100 books like A Scanner Darkly

For a novel on the list, I have only read once, and a long time ago, I still keep thinking about this. It asks: Can we learn about the universe without first learning about ourselves?

It also goes into the limits of science. There are simply things science cannot tell us. The planet’s colloid sea is nonlinear, the math unsolvable, and the alien is potentially hostile. I choose to believe the planet is attempting to heal some deep-forgotten hurt of the narrator. What is the purpose of bringing up a disastrous relationship? To heal or learn? Or perhaps the alien is simply toying with them?

I read it soon after changing my life's trajectory and attempting to be more peaceful, creative, contemplative, and less frantic or consumptive. I need to read this again.

I only recently read this book based on a friend’s recommendation (and because I wanted to read it before watching the movie). I was blown away by the depth and breadth of the world-building in Dune.

Though my general agreement with Herbert’s social philosophy might impact this pick, there’s no denying his prodigious world-building skills. 

This book is probably the quintessential book of mayhem, in my opinion.

Yep, it’s super dated, and the dialect can be difficult to get into, but I thought it was worth it, especially if you read the European version, which has an additional chapter the US publisher cut out. Abruptly it goes from a novel of unrepentant chaos to one of redemption.

Humans are always curious about what the future will look like. They are also concerned about the state impinging on their privacy and interfering with their lives. George Orwell masterfully combined these two human impulses in his classic novel. He wrote the book in 1949 to present his view of the future.

I read this book when I was in my mid-20s. I found it an interesting read, especially since many of his predictions did not come true. I was curious to know how past generations viewed our generation. 

Does this book qualify today as non-fiction? Everything about this tale is eye-opening and applicable to our present. Written during the Great Depression, this is a must-read for anyone who has a feeling that not everything is what it seems.

I adore the gripping narrative, notable arcs, and subtle humor, which give this stark tale some needed levity. I always come away from this book with a lot of questions: How can we as a civilization do better? How did Aldous Huxley so accurately portray life in the 21st century? If I had to build a bookshelf of must-reads for my kids, which I may actually do, this book is on the list.

This wild, uproarious classic still makes me laugh out loud when I read it, though I must have been through it eight or ten times. And while it’s darkly funny, that’s not even the best thing about it.

This book gives an intimate portrait of early-seventies drug culture, as well as American society and its political realities, in real-time. There’s no sense of distance or retrospection, except when he thinks about the countercultural explosion of a few years earlier. He sees it nostalgically and clearly sees its demise. Not everyone will agree with his assessment of that demise, but his take on it is an important one. For all its hilarity, it’s a very dark book.

As a young man, Ken Kesey worked as an orderly in a psychiatric ward and participated in CIA-funded hallucinogen studies conducted in the hospital. Looking out at the patients and nurses, he wondered what separated them.

What emerged from those experiences is the mesmeric narrator of his first book: the giant, Chief, sees the world through a terrifying poetic lens. Observant and cunning, he perceives all the forces of authority and conformity as a single machine he calls “The Combine.”

Kesey’s novel is a fable about the power of the individual to oppose any coercive larger force, even if victory isn’t certain. It’s dark, unflinching, and profoundly on the side of the freaks.    

This book was my introduction to Kurt Vonnegut. I marvel at the author’s genius in bringing together science and religion, two of the most profound subjects known to mankind, in such a playful way.

The unsentimental objectivity of science (and scientists) and a ‘perfect’ religion, whose greatest act of faith is to look at itself with a rather jaundiced eye, join hands to expertly manoeuvre, explain and let chaos be. It is the kind of hilariousness that makes you gaze into space rather than fall out of your chair.

I have always thought that poetry is important to allow prose to not take itself too seriously. Vonnegut has demonstrated how to do this.

One of my favorite characters in this middle-grade mystery has always been Chris Theodorakis, the teen boy with an unnamed neurological condition that confines him to a wheelchair and, for the most part, to his house.

Even if he can’t leave home—and even if people often look away from him when he does—Chris plays a key role in solving the mystery at the heart of the book by being a keen observer of everything that passes in front of his window. I love how this novel depicts Chris’s inner world to young readers, including his awareness of how his condition affects others’ perceptions.

More importantly, it shows how much people with disabilities and illnesses still have to offer. 

I grew up in rural Ireland, so not exactly the gritty urban Scotland of Welsh’s novel, but the first thing that struck me about the book was its savage, semi-feral, intensely real Scottish dialect. I’d never seen anything quite like it in print.

The prose feels almost illegal, a ne’er-do-well that has simply decided to break into the publishing house and force its way onto the page without anyone’s permission. I didn’t consciously plan to steal this technique for my own novel, but how could I not endorse it?

Welsh has written more explicitly psychedelic works, but this book remains for me his masterwork, underscoring how, in many ways, his protagonist Renton’s life is at its weirdest when he tries to get sober.