The benefits of friendship are well-document: those with strong platonic connections enjoy increased happiness and well-being, love and acceptance, and support of the emotional, mental, and even physical varieties when they need it.
Life has felt especially challenging these past few years; several of our team members here at MMD have frequently laughed (because you laugh or you cry) at the line from Shauna Niequist’s book I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet where she confesses that “so far, my forties are kind of a train wreck.” But one of the things that gets us through the hard times is our friends.
We need good friends—and yet making and keeping friends as an adult is tricky. Thankfully, we’re not alone as we figure it all out. To that end, today I’m sharing nine books that can help you be a better friend. Some, like Tell Me More and Share Your Stuff, I’ll Go First, are story-driven memoirs that include lots of practical tips on how to be a good friend and deepen existing friendships. Others, like Big Friendship, focus heavily on how to manage the inevitable conflicts that will arise. Text Me When You Get Home and Platonic incorporate plenty of research along with personal anecdotes. All are accessible, relatable, and thought-provoking.
I hope these titles will help improve the friendships in your life. Please share the ones that piqued your interest in the comments, along with any other titles you’d recommend for readers seeking to make and keep friends as an adult.
9 nonfiction books that will make you a better friend
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Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close
Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First.
Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends
Start with Hello: (And Other Simple Ways to Live as Neighbors)
Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say
Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
My Glory Was I Had Such Friends: A Memoir
How to Be Loved: a Memoir of Life-Saving Friendship
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
What are your favorite books about friendship? Please share in the comments.
42 comments
This list looks great!
I have another recommendation: Friendships Don’t Just Happen! by Shasta Nelson. I read this right after moving to a new place, and it gave me some concrete pointers on how to initiate friendships – and then words on how to maintain and/or strengthen them.
Must add Radical Friendship to this list!
Also Friendtimacy by Shasta Nelson as well
I’ll Be There (But I’ll Be Wearing Sweatpants) by Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston
These look great! If you like faith-based books at all, The One Year Daily Acts of Friendship devotional is really encouraging. The entries are short—one page a day—and include a question or action step at the end. Reading it every day got me into the habit of being a lot more intentional in my friendships.
I loved Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan. Words to live by for sure. I was so impressed with Laura Tremaine last week that I ordered her new book from her favorite Indie bookstore. Thanks for all the recs!
Me, too, Dana!
I have enjoyed Find Your People by Jennie Allen.
Break Bread Together is another book about the importance of community and friendship and how to step into it as adults.
Several years ago, I purchased the book MWF seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche. The author left behind all her friends and family to move to Chicago with her new husband. She was lonely and decided to get serious about making new friends. Some strategies worked, some didn’t, but she expanded her circle and by the end of the first year, she had friends! I have used several of her strategies successfully and the memory of that book and her determination have kept me reaching out when sometimes it is easier not to.
Start With Hello is my favorite from this list. All of Shannan’s books are wonderful. I still think about Falling Free at least once a week.
This is a topic I think about all the time and discuss it with friends. Making friends as grownups isn’t easy especially as you navigate differences in faith, parenting, life choices etc.
I really liked Text Me When You Get Home, it was just such a celebration of the messy, beautiful work of female friendships. Find Your People by Jennie Allen was practical and encouraging.
Loved that line about “so far, my forties are kind of a train wreck.” Actually, my train went completely off the rails and there were fatalities. But also bonding with my sister and love and support from my husband. I did learn what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
In my case, both parents had long term end stage illnesses and it all fell on my sis and me. We divided and conquered and made sure our parents had the best care for end of life.
I reall liked
“Friendshipping: The Art of Finding Friends, Being Friends, and Keeping Friends by Jenn Bane and Trin Garritano”
The authors used to have a podcast with the same title and the book is also delightful and has so many great practical advice on friendship.
I highly recommend Living Connected: An Introvert’s Guide to Friendship by Afton Rorvik!
For me, my 40s were also a train wreck. However, I was pleasantly surprised by my 50s. So far, that has been the best decade of my life. Hang in there! In all likelihood, it will get better.
The only one I’ve read in your selection is Tell Me More, and it is in my top 10 favorite books of all time. I laughed, I cried, and I recommend this book a lot. Go read it! It will evoke a beautiful range of emotions, an experience you’ll want to have again and again!
I just turned 71 (hard to believe!) and friends are more important to me now especially after my husband passed away. At this age, everyone is very set in their ways and grammas are busy co-parenting more than ever. It makes it tough to have friendships so I really would love to read these books. Are there ones that you recommend as an audiobook versus a physical book? Any that are geared towards the over 40 group? Thanks!
Carol I know what you mean. When my husband had to work in another country for two years I found I really couldn’t rely on my friends because they were too busy with their families. I really had to work hard at making new friendships – mostly with women who were single so they had time to spend with girlfriends.
Carol, I just turned 72 and I understand your situation, because I was in it a few years ago. I joined the friends of the library program in my city, I joined a book club through the library and I volunteer in a feed the hungry program, which simply involves making sandwiches in my home. I also crochet and I found a group at a local yarn store that meets weekly. There are also garden clubs in my area. It takes a bit of an effort to put yourself out there the first few times though. Good luck!
I love this list and also the importance of friendship! Platonic was a great read.
I have only read Kelly’s book. what a list. I want to read all of them. thank you.
“Let’s Take the Long Way Home” by Gail Caldwell is one of my favorite books. It is a memoir about female friendship.
I love that book and also the books by her friend, Caroline Knapp — “Drinking, A Love Story” and “A Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs”. Somehow we can forget that our pets are part of our friendship group.
I love the list and the comments. All extremely helpful to me. I’m helping my mother learn how to build new friendships as she moved to a new area to be closer to one of the kids for healthcare reasons. These will all be beneficial to her and to me as well as I feel it is something I can always work on.
Thanks for the recommendation on the Devotional as well. My mother loves those.
The Art of Gathering has been on my TBR for a long time. I definitely need to bump it up this year!
I wrote about some of my favorite nonfiction books that I read last year: https://brittanydahl.com/blog/11-best-books-to-read-in-2022/
I really enjoyed a Eugene Peterson book and also Art & Faith by Mokoto Fujimura.
I read more nonfiction the year before, including EB White’s essays. Isn’t he the best?: https://brittanydahl.com/blog/favorite-books-of-2021/
Tell me More is on my nightstand, I read it often. I LOVE the chapter about her friend Liz who is dying makes me cry every time. I am looking forward to exploring some of the other titles, of which I have only read Big Friendship which I liked but did not love.
Sorry I’m Late I didn’t want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan was a memoir that really spoke to me. Relocated to a new country, she pushes herself into new situations to make connections. By turns painful and sweet, she tries lots of things outside of her comfort zone to meet new people.
Thank you for these recommendations and all the recommendations in the comments! I recently moved and I am looking to grow a new community of friends! I added many of these to my very long “to be read” book list and requested one at my local library.
This is great! As someone with a podcast solely about adult friendships and friendship column before that (Dear Nina), I swore I had read every book out there on the topic. And I have read most of these. But there were a few totally new-to-me selections. Adding to my TBR list. Thank you!
I enjoy your blog, Nina, for my Parenting Your Emerging Adult class. Share it all the time.
Any suggestions for books that would help teenage girls with this? Like 14-16 year olds?
I second this and add teenage boys too.
I’m pretty sure I have you to thank for recommending Kelly Corrigan. I LOVE her!!! Definitely putting these on my TBR list.
Brittany – Yes, E. B. White is the best! I just read the book “Some Writer – The Story of E. B. White.” by Melissa Sweet. It is technically a children’s book, but so, so good. The text is great and the author uses collage art to illustrate with pieces that include pieces of White’s writing. I loved it!
I feel like such an outlier but I did not like “Tell me more” . I felt like although the author had some interesting pithy thoughts on friendship, she was so LUCKY and privileged that a lot of her advice wasn’t all that helpful unless you’re already starting on 3rd base so to speak.
I did, however, enjoy Platonic and want to read some of the others on this list.
I’m finally reading Text Me When You Get Home (you recommended it years ago), and it is SO GOOD!
I’ve been listening to “Awkward: The Science of Why We’re Socially Awkward and Why That’s Totally Awesome” by Ty Tashiro on my walks lately. As a shy, awkward person who only got even more awkward as my social skills atrophied these past few years, I’ve found the book both helpful and reassuring.
These books are really useful and must read in free time. Thank you.
I love this list and everyone’s suggestions. I’m teaching about cultivating friendships and helping kids learn relational skills in my Parent Ed class next week. Wish I could read fast, so I could read all these recommendations over the weekend. I’m currently reading David Brooks, How To Know a Person, and I think it’s excellent.
I’m finding myself – in this stage of life & my circumstances (retired for several years & with no children, experiencing some recent health problems), woefully without close friends anymore. It recently became painfully apparent to me that I needed to prioritize finding my new people. Even lifelong introverts like me need deeper social connections.
So, what does a bookish person do? Look to books, of course! Platonic (listed above) was fantastic, I thought. Lots of good, specific, actionable ideas. Finding Your People by Allen, mentioned in some other comments, was definitely not for this reader. Very Christian faith-based, which I am not. Not much there for me.
To this list, I would add Belong: Find Your People, Create a Community, and Live a More Connected Life by Radha Agrawal. Not all of it will be relevant to everyone, especially if you are not wanting to create a *formal* community, but I found it inspiring and hopeful. It reminds you to pay attention to the energy that you are projecting to others. Are you a positive, enthusiastic person to be around? I love the idea of being a “f*** yeah!” friend. She also had good thoughts about creating community by practicing inclusion in your interpersonal interactions – how it feels when you are the one excluded and the damage that exclusion can do to relationships in any group of people. Ideas to chew on.
I look forward to exploring more books on this list. Thank you, Anne & team.
I read this one back in 2018 and thought it was good. I’ll just copy what Amazon says about it.
Just Show Up: The Dance of Walking through Suffering Together, written by Kara Tippetts and Jill Lynn Buteyn
Kara Tippetts’s story was not a story of disease, although she lost her battle with terminal cancer. It was not a story of saying goodbye, although she was intentional in her time with her husband and four children. Kara’s story was one of seeing God in the hard and in the good. It was one of finding grace in the everyday. And it was one of knowing “God with us” through fierce and beautiful friendship.
In Just Show Up, Kara and her close friend, Jill Lynn Buteyn, write about what friendship looks like in the midst of changing life seasons, loads of laundry, and even cancer. Whether you are eager to be present to someone going through a difficult time or simply want inspiration for pursuing friends in a new way, this eloquent and practical book explores the gift of silence, the art of receiving, and what it means to just show up.