97 books like The River

At the time, when I read this book, I’d just become a father. Naturally, the story about a father trying to protect his son in a harsh dystopian world was captivating for me and still is to this day.

I loved the book's gritty realism and felt as if I were walking beside the characters during the entire journey. I also found McCarthy’s writing style unique and something new from the best-selling paperbacks I’d often read before picking up his book.

Having read this book when I was 22, it helped shape my fear of the danger of complacent societies. Simply but powerfully written, its first-person narrative creates a sense of claustrophobia, a glimpse into the isolating and dehumanizing life of a handmaid. 

Through Offred, the traumas she experiences, and the people she interacts with the whole world of Gilead springs to scary life. While reading the book, it struck me that nothing was totally made up. Every incident in the book was derived from history. These things had already happened, and they could happen again. It showed me that victory is not always heroic and impressive. Sometimes, victory can be just surviving oppression.

I realize this book isn’t one of King’s supernatural thrillers like Kujo or The Shining, both of which petrified my middle-school self into turning the pages late, late into the night. But Misery is the best of King’s work because this “super-psychological” thriller pits two antithetical forces against one another.

The police interview setup seems a straightforward approach to story-telling, but it turns into a deeply emotion, personal journey for Paul, the book’s hero. We learn in subsequent pages that Paul’s “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, refuses to allow Paul to continue on a journey of self-aggrandizement...to the point she’s willing to brutalize and imprison him…all while claiming to love his mind. Paul’s imagination becomes his only viable tool to escape Annie’s machinations.

Misery is powerful, brilliant work and the reason I now write mysteries and thrillers.

I loved this book because it gives a dark vision of what could go wrong if we fail to control pandemics. I read this book in 2019–just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave it a terrifying reality!

I am a lab scientist, and my work can focus on somewhat abstract ideas about infection, but this book inspired me to think about the (huge) human impact.

This is an adventure! Turn the pages of this book to find waves and many kinds of waves: rogue, freak, and giant waves of the ocean and the people who try to surf them. I am a retired US Coast Guard officer and sailed many ships at sea. As a mariner we know of or have seen waves, some of them tossing our ships in the middle of the night as we try to sail home. Any number of ships have vanished in the ocean, quickly, with no time to put out an SOS call for help. This is a great book to learn more while having an adventure reading it from the safety of your chair.

What kind of children’s book list would be complete if I didn’t include a book with a bear in it? So, I’m going with a classic.

I have Flip Flop Flip Flopped through these pages of fun sounds over and over again through the years. I love this story for its simplicity and heart about a family going on a nature walk. As a father of two girls, I’m indebted to Rosen because I’ve employed his bear hunt chant on countless occasions to get my girls excited about exploring our own woods and trails. And the ending on this one is just perfect!

Again, I chose a book that is given in the first-person point of view. Rather than using a variety of first persons to tell a story, Martel takes the main character, Pi, and uses him in back-and-forth narrations from various ages – young and in the moment, and older, looking back. As well, he uses Pi as a general narrator overall in the storytelling. This gives the illusion that perhaps the other characters are not so important, or rather they are not the point of the story. 

This book is based on a real-life tragedy – the deaths of five young Nova Scotia fishermen aboard the Miss Ally, a fishing vessel that was lost with all hands during a storm in 2013. Casey, a journalist and writer, has produced a moving synthesis in this work. He explores the lives, families, and characters of the young men who were lost, and recreates the community they lived in, effectively evoking the fishing culture, the profession’s unique dangers, and the economic imperatives and opportunities. Some may feel he judges the official emergency responders harshly but he is writing from the position of the community, which is always apparent to the reader. He explores the youthful over-confidence and bravado that likely played a role in the tragedy without pointing the cold finger of judgment. 

Another great handling of mental health, femininity, and adolescence is Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King. Her mother’s suicide has left the protagonist with some pretty big questions about her own nature and destiny. And when she gets the unprompted, magical power of seeing visions of both infinite past and future, things only get more complicated. Despite the ambitious bite of dark weight, the novel’s voice remains witty, casual, and auspicious. It’s a glimpse into the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship, especially when it's cut dismally short.

I love this book because although it was written before the pandemic, it hits home about being stuck inside—in this case, by choice! The first line is, “Logan was a stay-at-home bunny.” I’m a sucker for bunnies and the friends in this book—Logan and Luna—actually display personalities similar to that of my sons! One of my sons is daring and brave; the other, shy and unadventurous. This story shows that we may think that we are not brave at all, but when we dig deep down, we can all find our brave. Sometimes just a little bit of bravery is enough. The good news is we are all braver than we think!