100 books like Falling in Love with Hominids

Although not the easiest novel to read, The Silmarillion tells us the creation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s beloved world. It’s dense and complex, full of characters and places that are linked in this intricate web. I recommend this book because it takes us out of our comfort zone of how we’re accustomed to reading. I felt it gave my mind a bit of a mental exercise trying to connect and understand what was written. I understand that such a thing may not be enjoyed by all readers, but for those who yearn for a challenge, pick this one up.

This classic middle grade fantasy tale is what first taught me an appreciation of figurative language and lyricism in writing. It revolves around a young courtesan tasked to provide a definitive definition of delicious to resolve a court dispute. He asks many people throughout the land, which yields answers such as “a cold leg of chicken eaten in an orchard early in the morning in April when you have a friend to share it” or “a drink of cool water when you’re very, very thirsty.” At an early age, those descriptions made clear to me the power of making comparisons that evoke memory and mood. It also heavily influences my food and drink reviews to this day!

I studied the literature of the Harlem Renaissance in college, and the rhythmic power and cadence of so many great works of that time still influence me: the deep bass throughline of Claude McKay’s Banjo; the fiery, relentless push of truth in James Baldwin’s essays and novels. Zora Neale Hurston imbued her allegories and anthropological studies of the era with literary devices that made them smooth to read and easy to slide under your skin. Just the repetition of mountain in Moses, Man of the Mountain, is enough to reveal the power of the simplest literary devices. And her expert use of alliteration makes this a beautiful, boisterous, and emboldening read.

I was unprepared for this book’s unrelenting pace, as it provides some of the most on-the-nose and funny skewering of our present era that I’ve read to date, via alien invasion and our coping strategy of viewing reality as a show. Anderson wields short chapters and surprising reveals in his last sentences as atypical, but effective, literary weapons. His framing of the whole work as a series of images, through chapter titles that read like illustrations, is brilliant and a quite literal representation of figurative language. Each time we’re reminded that this is a story about television, about fiction, about the comfortable lies we tell ourselves, the words strike a familiar beat, like a cinematic score reprising a theme. 

Alvar’s stories of men and women of the Philippine diaspora take place all over the globe, shedding insight on the export of labor.

As they separate from the safety and familiarity of family, the characters’ longing and aspirations are universal. This is an important book that helps to illuminate a fascinating and often painful experience of leaving, losing, and searching for home.

I lived in Bangkok for six years. This is the rare novel that captures the sounds, the smells, the spirit, and spirituality of the place. Bangkok in fact is the main character, with supporting roles by humans who make their lives there, from the nineteenth century to the present and into the not-so-distant future, when water lays permanent claim to a city built more or less at sea level. You can expect lyrical writing and engaging characters, whether human or urban. 

Ocean’s book is vulnerable, intimate, and heartbreaking in the most life-affirming way.

The way he writes about love between a mother and son, and a son and another boy, feels so universal and delicate, like the scent of a rose that is here one moment but just as suddenly drifts away. As an immigrant myself, I felt the starkness in the way Ocean describes the hardship of living in a land not one’s own.

I finished the book feeling like I needed to go hug my mom and tell her I love her. Those bonds of family are so shattering yet important. Ocean’s book reminds me to allow myself all the depth of feeling because life is hard, but whoa, it is also gorgeous. 

This highly recommended story is a love story between two people who should have been together all along but obstacles prevented them from sharing a life. Those obstacles include political and personal forces, but I won’t elaborate as that would count as giving away the story. I was intrigued by life in Iran back in the 1950s and how girls/women were treated then. How they were expected to behave even as those expectations began to shift to be more Western in nature. Dealing with change is never easy, especially for those who resist new ideas. I haven’t studied this time period nor this country so experiencing Kamali’s story gave me a level of awareness of the culture and the politics of the time in an easy-to-understand form.

This collection of short stories offers a contemporary Hawaiʻi full of flawed characters who face challenges both unique to the islands and universal in motivation.

Kahakauwila explores the concept of paradise and the price paid for it. They are stories that capture the spirit and tenacity of Hawaiʻi, the nuanced layers of its social fabric, and brings me home every time I read them. 

The first time I read it, I was alone in a cabin in the woods in the middle of my first writing residency. Suddenly I was no longer pressed up against a wood stove trying to stay warm. Through her gifted storytelling, all the sights and sounds and smells of home came rushing in, both comforting and familiar.

You don’t need to know Hawaiʻi to enjoy this book, but by the end of reading it, you will feel like you do.

Boris Fishman made his debut with the story of Salva, a journalist for a long famous magazine asked to forge Holocaust-restitution claims—by and for his grandfather, a Russian immigrant living in South Brooklyn. Soon Salva achieves the American dream—a something from nothing business writing false claims.  It seems there’s a neighborhood full of people who can use his writing services. I loved this novel, a tender and wise study in the meaning of family, loyalty, and justice. Tragedy meets comedy in A Replacement Life.