90 Books Like Wild Abandon

Clift creates a sympathetic and highly informative picture of the islanders of Kalymnos in Greece’s Dodecanese.

She lived here with her family in the 1950s, when the island’s males made their dangerous living from diving for sponges. Clift brilliantly captures the suspended animation of the families left behind by the diving fleet, loved ones who could only hope that fathers and sons would return alive and intact.

I’m familiar with today’s Kalymnos, its port choc-a-bloc with tourist boats. It’s salutary to be reminded of the hardships of traditional island life and how modern tourism can be a benefit, not a blight.

A multi-day walking trip requires a page-turning thriller. It is one of the most intriguing mysteries I’ve ever read. It dragged me into another world and then deeper into a story within a story. Lying in uncomfortable beds in noisy hostels while backpacking in Australia, I was beguiled and forgot my own reality.

Years later, this book stayed with me and influenced my debut novel despite, I think, never really understanding it. However, writing this review has made me start reading it again. I’m already baffled, but I'm hooked!

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this book. I wanted to read about Greece and Greek life, but I wasn’t certain I wanted a murder mystery. But this book is delivered with lots of local Greek colors and colorful characters.

It is atmospheric, enigmatic, and thoroughly beautiful. The nitty-gritty scenes of Greek life contrasted with Mediterranean passions, which at times ran very high. I was so pleased to discover there were more books to read by Zouroudi.

In 1947, archaeologist Kevin Andrews went to the Peloponnese on a Fulbright fellowship to study the Crusader castles and found a country in the midst of a civil war. He was one of the few foreigners there at the time, which his book vividly brings to life.. after a first rather idyllic description of stomping on grapes with friends on Paros he enters another world. Yet he was so moved by the humanity of the villagers in a period of great poverty, suspicion, and turmoil that he made Greece his home, and wrote numerous other books about Greece, but this is his best… about a period I hope is never repeated.  

This is a dual memoir and each woman is on a quest to redefine herself. Sue Monk Kidd as a writer and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor as she asks the age-old question: “what to do with my life.” 

Written in alternating chapters, mother and daughter write of their experiences and insights as they visit sacred sights in ancient lands, places rich with myth and legend and the sacred feminine. My journey too was as a seeker, a woman thick with an urgency to write as Sue was, and as a single woman exploring “now what?” 

While I traveled alone and these women traveled together, each of us was on our own individual journey, exploring, discovering, asking questions, and seeking answers that can often only be found when we travel within.

I came across this book while researching my guide to Northern Greece. Kapka Kassabova is a Bulgarian writer now living in the Scottish Highlands, who returned to the land she knew as a child: the once heavily militarized border between Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Her account of the places and people she meets in this forgotten corner of the world are uncanny, full of wonder, tragedy and horror, comedy and beauty, in a place where even in the 21st-century magic and the supernatural still live on.  

“I am the Fog Man,” said their host. “You must have got lost in my fog.” These are the words spoken by a man on Fog Island with a beard and hair that entirely cover his body. His only visible clothing are slippers, metal wristbands, and a candle strapped to a metal headband. He is the one that the kids Finn and Cara encounter when they decide not to heed their father’s warning to not leave the bay of their small coastal Irish village.

The illustrations paint a moody dreamlike journey that swing between whimsical, eerie, and delightfully odd. The text reads like an epic tale from the old country owing in so small part to the repeated use of the word “carragh.” This, like Tim Fite’s book, is another great example of an author/illustrator bringing a cohesive aesthetic to their work. We visit Tomi’s world between these pages, and… show more.

To be truthful, I would list all the Moomin books as top of my list and am only choosing one because I can’t pick them all. In Moominvalley and its enduring characters, its seasons, snowstorms, comets, floods, and finally its absences, we find lifes’ psychological dramas, doubts, and triumphs perfectly embedded in and drawn from the tempestuous and consoling presence of the natural world. I read all these books to my daughter and relished the emergence of a conjured world that was deep and familiar, yet also distant and magical, as is whatever realm of nature you most find yourself close to. I remember Moompapa at sea for its particularly philosophical and slightly wistful tone and because who doesn’t wonder about the wildness and loneliness of life inside a lighthouse. 

I loved the atmosphere of this book; it’s so quiet and understated, and I really felt like I was growing up with the main character. I loved how her perception of the magic changed over time. She’s at first wonderstruck by the beauty of flight, then hungry to earn her wings, and then we see her crushed by the weight of responsibility as she becomes a mentor to the next generation.

There’s such a thoughtful balance between excitement at the magic and critique of how that magic is ‘gifted.’ Plus, it’s a standalone, so there's no waiting around for that next brick in the series (I’m looking at you, Winds of Winter). 

I thoroughly enjoyed this stylish, unusual book and was instantly drawn in to the author’s pilgrimage story.

The portrayal of the different islands is rich and intriguing – I found myself wanting to go back to those I know and visit those I haven’t yet experienced, as well as thinking more seriously about a pilgrimage!

The writer is a first-rate historian who writes in a very readable, accessible, and lighthearted style. But the easygoing narrative flow also fuses with razor-sharp insight.

The book delivers a compelling account of society’s historical exclusion and maltreatment of women.