79 books like Serena

It centers on and celebrates becoming—molting from one skin to another. For Ishmael this is a transition from a tired and limiting worldview to something fresh and alive.

The “bosom buddies” at the heart of the novel, Ishmael and Queequeg, seem comprised of opposites, but Ishmael’s etherealizing is grounded by Queequeg’s pragmatic ingenuity in ways that quiet and expand the young pagan-Presbyterian’s buzzing, anxious mind. Theirs is a friendship of succor, probably sex, and survival—all of it shadowed by the delusional obsessions of their mad captain.

Remember a few years ago when this book was everywhere? I do! And it was deserved—Delia Owens created a memorable heroine in Kya, a loner who lives in the tidal lands of the North Carolina coast.

Owens, a zoologist, calls upon her impressive knowledge of flora and fauna as she sets up a murder mystery, and the novel's finale is both satisfying and memorable. I’ve never read another book quite like this one.

Susan Ward joins her husband, a mining engineer, at a mercury mine near San Jose, California, coming west from New York.

She is an illustrator and writer and, as her grandson tells it, never completely adjusts to life in the West. We get much description of California, however, in the layered times in which her story is told. She and her husband settle in Grass Valley, where her husband works for quartz and gold mines.

Wallace Stegner’s use of Mary Hallock Foote’s memoir and diaries as the basis for this story is still controversial. Foote lived from 1847 to 1938 and wrote beautifully, illuminating life during this time. The controversy makes the story even more intriguing.

When Pat Conroy died in 2016, I knew what the late Southern gentleman-writer, Lewis Grizzard, meant when he wrote, Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself.

Pat Conroy understood the Southern male in ways that only fellow Southerners can know in all its fullness. I felt less Southern at his passing than I had felt in a long time. Pat Conroy was my better self as a Southern male. He understood me without knowing me.

The Prince of Tides protagonist, Tom Wingo, is undoubtedly filled with the simplicity and complexity, goodness and evil, connection to history that describe the southern male who often will define being Southern as a fundamental personal value.

Want some insight into the Southern male, and who wouldn't? The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy is where one should start.

Although it is not set in England, it is clearly about England, the English, and the war.

As with the other books mentioned so far, I read them upon release before later seeing the subsequent films—and sadly, much of the imagery from my mind has been overwritten with often brilliant cinematography, which is never as affecting as what you imagine. I just recall that, at the time, I saw ultra-vivid scenes from the page that transported me, and that became a prime aim of mine to replicate. 

I found the prose sparse but poetic, albeit by then, I’d already fallen in love with slightly more complex sentence structures. Still, I marvel at how Ondaatje wrote such a dense and affecting novel in only 320 pages. 

Dark—ironic with the title—tale of what it means to be authentic while coming to terms with Southern heritage. There is much to understand when you see that light—the American South in its glory and graphic tumble. Christian allegory and gothic narrative drive this book. The characters are iconic and honest—largely marginalized. Written in 1932, this novel set in that time, has several insights for present day and how to tell stories and learn from the South.

When talking with younger writers, sooner or later I ask them to name a writer or a book they can point to and say, “That’s the goal. That’s what I care about. That’s what I want to do.” If I asked myself this question, one of my answers would be Karen Joy Fowler’s first novel, a pitch-perfect account of 19th-century America and the mysterious title character, a weird woman whose weirdness confirms how weird everything else already is.

I love any book written by Carl Hiaasen for the simple fact that he’s not boring, and of course, his writing, though somewhat politically incorrect, makes me laugh. I can forget about everything when reading one of his books.

In this novel, there’s a twist that the bad guy doesn’t think about when he pushes his wife off a cruise ship. The book is seriously hilarious. If you want to disappear into some Floridian madness, you’ll want to read this book.

I credit John Hart for inspiring me to write; I think this is his best work. I love the balance between gritty, literary-style writing and an action-filled, fast-paced plot.

As a reader, I found that balance to be exquisite, especially as the POVs shift from a child's mind to troubled adults and the investigation into the missing child.

It contains all the elements that make a great novel. I’ve only read one novel twice, and this was the one. 

This atlas, a beautiful but money-losing coffee table book from the book-publishing arm of Southern Living, appeared just as a new CEO ordered the company’s book people to think of themselves “more in the direct-marketing business, as opposed to being a book publisher.” (This strategy led eventually to How to Cook for Your Man and Still Want to Look at Him Naked.) It was probably treated as a write-off from the beginning and not marketed at all, which is a shame, because it is much more than a handsome ornament for your living room. Three geographers and a historian, all from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, produced a solidly-researched and profoundly informative work of cartographic excellence, one that repays both casual browsing and close study. (Some used book sites incorrectly show a different cover, but don’t worry about that.)