100 books like Call Me by Your Name

Coelho’s book is an allegorical adventure of a young shepherd who dreams of buried treasure in a far-off land. The predominant themes are having a destiny, the idea of a universal plan, the interconnectedness of all things, the value of simplicity, and that fear is an obstacle.

As I read through, I had to decide who I was: the dreaming shepherd, the interpreting gypsy fortune teller, the fearful crystal merchant, the intellectual Englishman, the wise alchemist, or the beautiful Fatima who simply believes the shepherd will return and does not put conditions on him.

At the core of the book is the advice given to our shepherd hero that, "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe will conspire so that your wish comes true.” I choose daily to see life as a grand adventure, to believe the whole universe is conspiring on my behalf, and to have… show more.

Les Misérables showcases the terrible power imbalance between the poor and the morality police. Jean Valjean is irredeemable in the eyes of Inspector Javert for stealing a single loaf of bread. Fantine is forever tainted by one dalliance with a boy of privilege. Her daughter Cosette is considered illegitimate at birth and exploited at every turn.

These rag-tag individuals find solidarity in the gutter. They reinvent themselves as needed, care for the lost children of others, and fall in love with hope for the future. Some even take to the streets in a revolt inspired by the bloody Paris Uprising of 1832.

While Les Misérables is a beastly long book (what my French lit professor called “un pavé,” a paving stone), Victor Hugo’s characters show the value of perseverance. This resistance manifesto inspires one to fight the good fight.

The Song of Achilles is such as beautifully written book that perfectly weaves together a queer love story with a proper Greek epic.

It was so fulfilling to follow Patroclus and Achilles as they grew up. The attraction grows subtly and feels very natural. The fantasy elements feel very matter-of-fact and never take away from the incredibly relatable character moments.

From the first time I opened the pages of this book many years ago, I fell in love with it.

There is nothing more tender in literature than the sensitive eunuch who falls in love with Alexander the Great, the first man to treat him courteously. Though Alexander returns the love, his energies are divided between his endless battles, his old lover, and his obligatory wife. The intensity of their closeness is kept bright by the boy Bagoas.

Every time I reread this novel, my soul opens.

I couldn't leave this important book off this list, especially since my own novel is a refashioning of that story from the woman's point of view!

Fitzgerald's most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, is seen by many as an avatar for the American Dream of the quest for riches and status. But Jay Gatsby is also Scott himself—the man striving to be part of the in-crowd, who conflates wealth with class, and who never, ever gave up on his ultimate goal of reclaiming the great love of his life, Daisy Buchanan.

Short—it clocks it at barely 50,000 words, The Great Gatsby captures the zeitgeist of its time, taking readers back to the heady, post-Great War party of the Jazz Age, where anything seemed possible.

Written in 46 short vignettes, this is a coming-of-age story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Yet the novel is anything but one protagonist’s story, as it consistently juxtaposes Esperanza’s story with stories of secondary characters who make a brief appearance in the novel to seldom reappear and tie loose ends of the “sub-plots”: Marin, Louie, Alicia, Geraldo, Rafaela, Minerva, and others. Narrative continuity via a protagonist’s psychological journey that is a key trait of coming-of-age novels, or of mainstream Western or realist novels at large, is repeatedly disrupted here, making the reader wonder, who is the novel’s protagonist?: Esperanza, Mango Street, or its Brown community, or young Latina girls and women in a 20th century USA, alluded by “las Mujeres” to whom the book is dedicated.

I love a soft sci-fi and Adam Silvera knows how to deliver.

What makes his world different from ours is a technology that can let people know the day they are going to die, on that day, so they have a chance to say goodbye. It provides such potential for deep introspection (for his readers as much as his characters) and heartbreak. 

Again, I chose a book that is given in the first-person point of view. Rather than using a variety of first persons to tell a story, Martel takes the main character, Pi, and uses him in back-and-forth narrations from various ages – young and in the moment, and older, looking back. As well, he uses Pi as a general narrator overall in the storytelling. This gives the illusion that perhaps the other characters are not so important, or rather they are not the point of the story. 

Love in the Time of Cholera tells the story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, who fall in love as youths before being separated by fate and society.

The novel spans 50 years and depicts historical changes and revolutions in Colombia, as well as universal human themes like love, aging, and death. Its style combines realistic and fantastical elements, with moments of dramatic irony that are almost too neatly coincidental to be true… and yet life imitates art just like that sometimes.

While politics, plagues, and pandemonium ensue, in the meantime people still live their lives, treasure their loves, and hope to survive long enough to experience relief.

I tried to avoid boarding school novels while writing my book, fearing the sort of subliminal influence that would subject my own book to accusations of being derivative, but about a month ago I returned to A Separate Peace for the first time since maybe ninth grade.

I was struck by a lot that I’d missed then—namely the undercurrent of bristling homoerotic tension between Gene and Finny—but more pointedly, I felt a new sense of solidarity with Gene, who narrates the events of one summer at boarding school from the comparatively distant vantage of early adulthood. I recall Gene the narrator seeming impossibly old when I read the book in high school, but at thirty I saw a colleague: not only in the facts of his present but in his relationship with the past.

Those of us who came of age in the enclosed ecosystems of boarding school all have… show more.