100 books like Men at Arms

Any list like this needs to include a Hitchhiker’s book, and this is my personal favourite. These books skirt even further into the surreal and silly than the Discworld books, but somehow Douglas Adams saves them from falling into pointlessness. I can’t quite see how he does it. The settings are so diverse and mind-boggling, and the plot is thin enough that it would probably collapse if I tried to describe it, like a beautiful bubble popping in your palm. The characters are vividly memorable, but in these books, it is the language that really shines, the spectacular, witty, wonderful use of words and phrases, which somehow elevate the book, making us care about the journey despite its utter silliness.

I first read this when I was a teenager because I loved the TV show. But though the book has a lot of cleverly mad humour, there is more of a melancholy undercurrent here. The science fiction ideas are creatively insane, but they are always brought down to Earth by the palpably flawed characters, which give the whole book a reality it would otherwise lack. This elevates it from whimsical science fantasy to something solid and substantial. For smeg’s sake, give it a read!

Silliness is one of my favorite things, and it doesn’t get much sillier than when a run-of-the-mill trip to buy milk turns into a madcap adventure.

There are dinosaurs! And pirates! And aliens! This book is a delightful escape, and Skottie Young’s illustration perfectly capture the romp of it all.

I said I would limit myself to two Discworld books, so here we have my other favourite. This is quite an early one, before the world is fully formed, but the portrayal of the wizards and their University is beginning to emerge, full of chaos and joy and demented energy. But again, this madcap, surreal mania is corralled masterfully, the characters feeling like real people with real agency, moving through a world that—while full of vivid colours and impossible, surreal things—is also somehow solid and real. It is a testament to Pratchett’s incredible storytelling powers that Ankh Morpork is more real to me than several cities I have actually, physically visited. It is unreal and yet hyper-real at the same time. You should go visit. It is wonderful. 

I like Terry Pratchett’s fresh take on dragons. I’ve always appreciated his sense of humor, and his portrayal of little swamp dragons is hilarious! It cracked me up to read about little dragons like they are purebred lap dogs.

In this book, Sir Terry skillfully uses a big dragon as a metaphor, and I always love a good metaphor. Although I read it years ago, this book has stuck with me.

From the moment I first read a Discworld novel, I was hooked by the unique and whimsical twist, given by Terry Pratchett, to the situations his characters find themselves in. His clever use of humor allows him to entertain his readers while making complex financial concepts accessible to readers of all backgrounds. This use of humor and the underlying message that finance is as much about human nature as it is about numbers underpins my teaching and writing.

He highlights the quirks and motivations of bankers and entrepreneurs which I recognised from my time in the industry. But importantly he highlights the personal transformation and ethical dilemmas a quest for wealth can bring. For me, this resulted in really considering the true meaning of success.

That said he doesn’t shy away from addressing economic disparities. But overall, when I read this I was given a chance to view the finance… show more.

No one has taught me more about life than Terry Pratchett. No one has taught me how to wrestle with my demons (both literal and metaphorical) or how to be a better person no matter what fate befalls me. Humanists don’t need a bible, but if they did, the collected works of Terry Pratchett would be that book.

More than just fantasy, humor, or satire, his words work at a profound and subtle level. All of his books are favorites of mine, but this one is my most favorite of all. It’s a book about witches and magic and fairy tales. It’s also a story that contains stories within stories, but most of all, it’s a book about knowing who you are.

I love Pratchett’s work so much in general that it’s really hard to pick just one. His work was side-splittingly funny but also the very best kind of satire. He had pointed things to say about society while also making you care deeply about his characters and making you laugh until your face hurts. Do you know how hard that is?

In this book, the protagonist is a con man forced into trying to resuscitate a dying postal service. He’s petty evil, the kind of selfish who has never thought about what happens to his victims. By the end, you can’t help but root for him to triumph over the much less petty but equally hidden evil of systems and big money. But you also can’t look away from the chaos of ravening stamp collectors, hapless wizards, and a literal avalanche of dead letters.

A Kirkus review aptly described this novel as “mysterious, bizarre, frustrating, weirdly smart and pretty cool”. 

It’s mostly a fiercely intelligent exploration of both political and personal crises in 2017, the year of Trump and Brexit. Radical feminist Kathy has also fairly inexplicably agreed to get married. Pre-wedding she travels to a resort in Italy with her fiancé where she tumbles through a range of highly-emotive stances on intimacy and closeness.

After an argument about prosciutto and fig ciabattas with her husband “she hated him, she hated any kind of warmth or dependency, she wanted to take up residence as an ice cube in a long glass of aqua frizzante.”  Her fury quickly dissolves “anyway they sorted it out” and the novel travels brilliantly onwards.

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.