Here are 100 books that The Offset fans have personally recommended if you like
The Offset.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.
I felt a deep connection to the characters in this book as they go through a journey of intense struggle. It is a thorough exploration of another world, including both the good and darker aspects of human nature. When I finished this book, I felt I had returned from a great adventure to another land with characters that I had come to know well. The book has a timeless relevance with its insights into human nature and the corruption of power.
I think Le Guin's world-building is nothing short of remarkable. Through her meticulous attention to detail, she crafts a society unlike any other. The exploration of power and its corrupting influence is a central theme.
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…
When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.
This book stands apart as science fiction without the typical tropes of lasers, interplanetary wars, or grand technological advances. Instead, it offers a meditative space to consider life’s big questions in a world that, while different from our own, feels deeply familiar. I liked the exploration of human emotions and the characters' search for purpose.
I found this to be a beautifully imagined world. It showed that no matter where or when we exist, our need for connection, self-discovery, and belonging remains universal. It's a warm, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be alive.
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
After more than 20 years of community work and activism in LGBTQ+ spaces, I couldn’t help but turn these experiences into a novel in which Berlin becomes the world’s first gay state – Proud Pink Sky,released March 14 from Amble Press. My essays and short stories focus on the strange, the queer, and the speculative, and have been published in The Sun Magazine, Guernica, Strange Horizons, PinkNews,andNature Futures,while my campaign work for LGBTQ+ and polyamory rights has been referenced in The Mirror, Buzzfeed, and BBC News. I am also nonbinary queer, have a Ph.D. in Literature, and currently live in Berlin.
Melissa Scott takes worldbuilding to fascinating extremes in her 1995 novel, Shadow Man. Due to changes in human biology, there are five recognised sexes in Scott’s far-flung society, with man and woman joined by fem, herm, and mem – yet despite the variety in body types, the isolated and backward planet of Hara forces its residents to choose between a simple binary. With its bold depictions of gender discrimination and violence, Shadow Manis relevant to our own social battles while also indulging in a fast-paced plot and thought-provoking speculation, all while being just different enough from our own world that it scratches that escapist itch.
In the far future, human culture has developed five distinctive genders due to the effects of a drug easing sickness from faster-than-light travel. But on the planet Hara, where society is increasingly instability, caught between hard-liner traditions and the realities of life, only male and female genders are legal, and the "odd-bodied" population are forced to pass as one or the other. Warreven Stiller, a lawyer and an intersexed person, is an advocate for those who have violated Haran taboos. When Hara regains contact with the Concord worlds, Warreven finds a larger role in breaking the long-standing role society has…
In 1966, I traveled to brave new worlds with the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek immediately became my lodestone, the focal point of my ten-year-old self, and I never missed an episode. A few years later I found Dune, and my love for the SF genre was cemented. I freely admit that I am not a hard science writer. I like to have fun with my stories, to play with ideas. I write first to entertain myself, and hopefully a reader or two along the way. I am a philosopher, a reader, and a writer.
I couldn’t imagine what this book could be about with a title like this, but I enjoy Cat’s short stories so I took a leap of faith. I’m glad I did.
You Sexy Thingis the name of a sentient bioship that believes it is being stolen. Fast-paced and action-packed with great characters, You Sexy Thing also has depth–found family, personal ethics, and a pirate king bent on revenge. Immensely entertaining.
Farscape meets The Great British Bake Off in this fantastic space opera You Sexy Thing from former SFWA President, Cat Rambo.
Just when they thought they were out…
TwiceFar station is at the edge of the known universe, and that’s just how Niko Larson, former Admiral in the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, likes it.
Retired and finally free of the continual war of conquest, Niko and the remnants of her former unit are content to spend the rest of their days working at the restaurant they built together, The Last Chance.
A former microbiologist and attorney turned children’s book author, I’m delighted to advocate for children’s self-confidence and critical thinking skills in literature. I like to write about things that I know, to share my passion, and about things I don’t know—to learn more. Stories have been an escape and a learning tool for me and I want to share stories that do the same for children today.
This recent title’s combination of silly and earnest has quickly become a favorite. Blob is able to shape itself into being anything it wants to be and it reminded me of my cloud character Lola. But unlike Lola, Blob isn’t sure at first what it wants to be, and the shapes it makes are a journey of self-exploration. As a grownup who has held many varied jobs over the years, the idea of not picking to be any one thing resonates with me. People, and blobs, get to be themselves, whatever that is.
1
author picked
Blob
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
A humorous picture book featuring a blob (n. a creature that can be anything they want) about embracing who we are and the many things we can be.
Blob is a creature of indeterminate kind. Blob can be a giraffe, cotton candy, and even an octopus. It's not until a certain someone continuously calls them "Bob" that Blob starts to question who they really are.
After a series of funny yet enlightening discoveries about all the possible things they can be, Blob realizes that the best thing to be is . . .
Do you know you will spend 80,000 hours at work in your lifetime? And yet we get so little guidance on how to make choices about the work we do. I am fascinated by the world of work and how we navigate it, and thrive in it. I’ve always wondered how people made decisions about how to live and how to approach finding the right kind of livelihood that fits their skills and interests. I’ve made it my job to design a method to help people get specific and clear and help them not only find the work that best utilises their skills and passions but also identifies the environment that works best for us.
If you are anything like me and struggle to decide on one career or one path then this is the book for you. If by working through your passions, skills, etc. you find that there isn’t just one area you want to work in but in fact, you are interested in loads of stuff, then this book will help you manage this challenge and create the life that you want not the one everyone else says you should have.
Don't know what to do with your life? Drawn to so many things that you can't choose just one? New York Times best-selling author Barbara Sher has the answer-do EVERYTHING!
"Designed to help you enjoy your many interests without feeling overwhelmed and unfocused" - Metro New York
Author of Wishcraft and I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was..., Barbara Sher has become famous for her extraordinary ability to help people define and achieve their goals. What Sher has discovered is that some individuals simply cannot, and should not, decide on a single path; they are genetically…
The truth is, I’ve never fit in. I'm always asking questions like: Why do we do it that way? And, what if we tried this instead? These types of questions, however, though intriguing to me and other creatives, make the keepers of the status quo really nervous. As a professor and narrative inquiry researcher, I study the stories of people who've been silenced—extracting the characters, plot, and setting these narratives have in common. For workplace abuse survivors, a salient theme is they think big! To support this mission, I'm on the Executive Board and serve as the Education Director for the National Workplace Bullying Coalition and am a regular contributor to Psychology Today.
A book on quitting may seem like a downer to end my list of recommendations, but if that is what you think, you’ve got quitting all wrong.
Quitting is not about endings, but about clearing the page so there is space to write the next story. In this thought-jostling book, Duke brings the reader into the lives of notable characters who stayed in the game too long and the high price they paid for not walking away.
Throughout her engaging narratives, she infuses research on why we hang on too long and offers reflective questions to get us out of the muck. Threaded amongst the chapters are life lessons disguised on quips like when we quit on time, it likely feels like we are giving up too early, and when it looks like a tie between sticking it out and cutting our losses, we are almost always better walking away.…
'Brilliant and entertaining' Daniel Kahneman | 'Quit what you are doing right now and read this' Richard Thaler | 'Engrossing, important, and grounded in science' Katy Milkman
What if the secret to success is not just hard work, but knowing when to change track?
In this game-changing guide, decision-making expert Annie Duke shows why quitting what holds you back is essential for success. Drawing on new research and fascinating examples, this book offers practical strategies and explains:
Why it's so hard to walk away How to identify when it's best to persevere or pivot How quitting on time often feels…
I’m a history instructor and often think about alternate historical outcomes, but you don’t get to choose those. Wish the Spanish Armada hadn’t sunk? Tough luck. But you can take a novel in any direction—kill a character, bring them back, let them fall in love, make them eat an egg salad sandwich… When the book itself is about parallel worlds, it increases those possibilities exponentially. In What Goes Up, Rosa and Eddie have very different backgrounds—Earth is two different worlds for them. What happens when there’s another world out there and they meet themselves in a different place? As one character asks, how much do you trust yourself?
Jane, Unlimited is a marvelously constructed book that focuses on Jane, a girl grieving her auntand making umbrellas, who gets an invitation to a mysterious island mansion. I am here for allmysterious island mansion books. This estate is named Tu Reviens–"You come back” in French.That is, of course, a clue to the premise. There are a couple of possible love interests, but it’snot a love triangle and I don’t think it would annoy the people who are dead set againsttriangles.
An instant New York Times bestseller—from the award-winning author of the Graceling Realm series—about adventure, grief, storytelling, and finding yourself in a world of seemingly infinite choices.
"A wild gift for readers who like books that take them to unexpected places."—Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel Wood
Jane has lived a mostly ordinary life, raised by her recently deceased aunt Magnolia, whom she counted on to turn life into an adventure. Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is lost. So she's easily swept away when a glamorous, capricious, and wealthy acquaintance from years ago asks Jane to accompany her to a gala…
I’m a Hope College social psychologist who reports on psychological science in textbooks, general audience trade books, and essays. My career has progressed from experiments on group decision-making to reading widely in psychological science in search of discoveries and big ideas that educated people should know about. Two aims animate my writing: to enable people, amid a sea of misinformation, to think smarterabout their lives, and to savor the wonders of their lives.
“For the time is coming when people will...turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” So wrote St. Paul, two millennia ago. And so it has come to pass in our age, with misinformation spreading faster than truth, and democracy threatened by anti-science conspiracy thinking. In response to this post-truth world, Pinker, with his characteristic wit and wisdom, exposes the roots and fruits of human irrationality and guides us to thinking smarter. A book for our time.
'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times
'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind
In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing?
As an archaeologist, I love prehistoric things and what can I learn from them about the people that made them and left them behind. I study ancient Maya commoners in what is now modern Guatemala. Their material remains are humble but include depictions and symbols normally found in the palaces of Maya kings and queens. First I wondered and then I studied how the title-giving war owl fell into the hands of Maya commoners. By approaching this process as innovation, I discuss creativity in the past and cultural changes that result from it.
This book introduced the concept of nudging into the public discourse, and I guess all of us have encountered it one way or the other. How many reminders have I gotten to sign up for this or that program?… Alas, I love Thaler and Sunstein's concept of choice architects. It made me think about power as a capacity to affect not only people but also the very framework in which people make decisions.
The original edition of the multimillion-copy New York Times bestseller by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Richard H. Thaler, and Cass R. Sunstein: a revelatory look at how we make decisions—for fans of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow
Named a Best Book of the Year by TheEconomist and the Financial Times
Every day we make choices—about what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our children’s health and education, even about the causes we champion…
