Here are 100 books that Afterword fans have personally recommended if you like
Afterword.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
I adore this book because it is so unique—I’ve never read anything quite this specific or niche which seems so all-encompassing.
It is the story of a life lost, and a life found. Of a father that dies and how the recovery of his daughter is tied up with the start of a new relationship—with a goshawk.
At the outset, the author is so wonderfully eloquent on all aspects of loss; the sudden jarring sense of confusion when a person dies and you have their possessions still in your hands; the struggle to keep in touch with reality (“for weeks I felt like I was made of dully burning metal”); the desperation to see the back of grief when new relationships are desperately grasped at, and fail of course, because of that desperation.
The goshawk saves her (and us) from the darkness, as she becomes gripped with the…
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
In this claustrophobic modern classic, a grieving father and Ted Hughes scholar finds himself haunted by an oily, unnerving, anthropomorphic crow.
I’m a fan of anything Porter writes, but his debut is deserving of the indelible mark it’s made upon the modern literary landscape. The crow is a character like no other, and Porter’s poetry brings this strange and beautiful bird to life.
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Winner of the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.
In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family…
I have long been fascinated by how personal and singular the experience of grief is. There is something soothing and relatable about reading others’ experiences—the more strange, nonsensical, or even supernatural the better. My own novel, The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn, is a retelling of The Secret Garden, but with an adult protagonist moving through grief over the death of her complicated mother, striving to see a bright ray of hope on the other side. Each of the books on my list about unusual manifestations of grief tackles this same concept in new and surprising ways, and I hope they touch you as they have touched me.
Don’t let the YA tag dissuade you if you don’t generally read books for that audience; Watch Over Me has definite appeal for an adult crowd.
The main character is an 18-year-old young woman who has aged out of foster care and is searching for her place in the world. A ghost-story-that-isn’t-a-ghost-story, Watch Over Me is a book about confronting our own ghosts—literally and figuratively.
La Cour’s arresting prose seamlessly inserts the speculative elements into an exploration of recovery from guilt and grief in a way I found breathtaking.
A modern ghost story about trauma and survival, Watch Over Me is the much-anticipated new novel from the Printz Award-winning author of We Are Okay
"Gripping; an emotion-packed must-read." -Kirkus, starred review "A painfully compelling gem from a masterful creator." -Booklist, starred review "Moving, unsettling, and full of atmospheric beauty." -SLJ, starred review
Mila is used to being alone.
Maybe that's why she said yes. Yes to a second chance in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I have long been fascinated by how personal and singular the experience of grief is. There is something soothing and relatable about reading others’ experiences—the more strange, nonsensical, or even supernatural the better. My own novel, The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn, is a retelling of The Secret Garden, but with an adult protagonist moving through grief over the death of her complicated mother, striving to see a bright ray of hope on the other side. Each of the books on my list about unusual manifestations of grief tackles this same concept in new and surprising ways, and I hope they touch you as they have touched me.
Rouge is at its heart an exploration of a daughter’s grief for her troubled mother and the bizarre turns that grief can take.
Rouge tells the story of a young woman obsessed with cult-like beauty culture. When her mother mysteriously dies, she is forced to return home and confront the complicated relationship she had with her also beauty-obsessed mother. Fairy tale surreal and viscerally disturbing, Rouge delves into obsession, grief, and the dangers of beauty culture taken to the extreme.
Like all of Awad’s books, this is a story that will stick with me a very long time.
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty.
Can she escape her mother's fate and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 in The Guardian, i newspaper, The New York Times, Time, Globe and Mail, Bustle, The Millions, LitHub, TOR, Good Housekeeping, Our Culture Mag, and more!
'You think, "She's not going to go there...yes, she is.' Margaret Atwood
'The trancelike, rhapsodic language and deepening…
I’m a Chinese Vietnamese American author who writes about the Asian girls I never saw in books as a kid. Growing up in Southern California, I was part of an Asian community that was extremely diverse—a reality that was rarely reflected in American pop culture. For years, I longed to see messy, flawed, fully humanized Asian characters in all different kinds of stories, not just the typical child-of-immigrant narratives. As a result, I now spend a lot of time thinking about representation (whether I want to or not!), and I’m always looking for writers who pull it off with nuance and realism. I hope you’ll find these books are great examples of that.
Thanks to the evocative prose in Yvonne Woon’sIf You, Then Me, I found myself swept up in the protagonist Xia’s vision of the Bay Area as a perfect paradise, despite the fact that I definitely know better.
I was rooting for Xia, a talented but lonely coder whose best friend is her AI app, even when she started making all kinds of questionable choices. Though I’ve seen this book characterized as a rom com, I actually think it’s more of a modern fairy tale—in all the best ways.
A warm and funny teen coming of age story set in Silicon Valley from Asian American author Yvonne Woon about the questions we all ask when making mistakes in life and in love, perfect for fans of Emergency Contact and When Dimple Met Rishi.
What would you ask your future self? First question: What does it feel like to kiss someone?
Xia is stuck in a lonely, boring loop. Her only escapes are Wiser, an artificial intelligence app she designed to answer questions as her future self, and a mysterious online crush she knows only as ObjectPermanence.
I was raised in a large family, and we were taught to be respectful, honest, and polite to everyone. I've never been able to understand the mind of a 'nasty' person or how a person can hurt another. When these people are brought to justice, how can we know they are telling the truth?
Expanding on this, I started thinking about Artificial Intelligence—could this be the creation that gives us the way to see into a person's mind; to find out what crime they have committed? But then I thought, what if the actual creator was a criminal? How would anyone even know? That was the route of my research which led to i4Ni being written.
I bought this book because of the great write-ups about it. The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and this was his first book following that award, so for me, it was recommended as soon as the author won the award.
It's a great read and has filled me with a mixture of emotions, so it will be interesting to see how you feel after reading it. For me personally, it's a book to study and learn from, as there is always room for learning in any career you decide to do.
It fascinated me because Klara is an 'Artificial Friend', which ties in with my research and interests in Artificial Intelligence.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
My passion for generative AI first ignited in 2016 when I spoke about it at a conference, and ever since then, I can’t stop! I've created an online course, a newsletter and even wrote a book to spread knowledge on this groundbreaking technology. As an instructor, I empower others to explore the boundless potential of generative AI applications. Day in day out, I assist clients in crafting their own generative AI solutions, tailoring them to their unique needs.
I absolutely love Nick Bostrom's book because it dives deep into the fascinating yet daunting future of artificial intelligence, a topic that resonates with my own work. Bostrom's exploration of how superintelligent AI could emerge and the profound risks it poses is both thought-provoking and essential reading for anyone curious about technology's trajectory.
His insights on the challenges of control and alignment really struck a chord with me, as they highlight the importance of designing AI systems that prioritize human values. This book not only raises critical questions but also inspires a sense of urgency to navigate the future responsibly, making it a personal favorite and a vital resource for anyone interested in the intersection of AI and ethics.
The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains.
If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.
My passion for generative AI first ignited in 2016 when I spoke about it at a conference, and ever since then, I can’t stop! I've created an online course, a newsletter and even wrote a book to spread knowledge on this groundbreaking technology. As an instructor, I empower others to explore the boundless potential of generative AI applications. Day in day out, I assist clients in crafting their own generative AI solutions, tailoring them to their unique needs.
While it’s not the newest tech, I love that it covers the essential groundwork that sparked the modern AI revolution. I personally think its perfect for engineers and data scientists. It's also a great precursor to my book, giving you the strong foundation you need before diving into the next wave of AI advancements.
Generative modeling is one of the hottest topics in AI. It's now possible to teach a machine to excel at human endeavors such as painting, writing, and composing music. With this practical book, machine-learning engineers and data scientists will discover how to re-create some of the most impressive examples of generative deep learning models, such as variational autoencoders,generative adversarial networks (GANs), encoder-decoder models and world models.
Author David Foster demonstrates the inner workings of each technique, starting with the basics of deep learning before advancing to some of the most cutting-edge algorithms in the field. Through tips and tricks, you'll…
As a child of the microcomputer revolution in the late 1970s, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of a general-purpose machine that I could control. The deep learning revolution of 2010 or so, followed most recently by the advent of large language models like ChatGPT, has completely altered the landscape. It is now difficult to interpret the behavior of these systems in a way that doesn’t argue for intelligence of some kind. I’m passionate about AI because, decades after the initial heady claims made in the 1950s, AI has reached a point where the lofty promise is genuinely beginning to be kept. And we’re just getting started.
Artificial intelligence is, of necessity, an academic pursuit, at least initially. McCorduck’s book is her account of the history and development of AI. She was not a historian coming to events after the fact but a living witness. Her circle of friends included all the key figures, the people those of us who fell into AI later didn’t have the opportunity to know.
This book, personal and human, not technical and heavy, reveals the humanness of the process. Yes, artificial intelligence was the goal, but human intelligence (and frailty) were central to its emergence.
In the autumn of 1960, twenty-year-old humanities student Pamela McCorduck encountered both the fringe science of early artificial intelligence, and C. P. Snow's Two Cultures lecture on the chasm between the sciences and the humanities. Each encounter shaped her life. Decades later her lifelong intuition was realized: AI and the humanities are profoundly connected. During that time, she wrote the first modern history of artificial intelligence, Machines Who Think, and spent much time pulling on the sleeves of public intellectuals, trying in futility to suggest that artificial intelligence could be important. Memoir, social history, group biography of the founding fathers…
I was raised in a large family, and we were taught to be respectful, honest, and polite to everyone. I've never been able to understand the mind of a 'nasty' person or how a person can hurt another. When these people are brought to justice, how can we know they are telling the truth?
Expanding on this, I started thinking about Artificial Intelligence—could this be the creation that gives us the way to see into a person's mind; to find out what crime they have committed? But then I thought, what if the actual creator was a criminal? How would anyone even know? That was the route of my research which led to i4Ni being written.
If you are a mature person with English as their second language and would like to read this type of fiction in an easier to read format, then this is a fantastic book for you.
As a former teacher/trainer in ESOL and beginner maths, I am impressed that this author has used current creative thoughts on AI and modern technological ideas, rather than the older books, which will possibly contain outdated themes in the future.
It starts with Josie attending a building where she doesn't see any people.
She requested an interview, but doesn't see one living person. A robotic voice informs her she has been successful and gets the job, but she hadn't even had an interview? Josie is told that her success was based on her personal information that was collected from all over, AI had gleaned all of her computing personal information taken from everywhere possible.
In the first hour of her new job in Melbourne, Josie is chased, shot at, and almost blown up, and all before breakfast.Why are people trying to kill her?What is so important about the package?And who are the rival organisations stopping at nothing to get what they want?Drawn into the invisible world of agents against startups and A.I.s, Josie soon discovers that things are not always what they seem. Not only is Melbourne in trouble, but the entire planet might be in danger.And she has no idea how she is going to save it.---The ESL Fiction series has been developed…
