Here are 45 books that Wolfli fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was a kid in the 80s the superhero comics I was obsessed with were beginning to deal with the real world in a new way. And their creators were beginning to push and pull at the boundaries of the medium with a new spirit of play and provocation. I still love comics that seriously deal with real life – its complexities and its profound weirdness – and that push the medium in new directions and reckon with its history. I also want to be absorbed and moved and to identify intently with characters. It’s what I try to do in my own work, and what I look for in that of others.
This is the most profoundly absorbing experimental art-comic the world has ever produced.
It’s a fun book to sit with someone else and page through, backward or forward, or just ambling around, discovering things. The very simple conceit is that it’s a book that spans millions of years in time, but all happens in exactly one single space. It grew out of a six-page short story that blew people’s minds in the 80’s comics anthology Raw.
I remember hearing that the author had decided, two decades later, to expand it to book form, and wondered if that was really necessary. The short version had been such a perfect jewel of a piece. Turns out he had very good reason.
From one of the great comic innovators, the long-awaited fulfillment of a pioneering comic vision. Richard McGuire’s Here is the story of a corner of a room and of the events that have occurred in that space over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
"In Here McGuire has introduced a third dimension to the flat page. He can poke holes in the space-time continuum simply by imposing frames that act as transtemporal windows into the larger frame that stands for the provisional now. Here is the comic-book equivalent of a scientific breakthrough. It is also a lovely evocation…
I think of my imagination as a living thing that I have a working, evolving relationship with. I try to access that creative flow state through automatic drawing and something about that process seems to help me in my daily life. I draw every day. I make art zines, comics, fine art, album art, and collaborative works. The books in this list all feel personally important to me and are works I return to and think about often.
One of the most meditative books I’ve ever experienced. I read this for the first time on an airplane and it felt like having a lucid dream. It’s an entirely wordless graphic novel documenting all the details and experienced moments of a train ride, from finding a seat, to the patterns of rain on the windows and the passing landscapes, all rendered in highly stylized but clear line work. This book left me wanting to notice and appreciate my own movement through the physical spaces of my daily life. I recommend anything you can find by Yokoyama, but this one feels especially important to me.
I think of my imagination as a living thing that I have a working, evolving relationship with. I try to access that creative flow state through automatic drawing and something about that process seems to help me in my daily life. I draw every day. I make art zines, comics, fine art, album art, and collaborative works. The books in this list all feel personally important to me and are works I return to and think about often.
I consider this to be one of the great wordless graphic novels. It’s a hyper-colored meditation on the creative power and potential of human hands, full of movement, energy, and effort. It’s amazing to see a work like this that’s so full of power, like a raw force of nature, yet there’s no violence or destruction. Sit in a quiet corner and give every page of this book your full attention and tell me how your brain feels afterward.
I think of my imagination as a living thing that I have a working, evolving relationship with. I try to access that creative flow state through automatic drawing and something about that process seems to help me in my daily life. I draw every day. I make art zines, comics, fine art, album art, and collaborative works. The books in this list all feel personally important to me and are works I return to and think about often.
One of the most treasured and unusual books in my personal library. It’s an encyclopedia from another world, entirely written in a made-up language. Page after page of haunting and strange illustrations, organized into specific categories and concepts. Sitting with this book transports me back to the time before I could read, when words felt like incomprehensible symbols. Taking the time to puzzle over this book feels like such a valuable experience. It takes me right out of the familiar ways of taking in information and puts me in a state of mind that has to search and consider the juxtaposition of images and ideas in totally new ways. I can’t recommend this book enough.
An extraordinary and surreal art book, this edition has been redesigned by the author and includes new illustrations. Ever since the Codex Seraphinianus was first published in 1981, the book has been recognized as one of the strangest and most beautiful art books ever made. This visual encyclopedia of an unknown world written in an unknown language has fueled much debate over its meaning. Written for the information age and addressing the import of coding and decoding in genetics, literary criticism, and computer science, the Codex confused, fascinated, and enchanted a generation.
My research into the overlap between mysticism and schizophrenia has garnered one academic monograph on James Joyce, with another on Charlie Kaufman’s films and fiction due out in 2025 (both from Routledge). For 15 years, I’ve been a writing professor at New York University, and the two things I want to impart to my students are: 1) the courage to pursue a singular question or unique viewpoint and (2) the compassion to write clearly for the reader! All five books on my list don’t shy away from profound questions of what it is to be a complex spiritual being, but they always remain lucid and engaging for a general audience.
MacGregor’s book blew my mind when I first read it. This masterful history reveals the discovery of a secret treasure, one that eventually transformed the art world.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, mental asylums in Europe began experimenting with art therapy, allowing psychotic inmates access to drawing materials. Over seventeen chapters jam-packed with astounding images, MacGregor’s book tracks the evolution of what is now known as Outsider art and the profound effect it had (and continues to have) on avant-garde art.
I love MacGregor’s ability to marry the rigor of a scholar with a humane and sensitive commentary on the lives of these forgotten "schizophrenic masters.” This book inspired my own research into schizophrenic art and is my go-to source for inspiration on this theme.
This pioneering work, the first history of the art of the insane, scrutinizes changes in attitudes toward the art of the mentally ill from a time when it was either ignored or ridiculed, through the era when major figures in the art world discovered the extraordinary power of visual statements by psychotic artists such as Adolf Wlfli and Richard Dadd. John MacGregor draws on his dual training in art history and in psychiatry and psychoanalysis to describe not only this evolution in attitudes but also the significant influence of the art of the mentally ill on the development of modern…
I’ve been sketching the world around me since 2014 after discovering one or two of the books on this list and feeling inspired to do the same. I have travelled and sketched my way through many countries and in 2020, started a blog called Urban Sketching World, sharing tips and tricks I have learnt along the way. This expanded to a YouTube channel called Taria’s Sketchy Adventures, and I am proud to say I have taught hundreds (possibly thousands) of people how to pick up a sketchbook and start recording their own sketchy adventures. I now have my own book published called The Beginners Guide to Urban Sketching.
Tommy Kane is an insane artist and this book collects together some of his beautiful sketches from all over the world, from both observation and his imagination.
I feel like I am leafing through his sketchbooks. The book is large and beautifully produced so that you can see the artwork in all its glory. Tommy does have another book of drawings, too, which I have yet to purchase, but I am sure I will at some stage!
Tommy has an amazing sketching style influenced by MAD magazine and veganism. I could look at his work forever. Indeed, I regularly get his book from the shelf and leaf through it.
Tommy's new book follows the international success of his first book, An Excuse to Draw. As title suggests, Tommy approaches scenes with a photographic eye but renders them in this trademark detailed drawing style. The subjects are wide ranging including wildlife, models, travel and movie sets and feature his characteristic charm and wit, with astonishing level of detail he is known for. In a style at times reminiscent of cartoonists like Robert Crumb yet always wholly his own, Tommy Kane presents his subjects with a mixture of surrealism, humour and thoughtfulness.
I was born into a family of psychics and spiritualists, where dream decoding was the order of the day. I did my Bachelor's degree in Theology and English at King's College, Cambridge University, and since graduating have devoted my life to spreading the word about the healing and transformative power of dream work. I share my passion for mainstreaming dream decoding as a potent personal and spiritual growth tool through my numerous dream and spiritual awakening books, podcasts, media appearances, my Sunday Times bestselling author status, and my collaboration with scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists researching dreams and the science of consciousness; I have earned the title Queen of Dreams.
This is a mind, heart, and eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists and dream workers of his time, Carl Gustav Jung. In this book, he shares his lectures, conversations, and his own writings.
Jung's psychological approach to dreams and the workings of the inner world are truly seminal and a must-read for any serious student of their own dreams. Jung not only changed the study of dreams, setting up the Jungian school of thought and Jungian dream analysis, but he forever changed the way dreams are studied and perceived.
'I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals' Carl Jung
An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings.
In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffe, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other…
I grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland. Ulster was always an inspiration, for both my painting and my writing. My first novel, The Misremembered Man, became a bestseller worldwide, and I followed it with several more works of fiction. I attribute their success to the magic of rural Ireland, and the wonderful characters who peopled my childhood. My formative years, unhappy and fearful though they were, serve as a repository of emotion and stimulation, which I draw upon frequently in my writing. Having the courage to change and grow in difficult circumstances is a common theme. Since all my novels are character-driven, my book choices broadly reflect this strength in the authors I have chosen.
Yes, another novel set largely in a hotel. This time it’s in Switzerland and overlooks Lake Geneva, spreading, in the wonderful words of Anita Brookner, "like an anaesthetic towards the invisible further shore." Edith Hope is a writer of romantic fiction. She arrives at the "stolid and dignified" Hotel du Lac in late autumn. This is not a holiday for Edith. Her friends and family have insisted she go away for a few weeks to ponder a ‘social indiscretion’. She was due to marry Geoffrey, a boring man she didn’t love, and deserted him on the day of the wedding. Her heart had gone out to David, a married man.
Brookner had an enviable gift for describing people and their peculiarities. Those whom Edith Hope meets at the hotel are largely from the aristocracy, and each and every one is eccentric in the extreme. Edith describes her fellow guests to…
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • When romance writer Edith Hope’s life begins to resemble the plots of her own novels, she flees to Switzerland, where the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac promises to restore her to her senses.
But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.
Family history has always fascinated me. I didn’t want mine to be buried with my loved ones. So, out of curiosity, I asked relatives lots of questions. If unsatisfied, I sought answers elsewhere. I traveled as far as Celle San Vito, Italy, where my grandfather was born, to solve a one-hundred-year-old mystery, and I filmed it for others to enjoy. I’ve memorialized momentous family events in poems, handmade greeting cards, memory books, screenplays, a documentary, and now, in my memoir A Cup of Tea on the Commode. The books on my list are about “family.” I’ve been moved by each, and I hope they move you as well.
Amy’s story is filled with many welcome laughs to break up the many dramatic moments. And I thank her for that.
It’s a beautiful yet tragic love story. After a terminal diagnosis, her husband chose to leave this world with dignity. Amy supports his decision, knowing she’ll spend the rest of her days alone. It raises many questions. “What would I do in this situation?” Could I make the same sacrifice? Could I support my spouse if she chose the same?
I love that we are with them every step of the way. In our country, why can’t we decide how and when to leave this world when faced with a terminal diagnosis? We do this with our pets. I don’t know why we can’t do this for our loved ones instead of draining them of their dignity and the family of their finances.
A poignant love letter to Bloom's husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, In Love reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.
In January 2020, Amy Bloom travelled with her husband Brian to Switzerland, where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life while Amy sat with him and held his hand. Brian was terminally ill and for the last year of his life Amy had struggled to find a way to support his wish to take control of his death, to not submerge 'into the darkness of an expiring existence'.
I’ve written and script edited in a lot of different genres, from factual drama to sitcom, children’s TV to fantasy. I’ve always loved spy stories, and I’ve always wanted to write one. Recently, at the University of East Anglia I studied for an MA in Crime Fiction, and that’s where I finally got the chance to study espionage and write a spy novel myself. I hope you enjoy my selection of books if you haven’t already read them. Or even if you have. They’re all so good that I feel like re-reading them right now.
This is a real golden oldie, published in 1927. I read it when I was in my teens, and I periodically re-read it.
Ashenden is a collection of short stories about a British spy who is also a writer and it paints a picture of spy amateurism and the grubby grind of the work dealing with agents. I love how it reeks of authenticity as Ashenden travels around neutral Switzerland trying to recruit difficult and greedy agents. Maugham was a spy, and Switzerland was his beat during WWI.
When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. Multilingual, knowledgeable about many European countries and a celebrated writer, Maugham had the perfect cover, and the assignment appealed to his love of romance, and of the ridiculous. The stories collected in Ashenden are rooted in Maugham's own experiences as an agent, reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality of espionage, its intrigue and treachery, as well as its absurdity.
