Here are 100 books that Visco fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been obsessed with making the future a better place since I was 8 years old and spent my evenings hanging out in a local community center. I realized that things got better when people who cared showed up for each other. I am now a philanthropic futurist and have spent my career dedicated to helping visionary leaders build a more beautiful and equitable future. All of the books on this list have inspired me, and I hope they inspire you, too. If we all do our small part, we can ensure we have a Star Trek future and not a Hunger Games future.
I don’t usually read science fiction, but this book completely changed my perspective. It was an eye-opening experience, vividly illustrating what the climate crisis could look like if we don’t take significant action now. I was hooked by how realistic the scenarios felt, even though the story is fiction.
I found myself thinking deeply about the potential consequences of inaction and how urgent it is to address the climate crisis. The fictional eyewitness accounts made it even more impactful, giving me a sense of immediacy and personal connection to the issue. I didn’t expect a science fiction novel to be so relevant to our current world, but this one is a must-read for everyone.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…
When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.
This book stands apart as science fiction without the typical tropes of lasers, interplanetary wars, or grand technological advances. Instead, it offers a meditative space to consider life’s big questions in a world that, while different from our own, feels deeply familiar. I liked the exploration of human emotions and the characters' search for purpose.
I found this to be a beautifully imagined world. It showed that no matter where or when we exist, our need for connection, self-discovery, and belonging remains universal. It's a warm, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be alive.
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
My day job is as a sustainability academic, so it’s hard to escape
concern for our future and what we’re doing to our wonderful planet. I
seek refuge in writing fiction. For me, if I can write the solutions,
then maybe people will adopt them. But first and foremost, I love
fiction as an escape, so I write and seek out books that make me happy
and are filled with love and hope and exciting ideas to keep you turning
the page. I also run the Green Stories project which hosts free writing
competitions to help us imagine positive visions of a sustainable
society.
I love this book because it shows how we can save our lovely planet.
Each story has climate solutions at its heart. Some are nature-based like planting sea grass. Some are technical, such as bringing water to the desert and carbon capture. Audacious solutions include refreezing the Arctic.
Several focus on our political economy like switching from the GDP to a wellbeing index or citizen assemblies to ensure climate-friendly decision-making. Some are incredibly innovative such as giving the Ocean nation-status.
Genres range from romance to action, family drama to whodunit. There are 24 stories so something for everyone and each story links to a webpage where you can find out how to make them happen. It’s also great value.
A collection of inspiring, funny, dark, mysterious, tragic, romantic, dramatic, upbeat and fantastical short stories.
These 24 stories are written by a variety of authors, with the aim to inspire readers with positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like and how we might get there.
The stories are diverse in style, ranging from whodunnits to sci-fi, romance to family drama, comedy to tragedy, and cover a range of solution types from high-tech to nature-based solutions, to more systemic aspects relating to our culture and political economy.
My day job is as a sustainability academic, so it’s hard to escape
concern for our future and what we’re doing to our wonderful planet. I
seek refuge in writing fiction. For me, if I can write the solutions,
then maybe people will adopt them. But first and foremost, I love
fiction as an escape, so I write and seek out books that make me happy
and are filled with love and hope and exciting ideas to keep you turning
the page. I also run the Green Stories project which hosts free writing
competitions to help us imagine positive visions of a sustainable
society.
Absolutely loved it. I love books that help you to appreciate the world in a whole new way.
This is the best example of this because the story is told from the perspective of a bee. It’s a real page tuner and so imaginative. I also love her next book The Ice which is more of a thriller and also a tale of redemption. Definitely an author to watch.
Shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015
Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction 2015
Enter a whole new world, in this thrilling debut novel set entirely within a beehive.
Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen.
But Flora is not like other bees. Despite her ugliness she has talents that are not typical of her kin. While mutant bees are usually instantly…
I have lived in London most of my life, and what I love most about it are the wild places, the spots where the city and nature rub shoulders. When reading fiction, ‘place’ matters a lot to me, and if I am familiar with the setting, I like it to be accurate. That said, I love a little fantasy to stretch the boundaries. As well as being a writer and editor, I have worked part-time in bookshops for over forty years, and during that time, I must have read hundreds of novels set in and around London. These are five of my absolute favourites.
I have always liked the idea of living in a houseboat on the River Thames. This wonderful story simultaneously fed my fantasies and made me realise it might not be as idyllic as I imagined.
The houseboats on Battersea Reach are like a small village–each character is an individual yet integral part of the whole, their fortunes rising and falling with the tide. Through these characters, the book paints a picture of sixties London, swinging yet also unforgiving for those who slip between the cracks. Penelope Fitzgerald lived on a barge in Battersea, and I think much of the story is based on personal experience.
What I particularly liked was the sense of the houseboat dwellers not quite belonging, being offshore in more ways than one.
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE
FEATURED ON BBC'S BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB
Penelope Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.
On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the temporarily lost and the patently eccentric live on houseboats, rising and falling with the tide of the Thames.
There is good-natured Maurice, by occupation a male prostitute, by chance a receiver of stolen goods. And Richard, an ex-navy man whose boat, much like its owner, dominates the Reach. Then there is Nenna, an abandoned wife…
I fell into medieval history from the moment I arrived at university, when I looked at a lecture list that included the Norman Conquest, King John and Magna Carta, Edward I – in short, the subjects of the books I have gone on to write. The attraction for me was that the medieval centuries were formative ones, shaping the countries of the British Isles and the identities of the people within them. After completing my doctorate on the thirteenth-century earls of Norfolk I was keen to broaden my horizons, and presented a TV series about castles, which was a great way to reconnect with the reality of the medieval past.
In my own writing I’ve recently ventured into the Anglo-Saxon period, so I know how hard it is to conjure the history of these early medieval centuries from the meagre source material that survives. Rory Naismith manages this brilliantly in his highly engaging history of London in the centuries between the end of Roman Britain and the Norman Conquest. Naismith’s earlier books are on coins and coinage, but he does not allow his specialism to pull the book off balance. It’s a comparatively short volume, but it provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging capital, and it wears its considerable learning lightly.
With a past as deep and sinewy as the famous River Thames that twists like an eel around the jutting peninsula of Mudchute and the Isle of Dogs, London is one of the world's greatest and most resilient cities. Born beside the sludge and the silt of the meandering waterway that has always been its lifeblood, it has weathered invasion, flood, abandonment, fire and bombing. The modern story of London is well known. Much has been written about the later history of this megalopolis which, like a seductive dark star, has drawn incomers perpetually into its orbit. Yet, as Rory…
I love rivers. The flow of water gives a sense of timelessness, the reflection of light from the surface brightens the colours on the banks and the wider stretches make a feeling of space. I have messed about in boats all my life and I am happiest on inland waterways. What I enjoyed as recreation alongside a medical career has grown into a vocation in my retirement. The more people who know about our beautiful rivers, the better the chances that we can protect them from exploitation and carelessness.
Sweet Thames Run Softly is a classic of natural history literature.
It is reputed to have been read by British servicemen during World War II to remind them of home and peace. It is just as evocative today. It describes a journey down the River Thames in a punt, and it meanders in the same way as the river does.
The beauty lies in the text and the charm is in the author’s etchings. This is a book that I read time and again, whenever I want inspiration or solace.
In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Robert Gibbings launched his home-made punt on the River Thames and began a slow journey downstream, armed with a sketchpad and a microscope. From the river's source at the edge of the Cotswold Hills to the bustle of London's docks, Sweet Thames Run Softly is a charming, often eccentric, account of an artist-naturalist adrift in English waters. First published as the Battle of Britain raged overhead, this gentle boating tale was an antidote to the anxieties of wartime and became an immediate best-seller. Our new edition includes the original engravings…
Warner is a multi-disciplinary artist who began with object theatre – writing, designing and building characters, and performing. Now, history writing is his primary focus, having written two books for 14 years, and still counting, writes a monthly blog, combining words and images to tell stories of early Snohomish.
Rebecca Stott sets her adventure story in the Roman ruins of early London around 500 AD, and is included in this collection because Stott is, in a sense, creating the first draft of history where none exists with this admirable tale.
It’s of two sisters, Isla and Blue, whose father dies and they must deliver the Sword he forged to the client, King Osric. Listening to the story transported me to the sister’s side as they overcome one obstacle after another. Found myself listening in a dream state — an extraordinary listen that called me to make the exception to include this book in my list.
On the author's website I wanted to learn more about the title and clicked on the tab "Mysterious Black Soil". Reading the entry, I was entranced all over again by this amazing tale. Briefly, when the Romans abandoned Londinium, around 420 AD, the mile-wide…
A “superb” (The Guardian) novel about two sisters fighting for survival in Dark Ages Britain that weaves “a dazzling blend of history and fantasy” (BuzzFeed)
“Rich in history and folklore . . . Stott is astute on the use of stories to control others and maintain power. . . . Female defiance blazes through as her women reclaim this brutal period from the men.”—The Telegraph
The year is 500 AD. Sisters Isla and Blue live in the shadows of the Ghost City, the abandoned ruins of the once-glorious mile-wide Roman settlement Londinium on the bank of the River Thames. But…
I was formerly Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and am now a visiting fellow at the University of Portsmouth. I can safely say that I have spent some years of my life walking along the River Thames. The fascinating thing about maritime London is that our understanding of it is always advancing and changing – much like the riverscape itself.
Stone looks specifically at the evolution of the Port of London from Roman times to the present day. His enthusiasm for London’s history is evident on every page. The book is well-paced, accessible, and combines a broad chronological sweep with interesting side-stories which help to bring the pages to life. Clear maps showing trade routes and the growth of London’s dock complex greatly help the reader.
The River Thames has been integral to the prosperity of London since Roman times. Explorers sailed away on voyages of discovery to distant lands. Colonies were established and a great empire grew. Funding their ships and cargoes helped make the City of London into the world's leading financial centre. In the 19th century a vast network of docks was created for ever-larger ships, behind high, prison-like walls that kept them secret from all those who did not toil within. Sail made way for steam as goods were dispatched to every corner of the world. In the 19th century London was…
I came to writing crime late after reading a P.D. James novel on my honeymoon. Previously a travel and ghostwriter, I became fascinated by the challenge of creating a whodunnit plot that fools the reader while simultaneously playing fair by giving them plenty of juicy clues. Agatha Christie said you should get to the end of your book and then choose the least likely person as the murderer. Quite often, I don’t know who the killer is myself until the end. If I’m kept guessing, hopefully my readers are too. I love the fact that whodunnits are a way of writing about all sorts of worlds within a compelling structure.
This was the book that turned me on to crime fiction, a genre I had always previously spurned. Why should anyone want to read about crime, I’d thought. Isn’t there enough of it in real life anyway?
Then, on my honeymoon in St Lucia, I was staying with my new wife in a magical villa full of books I’d never read. I picked this one up because it was about a publishing house, which reminded me of several I knew as an author. Right from the off, I was drawn in by James’s superb characters and wonderful descriptions. Then the plot kicked in, and I was hooked. When I’d finished it, I moved on to another of her books and was soon reading crime voraciously.
The Peverell Press, a two-hundred-year-old publishing firm housed in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames, is certainly ripe for change. But the proposals of its ruthlessly ambitious new managing director, Gerard Etienne, have made him dangerous enemies - a discarded mistress, a neglected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues and staff. When Gerard's body is discovered bizarrely desecrated, there is no shortage of suspects and Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of extraordinary complexity and a murderer who is prepared to strike…
