Books like People We Meet on Vacation

01

Beach Read

Emily Henry · Contemporary fiction

January Andrews is a romance novelist who has completely lost faith in love after discovering her late father had a secret mistress for years.

A kindred contemporary fiction read.

02

Normal People

Sally Rooney · Literary fiction

Normal People follows Connell and Marianne from their small-town Irish secondary school through their years at Trinity College Dublin.

A kindred contemporary fiction read.

03

Conversations with Friends

Sally Rooney · Literary fiction

Conversations with Friends is told by Frances, a twenty-one-year-old Dublin student who performs spoken-word poetry with her best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi.

A kindred contemporary fiction read.

04

A General Theory of Love

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon · Psychology

A General Theory of Love is a 2000 book by three psychiatrists at the University of California, San Francisco — Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon — who set out to explain love scientifically without stripping it of its significance.

A kindred contemporary fiction read.

05

A Mind for Numbers

Barbara Oakley · Self-help

A Mind for Numbers is Barbara Oakley's guide to learning hard subjects effectively, written primarily for students struggling with mathematics and science but drawing on cognitive science principles that apply to any demanding field.

Both dig into memory.

06

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · Memoir

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published account of his years in Paris during the 1920s, when he and his first wife Hadley lived cheaply in Montparnasse while he apprenticed himself to the work of becoming a writer.

Both dig into memory.

07

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder · History

Bloodlands is Timothy Snyder's account of the territories between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — principally Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states — where the two regimes' violence overlapped between 1933 and 1945.

Both dig into memory.

08

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · Memoir

Brain on Fire is Susannah Cahalan's account of the month she spent in a New York hospital in 2009, during which she experienced psychosis, paranoia, violent behavior, catatonia, and seizures — and was nearly committed to a psychiatric facility before a doctor correctly diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a newly described autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the brain.

Both dig into memory.

09

Confessions

Saint Augustine · Philosophy

Confessions, written around 397 CE, is the spiritual autobiography of Augustine of Hippo and one of the most influential texts in Western philosophy and Christian theology.

Both dig into memory.

10

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

Both dig into memory.

11

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

Gabriel Wyner · Language

Fluent Forever is Gabriel Wyner's system for teaching yourself a foreign language and, crucially, retaining it.

Both dig into memory.

12

Gulag: A History

Anne Applebaum · History

Anne Applebaum's Gulag is the first comprehensive English-language history of the Soviet forced labor camp system, drawing on KGB archives opened briefly after 1991, survivor memoirs, and interviews with former prisoners and guards.

Both dig into memory.