Books like Beware of Pity — picked by fans

I find that Frankenstein transcends eras by posing critical questions about the ways we develop and use new technology.

I first read a comic-book version in elementary school and have returned to Shelly’s novel over the years because it stimulates my critical thinking about technology, particularly the current rise of AI and our response to it. Frankenstein raises a fundamental ethical question about technology in real life: just because humans can create something, should they actually create it?

For me, the novel also creates the opportunity to explore questions about how we engage technology once we choose to invent it. Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, and the creature becomes an angry monster. I ask myself, is this an allegory for our own response to technology?

I love All the Names so much that I read it twice in a gap of ten years. I love it for two main reasons: how ordinary people can be immortalized by powerful writing and what decisions good people make in a moral dilemma. In his Nobel Prize award ceremony speech in Stockholm in 1998, Saramago said that his writings were to transform ordinary people into literary figures in order that he would not forget them.

He did exactly that in this book. An unknown woman was immortalized by the main protagonist, who was portrayed as an unloved, lonely clerk working at the Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Lisbon. As I was reading his story, I wondered what turned this unassuming, timid worker into a forger. Given the opportunity, would a good person turn into a tyrant? 

If you are looking for a classic that tells a tale of adultery, murder, and revenge set in nineteenth-century Paris, you must read this book. I was completely absorbed with the story even though I was so busy moving across states at the time.

No one was a born murderer, and Laurent did not seem to be one. I was eager to not just finish reading the book but to study the psychology of the murderer. What made him turn cold-blooded and evil? His downfall was brought about by no one other than his own deadly sins—sloth and greed.

I love the fact that the book makes my mind busy. If the tragic hero of the story, Michel chose duty over freedom, he wouldn’t be a very bad person, would he? He remained faithful to his wife until her death. When it was not necessary to perform his duty anymore, he freed himself from worldly ties and indulged in his own pleasures. 

I love this book because it has so many layers. I love Michel because he dares to show his badness. One scene describes Michel’s beard being shaved off as though he wants to reveal what lies underneath. He compares himself to a Palimpset that contains the most ancient writing on its first layer. He is probably old Adam who feels compelled to act upon his original desire.

The great children's author of Matilda and Willie Wonka fame offers a glimpse into his deeply peculiar psyche and whimsical mixture of the comical and the grotesque. In this collection of wonderful stories, Roald Dahl has included colorful characters and bizarre situations only he could think up. 

My favorite is Lamb for the Slaughter, where the answers to a cop’s death lie right under his colleagues' noses. This book is a perfect segue to Switch Bitch, a book as risque as they get, showcasing the range of the author’s literary oeuvre. 

Reading this book, one is left marveling at the vast canvas inside the author’s mind and his amazing command of the English language, which has not received adequate justice from any Wes Anderson movie.

If a Wes Anderson movie collided with From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, it would feel something like this. Thirteen-year-old Theodora’s grandfather recently died, leaving her alone with her mentally ill mother, a crumbling Greenwich Village townhouse, a heap of unpaid bills, and the cryptic message, “Look under the egg”—and what Theo uncovers is a compelling mystery that stretches from the Italian Renaissance to the Nazi prison camps. The community that builds around Theo as she looks for answers is full of great New York eccentrics, and the Manhattan setting is captured with love and charm.

We always felt that Mad Men was one of the true gems of the turn of the millennium. Set during the tumultuous Sixties, it adeptly mirrored the various social, political, and cultural changes that marked that decade. On the surface structured like many TV series “companion” books (detailing the plot and major credits for each individual episode), Seitz’s book goes deeper to explain the underlying messages of each episode.

Even when we recall an episode’s story, reading Seitz’s book is like taking a fascinating course on all things Mad Men. About half of the entries are based on episode reviews Seitz wrote for New York magazine and its Vulture website, while the others are new to this book.

I loved this collection of short stories primarily for the characters that Kevin Wilson created. The humanity and eclectic traits that he puts into them connected with me on a personal level. It’s almost as if the characters could live in a Wes Anderson film. While the people shine in these stories, the plots still have that inventive odd twist that left me smiling. And the story from which the collection takes its name was a melancholic surreal tale that left me thinking about its layers of meaning long after I finished reading it.

A stunning collection of images of actors captured across a generation in the elusive space of “the half” – the thirty minutes of intensity just before the curtain is raised. 

It’s a window into the private space of the actor as they prepare to share their craft with the audience. It also demonstrates how an archive of photographs, captured over several decades, can take on new meaning when represented as a full collection.

For me, the most striking image is one of Natasha Richardson, arms outstretched, in a partially transparent flowing gown as she prepares to appear in The Seagull by Anton Chekov. She is ghostly and ethereal in this breathtaking black-and-white portrait from 1985. Her sister Joely adorns the opposite page, taking to Old Vic in the same year.

Neither of them know the fate that awaits.

I love Vatican intrigue, and Conclave has it in spades.

The characters, especially the various Cardinals vying to be pope, are the strength of the book. I recommend it highly, even if, as I did, you watched the movie first. And as far as "I didn’t see the end coming" is concerned, Conclave wins that competition hands down.