Here are 43 books that Treats fans have personally recommended if you like
Treats.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I am the co-author of Small Teaching K-8. I hold Massachusetts teacher licensure in English 5-12, Library k-12, and School Administration 5-8 as well as an M.Ed. from Boston College.
I read this novel in one sitting because I was so taken by Reid’s portrayal of ‘parent vs. caretaker.’
As teachers, we navigate these challenging relationships every day. Such a Fun Age shows the rawness and imperfection of parenthood alongside the precariousness of taking responsibility for someone else’s child.
A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • NPR • Vogue • Elle • Real Simple • InStyle • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Slate • Vox • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • BookPage
Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Reese's Book Club Pick
"The most provocative page-turner of the year." --Entertainment Weekly
"I urge you to read Such a Fun Age." --NPR
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and…
As a former graduate student who holds an MA and Ph.D in English with a Creative Writing emphasis, but also as the child of immigrants and the first in my family to go to college, I love when writers deflate the pretensions of academia. I didn’t grow up around formally educated people so I can relate to the imposter syndrome some of the characters in these books experience. I don’t know who recommended Lucky Jim to me, but that book began my infatuation with the genre of academic satires or campus novels, of which there are many others.
Finally, a campus novel with a female protagonist who’s also an undergraduate. Batuman does a wonderful job of immersing the reader in her main character’s point of view. And what a fascinating perspective she offers–I was so enthralled with her way of thinking and the amusing things she notices about the people and places around her!
The writing constantly surprised and engaged me while taking me along on the journey of Selin’s first year of college.
It occurred to me that if someone wanted to design a method of introduction for people who don’t actually want to date, then they’d design online dating as we know it today! One can't help feeling that many people using dating sites have no intention of forming a relationship (for a host of personal reasons). And that’s what makes it ripe for failure, and for fiction. Anyone who’s ever looked for the right connection (IRL or online), or tried to make an existing connection work, will recognise something in the story collection.
In this immersive memoir, Kassabova observes that people who’re drawn to the difficult dance of tango are usually complex and thin-skinned and thus, when relationships form between tango partners and, inevitably, end the suffering is excruciating because… complex and thin-skinned. Steeped in the history of tango and its music, the contemporary element comes from the Kassabova’s freelance life; accepting travel writing assignments at short notice, stepping off a plane into another city’s tango scene. Her relationship with dancing evolves over a decade and several continents, similarly her connections with tango aficionados encountered around the globe. There’s more than one heartbreak, described in lucid, compelling prose but the end is heart-healing because, as an Ecuadorian friend tells her, "The universal woman makes her own way."
Kapka Kassabova first set foot in a tango studio ten years ago and, from that moment, she was hooked. With the beat of tango driving her on and the music filling her head, she's danced across the world, from Auckland to Edinburgh, from Berlin to Buenos Aires, putting in hours of practice for fleeting moments of dance-floor ecstasy, suffering blisters and heart-break along the way. Here, in sparkling, spring-heeled prose, Kapka takes us inside the esoteric world of tango to tell the story of the dance, from its Afro roots to its sequined stars and back. Twelve Minutes of Love…
The best fiction explores complex relationships between friends and lovers. I’ve been fascinated by this for as long as I can remember because love and friendship are the cornerstones of human existence. As concepts, they give life meaning yet can also take it away. They bring us together but can also leave us estranged. The sun-soaked cities of Europe have for so long been playgrounds for young lovers and friends, enjoying both the best of life and the most melancholy. I love traveling Europe–the grandeur, the romance, the happy-sad sentiment of it all. It embodies the topic and makes for the most beautiful setting.
I read this book in a few sittings. That’s how hooked it had me. There’s something about the delicacy and complexity of the relationship between the two protagonists that makes this book stand out. I love the book for this. I felt connected to the characters, invested in their future, and even furious at their inability to make things work at times (they were made for each other!). Their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy are so relatable yet so often not talked about.
I loved the way the book explores deeper male emotions and the pressure felt by men in a world where talking about feelings has historically been seen as a weakness. Lastly, I love it because it is lyrical, melancholic, hopeful, and real. All of that is what life is.
NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan).
ONE OF THE TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE—Entertainment Weekly
TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson
AND BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town &…
I’m a multi-genre writer, a passionate reader, and, like all of us, a flawed human being. The stories that truly speak to me are the ones with a main character who is imperfect. I may not like the protagonist at first, but as the author develops the story and the hero’s challenges, the character grows, we see inside them and learn to love them, as they also learn to love and accept themselves, flaws and all. They use this growth to make a better world. And that’s what fiction is all about. Of course, it helps if they’re funny too. I love humor.
A book by Charlotte English – what more needs to be said? You know it’s going to be an unputdownable, funny journey. Gussie thinks she’s the ‘normal’ one in the family, until her magical gift asserts itself. Spiky and unsociable in nature, Gussie finds her ‘wyrde’, and then begins to view herself in a new light. With this new confidence, she sets out to save her world.
‘If you had not already realised it, this is a very strange house you are come to.’
The Scions of the House of Werth are all born normal. It is what happens afterwards that sets them apart.
It is not easy being the most supernatural family in England. Nell talks to the dead; Lord Werth is too often to be found out in the churchyard at the dead of night; and the less said about Lord Bedgberry, the better.
Only Miss Gussie Werth has missed out on the family curse. She sups on chocolate, not blood; she's blissfully oblivious to…
I grew up in Spain, the U.S., and Germany, but no matter where we lived I always felt at home with a book in my hands. From a young age, I was drawn to stories with otherworldly content or told in dazzling ways. My curiosity about the workings of nature led me to a degree in Theoretical Physics, and later, I studied the history of science fiction and the craft of storytelling. Science fiction from the 60s and 70s, setting out to push the boundaries of the possible, hit me at exactly the right time in my development as a reader and changed me forever.
When I discovered this book as a teenager, it exploded my understanding of what science fiction could do. After revisiting it recently, I found its absurdism, dark humor, and satire to be as fresh, funny, biting, and original as ever.
Voice is probably the most distinctive literary characteristic of Malzberg’s vast short fiction output, of which this collection contains a number of 70s gems. This work showcases some of Malzberg’s obsessive interests, like alienated astronauts, hallucinating patients, assassinations, and the deconstruction of genre tropes. Malzberg’s commentary on science fiction and fandom–the recursive strand in his work–links it directly to my novel, which mentions his work explicitly.
The stories in this collection are short but savage, genius, offensive, and maniacal. You’ve been warned!
Introduction (Out from Ganymede) (1974) essay Out from Ganymede (1972) short story November 22, 1963 (1974) short story Still-Life (1972) short story by K.M. O'Donnell The Conquest of Mars (1972) short story Some Notes Toward a Useable Past (1972) short story Linkage (1973) short story The Union Forever (1973) short story The Yearbook (aka Yearbook) (1971) short story Inter Alia (1972) short story Allowances (1972) short story The Helmet (1973) short story Breaking In (1972) short story Pater Familias (1972) short story with Kris Neville Causation (1971) short story A Short Religious Novel (1972) short story Report of the Defense…
I've benefited from (or perhaps been cursed by) a diverse life. I've lived and worked in six countries on three continents. I've been an English teacher, copywriter, magazine columnist, internet entrepreneur (in Bangkok, of all places), author, and creativity consultant. But before that, I was a child with an overactive imagination. I delighted in science fiction, surrealism, and humor. Outlandish ideas inspire me. And I love absurdity when done well. It is easy to come up with nonsense. Creating meaningful nonsense is far more difficult. But when it works, it is brilliant!
I love the sheer simplicity of this novel's theme and the chaos a simple act can wreck. The novel begins with the main character deciding to shave off the mustache he has had for more than a decade while his wife is out. When she returns, she says nothing about the missing mustache. When he brings it up, she denies he has ever had a mustache. Likewise, friends and colleagues say the main character never had a moustache.
Things get worse from there. The novel raises questions about identity, trust, and memory.
One morning, a man shaves off his long-worn moustache, hoping to amuse his wife and friends. But when nobody notices, or pretends not to have noticed, what started out as a simple trick turns to terror. As doubt and denial bristle, and every aspect of his life threatens to topple into madness - a disturbing solution comes into view, taking us on a dramatic flight across the world.
Translated by Lanie Goodman
Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world…
In my first career as an actress, I often got cast as the “comic relief” in more serious films and plays. I cut my acting chops on improv comedy before getting my BFA in drama from NYU and performing in everything from Shakespeare to Seinfeld. I wrote and performed in stage shows at Disneyland and Disney World and screamed myself hoarse in B-horror films. As an author, I like to write about serious topics but I just can’t help being funny. I received my MFA from Antioch University and have had over 30 short stories and essays published. While I read voraciously (and genre-indiscriminately), my favorite books are often “darkly comedic” or “funny yet poignant.”
Although Moore is one of my favorite authors, most of his books are not exactly about austere topics. His brand of absurdism features outlandish characters such as demons, vampires, stupid angels, tricksters, and lustful sea beasts. Yet Moore writes with a superlative intelligence that never disappoints me. This novel was an easy pick for my list. In it, Moore retells the story of Christ with a paradoxically reverent irreverence. It’s well-researched and details facts about Eastern religious traditions and Roman history as well Biblical events. I’ve recommended this book to so many people. And only a few of them were deeply offended. :-)
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in this divinely hilarious, yet heartfelt work 'reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams' (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes, Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the…
It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.
This is one of those books you can open to any page and immediately start laughing. It resembles an encyclopedia but every given subject is shredded with wit and insight. Personally, I’m eternally grateful to the folks at The Onion for trying to keep up with the organically occurring absurdity in modern life that now has rendered most satire obsolete. It must be a whole lot like dogpaddling. In Jell-O. In the dead of winter.
Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the print industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion's compendium of all things known. Replete with an astonishing assemblage of facts, illustrations, maps, charts, threats, blood, and additional fees to edify even the most simple-minded book-buyer, THE ONION BOOK OF KNOWN KNOWLEDGE is packed with valuable information-such as the life…
As an immigrant, an Asian American, and a gender-questioning person, I’ve never fit comfortably anywhere. So perhaps it’s no surprise that my writing isn’t easily categorizable either: many have told me that my work is too literary to be considered SF/F and too SF/F to be strictly literary. But what is genre anyway? My favorite books have always been the ones that straddled genres, and every time I read a wonderful book that can’t be easily labeled or marketed, I grow even more sure that the future of literature lies in fluid, boundary-crossing, transgressive texts. Here are some of my favorites—I hope you enjoy them.
Is Fried’s short story collection The Great Frustration literary, science fiction, fantasy, absurdist, or something else? I have no idea, and I suspect neither does he, but that’s one of the reasons I love this book so much.
Whether Fried is writing about the animals in the Garden of Eden or a town that refuses to change its ways despite its pesky recurrent problem of massacres, these stories will make you laugh.
After you’re done laughing, when you’ve had some time to think, you’ll realize that you were only laughing because Fried is adept at pointing out those aspects of society and human nature that we find uncomfortable—which, of course, the best comedians have always done.
Equal parts fable and wry satire, The Great Frustration is a sparkling debut. Seth Fried balances the dark--a town besieged, a yearly massacre, the harem of a pathological king--with moments of sweet optimism--researchers unexpectedly inspired by discovery, the triumph of a doomed monkey, the big implications found in a series of tiny creatures.
In "Loeka Discovered," a buzz flows throughout a lab when scientists unearth a perfectly preserved prehistoric man who suggests to them the hopefulness of life, but the more they learn, the more the realities of ancient survival invade their buoyant projections. "Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre" meditates on…
