73 books like Reservoir 13

As a fan of post-apocalyptic novels, I’ve always wondered what the world would actually look like without us. Weisman provides the answer in this book. He visits places that appear to have successfully moved on from humanity, such as the Białowiea forest, the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, showing nature thriving without us.

It’s both comforting and sobering, suggesting, yet again, that humans aren’t necessary to the world and, in fact, maybe the world is better off without us. The most jaw-dropping revelation for me was when a paleobiologist calmly stated that humans will go extinct eventually. All species do. But life on Earth will keep going. 

What will happen to the world if most of us—everyone except one or two humans, in fact—disappear?

According to Marlen Haushofer, the world will continue on just fine. I find that idea to be a little shocking, sure, but also comforting: maybe humans aren’t essential to the world’s existence after all. Maybe the world doesn’t need humans for drama, love, heartbreak, or healing.

This is what I would call an anti-post-apocalyptic book, one in which no one is a hero because humanity is beyond saving. Instead, the narrator has deep relationships with several animals—a dog, some cats, and a cow—animals that aren’t anthropomorphized in the slightest but treated with dignity, love, compassion, and complexity. I reread this slow and meditative page-turner every few years. I’m going to keep reading it for the rest of my life.

This book was life-changing for me. 

David Haskell is a biologist who visits a one-square-meter patch of forest throughout the year and then writes about what he finds there. His writing is gorgeous and evocative—I felt like I was visiting the place with him and observing the non-human life alongside him. At the end of the book, Haskell encourages the reader to try this experiment of observation themselves with whatever natural place is nearby (yards and city parks count!). I did this for a few months myself and discovered my little urban backyard contains a fascinating natural world well worth my time.

The Forest Unseen taught me that ordinary nature is spectacular, and it’s happening all around us. All we need to do is pay attention (though kneeling or lying on the ground also helps). This is a book to be savored.

This collection contains, hands down, my favorite exploration of non-human consciousness: the story “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics.” The title is a mouthful but I love how this story acknowledges we may never fully understand other species’ communications, that there will always be some matter of uncertainty or mistranslation.

At the same time, this story captures for me the intelligence and creativity of the non-human while making a persuasive argument that we need to at least try to understand forms of life that see and experience the world so differently from us.  

Is it worth buying an entire collection for this one story? Totally. But there are a lot of other great gems in Real and the Unreal as well.

Two American housewives—sisters—are on vacation in Morocco (a place I’ve really enjoyed visiting) and one of them disappears. Her sister is determined to find her, but neither has any preparation for the dangers they face. A foreign setting is mysterious, exotic, and always holds unknown possibilities. Finding themselves in a rural area, the women don’t know whom to trust, and they cannot rely on the usual social safeguards. The police and military are actually a threat. For me, a standalone thriller like this packs extra tension because you can’t be certain the characters will survive!

First Pynchon. Favorite Pynchon. Opens up on Christmas Eve, 1955 with our hero Benny Profane hanging out in the Sailor’s Grave, a navy bar in Norfolk, where all of the “barmaids” are called Beatrice, including the owner, who posits “that just as small children call all females mother, so sailors, in their way equally helpless, should call barmaids Beatrice.” She tests this theory by putting rubber nipples on the end of the taps and having sailors chug from them during Suck Hour. And this is just the start of Pynchon flexing his hilarious and bizarre imagination in this picaresque novel. I come back to V. whenever I find myself marooned in a sea of depressing fiction, because it cradles me in love and joy.  

I loved this book because, well, Paris—what’s not to love?—and at a micro level, the setting is an apartment with attics, spyholes, and lots of stairs. I’ve always wanted to live in a house with a hidden doorway, and this was exactly that kind of place.

Jess goes to the apartment to find her half-brother but instead finds a bunch of creepy inhabitants who seem reluctant to tell her where he is. Lucy’s novels feel like modern-day Agatha Christies, with a locked-room vibe and defined set of suspects, and this is no exception, right up my alley.

Manhattan Beach is less experimental and more conventional than Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and The Candy House, but it is every bit as moving, rich, and textured as those justly celebrated novels, and it contains one of the most touching father/daughter relationships that I've ever encountered in fiction.

A historical novel set in Depression and World War II-era New York City, Manhattan Beach begins with almost 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan accompanying her rakish father, Eddie, on a mission to a wealthy gangster. A few years later, Eddie disappears after abruptly walking out on his family with no warning or explanation.

Has he been killed? Is he in hiding?  Why did he abandon a family he ostensibly loved? Plucky, brave Anna devotes herself to the search for her missing father with the ingenuity and zeal of the detectives she reads about in fiction.

I reviewed Manhattan Beach for… show more.

Forget all those self-help tomes and Cosmo articles—this is the book that will improve your relationships.

It may seem deranged to admit loving a book, which is, arguably, one of the coldest I’ve ever read, but this slim 128-page exercise in pitiless dread made me a better person. After reading it one afternoon, I emerged shaken and disturbed. Ever since then, I have tried never to argue with my spouse on long road trips. Or argue, period. I’m not kidding.

There is a connection to major Poe themes here, but I will leave that a mystery. As the title implies, a vanishing occurs, and the novel is about the void that opens up afterward. Damn, just writing that sentence has me shaking. Go hug your loved ones. 

I read books for all ages, because good stories transcend age, gender, race, etc. I love books that teach me something new, especially those with smart, sassy, and determined female protagonists. Maya and the Rising Dark is a delightful middle-grade read, with an empowered 12-year-old girl leading the way. Rich with diversity, I loved journeying into the mythology of the Orisha gods with Maya and her friends