#QUITLIT is our curated list of addiction and recovery book reviews. All Sober Curator Contributors should be well-read, from addiction and recovery memoirs to fiction and self-help. You can also find us on Goodreads here.
What’s on your nightstand? We want to hear about what you’re reading and the addiction and recovery books you can’t live without. Please email us at thesobercurator@gmail.com or fill out The Sober Curator Library Book Review Submission Form HERE
In the mood to #ADDTOCART? Check out our curated list of #QUITLIT books in our Amazon Shop.
ADDICTION FICTION: Fiction Book reviews featuring addiction, recovery, and mental health storylines.
Check out The Sober Curator Library, a new way to go for a scroll and judge a book by its cover.
Evan Cason’s memoir, *Beyond the Street Lamp*, offers a sincere look at the journey from gang life to sobriety. In her review, Patti Clark highlights the book’s heartfelt nature while also noting its structural challenges. Cason’s story is a poignant reminder of the power of vulnerability and honesty in the recovery journey.
Getting sober can mean rebuilding your social life from the ground up. Anne Marie Cribbin explores the rise of “third places” — coffee shops, run clubs, bookstores, gardens and other community spaces — and why belonging, not alcohol, may be what we were searching for all along.
Three memoirs came out this year from three people who could not be more different, and every one of them was writing about the same thing. We pulled the Sober Curator readers into a room and made them score it.
Author Austin Rampt joins Bill and Mike on Sober Not Mature for a raw, funny and deeply honest conversation about addiction, multiple overdoses, life in Mexico, recovery and his memoir, *One Last Hit*. His story is proof that even after years of chaos, a completely different life is possible.
In Drunk Daddy, Trixie Rose tells the story of growing up with an alcoholic father and the emotional survival strategies that followed her into adulthood. Amy Liz Harrison reviews this short, funny and quietly devastating addition to the Bad Memoir series.
In Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic, Bunnie Xo shares her journey through childhood trauma, sex work, meth addiction and survival—and the choices that helped her build a new life in sobriety. Sober Curator Contributor Carolyn Bunn reviews this candid memoir about recovery, resilience and proving that your past does not get to write your final chapter.
Senior Sober Curator Contributor Tony Harte reviews Jason Mayo’s In Case of Emergency, Break Childhood, a brutally honest, darkly funny and deeply relatable memoir about childhood trauma, addiction, relationships and the slow loss of control. More than a retelling of one man’s downward spiral, the book invites readers inside the thoughts and emotions behind it.
Somehow it took me years to find The Small Bow, A.J. Daulerio’s recovery newsletter, podcast, and daily meeting community. Or its crossover column with Oldster Magazine, “Ask a Sober Oldster,” now 35 installments deep. Consider this your formal introduction.
The original printer’s copy of Alcoholics Anonymous just sold at Christie’s for an estimated one to two million dollars. The Stepping Stones Foundation, the National Historic Landmark home of Bill and Lois Wilson in Katonah, New York, won the bid. It is going back to exactly where it belongs.
Senior Sober Curator Patti Clark reviews The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff through the lens of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. This moving debut novel explores alcoholism, abandonment, intergenerational trauma, family survival, and the complicated work of healing without offering easy shortcuts. Heartbreaking, compassionate, and deeply resonant, The Bright Years is highly recommended for readers who understand the long shadow addiction can cast across a family.
I listened to the audiobook on Audible, in Austin’s own voice, while I was packing up my house and cleaning out decades of accumulated life. Austin Rampt’s One Last Hit is eight rehab programs, a decade of active addiction, and one of the more honest addiction memoirs you will find. 3.5 out of 5 Sobees.
If you know what the Big Book is to you, you already felt something when you read that it is going to auction at Christie’s on July 1. The original 167-page working manuscript, with Bill Wilson’s handwriting in the margins, is estimated at $1 to $2 million. The Irsay family is selling it last. Intentionally.
Daisy Jones & the Six isn’t told like most novels. Taylor Jenkins Reid structures the story as an oral history,…
This guide highlights essential sober books for readers exploring alcohol-free living, recovery, habit change, and healthier routines. From Quit Like a Woman and This Naked Mind to Atomic Habits, The Mountain Is You, and Dry, the article offers a practical reading list for anyone looking to better understand drinking culture, emotional patterns, self-sabotage, and the daily habits that support sobriety.
Anna David’s Legacy Launch Pad Publishing is helping entrepreneurs, media personalities, and recovery voices turn their stories into books. Here are the Quit Lit and recovery titles from Legacy Launch Pad that belong on your sober bookshelf.
Author Anna David reflects on the evolution from her early “will-say-anything” sober party girl years to motherhood, trauma recovery, and a more grounded understanding of herself. In this personal essay, she shares why she re-released a cleaner version of Party Girl 15 years later — and what happens when the wildest version of your past is still searchable, sellable, and occasionally handed to you by your child’s school principal.
Rufi Thorpe came to BACKSTAGE. Here is the five-minute clip, the conversation that broke the room, and the answer I am still thinking about.
Our recent live Alcohol Free Life Podcast event with the brilliant Catherine Gray left me buzzing, and thinking, long after…
The book that’s been living rent-free in our Addiction Fiction section for two years just became Apple TV+’s most anticipated…
Before there were podcasts about sobriety, before there were NA cocktail menus at every trendy bar, before the word “sober-curious”…
Kevin Kaufmann’s “Rigorous Honesty” looks at Alcoholics Anonymous in a different way. Instead of treating AA only as a recovery…
“Quit lit” — short for quit literature — includes books about addiction, sobriety, recovery, and personal transformation. These stories range…
Rabbi Shais Taub wrote a book about the twelve steps that doesn’t sound like any other book about the twelve…
“The River Is Waiting” is a painful, honest novel about guilt, grief, and the long road toward forgiveness. Wally Lamb…
Imagine if Sex and the City’s Samantha was an addict and her drug of choice was men. Go on a hilarious,…
“The Weight of Air” tracks Poses through multiple relapses, treatment centers, and the grinding dailiness of trying to stay clean.…
The first thing you need to know about “Leaving Las Vegas” is that John O’Brien wrote it to die. Not…
After reading Patti Clark’s book, “Recovery Road Trip: Finding Purpose and Connection on the Journey Home”, I finally felt like…
“The Disenchanted” is a short but powerful novel about talent, ego, and self-destruction. It is loosely based on Budd Schulberg’s…
The Sober Curious Activity Book doesn’t arrive with a wagging finger or a life sentence. It shows up like a…
