100 books like Pastoral

A steppenwolf is a loner among the animals and Hesse projects his personal isolation and mental turmoil into this masterpiece of autofiction.

It’s timeless because anybody can relate to loneliness. And the book asks the question of how to live a fulfilling life. I personally relate to it so much, because I am familiar with both the involved emotions, as well as the aspect of drawing inspiration for my stories from my actual life experience.

It also gives me hope as a writer, because it tells me that an author does not need to please the broad masses, but can freely write what they carry inside. In the end, this make the more original pieces of art, in my opinion.

Lady Oracle was one of the novels I read in the several years after first having the vague notion that I might like to write a novel akin to Steppenwolf but that would be set in the approximate present day and have a female protagonist. As Lady Oracle’s main character is a writer who, after periodically reinventing herself, now fakes her own death, flees her intellectual, non-dancing husband, and holes up in an Italian village, I saw possible avenues for my own husband-leaving Kari. Would Kari flee to another country? Would she have secret lovers or a history of being fat? Would she, too, fake her own death? Kari ultimately didn’t follow many of Joan Foster’s paths, but she might have.

I’ve been a devotee of Robertson Davies since my early twenties, when my alternately terrifying and delightful supervisor at the Pacific Lumber Company recommended Fifth Business to me. While all of Davies’s mature novels (the Deptford trilogy and the Cornish trilogy, as well as The Cunning Man) have commonalities with my own novel in their explorations of creativity and the psyche, here I’m recommending The Lyre of Orpheus. Why? It tells the simultaneously comic and deep story of a group of foundation directors who find themselves sponsoring and even helping script an opera begun by E.T.A. Hoffmann, now to be completed by their protégé, a brilliant but obnoxious and somewhat gender-ambiguous young composer. Davies’s account of the opera’s genesis and production helped me create my characters’ own theater piece.

Sorcerers is the tale of teenaged Eliot, who’s growing up in Philadelphia in the 1950s and strives to learn magic. Let’s not confuse this with the magic found in Harry Potter, the Narnia books, or in any of today’s fantasy worlds; Eliot studies basic stage-magic tricks and gains entrance to the Sorcerers, a club of aspiring teen magicians. Some Sorcerers are adept and elegant; others graceless gawks. As the novel develops, there's mystery, and to everyone's surprise, some of what might be termed "real magic" and strange power. This is a bildungsroman about human possibility, which is what prompts me to recommend it here. It's subtle and unusual, with a deep understanding of humanity and spiritual development. I've not encountered many novels that attempt what this one does. 

The last book in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved Anne of Green Gables series, this volume focuses on Anne’s children as they grow into adulthood during the tumultuous years of World War I.

With Anne’s youngest daughter Rilla as the central protagonist, Rilla of Ingleside is the poignant story of a young woman coming of age at a time when people thought the world might be coming to an end.

Rilla grows from a spoiled and flighty young teen to a capable and level-headed young woman as she watches the young men in her community – her brothers included – march off to war.

While it’s not central to the story, a highlight of this book is Dog Monday, the little yellow dog belonging to Rilla’s eldest brother, whose loyalty as he patiently waits at the train station for his master’s return knows no bounds.

Although it’s the final book in… show more.

If you are a kindred spirit, you know immediately why I’m recommending this book! I first picked this book up without knowing anything about it when I was a teenager. I immediately fell in love with Anne, Gilbert, Marilla, Matthew, and everyone in Avonlea. I can read this book anywhere and at any time. 

Anne Shirley is an orphan who winds up at Green Gables and is given a trial basis to prove to Marilla Cuthbert why she should keep Anne, who is not a boy. Imaginative, romantic, and funny, this book (and its sequels) kept me laughing and crying, sometimes at the same time. Most of all, it reminds me that every morning is the start of a new day with no mistakes in it. 

I’m always a fan of graphic novels that capture the mood of the book, rather than trying to make everything perfectly accurate to the original. Mariah Marsden’s adaptation of Anne of Green Gables perfectly captures the magic and beauty of one of my favorite childhood books.

I mentioned how much I enjoyed this adaptation to a friend who’s also a fan of L.M. Montgomery. However, my friend hated this adaptation (especially how Anne’s nose is drawn!) which I actually found very liberating as I considered adapting The Great Gatsby. I’d been concerned about how people who loved Gatsby would view my adaptation, but this made me realize that some people would love my book and some people wouldn’t—and that was okay!

Fung writes a powerful story about survival, her captivity, and her indomitable spirit under the most perilous of circumstances that she lived through in Kabul, Afghanistan after being grabbed by the Taliban. As the Canadian reporter describes her bone-chilling account of the horrific twenty-eight days, I am left in awe of her strength and courage. 

I think I’ll be recommending this book to people until the end of time. It’s just so, so good.

What I love most about it is it brings a forgotten part of history to life: a time when orphanages in 1950s Quebec misdiagnosed children as mentally ill to qualify for the better funding allocated to psychiatric hospitals. An obscure moment in history, generations of family scandals and secrets, and a forbidden love story? Yes, please.

I loved this book because it grapples with some of the really tough topics that our people have to face.

The characters were relatable and dynamic. I think America and Canada need a wake-up call and an effort to reconcile with their historical treatment of Native people, especially with regard to residential boarding schools. People can only handle calls to justice when they relate to those who were treated unjustly.

In spite of the heavy topics, this book does that really well.