100 books like Tonight We Rule the World

This book is one of the first to teach me how wonderfully odd people can be. Jandy Nelson’s ability to write about lovable, flawed people who see the world differently gave me the courage to take pride in my peculiarity.

With memorable characters and strong familial relationships, this book is one of my go-to recommendations for anyone wondering if there is space for the strange.

I know it’s trite to start a list of recommendations with a classic coming-of-age book almost everyone has read, but I would never dream of curating a list like this without including Perks. As a self-identifying wallflower, I was intrigued by the premise. I can’t say I experienced what our main character, Charlie, did.

His story is not mine, and I have never gotten to stand up in a car with my arms out. Yet Charlie’s quiet interiority, eccentricity, and sincerity charmed me when I first read it in high school and will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I know that including a Peter Pan reimagining where the narrator is a fairy in Neverland seems odd for a list like this, but this book captured my heart as few others have.

It focuses on Tiger Lily but is told from Tinkerbell’s perspective: an outsider is looking upon an outsider. The unique perspective and beautiful narrative made me, a girl on the periphery, wonder what stories even the quietest of us have to tell. 

Before Bo Burnham made us all Google derealization in 2021, Helena Fox helped me understand the concept of dissociation and how it ties to grief and its aftereffects. I had never seen struggles with mental health portrayed in such a raw, haunting way.

Though the book is unquestionably dark, and interested readers should check for content warnings before starting, I appreciated the honest portrayal of mental illness and loss. I read this book years ago, but it resurfaces in my mind every so often and lingers there.

This type of book taught me much about my own country, Zambia. It starts with the story of David Livingstone’s “discovery” of Victoria Falls, and many characters, including a choir of mosquitos, took me for a wild ride through colonial history, the struggle for independence, modern-day Zambia, and then into the future.

I had learned about some of the historical events in school, but many were revelations unearthed by Serpell’s meticulous research. I found the characters riveting, and the storytelling complex, creative, and exciting. Reading this incredible book has also made me richer in my knowledge of my home country. 

I adore good historical fiction, and this rich novel has a murder mystery embedded within to boot.

As a women's doctor in 15th-century China, Lady Tan is an outlier among my favorite female sleuths. She minces around on tiny bound feet and lives in luxurious confinement in the compound of her husband's family, where she is grudgingly allowed to attend to the medical needs of the dozens of first wives, second wives, and concubines in the household. She is keenly observant and when a beloved “auntie” is found face down in the koi pond, Lady Tan risks banishment or worse to suss out the motive and the murderer.

Lisa See has authored a dozen other historical novels centered around Chinese women and I intend to read them all.

I once asked Agnes Nixon, the creator of All My Children and other legendary daytime serials, how she became so good at plotting them. She replied, “I am a very good eavesdropper.”

I suspect O’Hara was, too. His 1959 epic (900 pages!) about a social-climbing, status-mad banker and the fashionable coterie of vipers he navigates to attain success at any cost is dipped in old-money style and privilege masking an ever-rotting core.

It’s packed with the one thing any great beach read needs: people keeping secrets who will do anything to protect them.    

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).

I love every one of Jane Austen’s novels. I have no favorites, so I can’t recommend only one. They are so funny, but they’re also full of life, love, sadness, loss, families, friends, disappointments, and surprises.

They all end in a marriage, but so do Shakespeare’s comedies–it’s just what happens in a comedy, along with many other things. I’ve read them all more times than I can count but I always find something new to love every time I reread any of them.

I was immediately taken with author/filmmaker Nicholas Meyer's brilliant pairing of a flailing, cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes with a winningly rendered Sigmund Freud, whom a desperate Doctor Watson has recruited to save the self-destructive detective.

Freud’s efforts eventually teased out the darkest of secrets driving Holmes’ notorious substance abuse in a manner I found enthralling. I believe the best historical novels confidently ground you in a time and a place that captivates but also conjures a reality all their own in their blending of fact and fiction, which this novel does in spades.

I’ve revisited it many times over the years. A wonderful film adaptation by Meyer was also released many years ago, starring Nichol Williamson as Holmes and Alan Arkin as Freud.