100 books like Joe Gould's Teeth

Another book with an episodic structure, The Confidence-Man concerns an assorted group of Mississippi steamboat passengers whose individual hypocrisies are confronted by the mysterious character of the title.

Melville’s ship of fools features a variety of types, some of whom are caricatures of American literary figures including Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe. The book was published in 1857 on April Fool’s Day, an irony equal to the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on Valentine’s Day, and a gesture that Wiseman, himself a great ironist, surely would appreciate.

Certainly, it is no surprise that Wiseman has referred to The Confidence-Man as his favorite novel. One might even find Melville’s elaborate prose style analogous to Wiseman’s careful editing and his ability to confront spectators with their own biases and preconceptions, as the eponymous confidence-man does in the book.

I love this book because it’s a story about ordinary people. But it’s a true story.

It reads like a fairytale: a peasant, Arnaud du Tilh, is accused of impersonating another man who had abandoned his wife several years before. Arnaud seems to have outwitted the judges until the errant husband returns condemning the impostor to death.

I like this story because it helps to identify with men and women in the past, who in many respects, are just like us. It’s also a piece of great history reconstructed from original trial records. Davis is a great writer.

It took Americans a very long time to honor the ordinary foot soldiers and seamen of the Revolution. It took even longer to recover the women of the Revolution, historian Alfred F. Young tells us. The author parses through various historical records to present a realistic picture of the female soldier Deborah Sampson. Deborah was not the only woman to volunteer as a soldier – dressed as a man. Her record was exemplary. Sampson became known only after the war was over, and then only to a few people. This biography is among the most thorough of crossdressing fighting women, and it gives a good picture of colonial life at the time of the American Revolution. 

It may seem unfair to group Benjamin Franklin among con artists and impersonators, but he certainly had a talent for self-invention. Most biographies of Franklin take it as a given that he was the “first American,” who set the mold for what we call the American dream. In this highly readable and comparatively brief biography of the great man, Wood breaks from that tradition and tells the story of a provincial striver whose many public personas were motivated by a desire to fit in among aristocratic Europeans. If you think you know what made Franklin tick, this biography will make you think again.

You think your life is complicated. Alliances in this mammoth, magnificent novel turn on a dime (or a brick), but several deep connections are life-altering.

For one: the Jamaican dealer Weeper defies category; he’s both violent and tender, both gay and appalled by his homosexuality. When he falls for another man post-prison, he has both to confront and to conceal his panoply of contradictions—which becomes excruciating and finally impossible when boss (and friend) Josey Wales flies in to inspect the Bushwick operation.

I love the intrigue, disclosure, and virtuosity. Nothing simple, nothing easy, nothing dull.

It can be difficult for kids to see their parents as real people, and that’s why I love Some Places More Than Others. When Amara finally convinces her parents she should get to go on a trip with her dad to New York City’s Harlem to meet the grandfather she’s only spoken to on the phone, she uncovers the fact that her dad and her grandfather haven’t spoken in twelve years. I love the depiction of Amara’s father as a person in his own right, someone with a history and his own problems and how, as Amara slowly unravels the mysteries of her father’s past, she begins to understand herself better too.

Lillian is an 84-years old woman walking around New York City on New Year’s Eve.

She loves the city, made her way there as a young woman in advertising in the 30s, became well-known as a poet of light verse. She alternately reminisces about her life and encounters people you would not expect.

She remembers her life in pieces, the way one does, so the reader puts together the mystery.

I found her to be a delightful and refreshing character. The book is a beautiful lacing of the past with the promise of unexpected things to come. 

This is post-modern crime fiction thematically linked and all with increasingly unreliable characters—because they’re each going insane.

In City of Glass private investigator, Daniel Quinn, goes mad sinking deeper into an investigation about identity. Who is telling his story and can they be relied on? Is it any of these characters who appear: ‘the author,’ ‘Paul Auster the writer,’ ‘Paul Auster the detective’?  Whoosh.

I love this stuff but understand it’s an acquired taste!

Franny and Zooey are the two youngest siblings in the Glass family. Originally, “Franny” was published as a short story and “Zooey” as a novella, both of them being published later in one book.

In “Franny”, the protagonist visits her college boyfriend who speaks about his experiences in great detail. But Franny increasingly becomes disenchanted with the ideals of accomplishment he speaks about.

The way “Zooey” opens is memorable: he is reading a letter from his brother Buddy who has written about their eldest brother Seymour’s suicide many years ago. Meanwhile, Franny has entered a state of distress. The book then focuses on Zooey trying to help her.

I love that the story centers around these siblings, living and dead and away, and that despite past tragedies there is hope. 

Kathy Mallory is a character unlike any other. Kathy was a child of the streets who had the good fortune of being adopted into the loving home of a police officer who saw her brilliance and resourcefulness even at a young age. Years later, Kathy has become an NYPD officer who brings justice to victims through her own sense of right and wrong. She is a street-hardened, lone wolf who doesn’t stop until she gets what she wants. I love the complexity of this tough-as-nails female officer who bends all the rules in her pursuit of justice. This book is so well written I immediately read every book I could find by this author.