18 books like Running

What to read after Running — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Let them eat cake Sandra Byrd · 2007 · ★ 3.8 · 320p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Lexi Stuart is at a critical crossroads. She's done with college but still living at home, ready to launch a career but unable to find a job, and solidly stalled between boyfriends. When a lighthearted conversation in French with the manager of her favorite bakery turns into a job offer, Lexi accepts. But the actual glamour is minimal: the pay is less than generous, her co-workers are skeptical,… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women

Confessions of a Shopaholic, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, and Shopaholic Ties the Knot (Shopaholic Series, Books 1, 2, & 3) Sophie Kinsella · 2001 · ★ 4.6 · 310p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Meet Becky Bloomwood, America’s favorite shopaholic—a young woman with a big heart, big dreams…and just one little weakness. Becky has a fabulous flat in London's trendiest neighborhood, a troupe of glamorous socialite friends, and a closet brimming with the season's must-haves. The only trouble is that she can't actually afford it—not any of it. Her job writing at Successful Savings not only… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women, Bildungsromans

Lie down in Darkness William Styron · 1951 · 400p · ≈ 13h · Moderate The story is set out in the south. The Loftis family members are waiting for the coffin of their daughter Peyton. The novel goes back in time through flashbacks and recollections uncovering truths and events leading to Peyton's suicide. Lie Down In Darkness is a post-modernist novel, a post-war account of the human state, an age of alienation, decay and meaninglessness. Neither society nor family… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women

Voyage Out Virginia Woolf · 1915 · ★ 3.8 “The Voyage Out” by Virginia Woolf. This is a story about a young English woman, Rachel, on a sea voyage from London, to a South American coastal city of Santa Marina. As I read the story, the title of the story became a metaphor for Rachel's inner journey. The inner journey within this story is perhaps best summarized in the author's words: “The next few months passed away, as many years… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women, Bildungsromans

Alice Adams Booth Tarkington · 1921 · 211p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Alice Adams is Booth Tarkington’s second novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, just three years after his novel The Magnificent Ambersons won it. The novel tells the story of Alice, a Midwestern girl who grows up in a lower-middle-class family just after World War I. Alice meets a wealthy young man and tries to win his affection, despite her lower-class upbringing. Alice Adams was twice adapted for… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women, Bildungsromans

Fledgling Octavia E. Butler · 2005 · ★ 4.4 · 322p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood, the lost child of an ancient species of near-immortals who live in dark symbiosis with humanity. Genetically modified to be able to walk in daylight, Shori now becomes the target of a vast… Shares: Young women--fiction, Young women

North and South Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · 2016 · 490p · ≈ 16h · Moderate By the mid-nineteenth century, the transition of textile production in England from a cottage craft to mechanized factories was complete. Still, the effects of the industrial revolution remain distant from the idyllic rural parish in the New Forest where Margaret Hale grows up. But with her father’s crisis of conscience in ministry, the country lanes of Hampshire give way to the crowded urban… Shares: Young women--fiction, Bildungsromans

Miss Marjoribanks Margaret Oliphant · 1866 · 546p · ≈ 18h · Challenging When Dr. Marjoribanks’s wife dies, his teenage daughter makes it her purpose in life “to be a comfort to dear papa.” At least, Lucilla thinks, ten years of such devotion might suffice, by which time she might have begun to “go off.” But beneath this grand intention lies a yet more ambitious plan: to revolutionize the moribund and constricted social life of Carlingford. She is remarkably… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

The bent twig Dorothy Canfield Fisher · 1915 · 480p · ≈ 16h · Challenging Unlike other young women of her generation, who were "bred up from childhood to sit behind tea-tables and say the right things to tea-drinkers," Sylvia Marshall - the "twig" of this novel - was reared to think for herself and to trust her own instincts and experience. This, coupled with her passionate temperament, makes Sylvia a compelling figure as she resists efforts to mold her with every… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Candy Terry Southern · 1964 · ★ 3.9 · 224p · ≈ 7h · Moderate Banned upon its initial publication, the now-classic Candy is a romp of a story about the impossibly sweet Candy Christian, a wide-eyed, luscious, all-American girl. Candy -- a satire of Voltaire's Candide -- chronicles her adventures with mystics, sexual analysts, and everyone she meets when she sets out to experience the world. Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Roustabout Michelle Chalfoun · 1996 · ★ 4.3 · 236p · ≈ 7h · Moderate the seedy side of the circus through the eyes of a young female worker Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Judith Paris Hugh Walpole · 1931 · 782p · ≈ 26h · Challenging Covering the years 1771 to 1822 and set partly in Revolutionary Paris, and partly in romantic Cumbria, Judith Paris is the story of the two very different men who love Walpole's most delightful heroine. Daughter of Francis Herries and Mirabell Starr, Judith was described on publication as "the most delightful of Walpole's heroines." As impetuous, impulsive and passionate as her father, she is… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Lili Annie Wang · 2001 · ★ 4.0 · 320p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Derrière le portrait d'une jeune Chinoise dans les années 1980, l'histoire d'une prise de conscience sociale qui aboutit aux événements de la place Tian'anmen en 1989. [SDM]. Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Nora, Nora Anne Rivers Siddons · 2000 · 263p · ≈ 8h · Moderate "Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town, a cousin who smokes cigarettes and drives a pink Thunderbird. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and she does make for good conversation at the Losers Club, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe she isn't so… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Downtown Anne Rivers Siddons · 1994 · ★ 3.8 · 621p · ≈ 20h · Moderate Set on the cusp of the country's great social movements - youth, women's, peace, and civil rights - in the year before the love turned to anger and the peace to militancy, Downtown is the story of Smoky O'Donnell, her career and her heart. When Smoky arrives in Atlanta in 1966, after an airless lifetime back in Savannah, she is at once thrilled and chastened by this dazzling, hectic young city… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Trading Up Candace Bushnell · 2002 · ★ 3.3 · 586p · ≈ 19h · Moderate A lingerie model whose fame and success have gone to her head, Janey Wilcox becomes involved in a world of too much money and too little ethics where she is forced to reexamine her values to determine how far she is willing to go to succeed. Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Irma Voth Miriam Toews · 2011 · ★ 3.6 · 272p · ≈ 9h · Moderate The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married and more recently deserted, is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religious community in which she and her family live. Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

Tea Stacey D'Erasmo · 2000 · ★ 3.2 · 317p · ≈ 10h · Moderate On a spring day in 1968, eight-year-old Isabel Gold prepares tea for her mother, certain she will drink it and recover from her mysterious sadness. But the tea remains untouched. Not long after, her mother takes her own life. Struggling to understand the ghost her mother left behind, Isabel grows up trying on new identities. Her yearning for an emotional connection finds her falling in and out of… Shares: Young women, Bildungsromans

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