Fans pick 100 books like Riddley Walker

Cormac McCarthy does the impossible in this book—he writes an emotionally satisfying, literary-minded travelogue of horrors. It shatters the reader but then lifts them up with its beautifully wrought prose.

Be patient: the novel gets brutally dark before the light.

Legends are made of powerful stuff, and nothing has greater power than a total flip in perspective. I still recall the gut-punch end to this book, though it’s been decades since I read it. 

Robert Neville is a vampire hunter by day and a tormented man by night. As seemingly the only living human in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, Robert faces depression, isolation, alcoholism, and his undead neighbor, Ben Cortman, who appears outside Robert’s front door each night chanting, "Come out, Neville."

But when Robert is finally captured, and the truth of his situation is revealed, he gets a good look at the world through the eyes of the undead and is forced to ask himself, who am I? What have I become? 

Le Guin is my favorite author, and all of her power is on display in this science fiction novel about an emissary who visits a planet (Gethen) where, most of the time, the people have no sex differentiation. Sex traits only become apparent in the two days per month of “kemmer,” and Gethenians may kemmer as male or female (and which is not completely predictable).

Because of Le Guin’s skill as a novelist, the implications of this arrangement are explored in subtle but powerful ways, more as the warp and weft of the cultural background than the main feature of the plot (although it is definitely significant). The book shows how deeply gender and sex infuse our own culture through the contrast with Gethen. The bonus is that this is a masterpiece of a novel, one often mentioned on lists of the best science fiction novels of all time. Le… show more.

This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.

As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb. 

No list of crows and ravens in fiction can ignore this book. While I don’t like crows being depicted as the bad guys, I do love King’s depiction of crows throughout this thriller as powerful and intelligent. However, those abilities come in part or maybe wholly because the crows are in service to the Devil. 

In this ultimate Good vs. Evil story, villain Randall Flagg is a shape-shifter who sometimes appears in the form of a crow. Crows have other, somewhat vague, and therefore scary roles in the saga. Sometimes, the crows come across as spies for Flagg’s army, and sometimes, they seem to appear as harbingers foreshadowing an appearance by Flagg. The birds in this book definitely lean sinister, but hey, it is a Stephen King novel, after all.

Where to start? Lord of the Rings contains countless unlikely heroes. From Frodo and Sam, simple hobbits who have to undergo an impossible task to save the entire world, to Theoden or Faramir, the books are full of tales of valor and strength as the good of the world strives to overcome an impossible evil.

The books are written with the key theme that even ordinary people can do great good, and that is reflected in the Hobbits. They are an ordinary race, unimportant for most of history, but they possess the courage and the heart to save their world. I love these books above all else, and the characters are all inspiring and loveable.

I loved Mary Norton’s book for its narrative hook: size. This is Gulliver’s Lilliput without the satiric political overtones. The main characters are a miniature Edwardian family called the Clocks because they live underneath one. The father, Pod, his wife, Homily, and their daughter, Arietty, are so small they fit under the floorboards of a human-sized house.

All their ingenuity is devoted to adapting their smallness to the world of Big People while preventing them from being “seen” by them. Everything they use must be “borrowed” from the bigger world and adapted to their circumstances. Matchboxes become dressers and chests of drawers; postage stamps serve as wall hangings and pictures; a thimble does duty as a soup tureen, while an actual tureen becomes a bathtub.

The discovery of a fully furnished doll’s house has become an occasion for wholesale redecoration. A crisis comes when Arietty is “seen” by the human… show more.

With E.R. Eddison’s book, the hook is identity. I love that the major characters are all avatars, manifestations of each other, and that they don’t know it is the underlying mystery Eddison wants the reader to discover without being told.

All of his men derive from the godlike Mezentius, and all his women derive from the Goddess. Their lives and characters intertwine the real and imaginary worlds of Earth and Zimizmvia. The human Lady Mary is the real-world avatar of the Zimiamvian goddess Fiorinda, who is the lover of Duke Barganax, who is the otherworld personification of the real-world Lessingham, widower of Lady Mary and lover of the Zimizmvian princess Antiope.

If you start to get confused, you are on the right track! Eddison aims to confuse, mystify, and enter you all simultaneously.

I value this book as a lesson in engrossing story-building.

While ostensibly 'a young Egypt read,’ this novel is a consuming and thrilling read for anyone who loves intrigue and historical adventure. It's about a slave girl hungry for her freedom. Mara is a spy story of dangerous love and a central character torn by a monstrous dilemma. 

It's a gem to discover.

Annette Gordon-Reed’s book introduces readers to the enslaved family of a Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson.

What I love about this book is that it upends the traditional picture of Jefferson while neither vilifying nor excusing him. It’s a full picture of a complicated man and the fascinating people who were part of his life. After all, the historian’s task is not to make heroes or villains but to show the full complexity of human beings.

At the center of the story is Sally Hemings, the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife and the mother of some of Jefferson’s children. The book also shows how a careful historian can interpret and evaluate different kinds of evidence, including documents, oral history, and DNA.