100 books like The Epic of Gilgamesh

This book scared the hell out of me when I was a teenager because its vivid descriptions stayed in my dreams yet it never stopped me from reading and loving the entire book.

It taught me a lot about following your intuition and/or gut feelings. Although it has been a long time since I read it, the main thing I remember is that your intuition is your protector, and listening to that inner voice helps a lot along the way.

Charlotte’s Web has it all: animal characters, a strong story with life and death at stake, yet as gentle as a breeze. Starring a naïve pig named Wilbur who faces a daunting future… and a unique friend in a spider named Charlotte. Again, a tale of true friendship when brave Charlotte soars beyond the limitations of a spider to save Wilbur. 

Charlotte’s depth of character and creativity, paired with Wilbur’s innocence, makes this a classic book for all ages. Yes, she spins the words “Terrific” and “Some Pig,” but in the end, Charlotte herself is one terrific and memorable spider.

Although I have read a number of novels focused on friendship, this one stands out with particular vigor. It started the way I expected: two friends since childhood. The more I advanced into the reading, though, the more I perceived the two main characters—Elena and Lila—as the same person:  a sort of super-protagonist that incorporates not only the psychological traits of the two but their lives as well.

If it’s true that life is often a fight between who we are and who we would like to be, then this novel portrays that conflict masterfully. What I saw in this story, more than the recount of a friendship, is the power that lies hidden within each of us. Whether we annihilate it or let it bloom depends on the choices we make in our lives. 

Ann Patchett is a successful American novelist, and Truth and Beauty is her memoir about her friendship with the poet, Lucy Grealy. She writes beautifully about Grealy, her talent and her warm, engaging personality, but also about her struggles and eventual death. Patchett conveys the depth of a passionate friendship by letting the reader see all her thoughts and feelings, courageously looking at how we can love someone, but how they can also try us to our limits. It is a book for those who love literature and are fascinated by the depth and intricacy of a creative connection between humans.

As someone occasionally made to feel I was “too much” as a child—too emotional, too smart, too odd—I’ve always been drawn to The Mill on the Floss’s temperamental and bewildered young protagonist, Maggie Tulliver. I’m moved by her attempt, as she grows older, to navigate relationships with three men who represent three different possible paths for her: her staid older brother; a gentle, intellectual soulmate; and an erotic tempter. One minute I’m hooked by the drama, the next I’m chuckling at the comic portraits of Maggie’s many colorful relatives.

Just like life, this supple narrative about a village in Warwickshire, England is full of beauty, gruesomeness, and sudden death. Without manifest plot points as such, the narrative seems to float past the range of eccentric townspeople after a destructive flood and later an epidemic of poisonings. Comically, none of the characters seem to take that death seriously. Comyns’ tender gift for describing humans in intimate communion with nature will make you long for flowers, forests, and abounding nature-amid-towns which we no longer experience in today’s world. This writer is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about humanity--but observationally brilliant. In their wild, hilarious ranges of behaviors, her characters too are lovely specimens living at the marshy banks of an omnipresent river.

This extraordinary novel by the Hungarian writer, Marai, was written in 1942. It reveals a friendship between two men who met when they were schoolboys. One, Henri, is from a privileged noble family, the other, Conrad, from a disadvantaged background, but they attend the same military academy together. One day Conrad disappears and Henri is left to wonder what happened to him. The book starts as Henri learns Conrad is about to return after 40 years of absence. The narrative is utterly compelling and the characters and their relationship are fascinating. It is one of those books that you can’t stop keep reading because you are so absorbed in the world the writer has created, but at the same time, you don’t want to finish so you put the book down to savour each moment. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the great masterpieces of world literature, and the oldest, with its origins lost in the mists of time.

It contains a dramatic account of the Great Flood, upon which the much later Noah’s Ark tale was based. The Epic was current for some 3,000 years and entered the literature of many ancient cultures including those of Sumer, where it originated, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Hittite.

The Epic has been reconstructed from many thousands of clay tablets unearthed from Middle Eastern archaeological sites. The cultures through which it passed moulded their own flesh upon its venerable bones and this I have also done. 

Like Daniel, young kids may have heard the word “poetry,” but what exactly is a poem? 

The collage illustrations will draw you in as Daniel takes a walk through the park asking creatures, “what is poetry,” the spider answers, saying, "to me poetry is when morning dew glistens.” Or maybe it’s “moonlight on the grass.” Daniel finds that poetry is different things to different animals, and he learns that to find his poem all he has to do is look around and listen. A perfect introduction to poetry!

In this book-length poem, Ross Gay manages to “talk” to the reader intimately without once “mansplaning” the way that so much of the tradition of “nature writing” has, for centuries, done. With the refrains of “what am I seeing?” and “what am I practicing?” Gay creates what feels like a genuine conversation with the reader, allowing me to ask myself the same questions as I read, to form my own thoughts and feelings, rather than passively receiving his.

In what I find to be his best work yet, Gay offers a genuine invitation to the reader to join into the seeing and feeling and meaning-making, thus making the meaning-making infinitely more meaningful. Be Holding is like a personal letter taken from its envelope, but somehow intended for all of us. It is as intricate as it is accessible and clear.