100 Books Like Brainwave

I’ll be honest: I don’t like Ayn Rand. I think she is a bad writer and a worse philosopher.

But I also can’t think of a book that better illustrates how, in the last century, we became a society that embraces greed and reveres the pursuit of wealth than Atlas Shrugged. Rand romanticizes a world where people are selfish, where empathy is weakness, where money is literally a religion, and the only thing worth pursuing.

It’s a maddening novel, but it lays the groundwork for the reality that would become Den of Thieves. I did not read every word; certainly not every word of John Galt’s nauseating 60-page (60 pages!) diatribe of a speech.

I wouldn’t recommend reading every word. But I do recommend reading (most of) it.

I found this a fun and brilliant story. I actually read it to my three nieces when they were 5, 7, and 11. It was great hearing their opinions on the story.  It’s one of those books that can be understood on different levels. 

In the simplest form, it is exactly what is written on the pages—a story about some farm animals who take over the farm. However, there are many layers to this simple tale. 

I love being able to re-read a book and understand it on a different level each time. To me, that is excellent writing, especially when combined with a fun and entertaining tale.

This is one of the least-known books by science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, but it’s my favorite. In a dying future, scientists are sent back to the past to initially transcribe history and later to change it when they discover that possibility.

Time travel books can either be an interesting intellectual exercise or a jumble of logical impossibilities. This is the former, but it is also a great historical description of the discovery of the New World, including all of the wonders and atrocities.

It confronts the disturbing roots of European and American slavery as well as the barbarism of Native American cultures. It is a well-written, exciting, emotional experience full of fascinating personalities, high adventure, historical narratives, and serious questions about morality.

The book and the original 1968 movie are worthwhile experiences that examine our society, our treatment of animals, and our treatment of each other by creating a planet in which the roles of humans and apes are swapped.

The screenplay was written by Oscar-winner Michael Wilson and Emmy-winner Rod Serling and adds a legendary ending that was the talk of the neighborhood kids when I was growing up. It created a powerful symbol of mankind’s possible eventual destruction that stayed with me over the years.

The 2001 remake of the movie stayed fairly true to the original movie but was a bit slow because of its many side stories. The second remake in 2011 had amazing special effects but made the disturbing point that humans have become a destructive society that must be abolished by the apes.

While the original message was to treat animals and each other better, the… show more.

I normally avoid dystopian, but this story doesn’t dwell in misery like so many apocalyptic stories do.

Last Man Standing is more like Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, because it’s about one man’s survival under extreme conditions. A scientist is stranded on a space station after an attack that has killed everyone else onboard. What happened, and why? He doesn’t know, but he’ll do anything to stay alive and find a way to get back to Earth despite a thousand obstacles in his path and little knowledge of spaceflight.

This story can be intense, but the character stays positive and has a lot of heart.

I have written speculative fiction, and the protagonist, Angel, a feisty, courageous, enigmatic, curious survivor is placed into such a setting. Climate change, one of my personal concerns, has wreaked havoc with the geographical, and therefore the political world, as we know it. It deals with the way elites take what they see as the necessary action to continue their privileged lifestyles.

The author managed to make me empathize with almost all the characters on some level, regardless how selfish, wicked, good, generous, or courageous they may be. I encountered elderly heroes and heroines, resourceful individuals and communities, victims, self-serving demagogues, cruel leaders, uncaring servants, unquestioning followers, and a group of talented and determined resistance fighters bent on turning a terrifying world into a just and equable future.

I have adored my next pick for its long narrative threads ever since I read it in my youth. It is the first book of a trilogy, but its ideas about human dignity and honor transcended the first book and pulled me into reading the second and third.

The cover drew me in but I loved the worldbuilding in this book, both in the premise of what happened to our world (toxic oceans, anyone?) but also how characters now need to live and survive. And with great rising tension and twists, this was a book that left me reading much later in the night than I should have! 

I was drawn in by the 4 main characters – even when I wanted to slap them, I still wanted to know what was going to happen to them. And the way the society was set up really tore at my sense of ethics – a great thing to have in a dystopian book, I think…how does the new society sit with you?

A dystopian novella that seems confusing at first but makes sense as you continue along. It requires piecing together broken memories, broken friendships, and flashes of emotion that are rarely understood. Each glimpse lasts only eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. It’s quite an incredible feat of storytelling. I read this in one sitting with the sun setting outside and me barely even noticing that time existed. I was fortunate enough to know and work alongside Salomon before his recent passing and this was a book I was privileged to provide a blurb for. I was blown away by the story that unraveled before me. I promise you will be too. 

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the last human left alive is a young boy, Fisher, this dystopian, fast-paced adventure story lets us glimpse a future where people tried...and failed...to save humanity. Determined to find out what happened, Fisher heads out on a wild journey with his robot, Click. This is one of the most unexpectedly laugh-out-loud middle grade novels I’ve ever read, and it combines the hilarity with incredible action scenes and a truly creepy “bad guy.” I devoured it in one sitting—this is a book I wish I could read for the first time again.