75 books like Radiance

Set in a dystopian future where poverty is rampant and the populous flocks to a gaming metaverse to escape the doldrums of everyday life, young Wade Watts must solve a quest to not only save himself, but to save the world.

Ernest Cline’s knowledge of 80s and 90s pop culture is astounding, but he weaves the tale in such a way that you don’t have to have lived through the period to enjoy the book.

Cline’s world building is excellent and Wade Watt (Parzival is the name of his avatar in the metaverse) goes through an excellent character arc evolving from a gamer on a quest to win at all costs to a caring individual willing to sacrifice himself for his friends. Great book and enjoyable movie. 

I was fascinated by the way the tragic protagonist uses “self-gaslighting” as a means of survival.

Anna Fox has suffered unimaginable tragedy, so she imagines it away. I felt her pain and isolation as well as her terror at discovering her neighbors have a horrifying secret.

I especially enjoy a suspense novel that moves at a pace between breathtaking and reflective.

Possibly my favorite book ever (only time will tell) this novel is a fever dream of Ike “Vikar” Jerome’s journey into Hollywood starting in 1969 and expanding over a decade.

With a tattoo of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor from A Place in the Sun on his bald head, this novel reads like Forrest Gump in the way that Vikar shows up at historical moments in Hollywood’s golden age, making friends with thinly veiled Hollywood titans as they get their start in the film industry. 

If you love books that tie themselves to movie genre tropes, you’ll not only love my novel, but also this one by Riley Sager, his first novel that launched a huge career and made him a household name.

Set around Quincy, a young woman who survives a horrible massacre in which all her friends are killed, she becomes what’s known in horror movies as Final Girl meaning she’s the only one who made it out alive. Linked to 2 other Final Girls by the media, Quincy leads a pretty normal life until someone starts killing Final Girls.

A fun read that’s inspired countless knockoffs that would make a killer movie. 

The dutiful daughter of one studio mogul and devoted wife of another, Irene Selznick was Hollywood royalty throughout the 1920s to 40s, the Golden Age of American cinema. Her father, the tyrannical Louis B. Mayer, steered MGM, Hollywood’s most successful studio, discovered Greta Garbo and victimized Judy Garland. Her husband, David O. Selznick made the first A Star Is Born and Gone with the Wind before self-destructing from drugs and megalomania. Irene escaped the shadow of overpowering men to become the respected Broadway producer of A Streetcar Named Desire, a woman to be reckoned with and—in this powerful memoir—a first-class storyteller.

Before he became a writer of potboiler novels and true-crime journalism, Dominick Dunne was a film and television producer and a social butterfly who also happened also to be an avid amateur photographer. This memoir of his Hollywood days, which resulted in a crash-and-burn from which he emerged as a writer, is filled with intimate, candid images of such friends (not all faithful) as Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, as well, of course, as Dunne and his family. There are dreamy and even eye-popping tales throughout, and if you're at all familiar with Dunne's books or magazine writing, you'll marvel at how so much of it so neatly dovetails with the life he actually lived and, thankfully, captured on film and in these frank and candid pages.

Okay, it’s more of an autobiography than a memoir, but Kazan’s 826-page volcano is the most explosive and mesmerizing show-business book I’ve ever plunged into. From his salad days as a struggling actor with New York’s Group Theatre to his conquest of Broadway as the hottest, most pugnacious stage director of the mid-20th century (Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), to his Oscar-winning films (Streetcar, Gentleman’s Agreement, On the Waterfront), Kazan vividly recounts his triumphs, missteps and misdeeds, his mistreatment of his wife and many lovers, and his betrayal of former friends and comrades, in a voice overflowing with self-laceration and self-justification. With a supporting cast that includes Tennessee Williams, Vivien Leigh, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and James Dean.

Published in 2016, four years after George Lucas had sold Lucasfilm Ltd., and with it the Star Wars franchise, to Disney, this is a worthy successor to Dale Pollock’s groundbreaking biography (first published in 1983 and last updated in 1999).

Brian Jay Jones brings that book’s story of an extraordinary filmmaker, who showed surprisingly little interest in movies during his early youth and then spent several years focusing on experimental short films before changing Hollywood with a series of huge blockbusters and newly formed businesses, to what appears to be its conclusion: since 2012 Lucas has largely withdrawn from filmmaking.

The book is not only very informative but in places, especially in the last chapter, also quite moving. 

Any book that starts with the line, “Who do you have to fuck to get off this movie,” has to be terrific, right? Terry Southern, the iconic writer of Candy, writes about a bunch of Hollywood characters who decide to make the perfect X-rated movie and sell it to a mainstream studio. The book is completely outrageous, in the same vein as Southern’s black humor film Dr. Strangelove.

My wife found this on my Kindle among the Michael Crichton and Jack Carr, and couldn’t believe I bought it—but after having made the delight of her acquaintance on Twitter, I decided to give Gigi’s latest novel a try. And boy, am I glad that I did! A screenwriter (Stepmom) and veteran Los Angelino herself, Levangie knows the ins and outs of the Hollywood lifestyle where showbiz is the only biz and the characters are always jockeying to be seen but never to be believed. No mysteries here—just a lot of laughs, with an endearing protagonist who provides the center of gravity to an orbit of crazy family and friends. Highly recommended.