Here are 89 books that The Wild Other fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wild Other.
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My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
I adore this book because it is so unique—I’ve never read anything quite this specific or niche which seems so all-encompassing.
It is the story of a life lost, and a life found. Of a father that dies and how the recovery of his daughter is tied up with the start of a new relationship—with a goshawk.
At the outset, the author is so wonderfully eloquent on all aspects of loss; the sudden jarring sense of confusion when a person dies and you have their possessions still in your hands; the struggle to keep in touch with reality (“for weeks I felt like I was made of dully burning metal”); the desperation to see the back of grief when new relationships are desperately grasped at, and fail of course, because of that desperation.
The goshawk saves her (and us) from the darkness, as she becomes gripped with the…
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of…
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…
For several years, I’ve been on a journey of personal healing and transformation after a traumatic marriage and divorce. These incredible female writers helped stitch my heart back together and offered beautiful insights and inspiration on the healing path. These are books of timeless wisdom for women everywhere, but especially for women who have loved, lost, hurt, and overcome. We are reminded not just of our personal strength and resilience when we glimpse ourselves in the stories of others; but we remember that we are part of a powerful collective of teachers, leaders, luminaries, mothers, healers, and trailblazers. We are never alone.
Dr. Edith Eger, holocaust survivor, psychologist, and author of the best-selling memoir, The Choice, distills some of her biggest lessons into this incredible book.
A manual for finding freedom and healing, even after the unimaginable, Dr. Eger gives us a profound gift by asking us to look at our own thoughts, patterns, and behaviors that may cause suffering.
One of my favorite quotes: “What a beautiful reminder that the things that interrupt our lives, that stop us in our tracks, can also be catalysts for the emerging self, tools that show us a new way to be that endow us with new vision. This is why I say that in every crisis, there is a transition. Awful things happen, they hurt like hell. And these devastating experiences are also opportunities to regroup and decide what we want for our lives. When we choose to respond to what’s happened by…
'An incredible human being with an extraordinary story to share' Dr Rangan Chatterjee
'A beautiful, life-changing manifesto' Brene Brown
'I will be forever changed by Dr Eger's story' Oprah
'Her story is a testament to our true human potential. She's a gift' Nicole LePera
Each moment in Auschwitz was hell on earth. It was also my best classroom. Subjected to loss, torture, starvation and the constant threat of death, I discovered tools for survival and freedom that I continue to use every day.
In her darkest moments, Edith Eger discovered that the most damaging prison was the one in her…
I am a speaker, grief investigator, filmmaker, and voracious reader! Since the death of my eldest son, Harry, 23 years ago, I have become passionate about changing the landscape for people who have to face life and work when they are living with grief. Books on grief helped me enormously right from the start with Harry’s diagnosis when I was going through ‘living’ or ‘anticipatory grief’ and even more after Harry’s death. They could be fiction or factual; it didn’t matter. They offered me a translation, a guide for what I was going through, and gave me the courage to go forward as these authors were demonstrating.
It is rare to find a book by a therapist that is written so viscerally and openly about their own personal experience. In writing about the sudden and unexpected death of her husband, Bill, Sasha has her professional and personal hat on.
I could almost feel her grief coming in waves through the pages, but rather than that being depressing, the therapist in her writes with wise observations on what is happening, what she is going through, and what helped at any given time; and just as importantly, what didn’t.
I have recommended this book to so many people going through grief and also to those who support them. It is a must-read!
'This is the most startlingly honest book about grief I have ever read. Its immediacy hits you on the first page and takes you on an unforgettable journey. No one has set out so clearly the stages we go through as we try to come to terms with facing the enormity of death.' - Dame Penelope Wilton, DBE
'Sasha writes exquisitely and honestly, the sheer rawness of what she has gone through and is still going through, sitting in balance with the calm and clear-sighted objectivity of the therapist, who is also her.' - Hugh Bonneville
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
Grief has been a part of my life since I was very young. My parents died 10 months apart when I was 11, then 12; my only sibling died when I was 20. Years later, after living through the grief of watching my marriage crumble and my 3 children struggle, my eldest son died at 20 in a single-car crash. Now, 26 years later, I read—and write—about navigating grief and uncertainty. I’m passionate about supporting those who grieve all manner of losses, including those that are spoken about and those often shrouded in silence. I hope you enjoy this book list as much as I have creating it.
Because I’ve spent so many years grieving one loss or another, I value the ability to understand what’s happening in our brains when it feels as though our emotions have completely taken over, particularly when we’re new to grief.
The Grieving Brain provides a deeper dive into the science of grief than Can Anyone Tell Me? does, and for that reason it’s been helpful for me to read now, when my loss is no longer new and I’m more able to digest the informational passages.
I loved how O’Connor skillfully explains the neuroscience of grief, then helps us understand how to create a meaningful life as we navigate our losses.
As long as we’re alive, there will likely be losses ahead, so I’m especially grateful to have read this now.
Next Big Idea Club's "Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022"
Behavioral Scientist Notable Books of 2022
A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning.
In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O'Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm,…
I was raised in a loving but strict Catholic family in the 1970s, when girls like me were still expected to grow up to become traditional wives and mothers, rather than go to college and pursue a career. In a Pre-Cana class intended to prepare me and my fiancé for marriage (it didn’t work so well, as evidenced by our rancorous divorce twelve years later), I learned the concept of “family of origin,” and the profound impact a person’s upbringing has on them as an adult. I became fascinated by the psychic baggage each of us carries around, and how it affects our personal relationships and life choices.
Samantha is the woman I used to be—a devoted and eager-to-please wife who is an expert at turning a blind eye to the cracks in the facade of her marriage. Getting to know Sam in the pages of this novel was a lifeline for me at a very difficult time in my personal life. I was delighted to see how she opens both her home and her heart to unconventional friends and experiences, and in the process, discovers a surprisingly joyous new life for herself.
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You.
In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart.
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money.…
As a practicing psychologist for the past twenty years, I have treated hundreds of children and teens who have behavior problems, as well as provided help for parents who want to improve their parenting skills. Central to many, if not most, of the problems I see revolve around poor communication. Many parents don’t know how to effectively communicate about certain issues, which often causes even more problems with their children. However, when parents learn how to approach their children without reacting in frustration and anger, I’ve witnessed amazing improvement in both behavior and the parent-child relationship.
I frequently use this child’s book to help young children cope with the divorce of their parents. Too often, I’ve found, parents don’t know how to talk to their children about divorce, and even more often, children don’t know how to talk to their parents about their feelings and what they may see as the end of their family. I Don’t Want to Talk About It follows a young girl who just doesn’t want to talk about her fears and painful feelings when she discovers that her parents are divorcing. However, with the gentle help of her parents, she is ultimately able to gain the courage to talk to them about what the future holds. The children I’ve counseled about divorce have responded well to this soft and empathic book. I highly recommend it.
When a child's parents tell her they have decided to divorce, the last thing she wants to do is talk about it. Instead, she wants to roar as loud as a lion so she can't hear their painful words, or turn into a fish and hide her tears in the sea, or even become a bird and fly away. But with her mother and father's help, she starts to consider what life will be like after divorce and learns that although some things will change, many other things will remain the same. Most importantly, she realizes that although her parents…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
As a Certified Divorce Coach and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®, I work with clients during one of the most difficult stages of their lives. Clients often feel regretful about the past and fearful for the future, and the right book recommendation can really help them move forward. I often give clients reading assignments between coaching sessions that help them process their grief, figure out their goals, educate themselves about finances, feel less alone in the divorce process, and become more confident in making major decisions. I’m never not reading on this subject.
Psychotherapist Daphne Rose Kingma offers ten coping strategies to heal your heart when struggling with life’s devastations, including divorce. This is a soothing read if one is still raw with grief as it offers both hope and practical suggestions for moving through loss. Divorce can be a chance to heal old wounds and grow and this book offers a terrific start to that process.
Add layoffs, foreclosures, and skyrocketing health-care costs to the inevitable crises of every life, and you have today’s landscape. Amid these challenges, even those who thought they had solid coping skills feel that their center cannot hold as things fall apart. In her first book in many years, bestselling author Daphne Rose Kingma takes us on a path of emotional and spiritual healing, with particular attention to the complex and frequently overwhelming circumstances of our lives right now. The perfect combination of empathic friend, sage counselor, savvy problem solver, and even gallows humorist, Kingma looks straight into the predicaments so…
I have been researching, curating, and writing women’s history for 30 years. I curated the suffragette exhibition Purple, White, and Green at the Museum of London. I wrote The Suffragettes in Pictures; Love and Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick; Elsie and Mairi Go To War: Two Extraordinary Women on the Western Front; The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton, and Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes.
I am a public historian, devoted to sharing my research and writing with all. I am a keen podcaster, Youtuber, and guest on television and radio. You could say I’m a heroine addict.
I hope you love my recommendations.
The leading authority on the history of divorce in England, Lawrence Stone’s brilliantly researched books are scholarly and highly readable. Road to Divorce is a frank and intimate account of the changing moral views of the past. It is utterly engrossing, full of drama, and leads readers to appreciate what a shocking prison marriage proved to be for hundreds of thousands of couples who, until 1857, needed an Act of Parliament to escape a bad marriage. Wives found it far harder than husbands to get a divorce as the legal obstacles were greater.
The first full study of a topic rich in historical interest and contemporary importance
Despite the infamous divorce of Henry VIII in 1529, subsequent moral, political, and religious attitudes ensured that until 1857, England was the only Protestant country with virtually no facilities for full divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty. Using a mass of transcribed legal testimonies, taken from hitherto unexplored court records, Professor Stone uncovers the means by which laity and lawyers reformed the divorce laws, and offers astonishingly frank and intimate insights into our ancestors' changing views about what makes a marriage.
As a bestselling ghostwriter, I spend a lot of time reading what everyone’s reading—the chart-toppers and book club favorites. But when I stepped out of the shadows to write my own memoir about love and loss, I leaned on less obvious writers to inspire me forward. I believe that everyone has a story to tell and a unique way to tell it, and one of the more magical aspects of being a reader is discovering those voices that speak directly to you, who make you laugh when you want to cry, and allow you to breathe again. I hope my favorites list similarly lifts you up!
This exquisite memoir validated for me what I already know but sometimes resist in my own writing: let it bleed onto the page. The grief, the heartache, the anger, the resolve.
I read this book nestled safely in bed and caught myself thinking: Yes! Do more of this. Throw off the damn blankets and tell the truth! That’s how we heal.
"[Smith]...reminds you that you can...survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new." -Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author
The bestselling poet and author of the "powerful" (People) and "luminous" (Newsweek) Keep Moving offers a lush and heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age.
"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices."
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins…
A friend once observed, “You know, Laurie, you’re a weirdo magnet.” I vigorously contested this label, all the while knowing he was right. And, so, I myself have experienced wildly outrageous dates, with what my friend dubbed “the weird.” These dates, while not ending in marriage, did provide endless fodder for my writing. What made them tick? Why did I attract them? Were they always weird? The weird, I discovered, make excellent characters, filled with idiosyncrasies, mysteries, and lessons to teach me and my readers.
In this boldly candid memoir, Lyz Lenz chronicles her escape from a marriage missing mutuality and respect only to discover the same phenomenon at play in the dating market.
I felt less alone in my shock at what men say to me on dates when I read what dates said to Lenz, a beautiful, successful writer: “If you want to be with me, you’ll need to be a better cook,” and “your professional accomplishments are not as impressive as my dick.”
But ultimately, what I liked best about the book is Lenz’s hard-won conclusion – to never again lose herself in a man.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!) in America today, and an argument that the former needs a reboot—from journalist and proud divorcée Lyz Lenz
“This American Ex-Wife is a bomb, a bouquet (but not a wedding bouquet), a memoir, a manifesto, and a total joy to read.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
AN ELECTRIC LIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Studies show that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women—women who are tired, fed up, exhausted, and unhappy. We've all…
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