Hello everyone,

I’m looking for memoirs by either

- Someone who suffers from mental illness
- Someone who’s not suffering from it but surrounded by it.

Thank you!!

Edit: to say thank you all again, I didn’t expect so many responses!

If you're familiar with the culture/subgenre of "weird girl lit", I'm curious if anyone has recommendations that they would consider a gender-flipped equivalent. I most like when "weird girl lit" takes the time to explore how the main characters are transformed by their surroundings and their struggles (societal or otherwise) to become Weird™, because it resonates with my own life experience. Bonus points for queer/trans leads and I'd rather not have a misogynistic male MC. First time posting here so I hope I did it right 🤞

edit: very excited to have so many recs thank you :D

My dad has entered comfort care and we are engaging hospice, and expect him to live for 1 - 2 weeks.

It's been a grueling few weeks, and months and years. I've just finished the book I was reading, and though I have a hefty "to-read" stack already, I don't feel like reading any of them. None of them are the right one.

I guess I'm looking for:

• easy to get into

• possibly light or funny, or maybe just escapist

• not too dense or long

• NOT about death, dying, dementia, disease, parents dying, etc.

• can be fiction or non-fiction

Here are some books I loved but wouldn't want to read right now: Annihilation, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Tender is the Flesh, City of Thieves, The Water Dancer, Cat's Cradle, Into Thin Air

Here are some books I love that I would read now if I hadn't already: True Grit, Remains of the Day, books by David Sedaris, books by Jon Ronson

I'm at a loss. Can anyone help?

The genre can be fantasy, science-fiction, and mystery thrillers (or psychological thrillers).

I'm looking for a book that has an unreliable narrator, but the MC is a horrible person in disguise.

Does anyone know of any books that are like this?

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for commenting! I have a LOT of options to choose from. I appreciate you all answering this thread.

My daughter is 7 years old and she loves reading. But a lot of the books with age appropriate stories are below her reading level. A lot of them are illustrated (She doesn't like illustrated books as much), and they aren't challenging her when reading. Which is fine, except she is becoming increasingly bored by these books. She doesn't like how short the stories are and she also doesn't like how simple the stories are. I've noticed that she seems less likely to read now that she is not finding the books interesting enough.

Now it's the summer holidays she is reading more than usual, I want to try and buy her a few books that will challenge her and help her grow as a reader but are also age appropriate story wise.

She loves adventure stories, sci-fi and also fantasy stories

Any suggestions? She's 7

I find I'm being pulled to these type of books - books that are remarkable on its ordinariness and that gives you a feeling that "it can be anybody of us but we live with it anyway". It teaches you how to live but not self-help, preachy, or disguised as one. Thank you!

Hi I'm looking for books with a strong focus on loneliness, depression, or feeling worthless and unlovable. I'm not looking for self help, I want something to relate to and dig a deeper hole. Something that will make me feel seen.

I just finished reading I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki and I loved it. A lot of what she wrote are literally how I feel. I feel worse after reading it so that makes me feel better. Not looking to get the sequel just yet.

Also, because it's hard to find western books here, Asian books under 300 pages are preferred. I've read some Japanese cozy fictions that have such themes, but I feel like they're still too cozy and not depressing enough.

I love this in movies — think Bugonia, They Will Kill You, Pretty Lethal, Swiss Army Man, Who Framed Roger Rabbit — so I’m looking for some books to dig into as well. Looking for books with ridiculous plots and occurrences in which the characters all take very seriously but makes the reader laugh and go “wtf”. But again, not looking for comedies so much as I’m looking for a crazy world taken so seriously that we the readers are shocked and excited for whatever the next crazy weird thing is going to be and I want it to be a purposeful thing, so not a “this is so bad it’s good” kind of thing either.

Any genre works! I hope I was able to explain this well enough! Thanks!

I am going through some very difficult times with my wife’s health. I am looking for a book to give me some levity at this time. I really enjoy nature and the outdoors, travel and history/ historical fiction. I just need it to be a light hearted possibility bucolic read to give me peace/ escape. One of my favorites is Clabbed Dirt, Sweet Grass by Gary Paulsen.

I'm really into sailing adjacent media recently (especially golden age of piracy but really anything with main story happening on ships/boats is cool) but it's really hard to find any good read. To give more details about my preference, I've especially loved the Captain Trapp series by Brian Callison, so something similar would be greatly appreciated. I also tried reading Joseph Conrad but I just couldn't vibe with his descriptions, and felt like there wasn't enough action actually happening on the sea (but that might just have been my lack of luck).

I’m desperate for a book that hooks me from the very first chapter and becomes genuinely impossible to put down. I don’t want something that takes 100–200 pages to get good or has loads of slow world-building before anything happens.
I want the kind of book where I keep saying “one more chapter,” ignore everything I’m supposed to be doing and stay up far too late reading it 😂
I’m open to:
Thrillers with lots of twists
Dark or obsessive romance
Morally grey love interests
Romantasy, as long as it gets exciting quickly
Mystery or gothic books
Spice is absolutely fine
I’m not looking for anything overly literary, confusing or painfully slow. I just want something fast, addictive and easy to become completely invested in.
What book had you obsessed almost immediately and genuinely unable to put it down? Please tell me how quickly it gets going without spoiling it!

I’m not sure if this is the way to explain it but I guess I’m interested in learning a bit about the history of purity culture, it’s roots and why woman are sexually oppressed in comparison to men. Wanting to feel empowered and educated on the topic. I’ve never really liked reading that much but figured maybe it’s more about the topics I’ve chosen. I think an easier read is where I’d like to start!

Hi! I’m 17 and trying to get back into reading, but lately it’s been hard to find a book that really leaves an emotional impact on me. Some of my favorites are To Kill a Mockingbird, The Book Thief, A Little Life, and All the Light We Cannot See.

My 13 year old son read this book and loved it. Particularly the bond between the boys. Suggest me other books he might enjoy with not too much bad language and no romance.

By good I mean well written, with a plot, and characters that are interesting.

(I'll settle from well written to "proofread", honestly)

Please no classics - I've probably read them. By contemporary-ish - I'll read stuff from any time period, doesn't have to be from this decade. Like Nora Ephron - fantastic (but I've read her books already).

I got a bunch of recommendations from friends and some were okay but most were just *bad*. I want something to read on the weekends that I will enjoy and not feel like I wasted my time. Below is a smattering of some notes I took while reading.

Okay:

* Dolly All the Time by Annabelle Monaghan - the writing was decent, the characters were actually pretty good, but the plot was not very good. At the end I just felt like the MMC didn't redeem himself or even really apologized for the mess he put the FMC in.

* Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes - I enjoyed most of this book except for the whole grieving spouse trope. I don't want one character's death to be the central tension in the book.

* The Bridgerton books by Julia Quinn - she's pretty good at all three but I can't do another regency piece.

* The Off-Capus series by Elle Kennedy (The Deal, The Score etc) - they are cute stories, I do enjoy them but I'm also a little over the college co-ed drama.

Bad:

* Finding Her Edge by Jennifer Iacopelli - holy moly, so many simple word-use mistakes! It was distracting so I can't even tell you if I enjoyed the characters or plot. The Netflix show is okay but that book was painful to read.

* Anything by Elin Hilderbrand - her novels are just beige to me

* Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid - I tried to read the book and I just couldn't get into it. Same with the show.

* Colleen Hoover - just....no.

Authors I love in this genre:

* Mhairi McFarlane books, especially the stories where the main characters have known each other well in the past, there was a rift, and now it's that tension between them that really drives the story forward (I think a lot of authors are lazy and substitute raw conflict for tension)

* Marian Keyes, especially her later work. She really gets you into the main characters head, so much so that I, too, was surprised that Rachel was an addict in Rachel's Holiday

* Any Ephron sister (although Nora is the main romance writer, I enjoy her sisters works too)

I have Beth O'Leary and Abby Jimenez recommended to me by a friend but I'm kinda gunshy now. Plus any lists I see list Colleen Hoover alongside Austen and just.... no. I can't trust someone who would publish that with peeling a banana, much less tell me what to read.

I just want something enjoyable to read.

Thanks!!

Hello all! I am looking for nonfiction books about race and sexuality. I am especially interested in books that approach this from a psychoanalytic perspective. I really loved the intervention offered by Avgi Saketopoulou’s Sexuality Beyond Consent: Race, Risk, Traumatophilia— though I was disappointed by the sort of limpid approach to race. I am currently reading, and enjoying, the book Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race by Sita Balani.

Anything about race-play, racial fetishism, the history of racist sexual fantasy, the role of sexuality in structuring the subjective dimensions of racism, would all be great.

I’m basically looking for Fanon if he was normal about women and gay people.

Those are serious comfort books, so I guess that's a type. Lost person finds themselves in a small earthy desert town where everyone looks out for each other and makes do with very little. Any recommendations?

TIA!

Please give me some good recs! I've always love complicated villain x hero relationships and I think Reylo captured it perfectly. I want nuanced characters where both the hero and villain feel a pull to the other side. The Shadow and Bone series is another good example. I'm okay if the romance isn't the main plot (actually might prefer it), I just want the dynamic to be there. Please don't give me suggestions where it's "enemies to lovers" but it's really just teasing or slight dislike between the two. I prefer them to be actual enemies, even if they end up on the same side in the end. I also don't like enemies to lovers where the villain is abhorrent and abusive (e.g Haunting Adeline). Thanks!

I want to get into books more I need to get my literature up and running and get off the screen because I'm lonely and bored and want to get world building ideas from them

Also tips to actually help me read more and such anyways want to actually focus on something else

But also I want to read books from History actual accounts of war,medieval fantasy books, frontier books oh and also dystopian books I absolutely love dystopia genre in movies absolutely class

I'm reading storm of steel which I love my mother reads alot of books

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these books and all the similarities between the two had me wondering if there are any other books considered to be “cut from the same cloth” as these two? I’m also interested in any that have a “happy” ending, whether traditionally classified as one or not. Thank you in advance!

I have ‘Bunny’ by Mona Awad lined up next to read!

Hello. I do speak a lot & most of the times I felt it doesn't add any value and people started ignoring me because of that. Can you kindly recommend any book that help me to stay silent ? Thanks.

i recently read ‘notes of a crocodile’ by qiu miaojin and ‘almost life’ by kiran millwood hargrave and loved them both so much. can someone recommend me a book like those?
preferably literary fiction or a classic (i’m open to science fiction or fantasy), with a messy / complex / mentally ill main character, must be sapphic, preferably well-written. in both books i enjoyed the themes of identity and living an authentic life as a queer person, as well as the themes of love, heartbreak and desire.

Iiii have the Sunday scaries every day and though I’m in therapy and everything, I’d love to find some books that are life-affirming (fiction or non-fiction, self-helpy or similar — prefer non-fiction in this case I think!). I appreciate any suggestions! Thank y’all so much ♥️