There's a particular kind of book that dog people return to again and again: the memoir. Not fiction, not a training manual, but a true account of one real dog and the person lucky enough to have loved them. The best of them do something remarkable in a small space. They make you laugh, they undo you a little, and they send you looking for your own dog to hold. Here are some of the finest, gathered by mood, from the joyful to the quietly devastating. A word of warning: dog memoirs rarely end the way we'd wish. But then, neither do dogs, and we still love them with all our hearts.
If you'd rather have the whole shelf in one place, novels included, start with my full list of the best dog books.
For a good laugh (before the tears)
No. 01Marley & Me
by John Grogan
The one that revived the whole genre, and still the gold standard. Grogan's chronicle of life with a magnificently ungovernable Labrador is genuinely funny for most of its length, which is exactly what makes the ending land so hard. If you've somehow never read it, start here.
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No. 02A Dog Named Boo
by Lisa Edwards
The true story of a woman who adopts a “special needs” puppy nobody else wanted, only for him to become a therapy and reading-assistance dog who transforms lives. Warm and uplifting, and a good antidote if you need a memoir that leaves you smiling.
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For the literary reader
No. 03The Friend
by Sigrid Nunez
A National Book Award winner, and one of the great human-dog love stories in modern literature. A woman inherits a giant Great Dane after the death of her closest friend, and the two of them grieve their way toward each other. Spare, beautiful, unforgettable.
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No. 04My Dog Tulip
by J.R. Ackerley
A classic of the genre by a leading British literary figure, this is the unsentimental, wryly honest account of sixteen years with his German Shepherd. Ackerley refuses all the easy pieties about dogs, which somehow makes his devotion more moving, not less.
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No. 05Dog Songs
by Mary Oliver
Not a narrative memoir but a collection of poems, and impossible to leave off any honest list. Oliver's meditations on the dogs she loved are direct, luminous, and endlessly re-readable. The kind of book you keep by the bed and return to for years.
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For the ones who love a very good dog
No. 06Merle's Door
by Ted Kerasote
The story of a dog who essentially adopted the author in the Wyoming wilderness, and the remarkable, free-roaming life they built together. As much a thoughtful exploration of what dogs actually want as it is a memoir, and beloved for good reason.
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No. 07Rin Tin Tin
by Susan Orlean
From a New Yorker staff writer, the sweeping true story of the German Shepherd who became one of the biggest stars of early Hollywood. Part biography, part cultural history, wholly absorbing. Proof that a dog's life can hold an entire century.
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For when you're ready to cry
No. 08Dog Years
by Mark Doty
A poet adopts a new dog while his partner is dying, and this luminous memoir holds both the tragedy and the sheer aliveness of being alive alongside an animal. Doty writes grief and joy in the same breath, with a lightness that only deepens the ache.
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No. 09The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
A liberty on this list, since it's fiction rather than memoir, but it reads with the emotional weight of a true account and belongs in any dog-lover's hands. An epic, Hamlet-inflected novel about a mute boy and the extraordinary dogs his family breeds. Devastating and unforgettable. (Included here as an honorary entry, for readers who won't mind the crossover.)
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If you love true stories of dogs…
Then you may also love reading about them in fiction. I write stories that celebrate the lives of dogs too, gathered from real devotion even where the tales themselves are invented. If any of the above has left you wanting more of the bond between us and the dogs who choose us, you might wander over to my own books.
For more reading, browse the best dog books or take something lighter from these funny dog books. If your reading time is limited, try these short dog books.