Here are 100 books that You Are My Sunshine fans have personally recommended if you like
You Are My Sunshine.
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I’ve always been drawn to the quiet mystery behind ordinary lives, the sense that something sacred hides in the margins. As a caregiver, teacher, and author, I’ve seen how small moments carry enormous weight. That’s why I created this book list: each title touched me deeply and helped shape my own writing, especially Midrash Whispered By Stars. I write to honor forgotten souls, overlooked stories, and the quiet transformations that happen when no one’s watching. These books aren’t just favorites, they’re part of the emotional and spiritual DNA behind everything I create.
I recommend this book because it was the first book I ever read, and it absolutely slayed me.
I wasn’t prepared for how human it was, how a simple story about a country vet could make me laugh out loud one moment and wipe my eyes the next. Something in Herriot’s world felt so real, so warm, so full of dignity, that I couldn’t stop; this book hooked me into reading the entire series.
Readers who love stories about ordinary people doing their best will feel right at home here. And it fits my theme because it shows how everyday lives carry a quiet, sacred depth, the same truth I explore in my own writing.
A tie-in to the PBS Masterpiece series and Christmas special, available on streaming and home video.
All Creatures Great and Small is first volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series. Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world's most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.
For fifty years, generations of readers have flocked to Herriot's marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike…
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…
Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same.
A captivating memoir that I could not put down. The mesmerizing cover! The story of a happy child growing up in a happy family in the Midwest that is somehow riveting! I was hooked from the get-go.
As someone who used to book comics in NYC, I admire anyone who can do brilliant clean humor. I wouldn’t call her a humor writer. She’s just a fantastic writer. I do not re-read books, but I do re-read this gem to feel sane and awed and to laugh. It reminds me of simpler times and that there are good, genuine people in this messy world.
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep…
I grew up in a small town, with wonderful librarians who introduced me to books I remember fondly to this day. The Flicka, Ricka, Dicka series, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, and, of course, Little Women shaped my love for stories about relationships and the simple pleasures of daily life. Whether it’s a mystery or a memoir, I want interesting interactions between the main characters, meaty descriptions of daily activities and affairs, and, of course, a happy ending. As I’ve gotten older, I like books with older protagonists; those are hard to come by—one reason I wrote a novel about the adventures of five middle-aged girlfriends!
I’m always looking for books about older protagonists; this one is set in a nursing home, so many of the characters are seriously older, but the main character is an endearing, middle-aged janitor and his interactions with the residents made this book a hard one to put down.
Ben’s obsession with numbers and patterns figures throughout the whole story, as does a previous life he’s attempted to leave behind. His relationships with various residents, a local podiatrist, and a woman from his past keep the story fast-paced and funny, but there’s an intriguing undercurrent of solemnity and a wonderfully satisfying surprise ending that left me with a big smile on my face.
Ben thinks the retirement home where he works should be called “Heaven Can Wait a Little Longer While I Golf” instead of Heritage Gardens. But who asked him? He’s just the janitor, after all. Of course, his inept boss, the cantankerous residents, and even his attractive podiatrist friend don’t know one important thing about him: he was recently a cardiothoracic surgeon, not a broom-pushing custodian.
Ben is in search of a stress-free life with a little freedom from the past thrown in. But will it be that simple to escape who…
Former model Kira McGovern picks up the paint brushes of her youth and through an unexpected epiphany she decides to mix ashes of the deceased with her paints to produce tributes for grieving families.
Unexpectedly this leads to visions and images of the subjects of her work and terrifying changes…
I grew up in a small town, with wonderful librarians who introduced me to books I remember fondly to this day. The Flicka, Ricka, Dicka series, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, and, of course, Little Women shaped my love for stories about relationships and the simple pleasures of daily life. Whether it’s a mystery or a memoir, I want interesting interactions between the main characters, meaty descriptions of daily activities and affairs, and, of course, a happy ending. As I’ve gotten older, I like books with older protagonists; those are hard to come by—one reason I wrote a novel about the adventures of five middle-aged girlfriends!
Hard to imagine a memoir about suicide can be entertaining but, honestly, it was.
Sean Dietrich’s father shot himself when Sean was a child. The book is a roller-coaster ride of emotions Sean experiences as he comes to terms with that event. While the backdrop of the story is that sad beginning, the details of Sean’s life lived along the way are often funny.
His description of math and why he hates it is downright hilarious: “Math is one of those things the good Lord allowed on this earth to remind mankind that the devil is real,” that paragraph begins. Sean details his journey from being a high school dropout to becoming an award-winning, hugely popular author and columnist with brute honesty, a distinctly Southern perspective, and a wit that puts him right up there with Will Rogers.
From celebrated storyteller "Sean of the South" comes an unforgettable memoir of love, loss, the friction of family memories, and the unlikely hope that you're gonna be alright.
Sean Dietrich was twelve years old when he scattered his father's ashes from the mountain range. His father was a man who lived for baseball, a steel worker with a ready wink, who once scaled a fifty-foot tree just to hang a tire swing for his son. He was also the stranger who tried to kidnap and kill Sean's mother before pulling the trigger on himself. He was a childhood hero, now…
Sean Conway is a record-breaking endurance cyclist who has cycled over 100,000 miles in the last decade including cycling around the world, LEJOG twice, and the world record for the fastest person to cycle across Europe.
Also very well written. Charlie chooses the roads less travelled and he meanders for nearly 4 years from the UK to Singapore then back and down through Africa to Cape Town before turning around and cycling back up Africa to the UK. He got arrested in Tibet. Had a pony stolen in Mongolia and nearly got killed by a drunken mob in Ethiopia. Gripping throughout.
I’m a writer, living in southwest France since 1995, and previously in Kenya for 20 years. Travel has always been my passion. I’ve written about hiking across France in Best Foot Forward, touring the perimeter by camping car in Travels with Tinkerbelle, cycling through the Marne Valley in The Valley of Heaven and Hell, and a Kenyan safari in Safari Ants, Baggy Pants and Elephants. Recently, due to COVID and with an elderly dog that suffers from separation anxiety, I couldn't leave for any length of time; I satisfy my wanderlust by reading other people’s adventures. My taste is for tales that include plenty of humour, and I’ve selected five which I have particularly enjoyed.
A beautifully painted account of the author’s journey through Africa, as much about his conflicting emotions as about cycling. Mainly eating jam sandwiches, and sleeping in dangerous places and filthy hostels, he pedals his way towards South Africa across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and war-torn Sudan. He finds friendship in unexpected places, and disappointment in others.
It appealed to me as both a cycling adventure, and having lived in Kenya I was keen to read about his experiences in Africa.
This enthralling account details Alastair Humphrey's epic journey across Africa, through Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya. His experience is at times brutal, and though he faces loneliness, despair, and harsh conditions, he also survives through trust in the kindness of strangers.
Moods of Future Joys is a story of the triumphs over adversities, of one man who set off from his home in Yorkshire to cycle the world, fundraise for charity and... to live a little.
Rusty Allen is an Iraqi War veteran with PTSD. He moves to his grandfather's cabin in the mountains to find some peace and go back to wilderness training.
He gets wrapped up in a kidnapping first, as a suspect and then as a guide. He tolerates the sheriff's deputy with…
I’m a writer, living in southwest France since 1995, and previously in Kenya for 20 years. Travel has always been my passion. I’ve written about hiking across France in Best Foot Forward, touring the perimeter by camping car in Travels with Tinkerbelle, cycling through the Marne Valley in The Valley of Heaven and Hell, and a Kenyan safari in Safari Ants, Baggy Pants and Elephants. Recently, due to COVID and with an elderly dog that suffers from separation anxiety, I couldn't leave for any length of time; I satisfy my wanderlust by reading other people’s adventures. My taste is for tales that include plenty of humour, and I’ve selected five which I have particularly enjoyed.
This is possibly the worst cycling adventure ever undertaken. It makes my list because everything that can go wrong does. Her bicycle is too big. Everything is shut. There’s no hot water in the showers. Yet still they pedal on.
Even the Greek island cruise is a disaster.
Acerbic, honest, extremely non-PC, it’s a schadenfreude delight. I rather unkindly couldn’t wait for the next catastrophe to strike this couple, because it made me laugh so much.
“Inspiring proof that you need neither be under 25 nor even bearded to have a terrific adventure.” Alastair Humphreys, Author & Adventurer When Donna and Iain, a couple in their late forties with no previous cycling experience, decide on the spur of the moment to cycle across an entire continent, you can rightly assume things might not go according to plan. Armed with little knowledge but much determination, they attempt a self-supported cycle tour, carrying everything they need and camping along the way, normally the domain of hardy, beardy adventurers or Olympic athletes. Join The Beardless Adventurer and her inconvenience…
I’m a writer, living in southwest France since 1995, and previously in Kenya for 20 years. Travel has always been my passion. I’ve written about hiking across France in Best Foot Forward, touring the perimeter by camping car in Travels with Tinkerbelle, cycling through the Marne Valley in The Valley of Heaven and Hell, and a Kenyan safari in Safari Ants, Baggy Pants and Elephants. Recently, due to COVID and with an elderly dog that suffers from separation anxiety, I couldn't leave for any length of time; I satisfy my wanderlust by reading other people’s adventures. My taste is for tales that include plenty of humour, and I’ve selected five which I have particularly enjoyed.
This made me laugh until I cried. It blends a harebrained idea with a social experiment. Two men decide to cycle from the southernmost tip of England to the far north of Scotland. They have no bicycles. They also have no clothes, food, or money.
Barefoot, wearing nothing but Union Jack boxer shorts, off they set in a freezing gale. The outcome of their journey will depend entirely on the kindness and generosity of strangers.
"...spent last night laughing so much my coffee came out my eyes..." "...this book is quite simply the best I've read in years..." "...a completely bonkers challenge and a brilliantly funny read, I couldn't put it down..." "...it reminded me of some of Danny Wallace and Dave Gorman's best bits..." "...this wonderful story had me crying with laughter more often than not..." "...inspiring, uplifting, need I say more? Quite brilliant..." "...funny, totally engrossing and actually quite moving..." "...one of the most heart-warming, genuinely funny books I have read in a long time..."…
As a cyclist from a young age (thanks to the encouragement and engineering of my dad—he literally welded one of my first bikes together from the carcass of another kid’s bike that was run over by a car in his driveway on accident), I’ve always had a fondness for bicycles and, more specifically, *riding* bicycles. So, as is probably common for anyone who is fond of something, I’ve spent years exploring it from as many angles as possible. In the process, I’ve loved studying bicycles in motion, along with collecting artistic and philosophical expressions that center the act of getting around on two wheels under your own power.
One of the most compelling parts of this gem of a book are Adam Thompson’s immaculate line drawings that capture the artfulness, and beautiful simplicity, at the heart of a bicycle ride—their white space pulls you in and invites you to imagine the landscape and circumstances around them.
Bicycles, and the paths they forge, take many shapes, but in the hands of Fattaruso and Thompson those shapes take center stage, and the essence of bicycling shines.
It’s a lovely interlude that always makes me nostalgic for riding a single speed on a rural road at the height of summer.
Somewhere between prose poem and sacred incantation lies Bicycle. In spare, comically surreal and beautiful prose, Paul Fattaruso does for bicycles what Richard Brautigan did for trout—he elevates them to the status of an idol. An intimate, inventive, and vibrant book.
Paul Fattaruso is the author of Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf. His work has appeared in Volt, Jubilat, Fence, Black Warrior Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Tiny, and others. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife Kristin and his son Max. He rides a silver bicycle.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I’ve been writing about cycling for 30 years and over that time I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the exploits of bike racers in the mountains and, above all, by this magnificent terrain itself. This ultimately led to my family leaving our home in the north of England and moving to the French Pyrenees, to a tiny hamlet that’s close to nowhere but is surrounded by mountains, where we can walk and ride endlessly through stunning countryside. I may not be French, but this is where I feel most at home.
Tim has long been one of the funniest writers to cover the cycling scene and its many quirks.
All of his books are very readable, but this one stands out for me because it gets to the heart of the horrendous difficulties and dangers that riders in the early 20th century faced when racing in the mountains.
Tim follows the route of the 1914 Giro d’Italia, and does so on a bike from that era. His tales of how he came by bike and then builds up are hilariously recounted, then lead into the ride itself on what is widely recognized as the toughest multi-day race the sport has ever seen, only eight of 81 starters finishing the event. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.
The 1914 Giro d’Italia: The hardest bike race in history. Eighty-one riders started and only eight finished after enduring cataclysmic storms, roads strewn with nails, and even the loss of an eye by one competitor. And now Tim Moore is going to ride it. And he’s committed to total authenticity. . .
Twelve years after Tim Moore toiled around the route of the Tour de France, he senses his achievement being undermined by the truth about 'Horrid Lance'. His rash response is to take on a fearsome challenge from an age of untarnished heroes: the notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia. History's…
