and English-language-learning readers by packing my books with lots of action and high-interest topics to keep them turning pages. I’m recommending these top-five narrative nonfiction animal books for adults because these authors have influenced my research and thinking—and because they’re terrific stories!
Elephants are my favorite animals—for their size and beauty, innate intelligence, and matriarchal structure.
Do you love them too? If so, or even if you just want to know more about these utterly unique creatures and many more, you’ll want to read this insightful book. Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason was a forerunner in writing about socioemotional studies of animal behavior for lay readers.
This was the first nonfiction book I read years ago on this topic, and it remains the one that changed my worldview and approach to animal research, appreciation, and understanding.
For more than 100 years, scientists have denied that animals experience emotions, yet this remarkable and groundbreaking book proves what animal-lovers have known to be true: wolves, tigers, giraffes, elephants and many other creatures exhibit all kinds of feelings - hope, fear, shame, love, compassion. From Ola, the irritable whale, to Toto, the chimpanzee who nursed his owner back to health, this book collects together for the first time a vast range of case histories which show the extraordinary complexity of the animal world, and the tumult of emotions that govern it.
I have often spoken with the animals that I meet: from migrating ducks to street cats, woodchucks to chickadees. Mostly quietly—and always as if they not only could hear and understand, but also could reply. As our children grew, the replies became louder and more insistent. When our daughter was old enough to feel fearful of travel—particularly the crossing of open water in small boats—I began to tell her stories featuring these talking animals. Because the animals also were sometimes afraid, the stories helped to distract her from the perils of our own adventures and then, eventually, to enjoy them as well.
Although not nearly as well-known as Richard Adams’ Watership Down (an epic tale, with voyages and battles on the scale of Homer’s Odyssey), this book was published decades earlier and could be seen as a quiet precursor to that far more violent story.
The gardeners among you will immediately recognize both the fear and the excitement that the animals feel when contemplating unfamiliar humans. My wife and I, who have moved dozens of times in our long careers, often quote a line from Little Georgie: “New folks coming, oh my!”
It has been a while since Folks lived in the Big House, and an even longer time has passed since there has been a garden at the House. All the animals of the Hill are very excited about the new Folks moving in, and they wonder how things are going to change. It’s only a matter of time before the animals of the Hill find out just who is moving in, and they may be a little bit surprised when they do.
I wondered, seven novels in, why I’d never written in the voice of a child, and it so happened that Our Picnics in the Sun, the eighth novel, required me to do just that. In doing my research I discovered an oddity. Writers of fiction assume the right to enter the head or consciousness or identity of their characters. The oddity is that you might expect a writer to write, without too much difficulty, from the point of view of a child: after all, the writer has been a child. But it turns out that childhood experience is often elusive, evades interpretation, and is the hardest to capture on the page.
A wonderful and slightly maddening memoir, this (it’s nonfiction, Jim, but not as we know it). Bayley survived her childhood by absorbing books. She evokes the worlds of David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, and everything Agatha Christie ever wrote, by ventriloquising and interweaving the voices of those stories with the story of her own parental neglect, thereby insisting, if dreamily, that the boundaries between her reliable book-land and her unstable real-life-land will remain blurred. It’s only slightly maddening (I did much the same as a child; part of me will always be Katie tumbling out of the swing). The book’s deliberate ambiguities suggest that Bayley is claiming sanctuary, reserving the right not to divulge what is still too unbearable to relate, and why shouldn’t she? It’s an amazingly honest, touching book.
'The word "mesmerising" is frequently applied to memoirs, but seldom as deservedly as in the case of Girl With Dove' Financial Times
'Reading is a form of escape and an avid reader is an escape artist...'
Brilliantly original, funny and clever Honor Clark, Spectator, Book of the Year
Growing up in a dilapidated house by the sea where men were forbidden, Sally's childhood world was filled with mystery and intrigue. Hippies trailed through the kitchen looking for God - their leader was Aunt Di, who ruled the house with charismatic force. When Sally's baby brother vanishes from his…
"A profound and often affecting story of resilience." —Kirkus Reviews
The Silent Women, an extraordinary novel inspired by the real women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee—the Manhattan Project’s “Secret City," where thousands kept the deadliest secret of World War II—is a sweeping, absorbing, and deeply human story about chosen…
I was a happy child until I went to school. When my teacher turned her back, I ran home. My mom sent me back. The umbilical cord broken, I held a grudge. That enmity remained until my ninth-grade English teacher read us Richard Brautigan’s post-apocalyptic, proto-hippie fantasy In Watermelon Sugar. There was much to imagine: a multicolored sun, an infinite garbage dump, and mathematical, parent-eating tigers. Like the narrator, I wanted to live in a shack, not have a regular name, and hook up with a proto-hippie, hot cake-making artist girlfriend who made “a long and slow love” possible. Since then, I have devoured fiction, poetry, art, film, you name it.
I saw my first raven near Mount Rainier. The bird looked me in the eye, hopped to the left, sized me up, and continued his business. The advancing Russian army drove Bernd Heinrich and his family into the forest near Hahnheide, Germany, where they lived in a small hut for five years.
There, he began his lifelong quest to connect with insects (especially bees), owls, trees, antelope (he runs ultramarathons), geese...and ravens. The mind of the Raven is a deep, scientific meditation on the intersection between being human and raven. It concludes that “ultimately [our differences are] less a matter of consciousness than of culture” (342).
I wonder how culture has dulled my imagination, a struggle Heinrich clearly has fought more successfully than I have.
Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a "raven father," as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.
Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in…
Food has always been my existential retreat from the world. Whether eating solo or with people, countless meals have been the best hyperbolic time chambers for strengthening relationships with others and with myself. And I’ve always wanted to write, to participate in ageless forums of subject and technique in this great literary tradition of ours. I guess these two art forms and obsessions were bound to lock horns in my aesthetic makeup. In my world, good reading is good eating. It’s that simple. No other qualifications are needed. I inhaled the following books and was made full every time – to eventually take a stab at a couple of recipes also.
If Cooking Gene is the rallying cry, Food: A Love Story is the marching time music.
Gaffigan expands the food observations and shenanigans from his standup routines and this memoir is just as funny as watching the family man on stage. Gaffigan’s food writing maintains a golden dynamic of being approachable and personal at the same time.
It was full of personality and gave me valuable insight into how to shape my character’s food habits as the focal point of literary scrutiny.
“What are my qualifications to write this book? None really. So why should you read it? Here’s why: I’m a little fat. If a thin guy were to write about a love of food and eating I’d highly recommend that you do not read his book.”
Bacon. McDonalds. Cinnabon. Hot Pockets. Kale. Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet (“choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover”) and decrying the worst offenders (“kale is the early morning of foods”). Fans flocked to his New…
During my twenty-nine nears in the federal government, I maintained a Top Secret clearance while being a CIO, Chief Architect, & Director of various things with the White House, US Congress, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, where I served in a senior management role for the National Security Division, the agency responsible for serving as the liaison between the Attorney General and the Intelligence Community. Today, my passion is writing about my White House experiences, in both fiction and non-fiction.
J.B. West was a White House Usher from 1941 to 1969. His book details many of his experiences in performing this rare and unique job in the White House, where he personally worked for Presidents (and First Ladies): Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. There have only been three books written by White House Ushers: Ike Hoover, who served from 1904 -1933; J.B. West, 1941-1969; and me, Chris Emery, 1986-1994.
In this New York Times bestseller, the White House chief usher for nearly three decades offers a behind-the-scenes look at America's first families. J. B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue-and coordinated its daily life-at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings and funerals, gardens and playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and, with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home. For twenty-eight years, first as assistant to the chief usher, then as chief usher, he witnessed national crises and triumphs,…
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation
by
Brian Lofton,
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation, is a raw and faith-centered memoir about life after military service—and the internal battles many never see. Brian Lofton shares his journey through addiction, shame, identity loss, and spiritual distance, revealing how the hardest struggles often begin after…
I am a creature of habitat. I can’t help but connect with my environment in every possible way. It’s physical, emotional. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Mexico City. Leaving was heart-wrenching, but the promise to fulfill a dream drew me to Los Angeles. During the next four decades I became a student of Los Angeles and the Latino community that populates it. I agree with Randy Newman: I love L.A.
If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous By Nowis a debut novel by Via Bleidner, a young writer who reports her experiences living in the L.A./San Fernando Valley enclave of Calabasas, attending the Calabasas High School. Calabasas, for those who have missed this essential chapter of contemporary lunacy, is home to the Kardashians. Bleidner writes about the world she has inhabited as a reporter. She participates, but she also is able to maintain a certain writer's detachment describing the shenanigans the natives engage in: lip surgery, social media, and dog celebrities. But there is humor in this slice of the L.A. experience. Bleidner not only describes, but also tries to understand and reflect.
If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous by Now is an insider's collection of funny and warmhearted stories about coming of age in the Los Angeles suburb famed for birthing the Kardashian-Jenners and the Bling Ring.
For Via Bleidner, transferring to Calabasas High from the private Catholic school she's attended since second grade is a culture shock, not to mention absolutely lonely. Suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world of celebrities, affluenza, and McMansions, Via takes a page from Cameron Crowe and pretends she's on a journalism assignment, taking notes on her classmates and jotting down bits of overheard gossip.
