100 books like Showdown

While I don’t always love mainstream classics, The Giver is a classic for a reason, and, in my opinion, it rightfully deserves its place on the shelf.

I love the emotional draw of this book and the invitation to think deeper about the meaning of life and the burden it can take on us. I love books that challenge us to think about the bigger concepts of life and all they entail: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This book was my favorite book for most of my life, so it holds a special place in my heart. It was only bumped by Well Witched (Verdigris Deep). 

This is the book I read over and over to my two children. One of whom loved to act out being the indomitable Bilbo Baggins. The prose is beautiful, the plot is tight, the adventure is fun, the wonder is wondrous. Who doesn’t love forest elves? And the world-building is amazing. I guess we all know that was Tolkien’s specialty!

I will argue with anyone that this is the best story Tolkien ever wrote. The prose is beautiful to read. It doesn’t wander, it doesn’t get off track, there’s a humor, and let’s not forget the dragon, and all packed into 310 pages!

I almost didn’t include this Newbery Medal winner book by Louis Sachar on my list of magical middle-grade books set in the real world. Is it really magical? Is it set in the real world? With a fourteen-year-old protagonist, Stanley Yelnats, is it even middle-grade?

Here’s why my love for this book won out. Sachar weaves together a quirky, complex story, just interconnected enough to qualify as “magical.” The setting, a juvenile prison camp with a sadistic warden, is “real-world” enough. And Stanley, though emotionally young for fourteen, is a kind, thoughtful kid well worth rooting for.

About halfway through reading, its darkness almost prompted me to lay this book aside. I’m so glad I didn’t. In the end, its themes of perseverance, hope, and redemption shone through.

One of the most popular children’s book series of the twentieth century, all of the books in the series feature the author speaking directly to the reader, detailing past events, reminding the reader of personality traits of the characters, and providing the reader with background details about the world the reader finds themselves in.

More so than the other books on the list, it’s clear the voice is that of C.S. Lewis though, rather than a seemingly separate narrator.

The North Shore is surfing’s mecca. I’ve been making the annual pilgrimage since my early teens. It’s a heavy place — the waves, the people, the vibes.

Author Chas Smith throws himself into the task of writing unflinchingly about people, places, and things that most people are afraid to go near. There’s tremendous humor. There’s a sexy, ‘cinematic’ car. I fell in love with Chas as much as I did with the North Shore and its hairball beefiness.

Ron Berger is a global treasure in the field of education. He is the guiding spirit behind the remarkable EL Education schools – they used to be called Expeditionary Learning schools – in the USA. An Ethic of Excellence was the first book of Ron’s I encountered, and it blew me away. With years of hard-won experience, he has learned that all students, give the right kind of support, are capable of producing genuinely high-quality work, and he knows how to teach in a way that makes that possibility a reality. Ron says, “when we are grown up, we won’t be judged by our test scores, but by the quality of both our character and our work”, and he gets students ready for that world. His schools get all their students to good colleges, and they get good degrees. The quality of Ron’s work is truly inspiring.

Until this book, I didn’t realize we live in a culture that applauds starting, growing, and flowering while turning a blind eye to ending, decaying, and dying.

Harald Welzer starts out by calculating how humans turn more living matter on Earth into dead matter each year. We don’t seem able to see that this is a sure way to stop living. Having survived a stroke, he asks the question: "What life do I want to have lived?" This is the framework of the book.

Along the way, he shares wonderful examples of (artistic) endeavors that attend to the ending–of a factory’s life, of insects killed by pesticides, of cathedrals that can only be built by accepting that some of them will crumble before they are finished.

Twelve-year-old Emma Graham she lives with her chef mother, older brother, Will, in the once-grand resort, Hotel Paradise. Emma works as a waitress in the hotel restaurant. Often left to her own devices, Emma learns about a forty-year-old mystery involving another twelve-year-old girl, Mary-Evelyn, who drowned in Spirit Lake. Emma is convinced the girl was murdered and sets out to prove it. Hotel Paradise is the first in a series. I love the plot thread that is woven through all four books as Emma uncovers one secret after another in her quest for the truth. But the book is about more than solving a mystery, it’s about Emma discovering who she is and her purpose in life. 

I don’t think I like Ghost World, but it belongs on this list. When I think of Clowes’ work I think of caricature, but the environments in Ghost World pull most of the storytelling weight. You can hear the hum of the fluorescents in the grocery store and the wind between buildings on an empty street.

Cinema of Paradox is a captivating journey into the intricate world of French cinema during the challenging years of the Nazi occupation of France. This book offers a unique window into a period when the French film industry not only survived but flourished, producing enduring classics like Carne's Children of Paradise.

Evelyn Ehrlich's meticulous exploration guides us through the tapestry of French filmmaking from the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the liberation of France in 1944. What sets this book apart is its comprehensive approach, delving into the political, cultural, and social context that shaped the cinematic landscape in occupied France. It also sheds light on the occupiers' perspective, revealing the surprising encouragement from the Nazis for the French to maintain their high cinematic standards for their own purposes.

Though the book doesn’t approach the problem of veiled representations of Jewish characters in French cinema, Cinema of… show more.