100 books like Queuing for Beginners

This path-breaking book presents a view of human communication as theater, where speakers choose their words to create desired impressions, and listeners try to interpret speech while guarding against manipulation and deceit.

Strategic interaction and interpretation are central to the argument. In effect, Goffman is examining dynamic games with incomplete information, decades below the formal language for such analyses was developed. 

I first came across Georges Perec via his novels. Many (most) of these are experimental – a word that often puts me off – but their cleverness is additional to great writing and storytelling. One of his novels, for example – La Disparition (A Void) – is written entirely without the letter ‘e’ as, remarkably, is the English translation! Species of Spaces is a collection of non-fiction essays in which he encourages us to look, to observe what is around us, to become anthropologists of the everyday. What might we find? Yes, we lie on beds. But, as Perec observes, this is highly unusual as they’re one of the very few places where we adopt a horizontal posture, and the only general one (the others are things like operating tables, beaches, psychiatrists’ couches. Perec focuses on what he calls the ‘infra-ordinary’ (as opposed to extraordinary)  and offers something remarkable on… show more.

This is a remarkable book (the first of two volumes), taking in a huge sweep of history, making bold claims about social change over the centuries, yet focusing as much on manners, civility, and such everyday matters as how we eat at table as much as it does on the changing nature of medieval society and the rise of the modern nation-state. A deeply serious book, but one with chapter titles that include ‘On blowing one’s nose’, ‘On spitting,’ and ‘On behaviour in the bedroom’. Elias has had a huge impact on modern understanding of social change, not least in documenting and analysing the centuries-long trend toward diminishing violence and increasing shame and ‘civility’ in daily life. 

I read this book as a student in my teenage years. To say it was an eye-opener is both to underestimate its impact on me and to reveal just how little I understood, or simply took for granted, about women’s lives (including my mother’s). Oakley’s book, published in 1974, explores the role of the ‘housewife’ and the nature of ‘housework’ and places both in their historical and social context. At heart, it helped puncture such male-oriented myths as the idea that there was something intrinsic to such activity that made it “women’s work” and that it wasn’t the equivalent of real work. In short, using in-depth interviews with young mothers (four of which are used as case studies here) it made housework visible as something to be considered alongside, and in some respects in the same way, as we might think about other forms of labour.  

I don’t know if misery loves company but I’m convinced that failure does. When their projects fall flat, my kid likes nothing better than to hear about the wreckage of mine: romantic fiascos, flunked tests, athletic defeats. Joe Moran’s “book of solace,” If You Should Fail, is in part a compendium of stories like these, in part an effort to dislodge our tendency to think of human beings as winners or losers at all. “To call any life a failure, or a success, is to miss the infinite granularity, the inexhaustible miscellany of all lives,” Moran writes. “A life can’t really succeed or fail at all; it can only be lived.” 

Kristóf (1935-2011) was a Hungarian writer who fled to Switzerland during the war and wrote in French.

The Notebook (the first in the trilogy) is currently number one on my list of all-time favourites. It has all the elements of storytelling that I love: deep, psychological insight into the human heart; adroit use of archetypes, which give the book a timeless, folkloric feel; concision (no waffling) and a poetic, pared-back language that creates a sense of startling immediacy.

Kristóf writes about World War II through the eyes of two young brothers in a Nazi-occupied country (unnamed), and she shocks us awake not through sensationalised violence but through matter-of-fact narration.

It reads like a cross-between dramatic monologue and biblical parable – she stretches the novel form and opens up new possibilities for writing. 

I love reading true stories of WWII told by people who lived through it. I find it difficult to understand how ordinary men could live, fight, and die in a foreign land without questioning in order to protect the United States; they were certainly true patriots. In the fall of 1944, two hundred true patriots of K Company, 333rd Infantry, 84th Division landed in Europe. For the next one hundred days, they were on the edge of the Allied spearhead into Nazi territory. If you ever wanted to be in the infantry, you need to read this book. 

Technically about World War II, this work covers Chim’s work depicting culture, politics, and life before and after the war, so the circumstances leading to conflict and its aftermath. Chim was the co-founder of Magnum Photos, so his contribution to photojournalism is immense, and his photos are beautifully lit and composed even as they capture fleeting moments: Polish school children waiting for a bus in the rain, a baby reaching for bread at a displaced person’s camp or a boy playing in the ruins of a bombed building. The book also includes later photos of celebrities and movie stars, which, when seen alongside his earlier work creates an interesting narrative of a world putting itself back together and once again seeking out joy and beauty.

Ariel Lawhon is one of my favorite authors. I will read anything she writes, and this novel is one of her best. Not many people have heard of Nancy Wake, but she was an Australian expatriate living in Paris during the years preceding World War II. I, for one, am glad she’s finally getting her due, for her story is one of those “I can hardly believe this really happened” tales. Nancy Wake started out as a reporter, but when Germany invaded France she joined the Resistance and smuggled people and documents across the border. The Nazis nicknamed her “The White Mouse” and put a bounty on her head, forcing her to flee France. Any ordinary person would have called it a day. But not Nancy Wake. She returned to France as Hélène under the aegis of England’s Special Operations Executives. Her cleverness and courage are guaranteed to thrill… show more.

I’d recommend this book to fans of The Notebook and serious history buffs alike.

Molly and Max are childhood friends who grew up across the street from one other in Toronto. They know and trust each other implicitly, so when an attraction develops between them as young adults, Molly and Max quickly tumble into love. What’s the issue? She’s Protestant, he’s Jewish, and Depression-era Canada is boiling with antisemitism.

Structurally, Letters Across the Sea is a classic World War II novel; Graham makes it stand out with loads of fascinating Canadian history and an unflinching look at the brutal conditions of the Pacific Front.