Here are 100 books that Coal Black Horse fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up on a trail mix-style melange of 80’s action movies, Stephen King and The Lord of the Rings (with a special melancholy fondness also for The Once and Future King). High and low brow and everything in between that turned into a fascination for science fiction crossed with military adventure and doomed–or at least long-suffering–heroes. War is getting increasingly technological, detached, and even surreal, with drones, satellites, and hackers now increasingly on the front. But even as tactics and weapons change, the carnage doesn’t. From The Iliad to today, wars and the people who fight and die in them make for stories worth telling.
I read this collection of loosely connected short stories about Tim O’Brien’s service in the Vietnam War when I was in high school, only a little younger than O’Brien was when he was drafted into the Army. The hazy line between memory and fiction in the book leaves you feeling like you’re strolling through someone else’s dream.
“Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” in particular has stuck with me throughout my life, the seemingly impossible yet terrifying realistic narrative of how a young girl who has no business being in a war zone falls in love with combat then with the primordial earth itself and eventually disappears into the heart of darkness. Did it really happen? Was it a tall tale? Memory is such a slippery thing.
The million-copy bestseller, which is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.
'The Things They Carried' is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has the cumulative power and unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme.
But while Vietnam is central to 'The Things They Carried', it is not simply a book about war. It is also a book about the human heart - about the terrible weight of those things we carry through…
I have always been intrigued by fantastical world-building that is complex, detailed, forensically credible, and immeasurably encyclopedic in scope. It should propel you to a world that feels almost as real as the world you leave behind but with intricate magic systems and razor-shape lore. Ironically, some of my choices took a while to love, but once they “sunk in,” everything changed. Whenever life gets too much, it has been cathartic, essential even, to transport to another universe and find solace in prose dedicated to survival, soul, and renewal.
This may be considered an odd choice on the surface, given the true events of the Trojan War. This was also another I initially struggled with. Nevertheless, despite the factual elements, it’s viewed as one of the earliest epic fantasies in Western literature, along with The Odyssey, which came after.
Centered on just a few days of the ten-year siege of Troy, the lives of humans and their gods are intricately linked. It is one of the earliest examples of pathos with much sympathy actually lying with the enemies, the Trojans, a people based in Asia Minor, and their allies from all over the region. Outside the gods, it also references monsters such as Bellerophon, the Gorgon, and centaurs, with the gods often used as a plot device to refract the emotions and flaws of the characters.
The world-building is vivid and rich in dactylic hexameter, a rhythmic style.…
One of the greatest epics in Western literature, THE ILIAD recounts the story of the Trojan wars. This timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves to its tragic conclusion. In his introduction, Bernard Knox observes that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it co-exists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.
As a child, I learned that I was able to lucid dream at will, speaking to the beings I met in these places I’d never seen before, and it always gave me a sense of interconnectedness. A thread that goes through all of us and our histories. I believe that the ancients dedicated so much of their energy and resources to preserving their stories in order to maintain this connection because it’s so important. Inside all of us is a darkness that, if left unchecked would lead us to ruin. These books all demonstrate the inner struggle we have to understand and redirect that darkness toward the light and the good.
I often ask what the nature of laws and authority is. In the "Old West," when there was no overarching central authority, the survival of the fittest was the law. I’m curious how the clash of the old world with the new becomes a never-ending cycle and where it may lead.
I loved how none of the characters were all good or all bad, they were just survivors. This book is not meant to be liked or disliked. It’s meant to be experienced and "danced with."
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
I am a child sexual abuse survivor who struggled for years with the help of therapy to become the person I am today. My sister, my mother, and I suffered years of emotional abuse by my father. When I was a child, my best friend (who also suffered abuse by her brother) and I made up stories that helped us navigate the situations in our families. I read, hiked, backpacked, and traveled alone for years in order to take
risks and develop strength before attempting to write at age sixty-one. I love books that put me solidly in time and place and deeply empathize with characters who struggle and grow to become their genuine selves.
I love this book because I became deeply involved with every one of the characters and how they were changed by their interactions with one another and by the results of their first experience with another salient species. The book involves the age-old questions of faith, God, religion, and humanity. Beautiful and haunting.
'The Sparrow is one of my favourite science fiction novels and it destroyed me in the best way when I read it. It is so beautifully written and the construction of the narrative is masterful.' Emma Newman, acclaimed author of Planetfall
Set in the 21st century - a number of decades from now - The Sparrow is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and talented linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who - in response to a remarkable radio signal from the depths of space - leads a scientific mission to make first contact with an extraterrestrial culture.
During my twenties I served in the United States Navy, and what I experienced there—next to nothing compared to what the characters in the below-mentioned books experience—was traumatic enough to leave me wandering for a dozen years, hitchhiking, traveling around the country in search of some way to get a grasp on my experience. The vestiges of that experience still remain, and much of my writing has been an attempt to understand it.
For my money, Shakespeare is the greatest writer who ever lived; anything he has to say will be interesting, profound, and stated as well as anyone can state it. His portrayal of the Macbeths rivals Homer’s portrayal of Achilles in the understanding of trauma. For Macbeth, this is the trauma of military violence. For Lady Macbeth, this is the trauma of the loss of a child.
3
authors picked
Macbeth
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
The authoritative edition of Macbeth from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.
In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne, becoming James I of England. London was alive with an interest in all things Scottish, and Shakespeare turned to Scottish history for material. He found a spectacle of violence and stories of traitors advised by witches and wizards, echoing James's belief in a connection between treason and witchcraft.
In depicting a man who murders to become king, Macbeth teases us with huge questions. Is Macbeth tempted by fate,…
I am a child sexual abuse survivor who struggled for years with the help of therapy to become the person I am today. My sister, my mother, and I suffered years of emotional abuse by my father. When I was a child, my best friend (who also suffered abuse by her brother) and I made up stories that helped us navigate the situations in our families. I read, hiked, backpacked, and traveled alone for years in order to take
risks and develop strength before attempting to write at age sixty-one. I love books that put me solidly in time and place and deeply empathize with characters who struggle and grow to become their genuine selves.
I love this book mainly because the main character is an ordinary young woman with grit who defies all hostility in Missouri during the Civil War, including neighbors who turn against her.
I went through lots of emotions with this character during her journey to finding love, from anger and trepidation to wonder and exhilaration. The setting, historical context, and unsentimental yet tender and poetic writing make this book a triumph.
"A gritty, memorable book ... it is a delight from start to finish, without a single misstep." Tracy Chevalier
Missouri, 1865. Adair Colley and her family have managed to hide from the bloody Armageddon of the American Civil War, but finally even their remote mountain farm cannot escape the plundering greed of the Union militia. Her house is burnt, her father beaten and dragged away. With fierce determination, Adair sets out after him on foot. So begins an extraordinary voyage which will see Adair herself denounced as a Confederate spy and thrown in jail. Here she falls passionately in love…
I am a child sexual abuse survivor who struggled for years with the help of therapy to become the person I am today. My sister, my mother, and I suffered years of emotional abuse by my father. When I was a child, my best friend (who also suffered abuse by her brother) and I made up stories that helped us navigate the situations in our families. I read, hiked, backpacked, and traveled alone for years in order to take
risks and develop strength before attempting to write at age sixty-one. I love books that put me solidly in time and place and deeply empathize with characters who struggle and grow to become their genuine selves.
I love this book because the protagonist—gritty, hard-talking heart-of-gold Ruby Fortune—is a lady as tough as the Arizona land she comes from and loves. She cusses and shoots, rides horses, entertains and cooks, and takes no guff from men. But first, she must rid herself of an abusive husband in order to save herself and her young boys.
I am partial to a cast of characters in what I read, and a remarkable cast joins her in this exquisitely written story. Her father Big Burl, her chosen mother who’s a madame, the Shakespeare-quoting drunk she puts up in her barn, the law man, and the black miner with whom she secretly falls in love.
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot.…
I am a child sexual abuse survivor who struggled for years with the help of therapy to become the person I am today. My sister, my mother, and I suffered years of emotional abuse by my father. When I was a child, my best friend (who also suffered abuse by her brother) and I made up stories that helped us navigate the situations in our families. I read, hiked, backpacked, and traveled alone for years in order to take
risks and develop strength before attempting to write at age sixty-one. I love books that put me solidly in time and place and deeply empathize with characters who struggle and grow to become their genuine selves.
I love this book because seldom have I read a novel where voice, time, and place are so perfectly portrayed as in The Hearts of Horses.
Molly Glass has become one of my favorite authors, and I read her books as soon as I discover them. If you love horses, you will love this story. If you don't, you will become attached to nineteen-year-old horse trainer Martha Lessen and the other engaging characters as they struggle to make ends meet in the beautiful remote county of 1917 eastern Oregon. This story played my heartstrings as few others have.
In the winter of 1917, a big-boned young woman shows up at George Bliss's doorstep. She's looking for a job breaking horses, and he hires her. Many of his regular hands are off fighting the war in Europe, and he glimpses beneath her showy rodeo garb, a shy but determined girl with a serious knowledge of horses.
So begins the irresistable tale of Martha Lessen, a female horse whisperer trying to make a go of it in a man's world. Along the way, Martha helps a German family, ostracised by the community, to save their horses, gentles another horse for…
I am a Professor of modern European history at the University of San Francisco. I have written or co-edited three major books and many articles and reviews, as well as serving as a correspondent for a German newspaper. My areas of expertise are intellectual, political, military, and cultural history. I also work on the history of espionage and served as a consultant to the CIA on my last book about student radicals in Germany.
I am a huge fan of everything Paul Fussell (1924-2012) published. He was a colorful character in real life and earned his chops as a literary critic of modern war when he landed in France with the 103rd Infantry division in 1944, was wounded fighting in Alsace, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
I couldn't put down his book. I find most important the universal way he describes the gap between the way common soldiers experience battlefields, in contrast to how the war is portrayed to the general public by observers at home, propagandists, and the like who interpret the war from a safe distance. I was always impressed by the sharp manner of his writing. He traces the pulverization of pre-1914 Victorian values as they collided with the sheer force and brutality of modern steel and gas technology.
I loved surveying the direct and profane language…
Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a literate, literary, and unapologetic account of the Great War, the war that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world.
This brilliant work illuminates the trauma and tragedy of modern warfare in fresh, revelatory ways. Exploring the…
I’ve been fascinated by war since I was literally a toddler. True story, I was the only two-and-a-half-year-old in South Boston, Massachusetts with an adult library card. I had to get one, and to get it to prove to the librarian that I could read, in order to check out certain books that I wanted. I only recall one title, The Battle of Midway. Since then, though I’ve done other things like practice law and become a novelist, most of my adult life was still spent as an enlisted man, non-commissioned officer, and company grade and field grade infantry officer in the Army.
Yes, I know: “Eight volumes? Are you mad, Kratman?”
This is unquestionably the greatest single history on the American Civil War ever written. There are over sixty thousand books about the Civil War in existence. You cannot hope to read them all. This being true, if the subject interests you—and it ought, because the Civil War made the United States what it is—if you can read only eight, make this series the eight. Think of it as a really long single volume work.
