Here are 100 books that Animal Crackers fans have personally recommended if you like
Animal Crackers.
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As a fiction writer and animal studies scholar, I’m always looking for strange historical anecdotes about human/animal relationships and literary works that help me view humanity’s complex historical relationship with our fellow creatures through fresh eyes. As these books show, whenever humans write about animals, we also write about personhood, bodily autonomy, coexistence, partnership, symbiosis, spectacle, sentience, and exploitation—themes perpetually relevant to what it means to be human!
This book immediately caught my eye with its cheeky Prince quote-as-title, then blew me away with Passarello’s meticulously researched, elegantly crafted essays, each centering around a different animal from world history.
Passarello’s prose is lyrical, whether she’s dramatizing Mozart’s creative correspondence with his pet starling, introducing us to “Mike, the headless chicken,” or whimsically “finishing” Christopher Smart’s famed 18th-century paean to his beloved cat Jeoffry.
Reading this book feels like visiting a combination zoo/museum with my smartest animal-loving friend.
Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000 year old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of the 16 essays in Animals Strike Curious Poses investigates a different famous animal named and immortalized by humans. Modeled loosely after a medieval bestiary, these witty, playful, whipsmart essays traverse history, myth, science, and more, bringing each beast vibrantly to life.
Elena Passarello is an actor, a writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Fellowship in nonfiction. Her first collection with Sarabande Books, Let Me Clear My Throat, won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards. She lives…
As a fiction writer and animal studies scholar, I’m always looking for strange historical anecdotes about human/animal relationships and literary works that help me view humanity’s complex historical relationship with our fellow creatures through fresh eyes. As these books show, whenever humans write about animals, we also write about personhood, bodily autonomy, coexistence, partnership, symbiosis, spectacle, sentience, and exploitation—themes perpetually relevant to what it means to be human!
For me, this book is a master class on using animals to write about humans without losing sight that animals aren’t human at all. It’s also laugh-out-loud hilarious because each story here is based on a real celebrity’s fateful encounter with an animal—and Millet uses a delightfully broad and irreverent definition of “celebrity.”
In this book, Noam Chomsky tries to sell a used gerbil habitat, Sharon Stone’s journalist husband is bitten and infected by a komodo dragon, and Madonna, in her British accent phase, shoots a pheasant badly. Millet’s precise prose satirically skewers our relationship with celebrities and creatures, inviting us to reconsider both.
Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer.
Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants―all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in a wildly inventive collection of stories that “evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review).
While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author…
As a fiction writer and animal studies scholar, I’m always looking for strange historical anecdotes about human/animal relationships and literary works that help me view humanity’s complex historical relationship with our fellow creatures through fresh eyes. As these books show, whenever humans write about animals, we also write about personhood, bodily autonomy, coexistence, partnership, symbiosis, spectacle, sentience, and exploitation—themes perpetually relevant to what it means to be human!
Colin Dayan’s book is a memoir of her 1960s Southern childhood, so lushly described that I can smell the magnolias. Using the fauna of her youth as touchstones, Dayan’s interrogations of race, gender, and place illuminate how Americans treat animals and each other.
Her research into the song “The Old Gray Mare” becomes a meditation on female aging and filial tension. Photographs of the violent bullfights her parents enjoyed on their honeymoon seem prescient considering their doomed marriage.
Meanwhile, Lucille, Dayan’s African-American nanny, forms the book’s emotional core. She takes her young charge, Possum, hunting while teaching her how unfairly humankind excludes beings they deem “less-than.”
Colin Dayan meditates on the connection between her personal and family history and her relationship with animals in this lyrical memoir about her upbringing in the South. Unraveling memories alongside family documents and photographs, Animal Quintet takes a raw look at racial tensions and relations in a region struggling to change while providing a disquieting picture of a childhood accessible only through accounts of the non-human, ranging from famed Southern war horses led by Civil War generals and doomed Spanish fighting bulls to the lowly possum hunted by generations of Southerners. Placing the reader in the mind's eye of a…
As a fiction writer and animal studies scholar, I’m always looking for strange historical anecdotes about human/animal relationships and literary works that help me view humanity’s complex historical relationship with our fellow creatures through fresh eyes. As these books show, whenever humans write about animals, we also write about personhood, bodily autonomy, coexistence, partnership, symbiosis, spectacle, sentience, and exploitation—themes perpetually relevant to what it means to be human!
Grounded in philosophy and law, Thalia Field’s book explores how human/animal relationships are codified by human systems. Like Field’s other ecocritical work, this one is formally bold, blurring the lines between lyric essay and poetry.
I am particularly intrigued by 'Happy/That You Have The Body (The Mirror Test),' where Field uses the legal concept of habeas corpus and the Mirror Self-Recognition test to discuss the rights of a captive elephant named Happy, isolated from her own kind for 40 years.
This book is exactly the kind of animal writing I love because each piece asks loudly why “some animals are more equal than others.”
Whether investigating refugee parrots, indentured elephants, the pathetic fallacy, or the revolving absurdity of the human role in the "invasive species crisis," Personhood reveals how the unmistakable problem between humans and our nonhuman relatives is too often the derangement of our narratives and the resulting lack of situational awareness. Building on her previous collection, Bird Lovers, Backyard, Thalia Field's essayistic investigations invite us on a humorous, heartbroken journey into how people attempt to control the fragile complexities of a shared planet. The lived experiences of animals, and other historical actors, provide unique literary-ecological responses to the exigencies of injustice and…
I’ve always described myself as a lifelong geek. I grew up reading King Arthur legends, watching Star Wars and The NeverEnding Story until I could recite every line, running secret science experiments in my room, and burying my nose in every book I could get my hands on. As I grew, I came to appreciate that there are many different varieties of geeks. Being a geek generally means that you have a true, deep passion for something, and you pursue it unapologetically and with joy. So I wanted to give book recommendations that will appeal to whatever kind of geek you consider yourself.
Perfect for embracing your inner space adventure geek. Seventh Grade vs. The Galaxy grabs your hand and pulls you into deep space for a grand, fun, and funny star-sweeping good time. There’s excitement, cool spaceships, scary alien races, and an awesome group of kids that suddenly finds themselves in over their heads. You won’t believe how quickly you zip through this book. You just won’t want to put it down.
PSS 118 is just your typical school―except that it's a rickety old spaceship orbiting Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. Jack's dad used to be the science teacher, until he got fired for tinkering with the ship. Now Jack just wants to get through the last day of school without anything else going wrong.
But when the school is mysteriously attacked, Jack discovers that his dad has built humanity's first light-speed engine―and given Jack control of it. To save the ship, Jack catapults it hundreds of light-years away . . . and right into the clutches…
Cozy mysteries tend to exist in a simpler world, one without extreme violence and heavy swearing. They are often set in bucolic settings, but they deal with murder! I love many of the cozy tropes—tea, cats, dogs or other pets, family shenanigans, food. I think it’s family nuances that draw me the most to cozies. Whether it’s a romantic comedy or just one full of capers and laughter, cozies are my favorite genre.
Julie Moffett won my heart with geeks and gadgets. I love a main who can invent her way out of a bad situation especially if she requires the help of more geeks!
These books tend a bit more toward young adult than my other picks, but they are just as crazy when it comes to adventure. Lexi is a techno-geek working for a government agency. She’s a reformed hacker, a gamer, and an unbelievable klutz. She’s stubborn and determined to solve cases and prove herself, even if she has to rewire a vacuum cleaner to do it—Zany, good, cozy, fun.
Me and the legendary Zimmerman twins--it's a friendship made in geek heaven. And it all started back when I worked for the NSA...
My best friend Basia dragged me to the beach for her idea of a vacation. All those annoying people, sand in embarrassing places--not exactly R & R for a girl who doesn't like the sun, the ocean or bathing suits. I couldn't wait to get back to work.
But things started looking up when I ran into Elvis and Xavier Zimmerman. We discovered we had a lot in common: gaming, anchovies, hacking. After that, the vacation was…
As the author of nine cookbooks, I strive to help readers master new skills and to become more comfortable in the kitchen. I’m constantly reading other cookbooks to keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the food world, as well as to improve my own culinary prowess. It’s been nearly 20 years since I graduated from culinary school, and I love that I can open a book to refresh a forgotten skill, learn a new one, or delve into the “why” behind cooking’s biggest questions. These books have kept me entertained and intrigued, not to mention well-fed. I hope they do the same for you!
A must-have for anyone with a passion for science, this book is a fun read, and I learn something new every time I leaf through it, whether it’s about how our senses of smell and taste work, or why weighing ingredients is superior to using measuring cups. Throughout the book are fun, informative interviews with experts on a wide variety of topics: Jeff Varasano discusses pizza, Herve This on molecular gastronomy, and Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) on scientific testing.
As a longtime cooking equipment writer, I particularly love how much detail he invests in kitchenware, explaining what’s necessary and what’s not. This isn’t the type of book you’ll turn to when you’re making a weeknight dinner, but certainly one where you can treat your kitchen like a science lab and spend an afternoon embarking on crazy (and delicious!) experiments. Case in point: a recipe for marshmallows that are firm…
Why do we cook the way we do? Are you the innovative type, used to expressing your creativity instead of just following recipes? Do you want to learn to be a better cook or curious about the science behind what happens to food as it cooks? More than just a cookbook, Cooking for Geeks applies your curiosity to discovery, inspiration, and invention in the kitchen. Why do we bake some things at 350 F/175 C and others at 375 F/190 C? Why is medium-rare steak so popular? And just how quickly does a pizza cook if we overclock an oven…
We've been writing together for over ten years now. A theme that we’ve come back to lots of times is the horrible workplace with its bosses from hell. Feedback from readers tells us that the ways in which we’re made miserable at work are universal and it can be fun to examine them in fiction. We doubled down on the theme in the Oddjobs series of books. We both love to read and write horror, and we spend time with lots of horror authors, so this list came together very easily.
Possibly the most perfect fusion of horror and the workplace, the Laundry Files books show us a bureaucratic British intelligence service where even reading a training manual wrong will result in your brains leaking out of your ears. A fusion of Cold War spy novels and Cthulhu-ish horror, The Atrocity Archive introduces us to put-upon spy/clerk Bob Howard. It’s uncertain whether endless form filling, petty managers, or horrors from the dark side of the moon are most likely to drive him mad.
'Brilliantly disturbing and funny at the same time' Ben Aaronovitch on the Laundry Files
'Tremendously good, geeky fun' Telegraph on the Laundry Files
NEVER VOLUNTEER FOR ACTIVE DUTY . . .
Bob Howard is a low-level techie working for a super-secret government agency. While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed.
Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it…
I believe that H.P. Lovecraft, only now appreciated at his full stature, has spawned a whole generation of equally brilliant writers who make modern weird horror the most vibrant, confrontational, and relevant of all current genres. He looms over today’s literature and pop culture like Cthulhu looms over the sea, and his heirs include some of the best writers of their generation. As a much-travelled Scottish writer, I’ve needed tools to tackle the chaotic, disorienting contemporary experience, as well as the darkest, most imaginative strains of my own Celtic legacy. Lovecraftian horror—through HPL’s explicit mythos or simply his implicit sensibility—served up the palette I needed to do that.
As a horror writer, I have a thick skin for horror writing. Charles Stross is one of the few authors whose darkest work still chills me when I read it. He’s also one of the most purely enjoyable self-confessed inheritors of Lovecraft’s mantle—teasing and subverting it constantly, while effortlessly tipping readers from chuckles to shivers. His humour only reinforces the horror. I rate The Fuller Memorandum highest in his Laundry Files series of sardonic occult espionage—rich in slightly reframed historical detail, compulsive as any thriller, quietly chilling in its implications.
Bob Howard is an IT specialist and field agent for the Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty's secret service that deals with occult threats.
Overworked and underpaid, Bob is used to his two jobs overflowing from a strict nine to five and, since his wife Mo has a very similar job description, he understands that work will sometimes follow her home, too. But when 'work' involves zombie assassins and minions of a mad god's cult, he realises things are spinning out of control.
When a top-secret dossier goes missing and his boss Angleton is implicated, Bob must contend with suspiciously…
Jeremy N. Smith is the author of three acclaimed narrative non-fiction books, including Breaking and Entering, about a female hacker called “Alien” and the birth of our information insecurity age. He has written for The Atlantic, Discover, Slate, and the New York Times, among other outlets, and he and his work have been featured by CNN, NPR, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and Wired. He hosts The Hacker Next Door podcast and lives in Missoula, Montana.
Hackers is a classic account of the computer revolution, centered on the pioneering tinkerers, gamers, social theorists, entrepreneurs, and other explorers who made military and corporate technology personal. These are not hackers in the criminal sense most people understand the term today, but men (and a few women) like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others far less famous. Their interwoven biographies are brilliantly researched and reported, underpinned by what Levy calls a common “hacker ethic” whose tenets dominate our economy, politics, and culture today.
Steven Levy's classic book about the original hackers of the computer revolution is now available in a special 25th anniversary edition, with updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg, Richard Stallman, and Tim O'Reilly. Hackers traces the exploits of innovators from the research labs in the late 1950s to the rise of the home computer in the mid-1980s. It's a fascinating story of brilliant and eccentric nerds such as Steve Wozniak, Ken Williams, and John Draper who took risks, bent the rules, and took the world in a radical new direction. "Hacker" is often a derogatory…
