100 books like Mother Night

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.

Technically, this book is science fiction instead of fantasy–aliens, spaceships, planet-hopping, check. But Adams isn’t particularly interested in the science or the predictive aspects as he is in finding a backdrop for his hilarious satire. His phrasing is so deft, his jokes so devastating that people are quoting him decades later. They’re still some of the funniest books ever written.

But there’s a bitter wounded heart under it all that comes out in a wistful strain of melancholy, which makes it all ring true. It’s funny because it has something deep and urgent to say about humans and our nature. But also because every traveler knows what he means by something “almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”

One of the most popular children’s book series of the twentieth century, all of the books in the series feature the author speaking directly to the reader, detailing past events, reminding the reader of personality traits of the characters, and providing the reader with background details about the world the reader finds themselves in.

More so than the other books on the list, it’s clear the voice is that of C.S. Lewis though, rather than a seemingly separate narrator.

This is not a book about animals, but it is a great book in which animals play a critical role.

This is the seventh book in Hiassen’s Florida-based Skink series and possibly the best. One of the main characters, Angie Armstrong, is a wildlife wrangler with extraordinary skills which leads to hilarious consequences.

This book also manages intriguing social and political commentary including Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons’ efforts to support a fictional president whose behavior is similar and almost as wacky as our former leader who is apparently running again – I hope someone reads this book to him.

Personally, I have owned 3 copies in my lifetime, two of which I read into tatters. Clive Barker remains one of the most unusual imaginations in horror to date. If you can’t find something in this collection that you enjoy, pull out the femoral stick. These stories have been translated into film almost as often as Carrie. 

Westlake was already a bestselling author of hard-boiled tales of a career criminal named Parker when he created that antihero’s lighter flip side, John Dortmunder, whose compatriots, capers, and consequences all come with some goofy, left-handed conceptual spin. The rock in the title is a famous African emerald, which Dortmunder and his mates set out to boost, only to find themselves having to steal the same gem a second time, and a third—eventually six heists, in all, from progressively impossible fortresses and in progressively outrageous ways. I’m inspired by the whole Dortmunder series’ blend of laugh-out-loud character pieces and genuinely inventive crime writing, and obviously I’m far from alone.

As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.

While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.

Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.

Before I became an author, I enjoyed a successful career as a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. So, naturally, I spent a tremendous amount of time in the swimwear Mecca of the USA…better known as Florida.

While in the Sunshine State, I encountered my fair share of zanies…better known as buyers; a cast of kooky characters who loved to add some spice to the human stew we all simmer in with some pretty hair-brained schemes. So, it’s only natural that no one tickles my funny bone more than Tim Dorsey’s protagonist, trivia buff and certifiably crazy as a loon Serge A. Storms and his drug-addled partner Coleman who loves cartoons.

In Florida Roadkill, Tim Dorsey’s debut novel of the series, the author introduces us to socially conscious, but misguided Serge who eliminates those he deems either jerks or pests of humankind. Serge’s zany brand of frontier justice is nothing short of… show more.

All fiction has some kind of basis in reality.

The bestsellers penned by Forsyth, Levin, and Goldman would not exist without the true stories of the men and women who worked tirelessly in the years after World War II to bring escaped Nazis to justice.

Nagorski’s wonderfully researched work of non-fiction shines a much-deserved light on those individuals who sought closure on behalf of the murdered 6 million when no one else cared to do so: Fritz Bauer, Simon Wiesenthal, Tuvia Friedman, Elizabeth Holtzman, Beate, and Serge Klarsfeld, and more.

According to Hannah Arendt's famous description of Gestapo agent Adolf Eichmann, he was merely a cog in the larger machinery of murder–someone who could not think for himself.

In his detailed account of Eichmann's activities, historian David Cesarani argues instead that Eichmann's inner commitment to Nazi ideology led him to identify with his task of organizing the transport of Jews to the extermination camps—a fanatical dedication that continued through January 1945.