100 books like Spy of the First Person

When I read The Remember Balloons, I thought about my aunt Luella and cried. Like the grandpa in the story, her memories had left her.

The illustrator portrayed memories as different colored balloons, each containing a special moment. Grandpa and the child’s parents had lots of balloons, but as time went by, Grandpa’s balloons floated away. Grandpa even lost the balloon of a memory he and the child shared, the time they fished off the dock.

When Grandpa no longer remembered him, the child’s balloons increased. He now held all Grandpa’s memories. He would tell Grandpa his stories. This book explains memory loss to a child in a way they can understand. The imagery with the balloons spark interest and the story is simple, sweet, and honest.

The prequel to this book had a big influence on me when writing my own book, as I wanted to explore how something so awful, like my trials and Terry’s slating process, could be introduced and the reasoning behind that. What I really love about Terry’s book is the science included. Slated explores wiping someone’s brain completely and giving them a blank slate. Her other books explore things like dark matter, think tanks (literally, the brains are in tanks), and global warming. Slated is where I started and is a series I read every year. While the subject matter is dark, it has become a comfort series, and Kyla a comfort character, for me. 

Addie Ramirez, the main character of Tumble, is the kind of girl who takes charge of her situation—whether it’s searching for her father or meeting new people or speaking her mind about wrestling.

I felt such a personal connection to Addie; she loves her stepdad, but she still wonders about her father and embarks on a journey to find him and get to know him. And along the way, she meets her wrestling family and learns firsthand how powerful women wrestlers can be.

I loved that readers get to see powerful women in a sport traditionally dominated by men!

It is a truism that Science Fiction dates itself. SF stories that were written only a few years previous often fail to foresee technological innovations ̶ cell phones, GPS, gene-splicing ̶ that seem obvious and inevitable to hindsight-blessed present-day readers. Those disconcerted by such, let us call them “backwards anachronisms,” should find Quantum Thief a welcome relief for decades to come, because the novel is set so far in the future that hi-tech things like, say, cell phones seem quaint curios out of far-distant days of yore. Long-distance communications in Quantum Thief are effected by something more like telepathy (although the word is never used).

“Quantum” is the operative term in this novel, make no mistake.

Be forewarned: Quantum Thief is chock-full of coined terminology. But have no fear. You have a choice. Either use the online glossary - or you can just read for the story and absorb the… show more.

Focusing in the main on the psychology of memory, in this excellent book Kurt Danziger argues that conceptually memory has changed considerably over time, not least because of the shifting historical contexts in which it has been applied. The book covers such critical issues as different kinds of memory, memory and metaphor, the cultivation of memory, and memory and truth. Danziger’s contention throughout the book is that memory and remembering are ineluctably social, and any sound understanding of them needs to account for how various historical factors and cultural practices have shaped and helped constitute them. 

If you are really serious about reading up on current research on human memory, then you can do no better than to dive into this excellent textbook written by three prominent British researchers.

The material probably takes more effort to master than the facts and ideas presented in other books on this list, but the reward is an up-to-date understanding of theories and findings in this fast-moving research field, including many studies of how memories are represented in the brain.

The book is lavishly illustrated, and contains many references to real-life situations, thereby relating the theoretical ideas to everyday life. The book is authoritative yet very accessible and entertaining. Highly recommended!

This is one of the best critical surveys of the relationship between memory and history I have encountered. Geoffrey Cubitt is concerned with memory as both personal and social, along with the various dynamics between them. The book is interdisciplinary in conception and operation, exploring how history and memory inform one another in complementary and contradictory ways, and how both cross and re-cross varying scales of past/present relations. Regardless of whether readers approach this book from the perspective of memory or history, they will find it a comprehensive assessment of their complex interaction.

Giordano Bruno was a great memory master who refined a meditation technique he learned from Ramon Llull. The technique involves using a "memory wheel." Different parts of the wheel contain problems, and an inner wheel contains solutions. Bruno gives many tips on how to use memory techniques so that you can meditate using the memory wheels.

Although very challenging, John Michael Greer's translation is clear and the illustrations help make your use of the memory techniques easy. The book also offers fantastic ideas for developing the best possible mindset for pursuing your meditation and learning goals over the long term.

If you love a smart, self-referential book in the mode of A Series of Unfortunate Events, you will love Adam Perry’s book. Right from the beginning, the book speaks directly to the reader with warnings about what’s ahead: monsters and villains and horrible deaths. But instead of being a Stephen King horror novel for the middle grade set, the book has a fairy tale-meets-Thursday Next vibe. The protagonist, Oliver, steals books from the library, but since no one reads anymore, he’s not overly concerned about his thievery. That is, until he steals a book that is also being sought by the Pribbles, two inventors that have devised a set of goggles to steal the book directly from Oliver’s mind. Mayhem and shenanigans ensue, and it’s all just delightful. 

Boy Toy is a book that stands out for me because it tackles a rarely discussed subject in young adult literature—the sexual abuse of boys. In this case, the protagonist, Josh, was molested by a teacher when he was younger. Now that he is about to graduate from high school, the repercussions of that abuse, along with the everyday stress he deals with, is coming back to haunt him. Lyga handles this subject matter in an unflinching and realistic way, which can be uncomfortable at times. That said, Boy Toy is definitely a worthwhile, original read.