Here are 100 books that The Castle fans have personally recommended if you like
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There are as many ways of thinking about cities as there are people who live in them, and by the end of this century, it is clear we will all be living in cities of one size or another. Cities are in effect the crucibles where all technological and cultural change takes place. They are the drivers of prosperity while also the harbingers of chaos, decline, and war. What makes them fascinating is that as soon as we begin to peel back the layers that compose the city, our understanding of them begins to change: they metamorphose into different conceptions where there is no agreement as to what they are or what they might become.
Imagining different cities from different viewpoints in history is the focus of Calvino’s wonderful set of vignettes between Marco Polo from his 13th-century travelogue and Kublai Kahn as they explore different ways they see cities that lie along the Silk Road. Weaving fact into fiction, they point up the essential logic of how cities are formed and how they evolve. What we remember, how we perceive these memories, and the size and shape of cities are all ideas which is the canvas on which Calvino describes the many cities of our imagination.
This is a wonderful set of stories–you can dip into them and read them if you are on the subway or waiting in the dentist's surgery or anywhere where you get a free moment. The stories are memorable.
In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'
I am a lifelong lover of books. As a child, one of my most prized possessions was my library card. It gave me entrance to a world of untold wonders from the past, present, and future. My love of reading sparked my imagination and led me to my own fledgling writing efforts. I come from a family of storytellers, my mother being the chief example. She delighted us with stories from her childhood and her maturation in the rural South. She was an excellent mimic, which added realism and humor to every tale.
This book is part odyssey, part ghost story, and part passion play. Toni Morrison is one of the patron saints of American literature whom I was fortunate to discover at an early age. This is her masterpiece, an example of what is possible when a writer’s heart, mind, and spirit are aligned.
The fact that the unfathomable sacrifice around which Beloved is imagined is based upon an actual event speaks volumes about the innate horrors of slavery. In matters of race, America’s skeletons are buried in shallow graves.
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
Quoting Aristotle when writing about yourself probably comes off as pretentious, but looking back at how I became a writer, his idea of how good stories must be “surprising yet inevitable” rings true: from a childhood split in rural Bavaria, where dark German fairytales sparked my love for books to experiments with lucid dreaming that ended in a loss of reality, my ending up as a game writer and novelist focused on the mind and dreams does sound somewhat inevitable—even if it took me some detours and distractions to get there. Now, I couldn’t be happier. 😊
I found out about this book when a friend urged me not to buy this book because it messed her up. Needless to say, I bought and read it right away, and even though it took me a long time with frequent pauses to get through this behemoth of a book, I understand why my friend said what she said.
Even beyond the striking visuals and the slowly escalating typographic madness (just google it and you’ll know what I mean) a feeling of dread suffuses this novel that stayed with me long after I put it down.
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…
Throughout my life, I’ve moved around quite a bit, and in the process, members of my family and I have encountered many wildly strange people and things. The universe itself is a wild place when you delve into the more exotic aspects: black holes, quantum physics, and measurable differences in subjective realities. It’s hard to say what the real boundaries are, and so I look for stories that stretch my ability to conceive what could be–and that help me find wonder in all the darkness and strangeness around me.
This is the first book in the Southern Reach Trilogy, but it also stands alone as a mysterious and haunting exploration of the way we attempt to navigate a world that is both familiar and alien at the same time.
Mysteries abound, and answers are elusive, but you can revisit Area X again and again and feel like answers lie just beyond the reach of your fingertips.
THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN AND OSCAR ISAAC
For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border - an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness.
The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic.
I’ve been told I’m a visionary, but labels are of little significance to me. What I know for sure is that I’m a storyteller of the visionary variety, who has won numerous awards in that genre. Dating back to cave dwellers, myth-tellers, and folk minstrels, visionary authors have been consciously or unconsciously laying paths and building bridges between paradigms for eons. Such bridges are constructed of new language, perilous journeys, and transformative visions. My particular stories connect the path of perceived human limitations to true, unlimited potential. My characters are quirky, endearing, and often funny. They are each of us stumbling through an infinite, low-lying thicket for higher purpose. Until one day, we look up.
This is a timeless visionary tale of the power of otherness.
Its hero, Moojie Littleman, struggles through life with physical handicaps that pale in comparison to the social handicaps of the grownups who are supposed to be caring for him. His is a hero’s journey about light and love, the power to heal, and the moral convictions that are only revealed in solitude.
Young Moojie, a disappointment even to himself, must look beyond his life circumstances for the answers he seeks. He must be open to new friends, new dimensions, and new possibilities. He must learn to employ his otherness as a tool, not only of survival, but of abundance.
The lyrical prose and unique voice of this tale enhance the strong character and storylines that are sure to inspire generations of young adults and older readers alike. Author, Robin Gregory, is an exceptional storyteller in the classical style…
Moojie Littleman is not just another disabled orphan, he is not just a kid who falls into a series of magical, mystical adventures involving goats, bees, and watermelons. He is, above all, the most unlikely hero ever known. Through friendship with alien outcasts, Moojie discovers his healing powers and a surprising destiny ... if only he can survive one, last terrifying trial.
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Welcome to Moojie's mythical world of mayhem and merriment, where miracles are standard fare, mistaken identity is rampant, and the desire to belong can be dangerous.
From screenwriter and award-winning novelist, Robin Gregory, comes a masterful debut…
As the fourth “oldest daughter” in my motherline, and my interest in genealogy and family history, my trajectory was set decades ago to become the keeper of the family letters, telegrams, photos, pilot logbooks, and stories. After researching
what happened to the three brothers lost during WWII, I also have casualty, missions reports, and more. Before publishing the first book, I had bylines in newspapers and magazines, and I’ve blogged regularly for several years. Because of the wealth of historic photos and stories, I began history Facebook pages for three Iowa counties, as well as one for cousins to share memories and photos. If you enjoy family stories, you’ll enjoy the books on this list.
I'm drawn to family stories and saw the author interviewed on a local TV station, so I knew I'd enjoy reading her book. It's a story that needed sharing, about sisters who immigrated from Germany. The much younger one (Bernadine) was so ambivalent about leaving Germany, about being left behind in Iowa when the older sister (Elizabeth) married and moved away. Even after marrying and having so many children of her own, then was widowed, Bernadine struggled.
Bernadine's life became even more fascinating after she married a man who wasn't really as she'd thought. And there were unpleasant surprises with two adult daughters. By then, I'd forgotten about the original secret, so when it was revealed, it came as a surprise.
From author, Diane Holmes, comes a story inspired by the life of her grandmother, Bernadine. In this work of historical fiction, the relationship between Bernadine and her older sister Elizabeth is complicated. Bitterness between them develops when Elizabeth asks Bernadine to keep a deep dark secret about her past. The author shows throughout the novel how the impact of keeping that secret is far greater for the one sister than it is for the other. The bitterness is intensified when the younger sister must leave her home in Germany and say goodbye to her best friend, Judith.
I am a philosophy post-doc at Unesp and a poet who has always felt that politics is not the exclusive business of politicians; that violence is not the exclusive business of warfare or of “vulgar” people, say, drunkards in bars. Violence, I have felt while doing philosophy in the USA, Brazil, Germany, and France, is likewise expressed by well-educated and apparently “peaceful” philosophers who are engaged in implicit politics and practice “subtle” violence. To handle the relation between politics and metaphysics is to do justice to this feeling. The Politics of Metaphysics, I hope, does that. I believe that though more tacitly, the same is done by this list’s books.
I love this book because it problematizes a popular assumption among contemporary Anglo-American authors who like to call themselves “analytic philosophers” and who only care to acknowledge the existence of a few past philosophers, e.g., Russell and Ryle. The assumption is that philosophers, such as the latter two, tackled in an apolitical “noble” fashion metaphysical matters.
Akehurst, by his turn, indicates how the likes of Russell and Ryle aligned themselves with a right-wing British policy whose “vulgar” propaganda is echoed throughout works published by British philosophers in the first half of the 20th century.
Also, I appreciate Akehurst’s way of showing that while contributing to the creation of the so-called “analytic-continental gap,” this attitude helped to naturalize the attribution of the shortness of logos to German philosophers like Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.
British Analytic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century examines three generations of analytic philosophers, who between them founded the modern discipline of analytic philosophy in Britain. The book explores how philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin believed in a link between German aggression in the twentieth century and the nineteenth-century philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. Thomas L. Akehurst thus identifies in this political critique of continental philosophy the origins of the hugely significant faultline between analytic and continental thought, an aspect of twentieth-century philosophy that is still poorly understood. The book also uncovers a tripartite…
Growing up, books and music became a refuge for the feelings I found I couldn't express aloud. I loved artists like Garbage and The Dresden Dolls. I felt most at home in stories about female angst, sexuality, and rage. Female stories helped me understand the dichotomy of the madonna/whore complex. They helped me understand where my emotions clashed with societal expectations, and how to push at those boundaries in a constructive way. I've always been fascinated with female rage, and stories that poke a stick into the body of the "good girl" stereotype always make for a cathartic and validating read. Females can be anti-heroes too.
Thanks to my religious conservative upbringing, I grew up naive and innocent. I learned a lot about life really quick when I entered college. I partied and made mistakes and definitely have my fair share of shame and regret.
However, reading this book even as an adult was still eye-opening. Life of the Party follows Mia, a fashion student living in Milan who lives the most chaotic life imaginable. She parties hard. She drinks endlessly. She wears outfits I'd never dare try on.
Mia couldn't be anything like rigid careful me, but I still resonated with her choices. I empathized with her trauma. I reveled in every small victory she has. Mia helped me realize just how much of the female experience is universal.
Life of the Party will leave you with a hangover and a "VIP" stamp on your heart. Hacic crafts a Beat novel for the Instagram generation.
This dark comedy dives into the underbelly of Milanese fashion and nightlife, through the eyes of Mia, a young expat. She came to Milan to escape her problems but only found more glamorous ones... Mia indulges in the highs and lows Milanese decadence can offer. Between fashion class and clubbing, her narcissistic boss and abusive boyfriend push her to face bleak reality. Life of the Party asks, can you lose your innocence if you…
I wrote my first romance with >40 characters in my mid-forties. It wasn’t like I never saw people of my age in the genre, but I have to say they were (and are) still rare, especially in traditionally published books. I love to see how people navigate what partnership looks like when people are established and their conflicts and experiences have changed. Elder care, relationships with adult children, fighting age-related stereotypes and discrimination: these are just a few of the nuances that set these types of books apart. But you still get that delicious well of emotion and the satisfaction of a happy ending.
A historical sapphic novella with women over 60? And they’re going to get revenge on a very bad man in very inventive ways? Do you really need me to sell this book harder to you?
Okay, fine: it’s Courtney Milan, whose wit, creativity, and compassion for humanity in general and her characters specifically always awe me. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing Courtney couldn’t do.
Mrs. Bertrice Martin—a widow, some seventy-three years young—has kept her youthful-ish appearance with the most powerful of home remedies: daily doses of spite, regular baths in man-tears, and refusing to give so much as a single damn about her Terrible Nephew.Then proper, correct Miss Violetta Beauchamps, a sprightly young thing of nine and sixty, crashes into her life. The Terrible Nephew is living in her rooming house, and Violetta wants him gone.Mrs. Martin isn’t about to start giving damns, not even for someone as intriguing as Miss Violetta. But she hatches another plan—to make her nephew sorry, to make Miss…
I’m a lifelong sci-fi/fantasy reader who loves the way speculative fiction helps us explore who we are, what we could become, and how to troubleshoot the future before we get there. As a parent and active community member, I’m looking for fresh perspectives on how to tackle the increasingly complex challenges of our time, perspectives that go beyond simplistic solutions like finding bad guys and killing them in climactic battles. I hope books that showcase nonviolent social change in all its complexity can help us imagine better ways to make a difference in our own lives.
Along with authors like Alyssa Coleand Talia Hibbert, Courtney Milan is a luminary of romance’s liberatory wing. If love can conquer all, let’s aim it at something worthwhile! This book takes one of humanity’s deepest nonviolent instincts, the desire for one another, and shows how it gives people the strength to support each other through the hard work of building a better world. I want to recommend all of Milan’s books, but from a nonviolence perspective, The Devil Comes Courtingstands out because of the way it also wrestles with what reconciliation (the last step in Kingian nonviolence) really means.
Captain Grayson Hunter knows the battle to complete the first worldwide telegraphic network will be fierce, and he intends to win it by any means necessary. When he hears about a reclusive genius who has figured out how to slash the cost of telegraphic transmissions, he vows to do whatever it takes to get the man in his employ.
Except the reclusive genius is not a man, and she’s not looking for employment.
Amelia Smith was taken in by English missionaries as a child. She’s not interested in Captain Hunter’s promises or his ambitions. But the harder he tries to…
