5 must-read nonfiction books like The Lives of the Saints by Sebastian Barry

Cover of The Lives of the Saints by Sebastian Barry

The Lives of the Saints

By: Sebastian Barry

3.98

Format: 120 pages, Hardcover

Intimate, revealing and generous of heart, these three lectures - written and delivered as part of …

If you liked the nonfiction plot in The Lives of the Saints by Sebastian Barry , here is a list of 5 books like this:

Cover of Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

1. Shakespeare: The World as Stage

By: Bill Bryson

3.81

Format: 199 pages, Paperback

At first glance, Bill Bryson seems an odd choice to write this addition to the Eminent Lives series… read more

Similar categories in Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • nonfiction
"Even Scientific American entered the fray with an article proposing that the person portrayed in the famous Martin Droeshout engraving might actually be--I weep to say it--Elizabeth I."

-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

"So it needs to be said that nearly all of the anti-Shakespeare sentiment—actually all of it, every bit—involves manipulative scholarship or sweeping misstatements of fact. Shakespeare “never owned a …"

-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

"(...)we all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at …"

-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

"A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample l…"

-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Cover of Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

2. Amy and Isabelle

By: Elizabeth Strout

4.33

Format: None pages, Paperback

In her stunning first novel Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout evokes a teenager's alienation from … read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth Strout's Amy and Isabelle book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

Cover of Walk the Blue Fields: Stories by Claire Keegan

3. Walk the Blue Fields: Stories

By: Claire Keegan

3.46

Format: 103 pages, Paperback

read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Walk the Blue Fields: Stories book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Antarctica by Claire Keegan

4. Antarctica

By: Claire Keegan

3.86

Format: 224 pages, Paperback

Published to great critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, the iridescent stories in Claire… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's Antarctica book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"That's the way it is in our house, everybody knowing things but pretending they don't."

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

"I run the house now. The last man who said I was old enough got scalded. My mother always said there was nothing as bad as a burn. And she was right. It's turning out that I'm taking no nonsense from…"

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

"Whatever you say, I'll manage. I will live out of a water barrel and check the skies. I will learn fifteen types of wind and know the weight of tomorrow's rain by the rustle in the sycamores. Make ne…"

-Claire Keegan, Antarctica

Cover of Prophet Song by Paul    Lynch

5. Prophet Song

By: Paul Lynch

4.10

Format: 259 pages, Kindle Edition

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internat… read more

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Cover of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

6. The Wren, the Wren

By: Anne Enright

3.55

Format: 278 pages, Hardcover

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of… read more

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Cover of The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

7. The House of Doors

By: Tan Twan Eng

4.14

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redempti… read more

Similar categories in Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

"Money's the sixth sense. If you don't have it, you can't make … the most of the other five."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.' He shook his head. 'We will be remembered through our stories."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

Cover of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

8. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By: Salman Rushdie

4.10

Format: 209 pages, Hardcover

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply pers… read more

Similar categories in Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • nonfiction
"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"To have a room of one’s own, one must have money. (I don’t think Virginia Woolf ever went to India, but her dictum stands, even there, even for men.)"

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"An intimacy of strangers. That's a phrase I've sometimes used to express the joyful thing that happens in the act of reading, that happy union of the interior lives of author and reader."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Cover of So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

9. So Late in the Day

By: Claire Keegan

4.00

Format: 47 pages, Hardcover

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the b… read more

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's So Late in the Day book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

10. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

11. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of Liberation Day by George Saunders

12. Liberation Day

By: George Saunders

4.00

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

The "best short story writer in English" (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores i… read more

Similar categories in George Saunders's Liberation Day book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

"...or said some racist thing out loud at church..."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

" You are trapped in you, the beam said. Yeah, well, who isn’t? she thought."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It is always regrettable to have attracted the attention of adult son Mike."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

"It was always falling down around you, everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were too alive to notice."

-George Saunders, Liberation Day

Cover of How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

13. How to Build a Boat

By: Elaine Feeney

3.78

Format: 298 pages, Paperback

This is the story of a remarkable boy and his search for his mother, told with warmth, tenderness a… read more

Similar categories in Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"To some, the world is filled with threats. To others, opportunities."

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"That's dedication and if life's taught me anything, we go to what we love, eventually - we mightn't find it straight away, but we get there."

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"...[W]hile language came readily to Tess when dealing with herself alone, having one-way conversations over all of her choices on her long walks in the woods, or on her way to school, now she no long…"

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"How can I miss someone I have never met? Jamie said. Grief was profoundly different for both humans. One felt an intense anger he had never recovered from, the other knew something was missing, a vac…"

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

Cover of A Guest at the Feast by Colm Tóibín

14. A Guest at the Feast

By: Colm Tóibín

3.71

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

In his essay about the life of Irish writer John McGahern, Tóibín reveals the tones of melancholy a… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's A Guest at the Feast book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • nonfiction
  • irish literature
  • ireland
Cover of The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan

15. The Queen of Dirt Island

By: Donal Ryan

4.09

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

From the multi-award-winning and internationally bestselling author Donal Ryan, a searing, jubilant… read more

Similar categories in Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
"Time will wind its own sweet way. We have no choice but to keep up."

-Donal Ryan, The Queen of Dirt Island

"Happiness was a strange notion, something that was wrapped neatly, and packed into the closing scenes of television shows and daytime films, sharply relieved on the screen, but blurry in real life, a…"

-Donal Ryan, The Queen of Dirt Island

"her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother had walked her to the classroom door and Mammy had cried a bit and Granny had told her to cop on and Nana then had told Granny to cop on herself and t…"

-Donal Ryan, The Queen of Dirt Island

"She felt sad in that moment for anyone in the world who didn’t have a mother like hers. A mother who was standing now above her quarry like a prizefighter in a swell of victory, looking slowly left a…"

-Donal Ryan, The Queen of Dirt Island

Cover of My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1) by Joseph O'Connor

16. My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)

By: Joseph O'Connor

4.05

Format: 276 pages, Kindle Edition

From the best-selling author of Star of the Sea, a WWII-era “great escape” novel set in the Vatican… read more

Similar categories in Joseph O'Connor's My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1) book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
"Life schools you the way no catechism will."

-Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)

"There are times when we must permit one another to lie."

-Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)

"I was singing in Belfast the night the Luftwaffe firebombed the theatre. That's what you call a mixed review."

-Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)

"A religiously minded kid will often be good at lying awake all night because you need an imagination if you're going to believe."

-Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)

Cover of The World: A Family History of Humanity by Simon Sebag Montefiore

17. The World: A Family History of Humanity

By: Simon Sebag Montefiore

4.00

Format: 1344 pages, Hardcover

From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author - the story of humanity from pre… read more

Similar categories in Simon Sebag Montefiore's The World: A Family History of Humanity book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • nonfiction
Cover of The Morningside by Téa Obreht

18. The Morningside

By: Téa Obreht

3.61

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, a ma… read more

Similar categories in Téa Obreht's The Morningside book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

Cover of The Colony by Audrey Magee

19. The Colony

By: Audrey Magee

4.11

Format: 376 pages, Hardcover

In 1979, as violence erupts all over Ireland, two outsiders travel to a small island off the west c… read more

Similar categories in Audrey Magee's The Colony book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature
Cover of The Lives of the Saints by Sebastian Barry

20. The Lives of the Saints

By: Sebastian Barry

3.98

Format: 120 pages, Hardcover

Intimate, revealing and generous of heart, these three lectures - written and delivered as part of … read more

Similar categories in Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • nonfiction
  • irish literature
  • ireland
Cover of Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan

21. Heart, Be at Peace

By: Donal Ryan

4.22

Format: 208 pages, Kindle Edition

‘I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise…’ S… read more

Similar categories in Donal Ryan's Heart, Be at Peace book and Sebastian Barry's The Lives of the Saints

  • ireland
  • irish literature

14 must-read ireland books like The Lives of the Saints by Sebastian Barry

Transform Your Habits

Walk the Blue Fields: Stories

Claire Keegan

3.46

Transform Your Habits

Antarctica

Claire Keegan

3.86

Transform Your Habits

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

4.10

Transform Your Habits

The Wren, the Wren

Anne Enright

3.55

View all the books

20 best-selling fiction books like Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan

Transform Your Habits

Earth

John Boyne

4.34

Transform Your Habits

Wild Houses

Colin Barrett

3.78

Transform Your Habits

The Heart in Winter

Kevin Barry

4.02

Transform Your Habits

Breakdown

Cathy Sweeney

3.81

View all the books

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