Books like The Kissing Bug — picked by fans

I love this book because it took me on a surprise adventure through the life of a black boy (and young man) raised in the South. I met Laymon at a writing workshop a few months prior to this book’s release date, and I heard him read an excerpt from it.

I was immediately hooked on his storytelling ability. The language is so authentic to him and his experiences, and he holds nothing back. I love the vulnerability that saturates each page as I follow him through his addictions and struggles. While his life is so different from mine, the idea of finding one’s identity in society could not be more relatable.

Some years ago, my father fell ill and I barely made it to his bedside in time to say goodbye.

Written after her husband’s sudden death, Didion’s book has not only helped me come to terms with losing my father, but has also shed light on our all-too-human response to endings. Didion is committed to analysis yet acknowledges our irrationality in the face of loss—like when she keeps her husband’s shoes, believing he’ll need them if he returns.

I can relate to this: when my father died, I kept one of his favorite shirts and his birding binoculars, thinking he might want them later. Didion doesn’t offer closure, just a portrait of the grieving mind and heart that I find consoling and, in the end, life-affirming.

Manguso’s book was the first memoir I read that delved into what it is like to live with a serious health condition. Her first-person account was vulnerable, yet she used the formatting of short chapters (vignette style) to carry the story through.

I learned so much about the struggle of long-term illness, but I also found moments within her book to breathe and find hope. Her book really helped me shape my own writing in how she conveys profound topics in a way that can buoy the human spirit. 

I went into this book wanting to see how to write about the loss of a child in a delicate and artistic way, and I was delighted to find that Comfort balanced those things beautifully. Through the loss of a five-year-old child from illness, Hood danced me right through the shock and then grief she felt.

I felt how overwhelming it was for her to carry on, and it normalized that for me, too, as a person who also had a related experience. The brevity of the book was perfect for me—a bite-sized way of glimpsing into this world, feeling this grief, and then finding a way out. 

This book was life-changing for me. Annemarie Colbin shares so much wisdom about eating whole foods as opposed to being on any kind of diet. She is a big advocate of “listening to your body.” She even asserts that if you “forget” to take your supplements, it could be because your body doesn’t need them at this time. In that case, she encourages taking a short break. This book inspired in me the idea of trusting your body to let you know what foods are best for you.

As a former college writing teacher, Sandra Marinella understands the value of writing one’s story. In The Story You Need to Tell, she recounts her personal journey with breast cancer and tells the stories of others who experienced their own illnesses and traumas. Throughout the book and with the help of writing prompts, Marinella guides and encourages readers to write their stories as an empowering way to heal. She demonstrates how this leads individuals to move toward a better and fuller self as well as to a new, hopeful, and resilient narrative. I recommend this book because it is an excellent guide to writing one’s story, which will eventually become part of that person’s legacy.

Jim Downs offers an essential corrective to the view of emancipation as a kind of liberal or progressive “triumphalist narrative.” Downs approaches the illness and death that the freed people suffered during and after the Civil War as a major public health crisis. He does not question the historical necessity or the morality of emancipation, but he shows that the disruptions and chaos that attended emancipation—often exacerbated by federal policy—also resulted in immeasurable human suffering and countless deaths. Historians have long recognized that emancipation was a messy affair. But what I find especially compelling is that Downs raises the question of whether the hardship caused by federal emancipation policy was intrinsic to that policy (however unintentional) or incidental—what we might call today “collateral damage.”

I kind of hate this book, mostly because I wish I’d written it.

It’s a very comprehensive look at what a sedentary life can do to your body and how you can do clerical work (like writing books or wasting time on social media) without killing yourself. I was a standing desk user long before I got this book, and as a career martial artist, I’m quite familiar with how the body works and why it needs to move.

I hate to admit it, but Dr Starrett is way better qualified than I am to write this, and despite my previous experiences, I learned a lot about how to stay healthy while spending hours at my desk. Dammit!

I loved this memoir because it is a story of incredible resilience.

I was deeply moved by the author’s ability to recount the stark facts of the heartbreaking intergenerational trauma she suffered while showing how her early life experiences of deprivation and abuse helped pave the way for her compassionate work with patients and populations. I nodded in recognition and sometimes laughed out loud at her account of her Catholic school education, which I could relate to my own experience.

I was awestruck by her grit and determination to rise above her difficult circumstances without any kind of model and little or no encouragement. I was inspired by her ability to find love and a fulfilling career after such a rocky start, and I’m sure her patients appreciate the depth of her compassion.  

I first picked up this book years ago for the appeal of its short, science-based chapters took on novelty, quirky questions about why our bodies are so weird: why do we have dimples? Why do stomachs rumble? Why do men have nipples? What happens to weight when it’s lost? (Spoiler alert: you breathe it out!)

But Hamblin also takes on some more serious topics, the (mis)understanding of which is even more important in the era of COVID and social-media-fueled wellness culture: how do vaccines work? Can you really boost your immune system? Do probiotics work? What about multivitamins? Are we made to eat meat? What is gluten, anyway? What causes cancer? Hamblin’s humor, straight-talk and lack of any agenda to sell you anything but the state of the science is a refreshing balm in a world fueled with health disinformation that thrives on our lack of scientific knowledge.