10 must-read nonfiction books like Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

If you liked the nonfiction plot in Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Similar categories in Carol Kaesuk Yoon's Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Similar categories in Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Similar categories in Becky Chambers's A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

Similar categories in Sabrina Imbler's How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook
• memoir
• animals
• nonfiction
• nature
• science

"But when I think about ponds infested with gallon-big goldfish, I feel a kind of triumph. I see something that no one expected to live not just alive but impossibly flourishing, and no longer alone. …"

-Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

Similar categories in Daniel Mason's North Woods book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• nature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

"Friendship,"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"How I will miss the horses."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"You try again. You fail better."

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

"There are no ghosts, but up here"

-Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Similar categories in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

"The truth is fluid, there is always another way to spin the story."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"They tell authors never to look at Goodreads, but nobody follows that advice—none of us can resist the urge to know how our work is being received."

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

"Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hu…"

-R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

Similar categories in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

"They were all humans, and yet they had completely different ideas about what humanity meant."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"My brother-in-law is an alien. I have a bunch of alien friends. I can't be racist," Randy Mac continued."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,"

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

"...despite how hard it was, she wasn't afraid with love. She knew how to wield it, how to grow it, and how to receive it."

-Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

Similar categories in Ed Yong's An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• science
• animals
• nonfiction
• nature
• audiobook

"It's ironic that we associate taste with connoisseurship, subtlety, and fine discrimination when it is among the coarsest of senses."

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"We are closer than ever to understanding what it is like to be another animal, but we have made it harder than ever for other animals to be."

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of realities fullness. Each is enclos…"

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

"A striking pattern emerged on days with the most intense solar storms, grey whales were 4 times more likely to beach themselves. This correlation doesn't prove that whales have a compass but it stron…"

-Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Similar categories in Michael Finkel's The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• history
• biography
• biography memoir
• nonfiction
• audiobook

"Museums are secular churches . . . and to steal there is blasphemous."

-Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

Similar categories in Matthew Desmond's Poverty, by America book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• nonfiction
• history
• audiobook

"To live and strive in modern America is to participate in a series of morally fraught systems. If a family’s entire financial livelihood depends on the value of its home, it’s not hard to understand …"

-Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

"The rest of us, on the ·other hand-we members of the protected classes-have grown increasingly· dependent on our welfare programs. In 2020 the federal government spent more than $193 billion on homeo…"

-Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

"In her book The Government-Citizen Disconnect, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler reports that 96 percent of American adults have relied on a major government program at some point in their live…"

-Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

Similar categories in Amanda Montell's Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• nonfiction
• history
• audiobook

"Without language, there are no "cults"."

-Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

"Some say people who join cults are “lost."

-Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

"With words, we breathe reality into being."

-Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

"The nimble direct sales industry always finds a way to reinvent itself - the capitalist cockroach that just won't stop reincarnating."

-Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

Similar categories in Hua Hsu's Stay True book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• biography
• memoir
• biography memoir
• nonfiction
• audiobook

"My parents are great, I said. Unbelievably non-stereotypical."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"The first generation thinks about survival; the ones that follow tell the stories."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"You were describing people we had not yet met, maybe people we ourselves would become."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

"It was a sign of personal growth, I thought to myself, that I could be friends with someone who liked Pearl Jam this much."

-Hua Hsu, Stay True

Similar categories in Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• biography
• memoir
• biography memoir
• nonfiction
• audiobook

"what procellous awesomeness does not in you abound"

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"It felt wrong to talk to anyone, to smile or laugh or eat again knowing that she was dead."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"I could almost feel in the embrace that my concerns had been her concerns, my pain had been her pain."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

"Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind."

-Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

Similar categories in Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook
• history
• biography
• memoir
• animals
• philosophy
• biography memoir
• nonfiction
• nature
• science

"There is grandeur in this view,"

-Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

"In every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend."

-Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

"We are specks, flickering in and out of existence, with no significance to the cosmos."

-Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

"When people have this feeling of personal inefficiency, compulsive collecting helps them in feeling better."

-Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Similar categories in Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• nonfiction
• biography
• memoir
• audiobook

"But this story? This one's mine."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"I thought you died, but writing this, I'm not sure you did."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"Your heart launches itself against your rib cage like an animal."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

"You tried to tell your story to people who didn't know how to listen."

-Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook

"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Similar categories in John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet book and Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

• audiobook
• history
• biography
• memoir
• nonfiction
• science

"We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here."

-John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

"I...took some pride in 'not fulfilling my potential,' in part because I was terrified that if I tried my hardest, the world would learn I didn't actually have that much potential."

-John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

"One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of."

-John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

"I think two of the fundamental facts of being a person are 1. We must go on, and 2. None of us ever walks alone. We may feel alone (in fact, we will feel alone), but even in the crushing grind of iso…"

-John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet