100 books like Green Dot

Very few books have affected me more than this autobiographical Japanese manga. The book's author, artist, and protagonist is a young woman navigating her family relationships, mental health, and sexuality. In the grips of depression, desperate to be touched, the protagonist goes to an escort agency—but the plot is not the point.

Nagata’s willingness to “go there” feels so fresh, and is so vulnerable and heartfelt. As a queer person there was a lot to identify with, as a writer I took away a determination to try and be even half as vulnerable in my writing, and as a young woman I felt seen in a new way. 

I love an audacious woman, even if she is a hot mess. This book follows Alex, a young woman who’s been staying at the Hamptons with an older man. She’s a calculated person, good at capitalizing on the good natures and human weaknesses of others, but a small misstep brings her free ride with the older man to an end. Instead of leaving, she decides to linger on Long Island.

Each night, she finds a new person to graft, a new scheme to help her stay. Spending time with Alex was stressful and made me want to shake her for her short-sightedness and self-sabotaging. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but admire her grit and wonder what on earth she was going to do next.

This book kicked off my obsession with stories about young women who are trying to make sense of all the versions of themselves they have inside and weighing up which one to present to the world at any given time. The protagonist, Ruth, is an American living in London who works at a department store, spritzing perfume during the day, watching all the people go past, and trying to understand how the other young women who work there seem so self-assured. This is not a plot-driven book so much as a character study of a character who doesn’t know who she is yet.

Kate Zambreno’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. She creates a distance between Ruth—the ‘green girl’—and the world, like she’s looking through a window and can see people inside talking but not understand what they’re saying. At the same time, I recognized myself in Ruth,… show more.

A young woman working in a pet library reads Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and decides that, moving forward, she must stop wasting her life and begin living it according to the book’s Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing.

Far from a motivational story, this is about a ridiculous protagonist who behaves in increasingly outrageous ways—very much an unlikeable character (I noticed that someone had tagged Treasure Island!!! under the category ‘unhinged women,’ which feels right). But gosh, did this book make me giggle? Humor can be hit-and-miss as it’s so subjective and sometimes tries too hard, but women behaving irrationally or badly just hits me in the right place.

After 608 days, Maggie is single again and almost 30–two things that give cause for concern and reflection. Thankfully, Maggie takes no blame for either thing happening and plows on, determined to find the pearl in the gritty oyster her life has become.

I laughed, but I also found myself filled with sad recognition of how we all too often set goals we’ll never score, only to find that halfway home is where the heart is.

Family life doesn’t get easier as you age. Having older parents and young adult children who all need something from you can be exhausting. Throw in your own changing body and a well-seasoned marriage; even a week in Cape Cod can’t fix it all. 

This book is funny, sad, and slightly too realistic. (It's especially so since the daughter in the book has the same name as my daughter!) But reading can give a different perspective, and reading really great writing can give you something else altogether.

This is one of those books where fantasy meets reality. It's about a woman who finally takes a chance on herself—instead of wondering, "What if I moved to LA to pursue my screenwriting dreams?", she is forced to go and do it. And when she does, it leads to explosive and unexpected results.

I loved the enemies-to-lovers feel of this, and the message that while life isn't perfect, we can be grateful for the good things we do have.

I love Noir because it starts out plausibly enough but quickly starts slipping sideways into stranger realms. Of course, it’s Christopher Moore, so it’s going to be hilarious. I was amazed by the world-building Moore undertakes in creating the seamy underside of late-40s San Francisco. The Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett vibe totally drew me in.

I found Noir’s San Francisco to be not quite realistic and not quite cartoonish, but very engaging. It’s a perfect place for Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin, a down-on-his-luck bartender who meets the love of his life while the rest of his world goes cuckoo. Adding in twists involving a crashed flying saucer and a secret conspiracy of the wealthy and powerful had me hooked.

There’s nothing childish about this rip-roaring fantasy adventure. I loved it long before Brandon Sanderson became a household name. While the book is steeped in whimsy, it sidesteps the pitfalls that render most Middle-Grade books inaccessible to adults. With realistic character motivations, a (strangely plausible) explanation for how all librarians could be secretly evil, and a cohesive magic system that could stand right beside any of Sanderson’s adult offerings.

I especially loved the way the book sucks the reader in with its deftly executed frame story. There are layers upon layers of storytelling here. I loved that, and I am not embarrassed to say it.

Skippy Dies is nearly 700 pages long, but I wished it had been longer, it was that fun to read. It’s both tragically sad and laugh-out-loud funny—a difficult feat for any writer to pull off, and Irish novelist Paul Murray does so brilliantly. I’m not giving away anything by saying that the protagonist dies—after all, he dies in the book’s title—but I won’t reveal how or the circumstances. Let’s just say that if you are a diminutive, shy, buck-toothed 14-year-old at an all-boys boarding school in Dublin and somehow manage to develop a crush on the girlfriend of an older, drug-dealing, violent bully…well, things can’t turn out good. The cast of characters—the teenagers, the teachers, the school principal—are wonderfully drawn. Murray’s dialogue captures the boasting machismo as well as the angsty insecurities of teenage boyhood. A real gem.