Fans pick 100 books like Eyeshot

Whether trying to finish an email or a book, I feel Dorothy Parker’s words deeply: “I hate writing,” she is purported to have said, but “I love having written.” 

In this book, protagonist Jacob Finch Bonner does Parker one better. Stuck after his well-received first novel, he takes someone else’s story and passes it off as his own. Korelitz unravels the dire consequences, though with fizzy, suspenseful glee rather than scared-straight preachiness.

Bonner may not be, as he tells himself, “a great writer,” but Korelitz certainly is. It made me want to try to write again: hate, love, and all other feelings welcome. 

A much more recent book that can be read in conjunction with The Handmaid’s Tale.

I had no idea what to expect from this novel and was truly gripped by the unfolding tale of a world in which women are incarcerated for being deemed bad mothers. I am not going to give away any of the plot here, as the power of the book depends on its unfolding horror.

D W Winnicott's definition of the ‘good enough' mother resonated with me throughout this book, and I do worry that we are facing this dystopian reality in a 21st-century America that puts fetal rights before those of women and families. 

I have never been as scared reading a book—that includes Stephen King’s whole oeuvre, and I am a huge SK fan—as I was this one. Barry conjures up a scene almost any woman will find familiar—you’re driving down a long, dark, lonely road, and then it gets even worse because you’re not alone anymore.

That Barry manages to create masterful suspense against a political backdrop that is even more relevant now than when the book was published is particularly dazzling. And the triumphant battle to the death at the end had my heart in my throat and my blood pulsing. 

Three generations of women act victoriously throughout this white-knuckle tale. Anne, who met the man of her dreams – slash the man of her nightmares – right out of college; her daughter, Thea; and the tough matriarch to them all. When these women thread their way through the winter woods to hole up in a cabin, they don't know the identity of the man who has chased them there, or the threat they will face. They only know their fierce love for each other, a bond too strong for any man to break. Told in the voices of these women, with interlocking timelines, there is an ageless, fairy tale quality to this thriller. It will raise your heart rate even as it tugs at your heartstrings.

This is the first person narrative of Kulger’s two years as a scout sniper with the 4th Marine Regiment. Relates what it is like to look through the scope, pull the trigger, and watch your target die. Kulger’s experiences mirror that of most Marine snipers in the war. This is the reality of being a scout sniper, not the fiction that is often written about the elite Marine shooters.

Army Special Operations Direct Action Sniper Nick Irving hunts for “The Chechnian” in Afghanistan in this action-packed memoir of war, comradery, and sacrifice. The reader endures sniper training before deploying to Afghanistan. Irving’s numerous insights into sniping at night in mountainous terrain blend smoothly with his priceless memoir. On each hit, we feel him push aside his excitement and fear to take that next critical killing shot…

Books that tell the story of Special Operations soldiers fighting in the Global War on Terror typically focus all of their efforts on adrenaline, explosions, the men, and the teams. While those are all critical elements and essential to the stories, most of them leave out one of the most crucial factors to keeping Special Operations troops in the fight.

In Special Forces, we had many sayings, but one of the most important was, “if momma ain’t happy, Joe ain’t happy.” 

All active duty soldiers engaged in war, even we Special Operators, depend on our families to keep us going. These may be the details required to keep the household running, keeping the family happy, healthy & fed (as nearly all Special Operators are extremely family-oriented), but also to be the rocks that we can fall back on when needed, the support to keep us pushing forward, and… show more.

Ethnic and religious conflicts pitted Orthodox Serbians, Catholic Croatians, and Muslim Bosnians against each other and sparked the siege of Sarajevo. Set in the 1990s during the war, The Cellist of Sarajevo plunges the reader into the perspectives of three characters trying to survive ineffable violence in a city crippled by fear. A shell kills twenty-two civilians standing in a bread line. A cellist risks his life to sit in the crater forged by the mortar and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for twenty-two days. This novel demonstrates how dehumanization is used as a means to justify killing those on opposing sides. I visited the region a few years ago, and during a drive across Bosnia to visit Međugorje, a sense of deep sadness struck. The fallout of the war remains visible—weariness etched in people’s faces, bullet-riddled apartment blocks. But the sadness did make some room for hope. During… show more.

Contains the history, along with exceptional pictures and illustrations, of Army and Marine snipers in Vietnam. Along with history it details the fielding of rifles, scopes, and suppression devices. More technical than “war story” it provides an excellent base document on which to build an education on long range shooting by American soldiers and Marines in the Vietnam War.

Finnish Simo Häyhä is the world's most famous sniper. The statement that best describes him is: One shot–one hit. Simo Häyhä still holds the top spot in the calculated world statistics for snipers with 542 kills. Häyhä still serves as a role model for all snipers, regardless of nationality.

In the Winter War on the Kollaa line, Häyhä made history by eliminating more than five hundred enemies. Häyhä was rewarded for his achievements in numerous different ways, such as by promoting him from lance sergeant directly to second lieutenant, by awarding him the Kollaa Memorial Cross, and by awarding him as the best sniper on the war front with a model 28 rifle manufactured by the SAKO arms factory. I have had the honor of holding that award rifle in my hand. It vividly reminded me of my own military sniper training in Kajaani.

Häyhä's war ended dramatically on March… show more.