After completing a great book, sometimes it's hard to find a satisfying follow
up. Let us help. Each of our "further reading" pages provides a
number of knowledgeable recommendations for what to read after you've enjoyed
one of our bestsellers.
AFTER
YOU'VE READ...
MAKE
YOUR NEXT BOOK ONE OF THE FOLLOWING...
Come
to Me by Amy
Bloom
Girl's Guide readers who vicariously shared in Jane's relationships
will appreciate Amy Bloom's complex exploration of love. In her collection
of short stories entitled Come to Me, Bloom provocatively draws relationships
that are alarming, joyful, unconventional, and up to the reader to judge or
embrace. The characters are human; their ways of relating to one another reflect
and betray precisely that. Come to Me is a National
Book Award finalist. Two of the stories in it, Love is Not a Pie
and Silver Water won "Best American Short Story" in 1991
and 1992, respectively.
Bridget
Jones's Diary by Helen
Fielding
Though the accusations that The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing
is a thin spin-off of Bridget Jones's Diary are not necessarily true,
Helen Fielding's book is the work most mentioned in the Girl's Guide
reviews. Bridget Jones's Diary is a bitingly humorous series of hopes,
dreams, and neuroses that belong to a thirtysomething single woman. Fielding
created Bridget Jones as a newspaper column and later fashioned the plot after
Jane Austen's Pride
and Prejudice. Fielding's heroine is bright, witty, and ridiculous enough
to cause readers of her Diary laugh out loud.
Animal
Husbandry by Laura
Zigman
Were they ever to meet, Laura Zigman's Jane might caution Bank's soul-searching,
mate seeking Jane against falling too quickly for Mr. Right – on the
grounds that he's only in the market for New Cow and will most likely dump
her once she becomes Old Cow – and that disguising herself as New Cow
is really ineffective. In Animal Husbandry, Jane Goodall (no, not "the"
Jane Goodall) gets suddenly dumped by Ray after he's said the "L" word and
after she has broken her lease. Jane turns her grief into an anthropological
study and plans to go public with her results.
Birds
of America by Lorrie
Moore
Not long ago, Lorrie Moore was also considered "one of the most promising
writers of her generation." But with the publication of her latest collection,
Birds of America, Moore has left that "promising" moniker behind. With
each new book her work continues to mature and deepen. The wise and sophisticated
stories in this collection have firmly established Lorrie Moore as one of
the very best contemporary American fiction writers – period. Fans of
Melissa Bank will appreciate Moore's much celebrated playful wit. But Moore's
stories have a richness of character and depth of insight Ms. Bank has yet
to achieve – though she does indeed show promise.
Local
Girls by Alice
Hoffman
There are a number of striking parallels between The Girl's Guide to Hunting
and Fishing and Alice Hoffman's Local Girls. Published in the same
year, each book is a breezy collection of interwoven stories that roughly
follow a woman's coming-of-age years on the Eastern Seaboard. The books are
also similar in style; both Bank and Hoffman strike a delicate balance between
witty one liners and a perceptive, bittersweet evaluation of human relationships.
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