Why am I passionate about this?

I find the experience of being at large in the world without a definite goal or obligation—that is, the state of drifting—to be a profound and intense way of communing with yourself and the place you’re in. If you’re hurrying someplace, or caught up in internal worries, you miss something about the world that only becomes clear if you let yourself drift, no matter how scary that can be.


I wrote

Drifter, Stories

By David Leo Rice,

Book cover of Drifter, Stories

What is my book about?

Collecting a decade's worth of stories by acclaimed author David Leo Rice, Drifter is a wild trip through the occult…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Driver's Seat

David Leo Rice Why did I love this book?

The Driver's Seat is one of the most powerful and tightly-wound books I've ever read about being alone in a strange city, unraveling both within and without at the same time. The fever pitch that grows throughout this short text is unmatched in my reading—it strikes a tone entirely unto itself.

By Muriel Spark,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Driver's Seat as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Driven mad by an office job, Lise flies south on holiday - in search of passionate adventure and sex. In this metaphysical shocker, infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.


Book cover of The Castle: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text

David Leo Rice Why did I love this book?

This book is an obvious choice perhaps, but one that can't be omitted. The tragicomic frustration of the surveyor who can't complete the job he's been sent to do no matter how hard he tries is massively influential for a number of very good reasons. Also, the way that the castle is both a literal place and a potent metaphor is crucial—as ever in Kafka, it's never just a metaphor, just as it's never just a dream, but rather a dream or a metaphor that also develops out of and into a very concrete situation. This is crucial writing advice for anyone interested in working with dreamlike or surreal elements.

By Franz Kafka, J. Underwood (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Castle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him' Vladimir Nabokov

The story of K. and his arrival in a village where he is never accepted, and his relentless, unavailing struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the castle that seems to rule it. K.'s isolation and perplexity, his begging for the approval of elusive and anonymous powers, epitomises Kafka's vision of twentieth-century alienation and anxiety.


Book cover of Molloy

David Leo Rice Why did I love this book?

There are several Beckett books that belong on my list, as Beckett I think is one of the great authors about vagrants and castoffs, but Molloy is ground zero for me in terms of my relation to Beckett's work. The strangeness of Molloy's solitary relation to the world, and to the room he's confined in, was a big influence on my books as well.

By Samuel Beckett,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Molloy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Molloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt) and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience.


Book cover of The Famished Road

David Leo Rice Why did I love this book?

The Famished Road is an epic novel about a West African "spirit-child" who can traverse the boundary between life and death, a kind of drifting that's truly profound and eerie to contemplate. I love the idea of life and death not necessarily being an either/or situation, but actually being an open-ended space where all kinds of transgressions and reversals can occur.

By Ben Okri,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Famished Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Man Booker Prize: “Okri shares with García Márquez a vision of the world as one of infinite possibility. . . . A masterpiece” (The Boston Sunday Globe).

Azaro is a spirit child, an abiku, existing, according to the African tradition, between life and death. Born into the human world, he must experience its joys and tragedies. His spirit companions come to him often, hounding him to leave his mortal world and join them in their idyllic one. Azaro foresees a trying life ahead, but he is born smiling. This is his story.
 
When President Bill Clinton first…


Book cover of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

David Leo Rice Why did I love this book?

This is a great novel about the romance of drifting and the danger (and perhaps also the necessity) of trying to bring your drifting to an end. The story "The Hate Room" in this collection is partly an homage to Mishima's delicate balance of beauty and brutality, as well as my own time in Japan (although it was nothing like that of the characters in the story!).

By Yukio Mishima, John Nathan (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.


Explore my book 😀

Drifter, Stories

By David Leo Rice,

Book cover of Drifter, Stories

What is my book about?

Collecting a decade's worth of stories by acclaimed author David Leo Rice, Drifter is a wild trip through the occult and surreal undercurrents of contemporary life. Ever in pursuit of illumination and unholy opportunity, the characters in these stories roam from blighted Western settlements to eerie New England circuses, from the backwoods of Austria to the remotest reaches of Japan, and from seedy Caribbean islands to the shadow of the Swiss Alps.

Blessed and cursed with the freedom to transgress all boundaries-between waking and dreaming, home and exile, even life and death. Rice's Drifters operate in the shadows of our world, revealing how frayed the fabric of reality has become.

You might also like...

Book cover of To be a Fae Queen

Tricia Copeland Author Of To be a Fae Queen

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been obsessed with fantasy since my grandmother bought me the entire Dorothy and the Land of Oz series as a kid. I love discovering new types of fantasy characters, spins on characters, new lore in genres, and mythology woven in creative ways. For my fantasy group, I’ve researched many interpretations of fae, witches, elves, vampires, and shapeshifters. I’m always looking to add to my list, and I love finding Indie authors new to their niche. I feel so privileged to interview many authors like these and Jennifer L. Armentrout (squeal) for my podcast, The Finding the Magic Book Podcast. I hope you love these books as much as I did.

Tricia's book list on Indie Fantasy books with creative spins

What is my book about?

After losing her brothers, Titania studied and trained to rule Aubren. But she hadn’t planned on becoming Queen at fifteen. Now with her reign challenged from within the castle walls, she must decide what is best for her kingdom. Should another rule in her stead? Or has fate led her to this moment?

Only she can decide a path that becomes littered with choices. Will a marriage shore up her reign? Could naming a successor be enough? And what of the creatures of the deep and a tale of one who can end all evil? Faced with a choice to…

To be a Fae Queen

By Tricia Copeland, Jo Michaels (editor), Jennifer Oberth (editor)

What is this book about?

With an endearing yet fierce female protagonist, fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jenna Wolfhart will love this epic Fae fantasy.

The last of her line, a faerie princess prepares to take the throne. But multiple forces plot against her, some trusted friends…

After losing her brothers Titania trained and studied to rule Aubren. But she hadn’t planned on becoming Queen at fifteen. Now with her reign challenged from within the castle walls she must decide what is best for her country. Should another rule in her stead? Or has fate led her to this moment?

Only she can decide…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Nigeria, castles, and Nietzsche?

Nigeria 67 books
Castles 37 books
Nietzsche 42 books