94 books like The Owl Service

Daphne Du Maurier has made a permanent mark on my soul. Whether it was Hitchcock's adaptation of The Birds, which I watched when I was far too young, or the wrecked ships of Jamaica Inn, her imagery and ideas are unforgettable. 

And like the titular character of Rebecca, part of me still roams the halls and grounds of Manderley. I first encountered the story at a transitional moment in early adulthood. Having been a child drawn to spooky stories about ghouls and spectres, this book marked the moment I came to understand that not every haunted house has a ghost. 

This is extraordinary, meditative, and beautiful. For me, it fulfils the most important element of any book – that magical sense of stepping into another world. In this case, it is the world of Katherine Swift as she describes the creation of her garden in Shropshire. Yet it is so much more than that. The book is built around the daily structure of monastic prayer, as in a medieval Book of Hours, and this contemplative mood flows through every page, taking us on a discursive journey involving horticulture, history, and the stories of some of the people who previously lived at Morville. Whenever I read it, I get that all-important sense of connection with nature and the rhythm of life.

I love books that chronicle the passing of time, going from dark and gloomy January, through the quixotic summer months and right into late December which I always think of as the fag-end of the year. The Ivington Diaries is a collection of Monty Don’s diary entries about his home and garden over several years. With charming honesty, he describes his gardening failures as well as his successes, the people he knows, and the vagaries of the changing seasons. Whenever I read this book it casts a spell over me and I feel as though I’m living in a secret corner of the garden at Ivington, watching all its comings and goings.

Plants are our companions through life. We grow, pick and eat some of them, but how much do we really value them? Our ancestors had an intimate knowledge and understanding of the power of plants and were aware of which were helpful and which caused harm. They wrapped comfrey leaves around the damaged legs of animals, believed that fairies sheltered from the rain beneath ragwort plants, cured childhood hernias with the aid of ash saplings, and recognized the benefits of rosehips long before science could analyse their nutrients.

Hatfield’s Herbal follows the tradition of so many other excellent herbals, weaving botany, plant magic, medicine, and folklore into an engrossing mixture that always keeps me reading long after I found what I was originally looking for. Read a good herbal and you’ll never look at a so-called weed in the same way again.

First published in 1962, I read this book in the late 70s when I was about ten years old. Not quite as iconic as The House with the Clock in its Walls (another favorite), this novel is equally evocative and strange, with its rambling, Victorian house, mysteries unfolding in the attic, and just the right hint of menace. Secrets lurk behind doors and in dreams, but the daylight world of the book is just as compelling. I recall as a child being swept away by the charm and pedigree of historic Massachusetts with all its transcendental mystique (replete with busts in the hallway of Emerson and Thoreau). Filled to the brim with what we might now call magical realism, this book is seared into my DNA – a must-read.

I’ll be completely honest, Hourglass sat on my bookshelf for years. I kept pushing it off, and pushing it off, until one day I took the plunge and read it. Why did I wait so long?

I fell in love with the main character Emerson. While she was immature I had to remember her age and she does progress as the book goes on. Emerson has visions and has a hard time dealing with them like any girl would. Her caring brother hires Michael who promises he can help control these visions. The two don’t exactly hit it off right away, but their dynamic is hilarious. Their relationship was slow to build, my favorite kind. The author did an excellent job explaining how time travel works for Emerson. It wasn’t difficult to understand, but it was tricky and very unique. The slow-burn romance eventually builds and, well you’ll have to… show more.

It is in Bergson's Time and Free Will that I first encountered an inspiring way to think of time. A way of thinking about time that does not focus on the time of clocks and calendars; that does not emphasize the physical homogeneous aspect of time, but rather reveals the relation between time and human existence. This book opened up not only an entirely new way of thinking about time, but a new way of approaching life: instead of focusing on the spatial, static, exterior, homogeneous milestones of life, I rather focus on the temporal, fleeting, inner, heterogeneous qualities of my life. Bergson writes in a relatively clear style, and his texts are accessible also for the interested layperson.

This book taught me to love reading when I was in the third grade. Jane, Mark, Katharine, and Martha are suffering the summertime-boredom blues when they find a grimy old coin.

By accident they discover the coin is magic; however, it’s so old it only works part-way. The adventures they have while trying to figure out what’s going on are charming and hysterical. I always laugh when the cat tries to halfway express itself because the children forgot to double the wish they wished.

Anyone with a sense of humor, adventure, and who misses (or missed) the delights of childhood should read this book. It was published in the 1950s, is set in the 1920s, and is still in print! That’s the hallmark of an excellent book.

Price is a philosopher and this book, along with Paul Horwich’s Asymmetries in Time and David Albert’s Time and Chance, are heirs of Reichenbach’s masterpiece. I select Price’s book here because it is more accessible than Horwich’s or Albert’s books. It is packed with fun and deep stuff: criticism of Hawking’s cosmology, exploration of the electromagnetic arrow of time, and serious discussion of wild ideas like causation going backward in time.

Like with my first recommendation, I feel that this book appeals to a desire for adventure that we all had as kids. Who didn’t dream of Time Travel adventures as a kid? And again, as an adult, I have of course come to realize that I’d not last a day if I were to fall into this sort of adventure – and although time travel is supposedly possible, albeit only as a one-way journey due to the nature of time-dilation, the undertaking of such a journey, and the physical aspects of what is involved, I’d never want to do it now. Of course, in Playing Beatie Bow, Abigail’s time travel method is very simple (and impossible), but the trouble she gets into in the past is complicated, complex, and dangerous. The book’s dual settings might not appeal to young readers of today, but its lessons about learning to live… show more.