Books like Above the Fire — picked by fans

I feel like this book was written for me. Beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, mysterious, puzzling, brilliant -- I'm on my second read right now and it's even better the second time around. It's the kind of book you will need to talk with someone about so make sure you read it with a friend. One of the top 5 books I've ever read.

The world building of The Naming Song just blew me away. It was pure pleasure to just lost myself in this new world that bordered on familiarity but also was full of adventure, discovery, surprises, beautiful friendships, language, ghosts, and wonder. I haven't cried for awhile while reading a book, but this one did make me cry!

This book reminds me that our outer journeys are also journeys through our inner landscape.

Matthiessen tells the moving story of a Himalayan pilgrimage in search of enlightenment after his wife’s death. The quest helps him make peace with his loss, as well as gives him a more profound understanding of the fleeting beauty of life.

The narrative especially resonates for me because it takes place in the Himalayas, a part of the world I’m closely connected to: I lived in Nepal when I was a small girl and have spent a lot of time with my Tibetan family in Darjeeling, India. 

I first read this book in 1995, almost twenty-five years after its publication date of 1971, making it a generation later. Re-reading it in 2025 made it another generation, a long enough survival for a work of literature to become a classic. And there are elements of reading a classic, such as grammatical constructions that have gone out of fashion and words contemporary authors would choose not to use. It is also longer, slower and more erudite than much contemporary historical fiction, which is not in itself a bad thing.

Another classic that’s hard to argue with.

Quite simply, Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian is an extraordinary read. O'Brian doesn't simply tell a story; he immerses you in the life of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, where every maneuver and shifting wind carries life-or-death consequences.

What captivated me most was the remarkable friendship between the bold, charismatic Captain Jack Aubrey and the thoughtful surgeon and natural philosopher Stephen Maturin. Their wit, loyalty, and contrasting personalities give the novel its heart amid the naval action.

The authentic sailing details never felt overwhelming because they served the story, making every battle more gripping and every voyage more immersive. By the end, I wasn't just invested in the adventure; I was eager to set sail with Aubrey and Maturin again.

Julian Barnes dramatizes the tortured inner life of the Soviet Union’s greatest composer.

Dmitri Shostakovich was by all accounts a nervous wreck: a twitching, blinking, sweating mess. He lived in the glare of Stalin himself as the most prominent Russian composer in the 1930s and ‘40s, during the Great Terror.

What I return to is the way Barnes takes us inside Shostakovich’s mind as he tried to balance writing music with life-or-death politics. Some of the compromises he made, like denouncing Igor Stravinsky’s modern compositions, haunted him. "He had betrayed Stravinsky, and in doing so, he had betrayed music. Later, he told Mravinsky that it had been the worst moment of his life."

Never lose your sense of adventure.

Caesar of the New Yorker tells the almost unbelievable story of Maurice Wilson, who in 1933 bought a biplane, flew it halfway around the world from England to Nepal, and attempted to climb Mount Everest by himself. Of course, he did not succeed—Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay made the first summit of Everest 20 years later—but Wilson carried out his attempt with rare panache.

I read this book with a mixture of astonishment and joy. So much of mountaineering literature is about over-serious people taking themselves far too seriously. Wilson, by contrast, liked to wear costumes and disguises, and outrun the authorities bent on stopping him in almost caper fashion. Whatever else the mountains are, they ought to be fun.

This novel explores what it means to leave music behind.

August Blue follows a concert pianist who walks off the stage, mid-performance, then follows her doppelganger across Europe. As she moves further from her artistic career, music becomes a memory. 

I admire the dream-like nature of the story, and the way Deborah Levy manages to capture in prose the idea of a sound heard, remembered, and slowly forgotten, as in this passage: "There were weeks when I played fragments of my score through the night, which is when I felt most in communion with [her]. I projected myself into her and she became music."

This book made me want to write a book of my own.

So many stories of the mountains are about bravado, grit, or conquest. Yet I go to the mountains for beauty and connection. Those are values that the Italian writer Paolo Cognetti prizes. His gentle novel uses the mountains as a setting for the relationship between two people.

The book chronicles a lifetime of friendship between a pair of boys who grow apart over the years. For a time, their shared history in the outdoors and love of the alpine is enough to maintain a connection. And then life intervenes. Yet the steady majesty of the Italian Alps remains a constant. I took my novel’s epigraph from this book: “It was impossible to convey what it feels like up there to those who have stayed below.” 

One of the most underrated novels of the twentieth century.

Patrick O’Brian is known first and foremost for his exceptional Aubrey-Maturin series about the British Navy during the age of sail. I love those books as much as any on my shelf. Yet before he found his way to that subject, O’Brian wrote other novels, including this exquisite love story set in a Welsh mountain valley.

Published in 1952, Testimonies is haunting, tragic, and remarkably self-assured. It captures as well as any book the romance of the mountains and their invigorating effect on the spirit: “the vast country opened and strengthened my being in ways that I had never imagined. Many things that had appeared all-important dwindled to trifles, and other values rose.” I return to this book frequently and often give it as a gift.