Books like

Books like The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

12 books with a reading profile close to The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan. Inward-looking and contemplative; an easy read.

1

Solutions and Other Problems

by Allie Brosh

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Allie Brosh uses crude digital illustrations and humorous vignettes to document her life after a long public absence.
2

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Fourteen-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., a budding cartoonist born with physical vulnerabilities, lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation where poverty and alcoholism are pervasive.
3

Beautiful Country

by Qian Julie Wang

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Qian Julie Wang was seven when she and her parents left China for New York in 1994, where her mother and father, a former professor and a professional, became undocumented workers.
4

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir, written in verse, chronicles her childhood across the 1960s and 1970s.
5

Persepolis, Volume 1

by Marjane Satrapi

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel chronicles her childhood in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War.
6

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O'Farrell

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

This memoir documents seventeen instances where Maggie O’Farrell narrowly escaped death.
7

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

by Nora Ephron

Also inward-looking · memoir, narrative

Nora Ephron examines the physical humiliations and domestic frustrations of aging, focusing on the specific maintenance required to camouflage a sagging neck.
8

Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo

by Christiane V. Felscherinow

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Christiane Felscherinow narrates her descent into heroin addiction in 1970s West Berlin, beginning with her experimentation with hashish and pills at age twelve.
9

Solito

by Javier Zamora

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

Nine-year-old Javier Zamora departs his small town in El Salvador to reunite with his parents in the United States, traveling three thousand miles without his family.
10

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

Also inward-looking and contemplative · narrative, accessible

During the 2020 pandemic, Lara gathers with her three adult daughters on their family cherry orchard in Michigan.
11

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

by Ruth Reichl

memoir, narrative

Ruth Reichl’s memoir tracks her development from a child navigating her mother’s dangerous kitchen to a professional restaurant critic.
12

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

by James McBride

Also inward-looking and contemplative · memoir, narrative

James McBride alternates between his own upbringing in a Brooklyn housing project and the oral history of his mother, Ruth Jordan.

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