Fans pick 67 books like Lord Jim

Chances are many of you have heard of this one, or at least of its author.

Neverwhere is not Gaiman’s best-known or best-selling book. Not by a long shot on either score. But it is my personal favorite, in part because it is less flashy than his other books, while managing to be just as exciting and suspenseful.

Like all of Gaiman’s work, it is at once humorous and dark, fanciful and brutally believable. Our hero, Richard Mayhew, is hapless but ultimately lovable. Our villains, a pair of killers named Croup and Vandemar, are terrifying.

And the characters we discover in the world below the streets of London, are charming and worth fighting for.

What must we treasure? That is the question that came to mind when I was reading this book. Is a vanishing lifestyle or a piece of indigenous art worth risking your life and reputation for? Two men – Bruno Manser and Michael Palmieri – dodged the draft then went on to live dangerously. These real-life Robinson Crusoe and Indiana Jones eventually made their way into the jungle of Borneo, where they tried to save for posterity what they believed was important to the history of human culture. Hoffman presents their stories in a riveting style that is perfect for adventure lovers.

O’Brien performed some sort of alchemy in turning a previously dry and underpopulated section of the historical fiction genre into literary gold, at once gripping and supremely well-written. One follows the adventures of a Royal Navy Commander and his Irish doctor friend–a man with a secret life–through the war at sea in the Napoleonic era, and I found the balance between naval exploits–Jack Aubrey being a swashbuckler of renown–and period history made for fascinating counter-points.

Over and above that, I loved the way O’Brien built an ensemble cast and proceeded to draw the reader into their lives, making the death of any one of them a personal loss. I know that I benefitted from learning this writing trick and used it myself in my Empire series, and I know at least one other Roman author who did much the same. Wonderful stories that kept me coming back, and this is… show more.

Many of us writers are subject to the terrible cliché of substance abuse, none so much as Charles Bukowski. Having dabbled in the debauched myself, Ham on Rye sadly reflects what life could be like if the idiocy of adolescence continues into adulthood. This book is hilarious, vulgar, shocking, and oddly insightful. Not only is this my favourite Bukowski book, but it’s the book that introduced me to his work and changed my writing forever.

This book is a re-interpretation of the epic saga of Beowulf, re-imagining him as a real-life hero who fought in a historical human world. The magic of this story is that it is hard to tell where facts end and story begins. Ahmad, the narrator, is opinionated in a dry and pedagogic way. He complains about many things but, like a true traveler, refuses little. Even though he regales us with his sense of superiority, his outward manner is meek and passive which helps him get along with the Northmen. Please don’t read this book in a public library if you do not want to be shush-ed. Some of Ahmad’s commentaries on Viking life have sent me into loud, sudden guffaws. 

All of the Singer Brothers are excellent tales of village life and struggles. Isaac Bashevis Singer could spin a yarn with no seams showing, drawing readers in to personal and social straits. Scum, Meshugah, Shosha, and the rest capture the strife and insanity of the times. Isaac Singer often called his brother I.J. a better writer. Better shmetter; I.J. wrote beautiful tales of folksy subjects, easing as well to the verge. The Brothers Carnovsky will linger for years.

Palace of Desire came out in 1957 in original Arabic and got translated to English in the early ’90s, and that’s when I read it. I’m not sure why NY waited so long, except that Naguib Mahfouz couldn’t get the right connection for those years. Your request for reasons that I chose this book made me take another look, and I’ll reread it soon. Thumbing through it now, it still flows with classic narrative, a form still vibrant in 1957, before books in English lost that traditional flow and began to read with a sameness, like most authors went to writing seminars or demanded their rights as women with feelings. I.e. Mahfouz reaches for nothing but the moment, which happens to be in a Cairo neighborhood populated with everyday Egyptians carrying on with life. It’s a slice unavailable to readers like me, revealing a reality far away and compelling, sitting… show more.

John Mole tells his stories the same way an Iban man would when he returns from a particularly harrowing work travel. I personally think that the memoir is a tragedy disguised as a comedy because some parts of his description of life in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union made my stomach cramp with emotion. At the same time, they also made me laugh because his imageries are so comical. His first-world naiveté either gets him scammed or rescued, but his survival instincts always kick in when it matters. So, if you are interested in a modern Wild-Wild-West adventure, this is the book for you.

Since the 1980s, anthropologists have been confronting the fraught ethics of representing other people, other places, other cultures much more directly than their counterparts in journalism or travel writing. Will Buckingham didn’t stick with anthropology, and this book about his fieldwork with woodcarvers in eastern Indonesia – written two decades after the events it describes – goes some way to explaining why. It’s wry, funny and thought-provoking. The title refers to the theft committed by every travelling writer.

I’ve travelled to more than 40 countries, and written about many, but when I’m asked which I’d like to explore more, my answer is always Indonesia. Elizabeth Pisani, a journalist turned epidemiologist, travelled across the vast archipelago, clocking more than 21,000 miles by boat, bus, and motorbike, and as many by plane. More than half a century since gaining independence from the Dutch, the world’s fourth most populous country, with more than 300 ethnic groups, is still struggling to establish its identity amid regional conflicts, the depletion of natural resources, and a growing wealth gap. With insight and wit, Pisani takes the reader on an enthralling, sometimes maddening journey from crowded cities to remote islands, where she bumps into people from many walks of life—from politicians to peasant farmers—as she tries to make sense of an “improbable nation.”