100 books like Subdivision

In this genre-bending novel, Ricky Rice is working as a janitor in an upstate New York bus station when he’s sent a ticket to Burlington, Vermont, with a note that reminds him of a promise he made years ago—a promise no one else could know about because he made it only to himself. There are a variety of crimes in the book, as well as several mysteries that unfold—not the least Ricky’s quest to understand the organization where he finds himself working.

As he does, he must sift through his past, including the narratives he’s grown up with and that he has used to understand and survive his world. I won’t tell you what the big machine is or how it works, but I loved this book and Ricky and the world he’s trying to (re)make. 

A reader begins a book only to discover that the same sixteen pages are printed over and over—so begins a journey across the beginning of novels and through continents. This is a book that breaks rules and taught me how to read it page by page—and I love that feeling.

Though first published in 1979, Calvino’s novel is remarkably timely with respect to the impact of data science and artificial intelligence on literature, as well as the “author’s position with regard to Trends of Contemporary Thought and Problems That Demand a Solution.”

Some might not consider this detective fiction, but I think—like The Aspern Papers (James) and The Savage Detectives (Bolaño)—the quest to find an obscure or missing text (or artist) fits within the genre and, indeed, is one of my favorite kinds of detective stories. 

This book is a traditional, hardboiled mystery about a young poet that goes missing at a writing program in Australia…except the whole thing is written in verse. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, mournful, insightful, and full of sinister characters like poetry professors who go on too long at readings.

It’s the kind of book you can read in an afternoon, though certain lines and images from the various poems have stayed with me long after. It also includes an Australian dictionary at the back with words like “lairy,” which means “visually loud; excruciatingly colorful.” What a word. Don’t tell the poets. 

The crime scene generally occurs near the start of a mystery—something incomprehensible and threatening the reader and detective will endeavor to explain by the book’s end. Sometimes, though, the world is the crime. In almost painfully beautiful language, this book sets us down in a frightening fairytale forest. We’re traveling with a failed detective looking for a runaway wife, but much of the investigative work emanates from the reader attempting—and often failing—to break through the atmosphere, through the visceral but unmappable feelings of danger and loss the text produces in order to find something that can be named, explained, neutered.

This is the kind of book that affected me sidewise; I never saw it coming, but it got me over and over again. The Spanish edition includes illustrations, the English a suggested playlist.

She’s either possessed by a particularly vicious spirit or just plain insane. Either way, I’ve never been able to forget the terrible things she does, although I read this so long ago, I can’t remember her name. It’s not gory; it’s eerie, and most of the horror is suggested rather than shown, meaning our own imaginations contribute to the impact. Ghost story or psychological horror, you decide.

Faith Ringgold, an acclaimed Black artist who grew up in Harlem, tells about her childhood and explains the process of creating her extraordinary painted quilts such as Tar Beach, Sonny’s Quilt, and Dancing at the Louvre. Each tells a story. “When I was starting out,” she wrote, “there were hardly any galleries that showed the work of black women, or women at all.”  Her quilts are now housed in museums and public collections nationwide. Full-color reproductions of her work, as well as vintage photos, illustrate this inspiring book.

Who hasn’t felt the urge to run away and start over at some point? And who hasn’t been devastated that the world we finally return to has been irrevocably altered?

In this book, Munro paints portraits of relatable, believable women who are dissatisfied with life and love and yearn for the better. Three stories focus on the same character, Juliet, who finds real life never matches her repressed expectations. She does a wonderful job of making us feel the frustrations, disappointments, and monumental significance of the mundane in our bones.

I love the part in this book when Germano is preparing to go to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball, and many guys are stunned to learn she will wear her uniform, not a dress. These male Marines believe a woman should attend the November gala dressed not like the Marine she is but as a civilian.

I’ve witnessed this attitude elsewhere. I was a freshman at Washington & Lee University when the school, which has been around since 1749, finally admitted women. The old guard wasn’t happy to see them, but doubling the brain pool made the school smarter. Women are about 10 percent of the Marine Corps these days, so I kept thinking about Washington & Lee as I read Germano’s book.

Even though this is a work of anthropology, it also provides unique insights into rural history. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Margery Wolf did fieldwork in a poor village in rural Taiwan. At that time, modernization was just beginning to affect the countryside, so most aspects of village life were still traditional. Although Taiwanese society differed from the mainland in certain ways, in most aspects of life there carried on the traditions of Chinese village life. This book looks at rural society from a female perspective. Due to poverty, both women and men had few options. They did whatever it took to survive. Many of the people the author interviewed seem very discontent with their lives, but they usually had no other choice.

I slid into the grandeur and opulence of The Savoy with my imaginary suitcase in hand. Set in the 1920s and featuring London’s heyday after the devastation of WWI, it is easy to escape with this novel.

I roamed the city streets in my mind’s eye and watched with anticipation as Dolly set her sights on a life in the theatre. I love a good mystery, and this one had me dashing, right alongside Dolly, as she tried to outrun her past and make a future for herself with only her dreams to fuel her. I adore Hazel Gaynor’s novels, and this book did not disappoint.