Here are 100 books that The Post-Birthday World fans have personally recommended if you like
The Post-Birthday World.
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I’ve always loved stories that rearrange reality in some simple, allusive way, including movies like Groundhog Day or The Truman Show. They remind me of a quote about Italo Calvino that I first read when I was a teenager and have loved ever since: ‘He holds a mirror up to life, then writes about the mirror.’ I tend not to be attracted to stories that simply depict reality and even less so to stories that completely abandon reality for an invented fantasy world. All my favorite fictions take place somewhere in between, in the blending of the real and the impossible.
It always seemed unfair to me that not only do we get just one life, but we only get to live it once. So I fell in love with this novel from the moment I read its premise: Ursula Todd is born and dies and is born again… and again… and again.
I love that she doesn’t remember her previous lives except as vague intuitions that help her avoid making the same mistakes twice–and I also love that avoiding those mistakes often means she makes other (often fatal) mistakes. I found this book funny, moving, and thought-provoking, but what I love most about it is the way its down-to-earth, realistic style allowed me to fully inhabit the impossible conceit at its heart.
What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.
I'm a curious writer and compulsive traveler. My lifelong goal is to communicate the message “You don’t have to live your life the way others expect.” From 2002-2015 I went to every country in the world, chronicling the journey on my blog The Art of Non-Conformity. At first I thought the blog would be just about travel, but along the way I began meeting lots of people interested in living unconventionally. Ever since, I've been writing books, hosting events, and avoiding traditional employment by any means necessary.
It's no exaggeration to say this book changed my life. I read it when I was briefly home in the US during a four-year stint as an aid worker in West Africa. It caused me to think deeply about the next stage of life, which involved going to every country and eventually starting a blog that became a whole new career.
If you've read any other "life design" books in the past two decades, one way or another the authors were influenced by Barbara Sher. Go back to where it started!
Cindy Fox was a waitress. Now she’s a pilot. Peter Johnson was a truck driver. Now he’s a dairy farmer. Tina Forbes was a struggling artist. Now she’s a successful one. Alan Rizzo was an editor. Now he’s a bookstore owner.
What they have in common—and what you can share—are Barbara Sher’s effective strategies for making real changes in your life. This human, practical program puts your vague yearnings and dreams to work for you—with concrete results. You’ll learn how to
• Discover your strengths and skills • Turn your fears and negative feelings into positive tools • Diagram the…
Since I was a little boy, long before I dreamed of becoming a Daoist monk, I sensed that there was far more beneath the pond of life than on the surface. I remember feeling jealous of a little turtle I saw in the Connecticut River. Why couldn’t I pop out of my world and see what was happening above, but he could? My spiritual questing led me to Asia and also deep into myself. Writing magical realism does not feel like engaging a fantasy; it feels like I can finally share how the world really is.
I cannot forget this book, even though, at times, I am desperate to do so. Ishiguro, one of my chosen authors and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is beyond masterful in the unique way he portrays quotidian events before a horror that is almost theatrical in its grotesquerie.
I was deeply disturbed while reading it, yet I could not put it down. Years later, I continue to find it a source of disquiet regarding where our culture/society is going and how we must stop a very particular trend. The trend is increasingly toward science and technology that utterly and completely disregards human feelings, individual rights, and the spiritual qualities of all sentient beings.
It’s simply an unforgettable story about something unfolding in an all-too-real fashion out here in the world outside the author’s mind.
One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense…
I'm an award-winning English writer of what's broadly termed science fiction and fantasy, at least in the sense that most of my work features strange events and fantastic settings. But I'm also deeply drawn to naturalistic fiction and have often found that one of the best and most exciting ways to explore the thrillingly odd without losing touch with the believably real is to take a step sideways in history. Alternate history isn't just about the Nazis winning World War Two, and the Confederate American South defeating the Yankee North. A good, original alternate history can open up the traditional novel into fresh worlds and new vistas.
Moorcock might be best known for his sword-and-sorcery Elric novels, but he's also a writer of considerable daring and style. Gloriana tells of a Queen of Albion whose empire stretches from the great continent of Virginia to far Hindustan, and then on to Cathay beyond. Half-familiar figures and place names vie with pagan myths and strange ceremonies inside a palace so vast and rambling that every kind of wonder, and the darkest of secrets, have room to hide. The settings and the language are glorious, and the characters, and their schemes and machinations, come vibrantly alive. This is a vivid dream of an alternate queen and an alternate England.
Tiem and again, small numbers of Germans, civilian nad military, noble and ignoble, scheme to topple the Fuhrer, and on several occasions they came within minutes - or inches - of succeeding. Fest explores why they tried, why they found so little support either in Germany or outside it, and why they failed.
I love historical settings and detail – I love coming away from a novel feeling like I’ve also learned something about the world. But I also like lots and lots of plot and intensity. Historical fiction slash mystery novels hit the spot just right. Though my own work thus far is more on the historical fiction side, I do try to plot it like a mystery, with lots of questions, revelations, and discoveries to be made as you go along.
A gorgeous, extravagant dual-timeline historical mystery about late-20th-century academics researching a pair of (fictional) Victorian poets – did they or didn’t they?
If you like library settings, fictional documents (letters, poems – lots of poems), and a good dose of poking-fun-at-academia, you’ll love it. Yes, it is also a movie (though I can’t speak to it).
Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.
I'm a curious writer and compulsive traveler. My lifelong goal is to communicate the message “You don’t have to live your life the way others expect.” From 2002-2015 I went to every country in the world, chronicling the journey on my blog The Art of Non-Conformity. At first I thought the blog would be just about travel, but along the way I began meeting lots of people interested in living unconventionally. Ever since, I've been writing books, hosting events, and avoiding traditional employment by any means necessary.
This was the book that set me off on a decade-long journey of reading (and re-reading) Murakami. Along with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, another favorite, I've re-read it at least twice.
So why is it about thinking differently? Because the book is written so differently! If you've read any recent speculative fiction, the author likely owes a debt to Murakami and his wondrous approach to narrative storytelling. You'll get lost in a bizarre, beautiful quest that takes on all sorts of twists and turns.
I'm a curious writer and compulsive traveler. My lifelong goal is to communicate the message “You don’t have to live your life the way others expect.” From 2002-2015 I went to every country in the world, chronicling the journey on my blog The Art of Non-Conformity. At first I thought the blog would be just about travel, but along the way I began meeting lots of people interested in living unconventionally. Ever since, I've been writing books, hosting events, and avoiding traditional employment by any means necessary.
A very early (published in 1908!) example of the personal development genre. Some of Bennett's recommendations may seem a little outdated now, but the concept of "you should work on improving yourself, and here's how" still feels fresh and original.
A secret publishing dream of mine is to update this book and introduce it to a new generation of readers. But don't wait until I'm able to do that (or until someone beats me to it). Jump in now and read the original.
2019 Reprint of 1910 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. In the book, first published in 1908, Bennett addressed the large and growing number of white-collar workers that had accumulated since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. In his view, these workers put in eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, at jobs they did not enjoy, and at worst hated. They worked to make a living, but their daily existence consisted of waking up, getting ready for work, working as little as possible during the workday, going home, unwinding, going to…
I'm a curious writer and compulsive traveler. My lifelong goal is to communicate the message “You don’t have to live your life the way others expect.” From 2002-2015 I went to every country in the world, chronicling the journey on my blog The Art of Non-Conformity. At first I thought the blog would be just about travel, but along the way I began meeting lots of people interested in living unconventionally. Ever since, I've been writing books, hosting events, and avoiding traditional employment by any means necessary.
Emmanuel Carrère just thinks differently! Sometimes described as the #1 non-fiction writer in France, this deeply personal memoir from him touched me with its sensitivity and embrace of awkwardness.
I don't know how else to describe it except to say: wow, this guy truly lives. I feel jealous of him as a writer, yet also different enough that it doesn’t really bother me. Instead, I just end up inspired.
'As a writer, Carrere is straight berserk' Junot Diaz
In this non-fiction novel - road trip, confession, and erotic tour de force - Emmanuel Carrere pursues two consuming obsessions: the disappearance of his grandfather amid suspicions that he was a Nazi collaborator in the Second World War; and a violently passionate affair with a woman that he loves but which ends in destruction. Moving between Paris and Kotelnich, a grisly post-Soviet town, Carrere weaves his story into a travelogue of a journey inward, travelling fearlessly into the depths of his tortured psyche.
Ever since watching Sliding Doors back in the late 90s, I’ve been fascinated by forking narratives. I don’t know if I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love that “what-if” spark–what if I chose this job over that one? Who would I have met? Who would I have married? Who would I be? That last question, I believe, is the kicker–we all only get to live this one life, so our choices are our choices. Only in the realm of fiction can we really be in someone else’s head, and writing my fifth novel, Lines, and its twinned/entwined plots was doubling the fun.
This book is categorized as a young adult novel, but I read it as a fully grown adult and was able to snap right into my angsty teenage years.
This book gives the protagonist, Ephraim, a good amount of agency, as it’s the flip of a coin that fulfills his desires–basically, it’s a wishing well. But the different versions of his life that spring forth are what makes this story intriguing and often quite moving.
The coin changed Ephraim's life. But how can he change it back?
Sixteen-year-old Ephraim Scott is horrified when he comes home from school and finds his mother unconscious at the kitchen table, clutching a bottle of pills. The reason for her suicide attempt is even more disturbing: she thought she'd identified Ephraim's body at the hospital that day.
Among his dead double's belongings, Ephraim finds a strange coin--a coin that grants wishes when he flips it. With a flick of his thumb, he can turn his alcoholic mother into a model parent and catch the eye of the girl he's…
Ever since watching Sliding Doors back in the late 90s, I’ve been fascinated by forking narratives. I don’t know if I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love that “what-if” spark–what if I chose this job over that one? Who would I have met? Who would I have married? Who would I be? That last question, I believe, is the kicker–we all only get to live this one life, so our choices are our choices. Only in the realm of fiction can we really be in someone else’s head, and writing my fifth novel, Lines, and its twinned/entwined plots was doubling the fun.
Not satisfied with two possibilities, Laura Barnett wrote three! She labels them as such–Versions One (they meet and marry), Two (they don’t meet until years later), and Three (they get together but break up), of Eva the writer and Jim the painter.
The chapters are very short, almost vignette-like, but this is a case where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Through a collage-like accretion, I came to adore this love story that spans almost sixty years.
A #1 UK bestseller, The Versions of Us is a dazzling novel about the ways the smallest decisions give shape to our lives, charting a single relationship through three possible futures.
What if you had said yes? Some moments can change your life forever. Have you ever wondered, what if . . .?
A man is walking down a country lane. A woman, cycling toward him, swerves to avoid a dog. On that moment, their future hinges. There are three possible outcomes, three small decisions that could determine the rest of their life.
