100 books like Woe to Live On

I think this novel did more to open white minds to the needless social harm of racism than any other book. It’s almost unparalleled success in reaching American readers of all ages, in my view, places it at or very near the top of the list of great American fiction.

Though not Harper Lee’s intent, her literary and commercial blockbuster remains an enduring tutorial for writers like me:  writers preoccupied with storytelling and the voices telling it. Sometimes, after a long writing session, I read a random chapter of Mockingbird to relax and to keep myself modest.

I’m the youngest of six sons. Our father read this book aloud to each of us. By the time I came along, he’d had lots of practice. He had distinct voices for all the characters. I can still hear him doing Jim’s voice after Jim gets whacked by the rattlesnake. I had nightmares for a week.

Your grasp of reality is altered when you read Huck Finn as a kid. Twain sweeps you out onto the Mississippi, where you mentally, emotionally, and physically, yes, physically, endure the journey with Huck and Jim.

I didn’t realize until I read the novel years later that this book was the first to blow my mind. And what was I? Nine? Maybe ten? Thanks, Dad!

This epic saga of African American history begins with the middle passage and progresses to the struggles of enslaved Black people as chattel in pre-Civil War America.

Whitehead’s ingenious plot device of turning the metaphorical underground railroad of history into an actual subterranean train capable of traveling through space and time adds an element of surprise and anticipation to an already engrossing story. The strong Black women in this novel broaden its perspective and enliven its appeal.

This book is written in a sparse but eloquent style by a master storyteller. Consequently, Whitehead has risen to the top tier of my favorite authors of historical fiction. I use his books as a guide for plot and character development and for telling a story without getting in the way.

I really enjoyed this novel for several reasons. For one, Jess Walter is a fantastic storyteller. As a history geek, this book gives a fascinating retro look into an era I otherwise would’ve ignored: Hollywood during the making of the movie Cleopatra. One of the strengths of fiction is fleshing out a historical personality by putting him or her on stage, giving them voice, emotion, and substance that would be difficult to do in nonfiction.

We meet Richard Burton in all his self-centered, boozy, womanizing splendor, and you can’t help but feel disappointed that you never got to spill drinks with him. But the guy who steals the show is Hollywood producer Michael Deane, a narcissistic schemer who tramples over everyone to get his way, on the surface self-absorbed, yet inwardly fully aware of the effect he’s having. 

It took me two tries to finish this tremendously difficult novel about a father who desperately wants a son, and gets two. Considered by many to be Faulkner’s most challenging work, it defeated me on my first attempt. But I was captivated by this example of fatherhood gone obsessively wrong, so returned to it and soldiered through.

It was worth the effort. I hope I never find any commonality with the main character of this novel, and I’m not sure if I should take solace from Faulkner’s conclusion that we can never really understand another person, and may not want to. I read it as a cautionary tale of what a family can become.

The murder of Leon Trotsky remains one of those historical events that didn’t change much yet reveals a lot about its time and the people. Since Trotsky was by then marginalized as a has-been in international communism, his death was simply an act of Joseph Stalin tying up loose ends. If you already know something about this period, what with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, the assassin Ramón Mercader, the Spanish Civil War, and the brewing of the Second World War, the author, Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, will still deliver an eye-opening and disturbing read.

The top of my reading pile always has a book in Spanish, and it was this way that I became familiar with Padura, famous for his crime noir novels set in Habana. I admire his scholarship in digging through what had to be vast mines of documents, but also his huevos for shaping a well-documented narrative… show more.

If you’ve never heard of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion—the Irish soldiers who deserted the US Army to fight for Mexico during the Mexican-American War of 1847—with this novel, Reyna Grande will fill in the blanks in grand style. She pulls you in using the trope of a romance between Ximena, a curandera, and John Riley, an Irish-American artilleryman, both pawns in a gigantic land grab now regarded as one of the US’s forgotten wars.

We listen to the big personalities—Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna and US General Zachary Taylor—give their version of events even as the book provides an unflinching eye at the plight of the common people caught in the chaos and bloodshed.

I’ve tried several times to understand the Mexican Revolution, with its cast of martyrs and rouges scrambling in a violent tornado of noble intentions and bloody treachery. Nava artfully demonstrates his chops as a writer by paring this seemingly incomprehensible sweep of Mexican history into an accessible and compelling narrative.

His characters are complicated and nuanced—Nava gives us no easy answers—and we watch them flail for salvation and fleeting promises even as society collapses around them.

Because my father was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Burma in World War II, I expected this book to depress me, and I dreaded reading it. But as one of my characters suffered the same fate, I thought I should at least give it a try. And what a pleasant surprise I got.

Yes, it is grim. Yes, it told me things I’d rather not know about what went on in the jungle prison camps. But it also has a sparkling narrative, and it’s romantic, erotic, moving, and exciting. In short, a great surprise and a wonderful, gripping read.

Dickens was a great intuitive psychologist, and The Tale of Two Cities shows some brilliant insights into human behavior during and after revolutions. The wonderful dreams of French society being built on justice and fairness came crashing down after the revolution. This is because people driven by opportunism and pathological hatred took over society. These ‘revolutionaries’ had an intense desire for vengeance and violent retribution–as well as gaining power for themselves. 

This is a feature of revolutions that we see again and again after the collapse of the old regime: unprincipled opportunists jumping to power. The direction of change becomes more radical. Inevitably, a lot of innocent people became victims during this post-revolution period, as did many innocent French people during what became known as the period of ‘Terror,’ when the guillotine rapidly killed thousands and thousands.

Dickens shows that in this terrifying post-revolution period, some individuals make great sacrifices… show more.