Books like Rereadings by Anne Fadiman

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

In Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman celebrates her lifelong love of books and language through a series of graceful essays that trace how her personal collections, family history, and favorite authors have shaped her life.

Dragon Riders of Pern.

Mary Karr’s memoir chronicles her turbulent Texas upbringing, her battle with alcoholism and mental illness, her marriage to a poet, and her eventual path to sobriety and creative renewal.

From Kay Redfield Jamison - an international authority on manic-depressive illness, and one of the few women who are full professors of medicine at American universities - a remarkable personal testimony: the revelation of her own struggle since adolescence with manic-depression, and how it has shaped her life. Vividly, directly, with candor, wit, and simplicity, she takes us into the fascinating and dangerous territory of this form of madness - a world in which one pole can be the alluring dark land ruled by what Byron called the "melancholy star of the imagination," and the other a desert of depression and, all too frequently, death. A moving and exhilarating memoir by a woman whose furious determination to learn the enemy, to use her gifts of intellect to make a difference, led her to become, by the time she was forty, a world authority on manic-depression, and whose work has helped save countless lives.

Pamela Paul’s memoir traces her 28‑year diary of every book read, revealing how the titles shaped and reflected her life, from college struggles to love, marriage, and parenthood.

"One of the most successful literary lies," declares Margaret Anne Doody, "is the English claim to have invented the novel.... One of the best-kept literary secrets is the existence of novels in antiquity." In fact, as Doody goes on to demonstrate, the Novel of the Roman Empire is a joint product of Africa, Western Asia, and Europe. It is with this argument that The True Story of the Novel devastates and reconfigures the history of the novel as we know it. Twentieth-century historians and critics defending the novel have emphasized its role as superseding something else, as a sort of legitimate usurper that deposed the Epic, a replacement of myth, or religious narrative. To say that the Age of Early Christianity was really also the Age of the Novel rumples such historical tidiness - but so it was. From the outset of her discussion, Doody rejects the conventional Anglo-Saxon distinction between Romance and Novel. This eighteenth-century distinction, she maintains, served both to keep the foreign - dark-skinned peoples, strange speakers, Muslims, and others - largely out of literature and to obscure the diverse nature of the novel itself. This deeply informed and truly comparative work is staggering in its breadth. Doody treats not only recognized classics, but also works of usually unacknowledged subgenres - new readings of novels like The Pickwick Papers, Pudd'nhead Wilson, L'Assommoir, Death in Venice, and Beloved are accompanied by insights into Death on the Nile or The Wind in the Willows. Non-Western writers like Chinua Achebe and Witi Ihimaera are also included. In her last section, Doody goes on to show that Chinese and Japanese novels, early and late, bear a strong and not incidental affinity to their Western counterparts. Collectively, these readings offer the basis for a serious reassessment of the history and the nature of the novel.

A spiritual memoir of the American writer and Presbyterianminister from the time of his father's suicide. Also includes information on his schooling, his writings, his depressions, and his faithful dependence on God.

Anna Quindlen celebrates the transformative power of books, arguing that reading fosters emotional connection, intellectual freedom, and personal growth while offering a curated list of must-read titles.

Chronicles the Los Angeles Public Library fire and its aftermath and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the actor long suspected of setting the fire, showcases the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives, and delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity.

Anne K. Ream’s true‑story collection follows sexual violence survivors from Mexico to the U.S., blending her own recovery, community case studies, and advocacy essays to illuminate resilience and hope beyond trauma.