88 books like The Antipope

I first read Slaughterhouse-Five as a callow college student, concluding with the certainty of youth that this was a brilliant but weird amalgam of dark humor and sci-fi wrapped inside an autobiographical anti-war screed. However, my real ‘duh’ moment came after rereading the book decades later.

The opening line, “Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time” – tells you everything you need to know: It’s about PTSD, written from the inside looking out. Like Billy Pilgrim, I could see myself time-jumping and being abducted by aliens to escape the trauma of war. Interestingly, the term “PTSD,” the acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, had not entered our lexicon when Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse Five in the 1960s. Poignant and personal, it's still a brilliant amalgam of dark humor and sci-fi. 

There is direct evidence of the horrors of war in this book, but the primary mode of showing these horrors is through the effects on the troops. If they are crazy or doing crazy things, it is because of what has happened to them.

I was sucked into the book like I think Heller meant me to be – curious and even amused by the absurdities, then engaged and affected by the characters, and finally shocked by the kind of events behind it all. Sitting naked in a tree is absurd/funny, and being angry at the leadership for changing the rules to suit them is something I could identify with, so when I came to read the later parts, I was ready. Skip the movie. 

Of my favorites it was The Old Man and the Sea that held me riveted from the first line.

I felt I was walking behind the boy and the old man, listening in and watching them. How the boy loved the old man was how I loved ole Charlie in my novel. Hemingway took the patience to describe the old man and the boy’s thoughts and caring—how a framed picture of the ole man’s wife was face down on a shelf because seeing her was hard on him.

The night excursion alone couldn’t have been written if Hemingway hadn’t experienced it himself—it would seem. When sharks returned, this time, from the deep—I jolted as I was shaken when that Mississippi steamboat struck Huck’s raft. I tell students this short story is the best read ever to learn writing details as an artist would capture them in oil. 

I recommend this book because, to me, it is unique–I’ve never read a book like it. It’s an interesting plot, end-of-the-world stuff, with some very unlikeable, low-life characters. It’s set in a very dark version of London that I know and love, in a pub environment similar to the one that I grew up in.

There is murder on the cards throughout the story, but the author still manages to squeeze in some humor. It’s just a different style of writing that I think people should give a try.

While this novel moves effortlessly between three narrators, I loved that one of them is plucked straight from the dusty pages of history. While Lucrezia Borgia typically gets plenty of press, her contemporary Giulia Farnese was the beautiful young woman who didn’t have a choice in becoming the mistress of Cardinal Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI. Here we see her learning to wade through Italian politics at the height of Borgia treachery.

This poignant, tragi-comedy of a novel is both relatable and uplifting.

And though the protagonist is going through a bit of a crisis, it’s ultimately a story of a woman finding herself and coming into her own.

Grace’s relationship with her teenage daughter is so well described – as mum of a teen girl I recognised the sadness she felt when she realised her daughter needed her less than she’d used to.

Only one night with a handsome stranger in London? This has been my dream forever, and once I read this blurb, I immediately one clicked.

Sandi Lynn made me feel like I was literally living this, and I found it almost impossible to drag my eyes away. I wanted this book to continue forever, and if you haven't read it already, you need to.

The daddy of all London books, an encomium to a city of myth. Its buildings hold and hide legends. Its rivers are lost underground. Its backstreets vanish into fable. Its characters are blurred between fact and fiction. Truths have been twisted by fantasy. Tourists are rendered blind, stepping around beggars to photograph the past, and sit in parks reading of a city that only springs to life in the mind, for in reality only the faintest outline traces now remain. A truly remarkable tour de force.

This one had me on the edge of my seat. More telling for me to be thrown back in time to the 1960s. I didn’t live this life, but the background was familiar. I remember the Kray brothers and I did once briefly have a job in the sleazy sort of club where the boss had his goons hold a guy so he could punch him in the gut. Scary. Simon Michael’s story is all too believable and it is a testament to his ability to pull me into that world that it threw up long-gone memories. The story is told in first person which works to keep you guessing along with the protagonist barrister sleuth. For me it was a thrill ride into the past.

Who doesn’t immediately fall in love with Bridget Jones upon meeting her?

This book is full of laughs, tears, and now parenthood! I adored the other books in the Bridget Jones series, and this didn’t disappoint. If, like me, you like to read about a woman who feels ‘real’ and relatable, this book is just divine.

Bridget Jones is the sister to all of us women who need to hear that someone else goes through such highs and lows.