But that said, over the last decade, Tolstoy Therapy has evolved around what I’ve been reading – and lately, that’s included a lot more new fiction and non-fiction than classics.

So, what are the best new books I’ve read in 2022? Throughout the year, I’ve been updating this list with the best new books that I’ve been enjoying (and hope you will too).

Without further ado, here’s my current list of the best new books in 2022 to read. Pick these up over the Christmas period, read them to kick-start the new year, or add them to your last-minute Christmas wishlist. Enjoy!

The best new books I’ve read in 2022

1. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

The Marriage Portrait is a spellbinding book, as gorgeously crafted and infused with life as any of protagonist Lucrezia’s wonderfully imaginative paintings. I raced through it in just a few days.

Right from the start of the book, we know that less than a year after fifteen-year-old Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici marries Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, she will be dead. The official cause of death was ‘putrid fever’, but it was rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.

It’s historical fiction built on a foundation of reading between the lines; of wondering what might have been thought and felt, what might have caused certain events, and what might have happened behind closed doors.

O’Farrell has brought life to the book’s cast with such care and artistry and built a marvellous world – or rather worlds; one constrained and polished to a fine sheen on the surface, the other wild, feral, and uncaged. I loved it.

2. A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors

“Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It’s a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct.“

I wasn’t sure if I was in the right mood to read A Line in the World, but I decided to give the first few pages a chance – largely because I now live in Denmark, I know very little about Jutland, and I love nature writing. Maybe it would be a good fit for next year, I thought. But I soon realised that I had to keep reading.

A Line in the World is a stunning memoir; graceful and lyrical, but with a powerful roar in there too. Read it if you loved The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, or other quietly powerful and introspective memoirs rooted in wild nature.

3. The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

The Sea of Tranquility is a difficult book to categorise in terms of the topics I usually write about. It’s neither a feel-good book nor a comforting book, really. And while it’s beautifully written, it’s a rather lopsided type of beauty. That said, it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

From the best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, The Sea of Tranquility is a stunning novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

4. Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

I’ve stayed away from books about the pandemic until now; I wanted reading to be my escape from it, not a reason to think more about it. But I feel like there’s been sufficient distance now for me to read books like this one. And Lucy by the Sea just felt so… therapeutic.

In this third book of Strout’s Amgash series, which you can read as a standalone or start with My Name is Lucy Barton, it’s March 2020 and Lucy’s ex-husband William pleads with her to leave New York and escape to a coastal house he has rented in Maine. Lucy reluctantly agrees, leaving the washing-up in the sink and expecting to be back in a week or so.

As weeks turn into months, Lucy and William spend their long, quiet days thinking about their complex past together – and the connections that sustain us in the hardest moments.

5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The fantastically vibrant cover of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow has been popping up everywhere over the last few months.

Winner of the Goodreads Best Fiction Award 2022, it’s the wonderfully nerdy, imaginative, and creative story of Sam and Sadie, who first meet in a hospital in 1987 and develop a unique bond as two brainy kids with no other real friends.

However, that connection is forgotten as they return to their normal lives – until the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station.

When Sadie gives Sam a game she’s been developing, they immediately reignite that spark and find once-in-a-lifetime intimacy in the digital realm. It’s also the start of a collaboration that brings them money and fame – but also duplicity and tragedy.

6. The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw

The Bookseller at the End of the World is one of the best new memoirs of 2022. It’s Ruth Shaw’s immersive, heartbreaking yet charming story of running two wee bookshops in the remote village of Manapouri in Fiordland, in the deep south of New Zealand.

In this beautiful book for booklovers (that is sure to make you want to read even more books), Ruth weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops and musings on the books that have shaped her life.

She also shares bittersweet stories from her full and varied life, including losses, enduring love, and adventures sailing through the Pacific, being held up by pirates, working with drug addicts and prostitutes, and campaigning to protect the environment.

7. Water, Wood & Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town by Hannah Kirshner

“With this book, you feel you can stop time and savor the rituals of life,” shared Maira Kalman about Water, Wood & Wild Things. I came across this beautiful book in my local library recently and fell in love with it.

Water, Wood & Wild Things is artist and food writer Hannah Kirshner’s journey through the culture and cuisine of one misty Japanese mountain town, its evergreen forests, local water, and smoke-filled artisan workshops.

Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, and full of Hannah’s beautiful drawings and recipes inspired by her time in Yamanaka, this is a soothing and inspiring book about what it means to find purpose in cultivation and craft and sustain traditions.

From making a fine bowl to harvesting rice, this tender book is a celebration of craftsmanship, creativity, quiet dedication, and the simple beauty of life.

8. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

“Tender and healing… I’m prescribing a preorder to anyone who has ever felt lost. Stunning, kind, necessary,” writes author Sarah Gailey about this gentle and life-affirming book from the author at the forefront of hopeful science fiction.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy is the second book in Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series, weaving an intriguing world about the robots of Panga who long ago laid down their tools and disappeared into the wilderness after they gained self-awareness.

To start at the beginning of the Monk & Robot series, first read the equally uplifting A Psalm for the Wild-Built, in which a robot returns to civilisation to startle a tea monk with a very difficult question: “what do people need?”

9. City on Fire by Don Winslow

Don Winslow has been one of my guilty pleasure authors for a few years. I first read The Power of the Dog while on the Trans-Mongolian train across Russia, Mongolia and China a few years ago and was hooked. (So was my now-husband, who ended up reading most of it over my shoulder.)

This year, I flew through the audiobook of Don Winslow’s newest release and the first part of a new series, City on Fire. It’s a compulsively readable thriller that transforms the events at Troy and the founding of Rome into a riveting gangster tale as two criminal empires fight to control New England.

10. Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid has written some of the best can’t-put-down books from the last few years.

I first read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and enjoyed how wonderfully flawed yet fantastic the characters were. I loved the strong family ties in Malibu Rising. I listened to the full-cast audiobook of Daisy Jones & the Six and immersed myself in a world of music, rocky relationships, and the even rockier road of self-discovery.

Now in 2022, Taylor Jenkins has published Carrie Soto is Back, her story of a tennis legend supposedly past her prime at thirty-seven, brought back to the tennis court for one more grand slam. Carrie Soto sacrificed everything to become the best, and now she needs to give everything she’s got to defend her record.

11. Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Another book I enjoyed as an audiobook in 2022 was Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. It’s an incredibly gripping book about what we choose to keep from our past and what we choose to leave behind.

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over, after leaving her picture-perfect life in Boston – married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, and raising a beautiful son, Asher— to return to the house she grew up in, taking over her father’s beekeeping business in a sleepy New Hampshire hometown.

This seems like the new start she needed… until Olivia receives a phone call that Lily, the new girl in town, is dead. When she hears that Asher is being questioned by the police, she wonders if she really understands her son at all. 

Looking for more books to read in 2022? You might also like my recommended books for when you don’t know what to read and the best can’t-put-down books to binge-read.

The post The best of 2022: the new books I’ve loved this year appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

To inspire your best year yet in 2023, I’ve compiled some of the best books for taking stock and inspiring life changes in the new year. Read these for hope, optimism, and motivation.

These recommendations include memoirs and fiction books about people starting afresh, finding their courage, and following their dreams. I’ve also included a few self-help and personal development books too.

Complement these inspiring books with a goals journal (I love the migoals journal) – alongside plenty of self-love and gentleness – and head into 2023 with inspiration, energy, and motivation.

The best books about starting over and new beginnings

1. The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller

The Arctic is one of my happy places, so as soon as I heard about this book about new beginnings on the archipelago of Svalbard I knew I had to read it. 

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a novel about a man who leaves a restless life in Stockholm for a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, where he’s saved by good friends, a loyal dog, and a surprise visit that changes everything.

2. Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid has written some of the best can’t-put-down books from the last few years, including The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & the Six.

Now in 2022, Taylor Jenkins has published Carrie Soto is Back, her story of a tennis legend supposedly past her prime at thirty-seven, brought back to the tennis court for one more grand slam. Carrie Soto sacrificed everything to become the best, and now she needs to give everything she’s got to defend her record.

This isn’t precisely about new beginnings, but it is about setting a lofty goal and finding the courage and motivation to reach it. For more like this, you might like this collection of inspiring books about strong women.

3. Finding Ultra by Rich Roll

If you’re looking for a book to inspire you to get in shape or push your physical limits, read Finding Ultra. Nearly fifty pounds overweight and unable to climb the stairs without stopping, Rich Roll experienced a chilling glimpse of his future on the night before he was to turn forty.

This story of superhuman personal transformation shows how – through a plant-based lifestyle and daily training – Rich morphed from out of shape, mid-life couch potato to endurance machine and Ultraman competitor.

4. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

At the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth, Nora finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived.

Which leaves her with the all-important question: what is the best way to live?

The Midnight Library will inspire you to think about the decisions you make every day as well as your big-picture vision for life, but it will also help you to realise that you can’t do and be everything (because that’s impossible).

5. A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

I love this cozy book about starting over. In the main city of Panga, the world of A Psalm for the Wild Built, we meet Sibling Dex: a non-binary twenty-nine-year-old gardener who has no idea what they want to do with their life.

However, Dex knows one thing for sure: that despite the beauty and livability of a metropolis, “sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city”.

Dex decides to become a tea monk instead, serving tea that’s perfectly personalized for every customer. When they find themselves still searching for meaning, they head towards the unknown and the wilderness, where they find more kindness and connection than they ever could’ve expected.

6. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer is one of my all-time favourite books about nature and self-discovery, but it’s also an excellent book about new beginnings.

The beautifully-written story has three parallel plots, all focused around a farming community in the Appalachians, including Lusa, a young woman from the city who must unexpectedly start over and find her own way.

7. Bewildered by Laura Waters

Usually there’s a reason why someone would ditch their life and take off into the wild for five months. For Laura Waters, the author of this inspiring travel memoir, it was the implosion of a toxic relationship and a crippling bout of anxiety.

Armed with maps, a compass, and her life in a bag on her back, she set out to walk the untamed landscapes of the Te Araroa trail in New Zealand: 3000 kilometres of raw, wild, and mountainous nature winding from the top of the North Island to the frosty tip of the South Island.

Laura hadn’t planned on a solo trip, but when her walking partner dropped out on the second day, she was faced with the choice of whether to continue alone or abandon the journey.

She chose to walk on, battling not only treacherous terrain and the elements, but also the demons of self-doubt and anxiety. However, at the end of this once-in-a-lifetime journey, Laura realised that she really could face anything that life threw at her

8. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken is a moving testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit – and one of the most gripping non-fiction books of the last few years.

In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was a delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a talent that carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943 in which his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific.

Surviving against the odds – and about to contend with even greater trials than the ocean – this cinematic page-turner shares the unimaginable story of how Zamperini was driven to the limits of human endurance and forced to answer desperation with ingenuity and suffering with hope.

9. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

If you want to read a fun, quick, and light romance book about fresh starts, read Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes. Bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid describes it as “a quirky, sweet, and splendid story of a woman coming into her own.”

It’s been a year since Evvie Drake’s husband died, but she still can’t leave the house. Dean Tenney was once a sports star, now he’s a former sports star who can’t understand why he’s lost his ability to throw a ball better than anyone else.

When Dean moves into the apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s dead husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s failed career.

But as Dean and Evvie grow closer, they wonder if these rules could actually be the one thing in the way of them starting over.

10. Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön feels like a balm for the soul. Eternally wise and comforting, Pema draws on time-honored Buddhist teachings on shenpa (all the attachments and compulsions that cause us suffering) in this book.

In Taking the Leap, she shows how certain habits of mind tend to “hook” us and get us stuck in states of anger, blame, self-hatred, addiction, and so much more – and, most of all, how we can liberate ourselves from them for a new way of beginning. 

For more books to read in the new year, complement this with my collection of the most inspiring books to read to change your life around, or the best self-help books to read for when you can’t get to therapy.

The post 10 inspiring books about new beginnings to read in the new year appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

I’ve been keeping a mental list of books about books for some time now, and it’s only now that I’ve turned it into pixels.

From The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek to Ruth Shaw’s memoir of her wee bookshops in the deep south of New Zealand, recently there have been so many books that have made me think, “yes! that will go in the books post!”

So without further ado, here are my favourite books about readers, librarians, bookshop owners, and, of course, books…

The best books about books for people who love reading

1. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

“As I gaze at the vacant, birdless scene outside, I suddenly want to read a book – any book. As long as it’s shaped like a book and has printing, it’s fine by me. I just want to hold a book in my hands, turn the pages, scan the words with my eyes.”

Kafka on the Shore, a fan favourite from Murakami (and one of my all-time favourite books), is an immersive and otherworldly book to get lost in when you want an escape from everyday life.

It’s also a wonderful book about books, and contains one of my favourite libraries in literature. 

Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the life of fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura, who has run away from home, and an aging man called Nakata.

2. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

The Bookshop on the Corner is a wonderfully cozy book about books, packed with musings on the joys of reading.

It’s also a book about librarians: namely, Nina, a literary matchmaker and librarian with the gift of finding the perfect book for her readers.

However, after losing the job she loves, Nina must make a new life for herself. Nervous but determined and ready for a new start, Nina moves to a sleepy village in Scotland where she buys a van and transforms it into a mobile bookshop.

She drives her bookmobile from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. With every new reader she meets, Nina slowly realises that this place might just be where she can write her own happy ending.

3. The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw

The Bookseller at the End of the World, one of my favourite new books for 2022, is Ruth Shaw’s immersive, heartbreaking, yet charming story of running two wee bookshops in the remote village of Manapouri in the deep south of New Zealand.

In this beautiful book for booklovers (that is sure to make you want to read even more books), Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings on the books that have shaped her life, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life of adventure.

4. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is one of my all-time-favourite books about books; 30+ of them, in fact (if I counted correctly), from The Iliad to The Great Gatsby.

It’s an excellent novel to spark a hunger for classics and mystery-solving, beginning with some of my favourite opening lines in literature: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

(For more book inspiration for fans of The Secret History, I’ve also curated a list of Donna Tartt’s favourite books.)

5. The Velocity of Being by Maria Popova

Like everything else from Maria Popova, the mind and heart of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), The Velocity of Being is a gorgeously curated book celebrating the joys of discovery.

Here, Maria Popova brings together some of the most wonderful culture-makers – writers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers — to reflect on the joys of reading, how books broaden and deepen human experience, and the ways in which the written word has formed their character. 

A beautiful illustration accompanies each letter about how books have shaped a contributor’s life, with stories from figures as diverse as Jane Goodall, Neil Gaiman, Shonda Rhimes, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Elizabeth Gilbert.

6. The Library Book by Susan Orlean

On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours, consuming four hundred thousand books and damaging seven hundred thousand more by the time it was extinguished.

More than thirty years later, the mystery remains: did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s love letter to libraries and a dazzling reflection on their past, present, and future in America.

7. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

Inspired by the true blue-skinned people of Kentucky and Roosevelt’s Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, relentless kindness, and one woman’s belief in the transformative power of books.

In this historical fiction novel (which I loved listening to as an audiobook), the hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to fight for everything. However, what they do have is their very own travelling librarian.

Cussy Mary Carter travels by packhorse to bring books – including Peter Pan, Doctor Doolittle, and The Call of the Wild – to the Appalachian community she loves. But with her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else, Cussy has to contend with prejudice and suspicion as old as the Appalachias.

8. The Diary Of A Bookseller by Sean Bythell

If you’ve always dreamed of owning a bookshop, The Diary of a Bookseller is the perfect book to indulge your bookish fantasies.

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown – Scotland’s largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea.

In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in booklover’s paradise, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff.

Along the way, he recommends books and evokes the charms of small-town life in delightful detail to inspire your own literary self-care and reading rituals.

9. The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

The Reading List is a wonderfully heartwarming book about books and connection. In this debut, a chance encounter with a list of books in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.

Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley after losing his beloved wife, now worrying about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library and trying to escape the painful realities she’s facing at home.

Slowly, as the reading list brings these two lonely souls together, fiction becomes their key to escape their grief, forget about everyday troubles, and even, with time and gentleness, find joy again. 

10. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill is a marvellously laid-back and joyful book about books to get lost in.

Shortlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize, Abbi Waxman’s charming and quirky romance follows introvert and bookworm Nina Hill as she discovers if real life can ever live up to fiction.

Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, an excellent trivia team and a cat named Phil. And plenty of time for reading.

So when the father she never knew existed dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. And if that wasn’t enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny and interested in getting to know her.

11. Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread by Michiko Kakutani

What are your five-star reads, the books that shaped who you are and how you see the world?

Ex Libris is literary critic Michiko Kakutani’s personal selection of over one hundred works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, sharing passionate essays on why each has had a profound effect on her life.

From Homer’s The Odyssey to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Ex Libris covers a rich and vast range of old and new classics, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations from lettering artist Dana Tanamachi.

12. What Writers Read: 35 Writers on their Favourite Book by Pandora Sykes

What do writers read? In this captivating, beautiful collection curated by the author of How Do We Know If We’re Doing it Right, a host of beloved authors from Elizabeth Strout to Derek Owusu and Ruth Ozeki to Elif Shafak reveal their favourite books.

Available as a gorgeous hardcover, What Writers Read is a stunning book about books and the joy of reading that’s perfect to gift to booklovers.

Still looking for new books to read? For more books to retreat into, complement this with the coziest books to read on a quiet night in.

The post 12 of the best books about books that capture the joy of reading appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

In this post, I’ve put together my favourite books to get lost in. They’re also perfect books to read when you need a distraction or if you haven’t read in a while, offering sheer escapism through unforgettable worlds and iconic characters.

The books in this list aren’t Russian classics. Instead, they’re the novels that broke my reading droughts and reminded me precisely why I love books.

Some of these are binge-worthy books you can’t put down, while others evoke intriguing and beautiful worlds that I love getting lost in and don’t want to leave.

To help you to rekindle the joyful habit of retreating into fictional worlds, read on for some of the best novels to get lost in and forget about the world…

The best books to get lost in when you want to escape into a book

1. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Full disclosure: I haven’t finished reading The Marriage Portrait yet. But I am completely lost in it right now. I’ve heard a lot about this 2022 bestseller, but as I rarely make time for historical fiction, I approached it tentatively.

A few hundred pages in, it’s been utterly bewitching. Maggie O’Farrell is clearly a magical writer and absolutely capable of following (and exceeding?) the success of Hamnet.

It’s winter in 1561, and Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is convinced that her husband is going to kill her. She’s sixteen years old and has so far led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence’s grandest palazzo, developing her hidden talent as an artist and stretching the confines of her imagination as her family ignores her.

Now, in a remote villa, Lucrezia is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband – and she has no idea what she’ll do against a ruler of a province – and trained soldier – to ensure her survival.

2. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Forget about Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert’s other books are totally different. I adored Elizabeth Gilbert’s most recent novels, The Signature of All Things and City of Girls.

In particular, City of Girls is a perfect novel to get lost in when you want a break. Told from the perspective of Vivian Morris as she looks back on her youth in 1940s New York, City of Girls shares Vivian’s story of female sexuality and promiscuity, pleasure and regret.

It’s a journey of true love and becoming, and an immersive page-turner that makes you feel like you’re there with Vivian.

3. A Place Like Home by Rosamunde Pilcher

I’ve been on something of a Rosamunde Pilcher binge this year. Her gorgeously cozy and slice-of-life writing has been exactly what I’ve needed to bring balance to my life when other things are out of my control.

The Shell Seekers is a good place to start with Rosamunde Pilcher – and Winter Solstice is one of the most perfect books to read in winter – but I also love this collection of short stories, published in 2021 (posthumously, after Rosamund Pilcher’s death in 2019).

Each of the fifteen stories in A Place Like Home is a perfect slice of romance, written with warm and comforting nostalgia and offering an antidote to challenging times.

It’s one of the best books to get lost in, letting you escape through the pages to the Mediterranean sunshine and sparkling blue seas, the fresh spring air of a Northumbrian village, or the fruit orchards of a recuperating stay in the Scottish countryside.

4. Greenwood by Michael Christie

Just like I experienced with its big brother The Overstory, Richard Powers’s bestseller with many similar threads but much greater fame, it took me a few attempts to get into Greenwood by Michael Christie.

The first chapter didn’t pull me in, but after about an hour of reading Greenwood, I was hooked. I read most of this doorstop of a book in a weekend, completely lost in the multi-generational saga.

Greenwood charts a family’s rise and fall alongside its secrets and inherited crimes, accompanied all the while by one steady presence: trees. I didn’t think it could be as good as The Overstory, but I really should have had more belief in it: it’s a superb book.

5. Circe by Madeline Miller

In this stunningly-woven page-turner, Circe sets forth her tale: a vivid, mesmerizing epic of rivalry, love, and loss. It’s a woman’s story told in a man’s world, and her defiance is captivating.

When Circe’s powerful magic threatens the gods, Circe is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts.

However, Circe isn’t left in peace for long, and it’s an unexpected visitor, the mortal Odysseus, for whom she will risk everything.

Circe is the perfect book to get lost in while waiting for Madeline Miller’s next book and the HBO Max Circe adaptation.

6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

When I worked in my village bookshop growing up, Cutting for Stone was the book that the shop owner recommended to everyone who didn’t know what to read. I’m so glad I finally picked it up.

This big book is the story of Marion and Shiva Stone, twin brothers born of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Ethiopia.

Bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

From Ethiopia to New York City and back again, you’ll meet a fascinating family of doctors who weave an incredible story of heartbreak, loss, and the relationships that shape their lives.

7. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

If you like the idea of a surrealist classic book to get lost in, read Kafka on the Shore. This fan favourite from Murakami (and one of my all-time favourite books) is an immersive and otherworldly book that’s surprisingly tranquil.

Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the life of fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura, who has run away from home, and an aging man called Nakata.

It’s also a wonderful book about books. “As I gaze at the vacant, birdless scene outside, I suddenly want to read a book – any book. As long as it’s shaped like a book and has printing, it’s fine by me. I just want to hold a book in my hands, turn the pages, scan the words with my eyes.”

8. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

If you want a lighthearted book to get lost in, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a fantastic choice. In this bestselling novel by Maria Semple, the quirky main character flees the anxieties of everyday American life for Antarctica.

It’s the perfect laid-back, easygoing book to immerse yourself in while imagining your own winter escape. I also think it’s one of the best books to read if you haven’t read in a while.

9. I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

Over the last decade, I Am Pilgrim has been my go-to recommendation for people who don’t read much but love gripping movies, especially crime, action, and detective plots.

“A big, breathless tale of nonstop suspense” is how The New York Times described I Am Pilgrim in 2014. Neither my dad nor my eighteen-year-old brother could stop reading it, which is high praise indeed.

Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn’t exist: a man who must return from obscurity, and the only man who can uncover a flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity.

10. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree is an enthralling, epic fantasy about a divided world on the brink of war – and the women who must lead the fight to save it.

I read this book on The Trans-Siberian Railway between Moscow and Russia, and it was the perfect choice for long days with a book as the remote landscape rolled past.

It’s a big book with an even bigger universe inside to explore, including fantastically strong women rulers and protagonists. The sequel, A Day of Fallen Night, is due for release in February 2023.

For more books to get lost in, complement these recommendations with the best books to binge-read or the coziest books to snuggle up with on a quiet evening.

The post 10 of the best books to get lost in if you need a break appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Some of my favourite books about strong women are fantasy books, others are thrillers, action books, literary fiction, and biographies.

Read on for some of my favourite books about strong women (which are also perfect books for strong women to read), including books from Madeline Miller to Maya Angelou, Philip Pullman to Katherine Arden.

I hope you can find some new additions to your to-read list that will give you some inspiration, escapism, and a kick in the butt to be a badass in your own life.

The most empowering books about strong women to read

1. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

My reading of His Dark Materials as a child was like my experiences of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia: magical, warming, and otherworldly.

As an adult, re-reading the series was just as meaningful, if not more so – there’s so much I could only understand those years later. I also remembered how much I love Lyra. She’s stubborn, caring, and strong, especially in the first half of the series before she reaches the self-consciousness that comes with early adulthood.

The first book of the series is Northern Lights, which is a perfect book to read in winter.

2. Galatea by Madeline Miller

I could’ve easily chosen Circe for this list of books about strong women, but to shake things up I’ll choose this short story by Madeline Miller.

In this tiny little book, Madeline Miller boldly reimagines the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion. Galatea (“she who is milk-white”) is the most beautiful woman her town has ever seen, carved from stone by Pygmalion, here a skilled marble sculptor, and blessed with the gift of life by a goddess.

Pygmalion expects Galatea to please him with her youthful beauty and humble obedience, but in Madeline Miller’s retelling, Galatea has desires of her own. She yearns for independence – and knows she must break free to rescue her daughter, whatever the cost. Here’s my review of Galatea.

3. Letter To My Daughter by Maya Angelou

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it,” wrote Maya Angelou in this genre-transcending guidebook, memoir, and gift to inspire all readers to craft a life with courage and meaning.

Letter to My Daughter is Maya Angelou’s offering for her “thousands of daughters,” even though she gave birth to one child, a son.

“You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all.”

4. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree is an enthralling, epic fantasy about a divided world on the brink of war – and the women who must lead the fight to save it.

I read this book on The Trans-Siberian Railway between Moscow and Russia, and it was the perfect choice for long days with a book as the remote landscape rolled past.

It’s a big book with an even bigger universe inside to explore, including fantastic women and LGBT rulers and protagonists. A sequel, A Day of Fallen Night, is due for release in February 2023.

5. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

If there’s a Nordic equivalent to Circe by Madeline Miller, it’s The Mercies. Set in the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm.

A young woman, Maren Magnusdatter, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.

The island is now a place of strong women, and The Mercies is a tale of what follows in the beautiful, brutal environment.

6. Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini

Ada Lovelace was destined for fame long before her birth, as the only legitimate child of the most brilliant and scandalous of the Romantic poets: Lord Byron.

However, her strict and educated mother had different ideas for her daughter – and succeeded. The rigorous mathematical education she gave Ada would steer her towards the work and observations that led to her (largely unheralded) legacy as the first computer programmer.

In Enchantress of Numbers, a “novel of Ada Lovelace”, Jennifer Chiaverini masterfully unveils the passions, dreams, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a pioneer in computing,

7. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind – she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales.

As danger circles her home, Vasilisa must call on her strength and summon dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect her family.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a Russian fairytale version of Spirited Away; magical, wintery, and infused with courage.

8. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The Wolf Den is the gripping tale of Amara, the beloved daughter of a doctor in Greece until her father’s sudden death plunged her mother into destitution.

Now, Amara is a slave and prostitute in Pompeii’s notorious Wolf Den brothel. But intelligent and resourceful, and buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel’s other women, Amara’s spirit isn’t broken.

In this book about strong women (which has similar vibes to Madeline Miller’s books), Amara finds solace in the laughter and hopes of the women around her, realising that the city is alive with opportunity, even for the lowest-born slave.

However, freedom comes with a price – and she’ll need to find the courage and ingenuity to pay it.

9. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler wrote about race and gender at a time when science fiction was almost exclusively the domain of men. You can pick up any of her novels and find a strong fictional role model, but Parable of the Sower is a great starting point.

The badass protagonist is a teenage girl who spends most of the story disguised as a man while the world around her crumbles – a world that, despite being crafted in 1993, is eerily similar to our own. If you loved The Handmaid’s Tale, read Parable of the Sower next.

10. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers has one of the most unique voices in fiction right now, creating wonderfully hopeful and cozy sci-fi that feels as comforting as a hot cup of tea.

Her first book, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is full of strong and well-rounded female characters. In a motley crew on an exciting journey through space, Rosemary Harper, one adventurous young explorer, realises that this crazy environment is exactly what she wants and needs.

On board the Wayfarer, Rosemary discovers the meaning of family, love, and trust in the far reaches of the universe. I loved escaping into this heartwarming and feel-good world crafted by the author of the 2021 novel A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

For more books about strong women, complement this post with my collection of the best books like Circe by Madeline Miller.

The post 10 of the best books about strong women to inspire your courage appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

That said, in the interviews that Donna Tartt has agreed to, there’s been one recurring question: what are her favourite books?

For this post, I’ve sifted through these interviews to curate a list of Donna Tartt’s favourite books. I’ve tried to avoid anything speculative here, including which books she might like best by favourite authors she’s mentioned. Of these, there are many.

In an interview with Rivista Studio in 2021, Donna Tartt shared her “worshipped writers”:

“Homer, the Greek poets and tragedians, Dante and Shakespeare are my constant touchstones. I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic. I also venerate Dickens, Nabokov, Proust, Dostoevsky, Yeats, Borges, Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh, Salinger, Virginia Woolf. Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

These writers overlap with those described by Donna Tartt as “the ones who made me want to become a writer”, which are mostly from the 19th century: “Dickens, Melville, James, Conrad, Stevenson, Dostoyevsky, with Dickens probably coming first in that list.”

Donna Tartt has also shared her favourite contemporary novelists (despite, in another interview, refusing to do so for fear of being “gossipy”): “I love Edward St. Aubyn, Haruki Murakami, Olga Tokarczuk, Don DeLillo, W.G. Sebald, Joan Didion.”

Elsewhere, Tartt shared: “As far as 20th-century novelists go, I love Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh, Salinger, Fitzgerald, Don DeLillo; and of the 21st century, my two favorites so far are Edward St. Aubyn and Paul Murray.”

I previously shared a list of the books mentioned in The Secret History, and there are some overlaps with this collection of Donna Tartt’s favourites. Read on for literary inspiration to add to your to-read list while waiting for Donna Tartt’s next book…

The curated list of Donna Tartt’s favourite books

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

In a 2021 interview, Rivista Studio asked Donna Tartt if she remembered the first book she read. She replied: “I certainly do: Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. It’s still a book I love.”

There are so many gorgeously editions of The Wind in the Willows, but I love this Union Square hardcover with illustrations by renowned artist Robert Ingpen.

This book about four enchanting and endearing protagonists – Mole, Mr. Toad, Badger, and Ratty – is one of the most beautiful children’s books of all time, and just as perfect for grown readers to retreat into.

Donna Tartt shared some of her other favourite children’s books with The New York Times: “As a child I adored Huckleberry Finn and Peter Pan. As a teenager: Franny Glass. In my 20s: Agatha Runcible.”

2. Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Donna Tartt has shared how she went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic. She added: “Homer, the Greek poets and tragedians, Dante and Shakespeare are my constant touchstones.”

3. Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück

“As a reader I love poetry more than novels and turn to poetry more often for inspiration. I was thrilled when Louise Glück won the Nobel as she’s one of my favorite living poets,” shared Tartt in 2021.

Madeline Miller, author of Circe and The Song of Achilles, has also shared her admiration for Louise Glück, a writer who has written about the Greek myth inspiring Miller’s novel-in-progress, Persephone.

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

In 2013, Donna Tartt chose Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov as her favourite book. However, she added, “Ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably say something else.”

On a similar note, here’s what Donna Tartt shared she’s looking for in a good book: “To paraphrase Nabokov: all I want from a book is the tingle down the spine, for my hairs to stand on end.”

5. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

In an interview with Independent.ie, Donna Tartt shared how influential Charles Dickens’ writing was on her early years: “I was entranced by Oliver Twist. It was the first book I read with real blood and death in it. I would worry about Oliver all day at school.”

About Dickens’ influence on The Goldfinch, in which Theo becomes an orphan with a mysterious benefactor, Tartt has shared: “Theo’s setup is Dickensian. I love Dickens a lot and just kind of internalize him.”

6. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Donna Tartt has said of her favourite comfort writing: “I always have a comfort book going too, something I’ve read many times, and for me at the moment that comfort book is Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep.'”

7. The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly

In an interview with The New York Times, Donna Tartt shared: “I’ve always got a dozen books going, which is why my suitcases are always so heavy.”

In the same piece, she commented that The Unquiet Grave has long been one of her favorite books (an enduring classic described by Hemingway as “a book which, no matter how many readers it will ever have, will never have enough”):

“I certainly haven’t enjoyed anything more than ‘The Unquiet Grave,’ by Cyril Connolly, which I went back and reread sometime early this year. I’ve loved it since I was a teenager and like always to have it to hand; when I lived in France, years ago, it was one of only six books I carried with me — but because of its aphoristic nature, usually I only read bits and pieces of it, and it’s been many years since I read the whole thing start to finish.”

8. The Iliad by Homer

The Iliad is one of the many books mentioned in The Secret History. In one interaction, Henry says to Charles: “The descriptions of Troy in the Iliad are horrible to me – all flat land and burning sun. No. I’ve always been drawn to broken, wild terrain.”

When asked about overrated and disappointing books, Donna Tartt replied: “I don’t like Hemingway. And I know I don’t love ‘Ulysses’ as much as I am supposed to — but then again, I never cared even one-tenth so much for the ‘Odyssey’ as I do for the ‘Iliad.’” 

9. The Difficulty of Being by Jean Cocteau

In 2013, Donna Tartt shared with The New York Times: “At the moment: Am greatly enjoying the Neversink Library reissue of Jean Cocteau’s ‘Difficulty of Being,’ since my copy from college is so torn up the pages are falling out.”

This book is a memoir of reflections on life and art from the legendary filmmaker-novelist-poet-genius, first published in 1947.

10. Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

Donna Tartt shared her favourite books of the pandemic in 2021; books that were new to her, though none by living writers: Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford, All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski, and A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq.

All three of these novels are about German history, interestingly. Shortlisted for the Booker prize, Sybille Bedford’s Jigsaw walks the line between autobiography and fiction, leading us from the Kaiser’s Germany into the wider Europe of the 1920s and the limbo between world wars.

In this world-shaping era, the narrator, Billi, tells the story of her apprenticeship to life and her many teachers along the way.

For more Donna Tartt-inspired books to add to your reading list, here are the 30+ books mentioned in her fan-favorite dark academia novel, The Secret History.

The post Donna Tartt’s favourite books that inspired The Secret History and The Goldfinch appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Circe is a dream of a book. It’s the perfect example of the Greek myth retold genre that’s been exploding in the last few years – what with The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood among others – but the reason I loved Circe goes deeper.

If I had known how beautiful the descriptions of nature would be, I’d have read Circe (and Madeline Miller’s other novel, The Song of Achilles) much sooner.

After unleashing magic that she never believed she could be capable of, Circe, the daughter of Helios, is banished to the island of Aiaia.

Rather than acting as her prison, Aiaia provides her sanctuary. Her days become focused on honing the art of pharmaka – the magic of herbs – as she forages, picks, blends, brews, and experiments with what she finds.

With the unlimited time available to her as an immortal, her spells and tinctures grow more refined and potent. She transforms men into swine, creates powerful protective chants, and treats her ailments and those of others. Her island makes for the perfect retreat for us as reader, too.

Here are some of the best books to read next if you liked Circe, featuring their own unique blend of magic, nature, myth, and strong women.

Books to read if you loved Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

1. Galatea by Madeline Miller

If you haven’t yet, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading Madeline Miller’s short story Galatea, which has recently been published as a beautiful (and tiny) hardcover for the first time.

Like Circe, Galatea is a story focused on transformation, or as Miller explains in the afterword, on “finding freedom for yourself in a word that denies it to you.”

Here, Madeline Miller reimagines the myth of Galatea (“she who is milk-white”); the most beautiful woman her town has ever seen, carved from stone by Pygmalion, a skilled marble sculptor, and blessed with the gift of life by a goddess. Here’s my review of Galatea.

2. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

If you loved the nature and magic of Circe, Uprooted is a fantastic choice to read next. We meet Agnieszka, who loves her quiet home, her village, and the nearby forests and glimmering river.

But it’s a fantasy novel after all, and the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power casting a shadow over her life.

To keep safe, Agnieszka and her people have to make a sacrifice to the evil wizard, the Dragon, every ten years. That sacrifice is a young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, and the next choosing is fast approaching.

3. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Published in 2021, A Thousand Ships is one of the most popular books to read if you loved Circe. This gripping novel by Natalie Haynes puts women, girls, and goddesses at the centre of one of the greatest tales ever told: the fall of Troy.

Madeline Miller shared, “With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”

4. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

If there’s a Nordic equivalent to Circe, it’s The Mercies. Set in the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm.

A young woman, Maren Magnusdatter, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.

The island is now a place of strong women, and The Mercies is a tale of what follows in the beautiful, brutal environment.

5. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Less about myth but very much about the beauty of nature, The Signature of All Things is a stunning book about one woman’s life, love, and self-discovery as a botanist.

The novel follows Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade. Alma inherits his money and his mind, and as she becomes a botanist of considerable gifts, her story soars across the globe.

For another book by Elizabeth Gilbert with plenty of self-sufficiency, foraging, and living off the land, read The Last American Man.

It’s non-fiction that reads as myth, offering an intriguing portrayal of a man who left his family’s comfortable suburban home to live close to nature in the Appalachian Mountains.

6. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

In The Silence of the Girls, one of the most immersive books like Circe, the ancient city of Troy has been under siege by the powerful Greek army for a decade, waging bloody war over a stolen woman: Helen.

In the Greek camp, another woman – Briseis, former queen of one of Troy’s neighbouring kingdoms, now Achilles’ concubine – watches and waits for the war’s outcome.

This wonderfully nuanced portrait of previously hidden figures is magnificent, brought to life by Pat Barker’s decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives.

Now in 2022, Pat Baker has just published her newest retelling of one of the greatest myths, The Women of Troy.

7. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A magical book to read after Circe is The Snow Child. It’s Alaska in 1920 – ruthless for most people, but especially for new arrivals Jack and Mabel.

Childless and drifting apart, the season’s first snowfall brings them together for a moment to build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

The girl seems to be a child of the woods, who hunts with a red fox at her side and somehow survives alone in the wilderness. Jack and Mabel come to love her as their own daughter, but in this beautiful, brutal place nothing is quite as it seems.

8. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

“I am not the feminine voice you may have expected.” Lavinia is a book entirely written from the perspective of a character that never utters a word: Lavinia in Virgil’s epic, The Aeneid. 

Delicately crafted by the queen of fantasy sci-fi, this is a richly imagined and beautiful novel of passion and war, reimagining a silenced voice just like Madeline Miller achieved with Circe.

9. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing has been recommended everywhere in the last few years, but if you haven’t read it, it’s got similar strong-woman-in-nature vibes to Circe.

We meet Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl, who’s survived for years alone in the marshland that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and building an encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural world. But when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the local North Carolina coastal community immediately suspects her and her quiet life in the wild is shattered.

If you enjoyed this, here are more books like Where the Crawdads Sing to read next.

10. Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

Do you wish you knew more about Greek mythology? If so, Pandora’s Jar is a great choice to read next.

Here, Natalie Haynes, broadcaster, passionate classicist, and bestselling author for fans of Madeline Miller, retells the great mythic sagas with women at their centre.

Putting the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk, the result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds – and misdeeds – of goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, and Circe.

It’s not just the goddesses that Natalie Haynes reimagines: away from Mount Olympus, it’s Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone, and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes, or Jason.

11. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The first book in the Wolf Den trilogy (Book 3 is scheduled to be published in 2023), The Wolf Den is the gripping tale of Amara, the beloved daughter of a doctor in Greece until her father’s sudden death plunged her mother into destitution.

Now, Amara is a slave and prostitute in Pompeii’s notorious Wolf Den brothel. But intelligent and resourceful, and buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel’s other women, Amara’s spirit isn’t broken.

Amara finds solace in the laughter and hopes they all share… and realises that the city is alive with opportunity, even for the lowest-born slave. But everything in Pompeii has a price. How much will Amara’s freedom cost her?

12. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

If you imagine a Russian spin on Spirited Away, The Bear and the Nightingale would come close. At the edge of the wilderness in this fairytale-like book, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses.

Vasilisa doesn’t mind the cold – she spends the Russian winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales.

The family honours the spirits in these stories, knowing them to protect their homes from evil, but when Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father brings home a new wife who forbids this.

More hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows, and as danger circles, Vasilisa must call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect her family.

For even more books like Circe, retreat into these books about wild nature. You can also read more about Madeline Miller’s novel-in-progress, Persephone, and the upcoming HBO adaptation of Circe.

The post 12 magical books like Circe set in nature and rich in mythology appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Powers’ bestselling novel centres on five trees that align with the lives of nine diverse Americans, ultimately tightening the threads between these characters and motivating them to protect and fight for our delicate natural world.

Since reading the Pulitzer Prize winner of 2019, I’ve never quite looked at trees in the same way. And after finding out that Netflix will adapt The Overstory to a series (announced in February 2021), I hope this will only add to my love for the book.

Hearing that one of your favourite books will be adapted to the screen can be both a blessing and a curse, hingeing on the success and faithfulness of the adaptation – but also on your idea of what’s accurate according to your own imagination.

How will it be with The Overstory? Right now, it’s too early to find out. But here’s what we know about The Overstory adaptation on Netflix so far to start setting our expectations…

What we know about The Overstory on Netflix

The job of adapting The Overstory is in experienced hands: those of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, best known as the creators of Game of Thrones. (When I told my husband this, he replied oh, god. It could go either way with them, he said.)

There’s no current expected release date or production date. Perhaps we can expect The Overstory to come to screens in 2023-2024, but hopefully we’ll find out more about the series soon.

Hugh Jackman will also executive produce along with Bernie Caulfield of Benioff and Weiss’s Bighead Littlehead production banner. Richard Powers is set to serve as co-executive producer.

According to The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, Jackman is reportedly a fan of the novel, as is Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings. Netflix describes the novel as “a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of the natural world.” 

“It tells the story of a world alongside ours that is vast, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us,” the announcement on Deadline shared in February 2021. “A handful of disparate people learn how to see that world and are drawn into its unfolding catastrophe.”

At a time when news sites quip “another day, another cancellation from Netflix,” fingers crossed we’ll hear more updates soon about The Overstory series.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are also writers and executive producers on the Netflix series adaptation of the sci-fi book trilogy The Three-Body Problem, as part of a nine-figure deal they signed with Netflix in 2019.

What to read while you’re waiting for The Overstory on Netflix

At this stage, we have no real idea of when The Overstory might be released on Netlix. But there are plenty of fantastic books to read in the meantime.

Start by reading or re-reading The Overstory, and continue with these similarly beautiful books about trees.

One of my favourite books like The Overstory is Greenwood by Michael Christie, a gorgeous multi-generational novel about trees, our changing climate, the twists and turns of fortune, and doing the right thing.

The post The Overstory on Netflix: what we know about the series so far appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

As a Brit, I had at least a vague idea of most of the historical events it covers, but I’ve loved watching The Crown to put more of the pieces together over several decades… even with the fictionalization that’s been causing a stir back in the UK.

Are the early seasons better than the later ones? Yes, absolutely. But I’ll still watch them with joy, including Season 5.

One unexpected gem in the new series is in Episode 6, “Ipatiev House,” in which the Prime Minister, John Major, shares Anna Dostoevskaya’s thoughts on the key to a happy marriage, as wife to Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In their regular meeting in this fictional portrayal, Major congratulates the Queen on her upcoming 47th wedding anniversary. In return, she asks Major how long he has been married, to which he answers 24 years.

“We must all be doing something right. What do you suppose that is?” asks the Queen.

I love the response from The Crown‘s John Major:

“One of the most memorable accounts of a long successful marriage comes from Dostoevsky’s wife, Anna. She and Fyodor were, she said, of contrasting character… different temperaments. Entirely opposing views. Yet they never tried to change one another. Nor interfere with the other’s soul. This, she believed, enabled her and her husband to live in harmony.”

“By having nothing whatsoever in common?” asks the Queen. Major replies: “Mm. The key to a happy marriage, it seems.”

Where did Anna Dostoevskaya share this marriage advice?

Anna Dostoevskaya’s timeless advice for a happy marriage is shared in her spectacular memoir, Dostoevsky Reminiscences. In this book, she recalls a conversation with Fyodor Dostoevsky during a tea break when they first met in 1865.

During this time, the then-Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina was working with Dostoevsky as a stenographer as he wrote an entire novel (The Gambler) in four weeks as part of an exchange to repay gambling debts.

In response to Dostoevsky’s assertion that he had never felt happy, or at least not the happiness he had already dreamed of, Anna advised him to marry again. Anna shares how the conversation continued:

“While we were on the theme of marriage, he asked me why I didn’t marry myself. I answered that I had two suitors, both splendid people and that I respected them both very much but did not love them — and that I wanted to marry for love.

‘For love, without fail,’ he seconded me heartily. ‘Respect alone isn’t enough for a happy marriage!’“

Their love story is a splendid one, really. With Anna’s help, Dostoevsky finished the novel in just twenty-six days. He paid her, thanked her, and planned a celebratory dinner at a restaurant (Anna’s first ever) the next day.

As Maria Popova shares on The Marginalian, Dostoevsky realised that his collaboration with Anna had brought more light and joy into his life than anything before. He was devastated by the prospect of not seeing her again, and asked if she would help him finish Crime and Punishment.

Just ten days after the end of their first project, she was back at his house. They walked to his study, where he proposed marriage through the guise of describing a new novel he was writing. It was about a troubled artist of his age, possessed with a tender heart but incapable of expressing his feelings, and desperately in love with a young woman whom he feared he had nothing to offer.

Fyodor and Anna were married in February 1867, and remained in love until Dostoevsky’s death fourteen years later.

The key to a happy marriage, according to Anna Dostoevskaya

In the afterword to her memoir, Anna shares the sentiment that is closest to what John Major shares in The Crown:

“In truth, my husband and I were persons of ‘quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views.’ But we always remained ourselves, in no way echoing nor currying favor with one another, neither of us trying to meddle with the other’s soul, neither I with his psyche nor he with mine. And in this way my good husband and I, both of us, felt ourselves free in spirit.”

Anna didn’t interfere in her husband’s spiritual and intellectual life, and recalls how he would sometimes say to her, “You are the only woman who ever understood me!”

She adds that, “He looked on me as a rock on which he felt he could lean, or rather rest”, and believes it was these mutual attitudes that enabled them to “live in the fourteen years of our married life in the greatest happiness possible for human beings on earth.”

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Published in 2018, Circe is Madeline Miller’s defiant reimagining of the daughter of Helios, the sun god, and the ocean nymph Perse, known in myth as a dangerous sorceress, perhaps the most dangerous woman a man could come across.

When her gift threatens the gods, she is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts.

But she won’t be left in peace for long, and it’s for an unexpected visitor, the mortal Odysseus, for whom Circe will risk everything.

While we’re waiting on Madeline Miller’s next book, there’s some more good news to look forward to: Circe is being adapted as an HBO Max series.

Circe will be an HBO Max series

Now, this news has been around for a while. Madeline Miller shared back in 2019:

“As an author, it is an honor to have my work in the hands of such passionate, experienced, and thoughtful people. I can’t wait to see what they do with Circe’s story, and most of all I love that they are keeping the Witch of Aiaia firmly at the center of her own epic journey–just where she belongs.”

HBO’s Circe was given an expected release date of 2021, which here at the end of 2022 realistically means 2023 at the earliest.

That said, nothing has been shared about Circe by HBO in the last couple of years, so let’s hope this is just a waiting game while they perfect casting and filming rather than second thoughts.

While we wait to find out more details, here’s what we know about the Circe adaptation for TV so far.

What do we know about the HBO Max adaptation of Circe so far?

Back in 2019, Madeline Miller announced that HBO Max had bought the rights for an eight-episode season of Circe.

In a piece on Deadline, it was shared that Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver – the American married screenwriting and film production duo known for Planet of the Apes – will write and executive produce the drama, which hails from Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content.

Here’s how IMDb describes the upcoming Circe adaptation:

“A modern take on the world of Greek mythology told from the powerful feminist perspective of the goddess Circe, who transforms from an awkward nymph to a formidable witch, able to challenge gods, titans and monsters alike.”

Sarah Aubrey, head of originals at HBO Max, shared in the announcement that:

“Circe tells an epic story of love, loss, tragedy and immortal conflict, all through the eyes of a fierce female lens […] I’ve been a longtime fan of Rick and Amanda’s work and their ability to simultaneously build epic imaginative worlds while creating emotional dynamic characters. In partnership with Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping, we have the dream team to bring Circe to life.”

What to read while waiting for Circe on HBO Max

While we’re waiting the undefined period before Circe is released on HBO Max, what to read?

The obvious starting point is Circe, of course, whether as a re-read or first-time read, alongside Madeline Miller’s other bestseller The Song of Achilles. I’ve also previously shared these similar books to Circe.

In the next year, we will also hopefully hear more about Madeline Miller’s novel-in-progress, Persephone.

For now, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading Madeline Miller’s short story Galatea if you haven’t yet, which has recently been published as a beautiful (and tiny) hardcover for the first time.

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