Here are 51 books that Teeth and Tongue Landscape fans have personally recommended if you like
Teeth and Tongue Landscape.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I do not remember a time when I wasn’t captivated by stories about adolescence. This was the case when I myself was a teenager—when I sought in these overwrought sagas the sort of sentimental melodrama that eluded the banality of my own life—but curiously it’s no less true at thirty, for reasons that are fundamentally the same but somehow more urgent. Becoming an adult is an exercise in hardening; to grow up is to forget what it’s like to be beholden to one’s own autobiographical romance.The following titles offer a respite from the cynicism that is adulthood; as a writer and a human, I'm forever in their debt.
“Sentimental” is maybe the last word you’d use to describe Ellis’ fiction, but Less Than Zero is an elegant proof that form needn’t follow function.
For all the sparseness of its language and pitilessness of its characters, there is a profound empathy for its narrator Clay, a pensive college freshman who’s returned home to California for Christmas break. Clay expends no outward moral judgment on the depravity of those who populate his very Gothic Los Angeles, but we come to intuitively understand his reticence as less a disposition than a defense.
It is precisely in how he understates his pain that we feel just how total it is.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York Times They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches,…
Books that make me feel uncomfortable are usually the ones that have stuck with me most over the years. There’s just something so alluring to me about an author who can effectively bring out that feeling in readers. When I started writing stories, I wanted to make my readers squirm – I wanted to layer the guts and gore with underlying psychological themes that made the violence and trauma that much more impactful. These books that I mentioned acted almost as study guides on how to blend shocking violence with themes of loneliness, depression, and rage. If you layer these correctly, you’re going to effectively be able to make your reader uncomfortable and your stories memorable.
This isn’t a zombie book. It’s a book about isolation, depression, rage, and escapism. This is the book I continue to come back to and is always the first one I recommend for someone looking for a new book to read. There’s a slow ramping of violence in this book, married perfectly to the main character’s evolution – resulting in some truly bleak scenes.
“Shocking, emotional, and punctuated by moments of brutal savagery, SLOWLY WE ROT contains some of the most frightening scenes in recent horror fiction. If you enjoy zombie stories, you’ll love this book. If you believe there’s no life left in the zombie subgenre, Bryan Smith is about to prove you wrong. SLOWLY WE ROT is a searing, stunning triumph.”--Jonathan Janz, author of The Nightmare Girl and Savage Species
Long after the zombie apocalypse wiped out most of the human race, a young man named Noah resides in a remote mountain cabin. Several years have passed since he last saw another…
Ever since reading Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in high school, I’ve always appreciated books and stories that can tackle dark subject matter in a completely deadpan way. The creator knows what they’re doing is kind of a joke and they’re inviting you along for the ride. I enjoy reading books where I think the writer had a really good time writing it, even if that means occasionally torturing the reader.
High Life is pitch black Hollywood noir. It’s one of those rare books that starts out dark and just keeps getting darker and more disturbing. Stokoe outdoes himself on nearly every page. This book was shocking and eye-opening, even for me. I’ve read a lot of extreme horror and I think this might outdo nearly all of them. Stokoe manages to fully flesh out the characters, rendering them terrifying, absurd, and profoundly sad, and does so with a style that is compulsively readable.
Hollywood. The City of Dreams at the end of the nineties. Jack has one ambition – to get famous. He doesn’t care how. He just wants to be like the people he sees in tabloid magazines and on TV: Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Tom and Nicole, Arnie, Bruce, Sly.... But the desire for fame has a dark side and he finds himself in a world of drugs and crime, whores, snuff shows, incest, deceit and despair. When his wife is found dead – murdered and disemboweled – and the search for her killer leads him to the femme fatale of…
Books that make me feel uncomfortable are usually the ones that have stuck with me most over the years. There’s just something so alluring to me about an author who can effectively bring out that feeling in readers. When I started writing stories, I wanted to make my readers squirm – I wanted to layer the guts and gore with underlying psychological themes that made the violence and trauma that much more impactful. These books that I mentioned acted almost as study guides on how to blend shocking violence with themes of loneliness, depression, and rage. If you layer these correctly, you’re going to effectively be able to make your reader uncomfortable and your stories memorable.
Forget everything you know about the horror genre. This book is one of the most overwhelming, disgusting things I’ve ever read, and physically gagged multiple times while reading it. If you’re not familiar with extreme splatterpunk, brace yourself. Nothing can prepare you for the all-out gore, guts, and absolutely insane depravity found in this book. There’s one scene in here that will never leave me. You’ll know it when you get to it. Oh, and it’s kind of about a pig.
Innovators long have fascinated me. I helped launch a clean-energy startup and advance legislation promoting environmental entrepreneurs. I’ve written biographies of Nikola Tesla (who gave us electric motors, radio, and remote controls) Jacques Cousteau (inventor of the Aqua Lung and master of undersea filming) and George Fabyan (pioneer of modern cryptography and acoustics), as well as a history of electricity (From Edison to Enron). I love reading (and writing) about ingenious and industrious individuals striving to achieve their dreams.
Here’s another engaging tale of the entrepreneurs and renegades fighting to bring lab-grown, cell-cultured meat to the world. I appreciated Purdy’s description of this competition as an “edible space race,” and unlike my other highlighted book, Billion Dollar Burger highlights the “difficult regulatory landscape” concocted by Big Meat lobbyists trying to keep protein alternatives off the shelves. He outlines ways to overcome that opposition and create healthier, more sustainable, and more humane food options.
A fast-paced, gripping insider account of the entrepreneurs and renegades racing to bring lab-grown meat to the world.
The trillion-dollar meat industry is one of our greatest environmental hazards; it pollutes more than all the world's fossil-fuel-powered cars. Global animal agriculture is responsible for deforestation, soil erosion and more emissions than air travel, paper mills and coal mining combined. It also depends on the slaughter of more than 60 billion animals per year, a number that is only increasing as the global appetite for meat swells. The whole world seems to be sleepwalking into a food crisis.
My life's work has been to educate and encourage others to take food into their own hands with the intention of reclaiming real nutrition and declaring independence from the conventional food system. I'm humbled by the fact that my DIY Kombucha business has been successful, and it means that enough people are realizing the importance of intentionality when considering the food and drink we put in our bodies. I'd say that our motto of "Changing the world, one gut at a time" accurately represents what we're doing every day.
With veganism and vegetarianism on the rise,
it's books like these that make an important case for keeping meat, especially
beef, in our diet. While reputable science is the backbone of the book, it also
takes a look at the ethical arguments for keeping local cattle ranching alive,
the use of natural fertilizers produced by farm animals, and delicious beef on
our plates.
We're told that if we care about our health-or our planet-eliminating red meat from our diets is crucial. That beef is bad for us and cattle farming is horrible for the environment. But science says otherwise.
Beef is framed as the most environmentally destructive and least healthy of meats. We're often told that the only solution is to reduce or quit red meat entirely. But despite what anti-meat groups, vegan celebrities, and some health experts say, plant-based agriculture is far from a perfect solution.
In Sacred Cow, registered dietitian Diana Rodgers and former research biochemist and New York Times bestselling…
Innovators long have fascinated me. I helped launch a clean-energy startup and advance legislation promoting environmental entrepreneurs. I’ve written biographies of Nikola Tesla (who gave us electric motors, radio, and remote controls) Jacques Cousteau (inventor of the Aqua Lung and master of undersea filming) and George Fabyan (pioneer of modern cryptography and acoustics), as well as a history of electricity (From Edison to Enron). I love reading (and writing) about ingenious and industrious individuals striving to achieve their dreams.
I first “met” Shapiro during one of his fascinating TEDx presentations. His book only adds to my fascination with the race among entrepreneurs to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat—without slaughtering animals. Shapiro offers a front-row seat to that race to create enough food for the world’s ever-growing, ever-hungry population. Meet the innovators offering clean meat—real, actual meat grown (or brewed) from animal cells.
Paul Shapiro gives you a front-row seat for the wild story of the race to create and commercialize cleaner, safer, sustainable meat—real meat—without the animals. From the entrepreneurial visionaries to the scientists’ workshops to the big business boardrooms—Shapiro details that quest for clean meat and other animal products and examines the debate raging around it.
Since the dawn of Homo sapiens some quarter million years ago, animals have satiated our species’ desire for meat. But with a growing global population and demand for meat, eggs, dairy, leather, and more, raising such massive numbers of farm animals is woefully inefficient and…
Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by scary movies, creature features, and books that tell tales of the strange and supernatural. Years later, my own books explored those things that scare us, from monsters of the deep and the ways we die to the mythology of blood. Research for those books led me into realms that explained why we fear the things we do. Many of those fears are found in horror novels, which provide an endless source of fright, release, and entertainment within their haunting pages. I can’t think of any other genre of writing that takes its readers on such a joyously terrifying ride.
There isn’t another horror novel written in the past ten years that scratched at my brain as much as this one. Baztericca’s brilliance lies in her writing a story that no one else has thought of before. The subject matter–humans have run out of animals to eat–seems like an obvious one.
What is striking about the book is that it is told in an almost clinical fashion, observing horror with a detachment that is precise and unemotional. The plot follows one man through the routines of his life, but it’s the world in which he exists that haunts you. By the time I finished, it was easy to imagine the world of “Tender Is The Flesh” becoming all too real.
It all happened so quickly. First, animals became infected with the virus and their meat became poisonous. Then governments initiated the Transition. Now, 'special meat' - human meat - is legal.
Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - only no one calls them that. He works with numbers, consignments, processing. One day, he's given a gift to seal a deal: a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her in his barn, tied up, a problem to be disposed of later.
But she haunts Marcos. Her trembling body, and watchful gaze, seem to understand. And soon, he becomes…
I love fish—to look at and read about—not to eat! Fish are unlike other pets. You can’t hold them, or pet them, and you certainly can’t “play” with them the way you can other pets. But for some reason, just looking at them makes me laugh. And because fish don’t say much besides “glug” (although some kinds sing and grunt) we need to imagine what they are thinking and feeling which makes for funny and surprising stories. And, yes, I have pet goldfish: an orange one, Norman, and a black fantail named Knot.
Looking for vegetarian options? This Reading Rainbow selection, published in 1980, is a masterpiece in story and art! Louis, who was born into a family of butchers, hates meat. But he loves watching fish! After his parents die, Louis inherits the butcher business. One night, Louis, who is miserable being a butcher, dreams he is a fish. When he wakes, he discovers he is a fish. A salmon. A very happy salmon who swims gleefully ever after. The story is a springboard for discussions on the importance of being true to yourself.
I adore cats and am anxious to improve their welfare. Late in life, I took a second degree and a masters in animal behaviour to learn more about feline welfare. People are now researching cats’ needs and discovering more about their welfare. I passionately want to get the message out there to ordinary cat lovers. Purrlease, the more you learn about cats, the more your cats will benefit.
I chose this book because I recently adopted elderly Mr. Spangles.
He has helped me understand that I have never taken feline old age seriously: so this book was one that I personally needed to read. For all of us, our cats will end up being old (we hope) so this book will help us know how we can give them the best life possible.
It’s not a read-through book, but one that is best read in sections.
Interested in
societal collapse,
climate fiction,
and
teeth?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
societal collapse,
climate fiction,
and
teeth.
