Fans pick 100 books like The Strudlhof Steps

When I first read Zweig’s memoir, I initially thought it was pretentious name-dropping, mentioning one prominent fin de siècle Viennese writer or musician after another. Only years later did I warm to his memories describing a world that existed before the cataclysm of World Wars and the ultimate fate of Europe’s Jewish citizens.

In reading other memoirs from the period (such as Ernst Krenek’s–not available in English), it’s possible to see that Zweig was writing from a position of enormous privilege while also reflecting the very essence of cultural life in a world where culture was perhaps its most important characteristic and distinguishing element. 

This is somehow the antidote to Roth’s novel. It is a daunting read, often thought of as a Viennese answer to Proust. What was fascinating was its very unsentimental and often quite funny representation of wealthy Viennese society. Musil is a seductive writer and it is easy to keep reading even while wondering when something might actually happen.

Like Roth, the effect of the novel is cumulative–only after reading it suddenly comes together. It also balances the presentation of Vienna as a city of musicians and poets and gives us the politicians, the mathematicians, the scientists, and the economists. The central character is himself a mathematician with little comprehension of the finer arts.  

This is a novel that is tender and sad, and it relates in a language that is simple and poetic to the atmosphere of the Habsburg Empire during its final days. The novel takes place in the provinces rather than in the capital.  Every line of the book can be savored, with every sentence laden with nostalgia for a world that seems like another, kinder planet. It is the world that pre-dated one of my other recommendations, The Strudlhof Steps, in its presentation of people with a sense of purpose, duty, and loyalty, even if not blessed with an abundance of acumen.

These were well-intentioned people trying to hold an empire together of disparate people and cultures. The empire represented an ideal world of Habsburg paternalism to Jews, Slavs, and Hungarians. It is difficult to conclude the book without tears. No cinematic version has done it justice—nothing captures the… show more.

There are so many histories of fin de siècle Vienna that this book is a welcome, long-awaited postlude. It explains how the city’s creativity did not die with the fall of the Habsburgs but became the source of everything we think of today as “modern”, from shopping, to cooking, to economics, to housing, education and the interaction of state and society.

Berlin may have been livelier in the 1920s, but the new ideas that would take root across the world and shape modern society were still coming out of Vienna. 

This novel shocked and even horrified me at first with its graphic description of a woman’s sexual fantasies. What has this to do with the horrors that are to follow? What is the relevance to the Holocaust of Freud’s attempt to treat this disturbed woman? The novel created huge controversy on its publication, and it took me several readings to understand what the author was suggesting–at least, what I think he meant because nothing is spelled out for the reader.

This is the heartbreaking story of a young woman and her small son caught up in the horror of what the Nazis did in Ukraine, and what I think D. M. Thomas is doing in the most inventive and daring manner is to show how deeply embedded in the psyche of Europe is the wickedness, the psychological sickness, that led to the Holocaust. I’m usually uneasy with the supernatural in… show more.

I really enjoyed this novel by Sofía Segovia. She takes us to a mystical world. Exceptionally well described, the main character, Simonopio, sees things nobody else can see, visions of what is to come. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, Simonopio is welcomed by Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt and care for him as if they were their own. His swarm of bees always helps Simonopio, and his mission is to protect his adoptive family from threats, both human and those of nature. For me, this is a fascinating book that shows the beauty of this little boy.

I love this classic novel; it is one of my old favorites.

Nowhere in the genre of young adult literature does there seem to be an author more subversive than Paula Danziger; here (and in the companion novel The Cat Ate My Gymsuit), she directly encourages the young reader to question adult authority and suggests that with protests and education about what rights the law gives (and withholds from) young people, it might be possible to effect change and increase their rights.

I also found it great that the novel shows the protagonist’s parents in raw realism–the father as a hypocritical, cheap, unlikable domestic despot, the mother as a shrinking violet who at first tends to excuse the father and conform to his expectations, but eventually starts questioning her stance when she sees her daughters rebel.

A book with astonishing imagery and surrealism!

It lurks in the hazy landscape between magical realism and weird fantasy, which is an unusual thing per my reading experience for a coming-of-age story of a girl named Aisha from Mombasa. Her voyage to rescue her father from across an ocean of godlike sharks was a strange and unsettling experience to read.

Certainly one of the most unique (even if, in some fleeting moments, it reminded me of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, which I found strictly okay).

Here’s another fantasy I didn’t know I had until I listened to this fabulous audiobook: to be neighbors with the great Chef, Julia Child. Not only that, to solve crimes with her!

Tabitha Knight has arrived in post-World War II Paris from Detroit for an extended stay with her French grandfather. She’s on a journey of discovery and about to get mixed up in a murder investigation.

Mysteries are my favorite genre, especially cozy mysteries focused on a topic and places I’d love to visit. This book combines some of my favorite things: cooking, France, and did I mention Julia Child?  

I’m most impressed by the fact that the author, a white American, did meticulous research into Chinese mythology and Daoist practices. The kungfu fight scenes are also arresting.   

Xian Li-Lin, a plucky Daoist priestess with superior martial arts skills who is bent on forging her own way in a male-dominated world of 19th century San Francisco Chinatown, charmed me from the start of the novel (which is a sequel but can be read as a standalone). Beset with personal challenges as a lonely Chinese widow with a harsh father, she still takes it upon herself to fend helpless immigrants from the perils of ghosts, evil spirits, and gangsters.