Books like Burn Book — picked by fans

This book is quietly hilarious. I loved being “inside” Patricia Lockwood’s mind. As a fellow lapsed Catholic, I resonated with her upbringing and living in the strange shadow of religion. Lockwood weaves a contradictory coming-of-age story with profound wit and lyricism.

She also explores the complexities of what she calls “The Portal”—the internet of things that boggle the mind even as they bring solace. I loved how Lockwood used “the portal” to understand her conservative upbringing and eventually find her own irreverent path in the world.

The book led me to follow her online presence too, and helped me learn new ways to “be” online. As Lockwood writes in Priestdaddy: “Part of what you have to figure out in this life is, who would I be if I hadn’t been frightened? What hurt me, and what would I be if it hadn’t?” 

I’ve always loved so-called monsters, and Emil Ferris, with her comforting voice and detailed, luminous drawings, elevates “monsters” to a transcendent place. This is a compelling graphic novel, a must-read for anyone who has felt labeled “monstrous” by societal norms or felt at all marginalized.

In reading My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Emil Ferris’s deep empathy for outsiders is felt in every line and drawing. The child’s point-of-view of 10-year-old Karen’s wild imagination felt like the author and protagonist were sharing their private diary with us. All this, and a mystery too, as Karen, who sees herself as a werewolf, tries to solve a monstrous murder mystery.

Lucy Sante’s memoir is about discovering something she’s always known - that while she was born Luc Sante, she has always been Lucy Sante. I found the book transcendent.

As my young friends began to question their sexuality and crave a non-binary world, I became curious about how that felt from the inside. As a journalist, when I’m confronted by something complex, I turn to original sources and voices. When Lucy Sante, one of the greatest wordsmiths of our time, began her transition, I knew this was a book for me. Her story took me on a tender, brutal, intimate journey that ultimately had me wondering: Am I living my true life?

Mandy Keifetz’s book is about grief over a lover’s suicide, but her voice is so wise and amusing that her story didn’t make me sad.

I’ve lost humans; we all have. I lost my best friend and my best dog. How can we grasp what was there and now is gone? I instantly related to this story—the author is a fellow New Jersey girl living at the misfit margins and drifting along, gig by gig. She’s scrappy and willing to do what it takes to survive. I love being swept into a curious mind through a book.

I enjoyed the book’s spiral narrative, which drills down on loss with the sense of a dog chasing its own tail in fury and glee. And then, yes, there is Pascal’s Wager. Why not keep one foot on the side of belief in an afterlife or soul’s lingering on? What do you have… show more.

Most of my work experiences have been with startups, but that statement is a bit misleading. To be more accurate, I worked at early-stage companies, since the smallest company I worked for was already 35 people. Chaos Monkeys conveys both the excitement and drudgery of founding a real start-up (Antonio starts with two other co-founders).

Antonio’s book takes us from his cushy job on Wall Street to making the leap to running his own venture. Antonio’s flavorful style is the perfect voice as he takes you into those meetings at which money is exchanged, contracts are signed, and options are handed out. His company’s exit and his summation of what was gained and lost are the bread and butter conversations of anyone who’s ever worked in a high-tech startup. This is an illuminating and insightful book.

This is one of my favourite tech criticism books. I love how each of the book’s chapters takes a word commonly used in Silicon Valley (and the associated international startup communities) - such as "failure," "disruption," "drop-out," and "content" and dives into the "intellectual bedrock" at the heart of the discourse which surrounds them.

Daub is a Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford - so his critical eye and vast knowledge of intellectual history swiftly pull apart the pseudo-intellectualism so many in the startup community use to justify their success and problematic behaviour.

I particularly valued the fact that it’s short, punchy, and acts as a brilliant thought-starter to go deeper into the crucial ideologies which are hugely impacting our world today.

Jonathan Taplin’s excellent book focuses on just four billionaires–Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen. What I found special about this book is that it shows how these billionaires have created and sold utopian futures to the world, whether they come in the form of the metaverse, cryptocurrency, space travel, or transhumanism.

Even more disturbing is Taplin’s argument that under the pretense of these utopias, billionaires have been able to grow their wealth and power without interference from the government. Meanwhile, inequality continues to expand, nature is replaced with technology, and oligarchy gets more and more entrenched. In short, billionaire utopian visions are a distraction from the real and present danger of gross economic inequality.

Over the last two centuries, human per capita energy usage has grown 800 percent, while the population has also grown to the same degree. Life has changed profoundly due to our adoption of fossil fuels—but puzzlingly few people are curious to understand energy’s role in society and history. Smil fills the void to overflowing with this detailed account of how people have harvested energy from their environments, and how doing so has changed the ways they live.

First published in 1958, this is one of Hannah Arendt’s most influential books and in it she attempts to define the human condition in the aftermath of World War II, developing her concept “natality.” 

It’s a challenging book that I’ve wrestled with and argued with and never forgotten. It includes some of her most powerful and frequently cited passages about birth. Lately, I’ve been returning to its opening pages, in which she discusses the launch of Sputnik into space. 

She saw this launch not as an exciting technological breakthrough, but as a fateful repudiation of our earthly existence, an existence that was defined by birth with possibilities and limitations.

Frankly, it makes me squirm to recommend this book, but it’s a topic we Americans need to understand better. Under Xi Jinping, China has expanded its use of surveillance cameras and begun a “social credit” system to track people who are—and aren’t—following the rules. Kai Strittmatter, who reported from China for a leading German newspaper for more than a decade, relies on strong research and concludes that China is Orwellian. And yet, most Chinese citizens I know do not feel watched and oppressed. I’m eager to get back to China to judge for myself.