Here are 14 books that Careless People fans have personally recommended if you like Careless People. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kayla Anderson Author Of Moon Northern California Road Trip: Drives along the Coast, Redwoods, and Mountains with the Best Stops along the Way

From my list on embarking on epic adventures from your armchair.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born and raised in Northern California, right on the banks of the Sacramento River. While I didn’t realize it growing up, it was an epicenter for outdoor adventures. Along with skiing, snowboarding, hiking, wakeboarding, and camping, I always read a lot. My dad was worried that I would have no sense of direction because I was always in the back of our van or RV reading a book. That led to writing…and I had my first article published in a wakeboarding magazine when I was 15 years old. Traveling always took a backburner to reading, but now it’s front and center of my writing. 

Kayla's book list on embarking on epic adventures from your armchair

Kayla Anderson Why Kayla loves this book

Anyone who has ever worked in the food or hospitality industry—as a cook, a waitress, a hostess, a barista, or otherwisecan identify with this book.

The restaurant business is a different beast, and Anthony Bourdain took a huge risk in writing this and burning bridges with his bosses and coworkers. But in doing so, he unlocked the universal hidden language that food and hospitality workers share.

As a former hostess/waitress myself who spent most of her college years with a part-time job at IHOP and the Golden Waffle, I could relate to a lot of what Bourdain experienced working in NYC, especially with minority groups and how they were treated during that time. He was a huge inspiration to a lot of people, including me. 

By Anthony Bourdain ,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Kitchen Confidential as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE CLASSIC BESTSELLER: 'The greatest book about food ever written' 'A compelling book with its intriguing mix of clever writing and kitchen patois ... more horrifically gripping than a Stephen King novel' Sunday Times 'Extraordinary ... written with a clarity and a clear-eyed wit to put the professional food-writing fraternity to shame' Observer _____________________________ After twenty-five years of 'sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine', chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all - and he meant all. From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown;…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

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…

Book cover of The Likeness

Karen C. Murdarasi Author Of The Apprentice Highwayman

From Karen's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historian Glaswegian Christian Linguist Crafter

Karen's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Karen C. Murdarasi Why Karen loves this book

There are some books that totally immerse you, and this is one of them. Cassie loses herself in her undercover role, and I was happily lost along with her. The life of the group of university friends is so well drawn, and so idyllic, that you wish you were part of it too - except that one of them probably murdered another one. That tension is always singing in the background like a struck glass, even as Cassie becomes ever more comfortable in her adopted life. It's a long book, but it never felt over-long. I wanted to know whodunnit (and why!) but I didn't want the story to end.

By Tana French ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Likeness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O'Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What's more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer…


Book cover of Means of Ascent

John Lawson III Author Of Kurtz

From John's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Former journalist Curtis Sittenfeld fan Former Marine Joan Didion fan Girls flag football coach

John's 3 favorite reads in 2024

John Lawson III Why John loves this book

I loved the way Caro takes an enormous amount of detail from a portion of Lyndon Johnson's life and weaves it into a digestible -- albeit large -- depiction of the complexities that made Lyndon Johnson what David Halberstam called "a politician the like of which we shall not see again in this country."

Those who overestimate the reach of social science, and those who overestimate the extent to which statistical correlations can enlighten us, can be guilty of dismissing historians and biographers as people who traffic too extensively in anecdotal evidence. But when so many anecdotes are brought to bear so skillfully in telling the tale of an outlier like Lyndon Johnson, we are reminded that a writer like Robert Caro is in an elite category of intellectuals who can explain to us what is beyond the comprehension of most explainers.

By Robert A. Caro ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Means of Ascent as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In "Means of Ascent", Caro covers the years 1941-48, years in the wilderness for Johnson, who had been devastatingly defeated for the Senate in 1941, but years of fascination for the biographer and for anyone interested in the more extreme grotesqueries of American politics. For this is the period when Lyndon Johnson and his wife Ladybird made themselves rich, Texas-style rich. And it is the period when Johnson won his first seat in the US Senate, in an election whose corruption was legendary even by Texas standards. Caro has tried to expose the details of Johnson's financial dealings, so long…


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Book cover of The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More: A Great Wharf Novel

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…

Book cover of The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi

Lucienne Boyce Author Of Bloodie Bones

From Lucienne's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historical novelist Historian (women's history) Biographer Blogger Speaker

Lucienne's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Lucienne Boyce Why Lucienne loves this book

It’s a fine line, as the saying goes, between historical fiction and fantasy fiction, which both rely on skilful world building rooted in an imagined past or simply the imagined. In The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, the author set out to make the book “completely historically accurate except for the plot”, and she succeeds brilliantly. It’s set in the Indian Ocean during a meticulously researched and realised medieval period, which is the jumping off point for a thrilling fantasy adventure. With sea monsters, missing artefacts, sorcery, pirates, swashes being buckled left right and centre, and my new favourite heroine since Ripley, this was a book I just couldn’t put down. It was my favourite read of the year, and I can’t wait for the next instalment in the series.

By Shannon Chakraborty ,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A thrilling, transportative adventure that is everything promised–Chakraborty's storytelling is fantasy at its best." -- R.F. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and The Poppy War

"An exhilarating, propulsive adventure, stitched from the threads of real history, Amina’s adventures are the reason to read fantasy." -- Ava Reid, internationally bestselling author of Juniper & Thorn

Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a…


Book cover of The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

Unknown Author

By William Egginton ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rigor of Angels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each in their own way uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world

Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the…


Book cover of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

julie10

From Julie's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Unknown Author Why Julie loves this book

Despite being set in a soviet-era Gulag in northern Russian, I found this book oddly uplifting. The charming protagonist, a prisoner in a forced labour camp, is just trying to get through the day, and I found myself cheering for him at every turn.

By Alexander Solzhenitsyn ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Foreshadowing his later detailed accounts of the Soviet prison-camp system, Solzhenitsyn's classic portrayal of life in the gulag is all the more powerful for being slighter and more personal than those later monumental volumes. Continuing the tradition of the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn is fully worthy of them in narrative power and moral authority. His greatest work.


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Book cover of That First Heady Burn

That First Heady Burn by George Bixley,

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…

Book cover of Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Peter Solomon Author Of 12 Years to AI Singularity

From my list on modern evolution: from humanoids to super species to sentient artificial intelligence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a scientist, educator, successful entrepreneur, and author. I believe that human civilization is threatened by the wonderful and dangerous technologies that we created in the last two centuries: fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, gene editing, AI, and social media. As a creator of technologies, I feel responsible that more hasn’t been done to properly control them. My current mission is to sound an alarm about the potential tyranny of technology through my novels, 100 Years to Extinction and the sequel, 12 Years to AI Singularity, on my website and on social media. While the recommended books on my list are nonfiction, my fictional story presents the science and technology accurately as nonfiction would.

Peter's book list on modern evolution: from humanoids to super species to sentient artificial intelligence

Peter Solomon Why Peter loves this book

I loved the way Nexus looks at human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us and our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. Will we lose that power to AI? I believe Harari adds an important historical perspective to complement Kurzweil’s view of the future.

I found Harari’s account about the role of Facebook’s AI in the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar to be fascinating. 

By Yuval Noah Harari ,

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked Nexus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

“Striking original . . . A historian whose arguments operate on the scale of millennia has managed to capture the zeitgeist perfectly.”—The Economist

“This deeply important book comes at a critical time as we all think through the implications of AI and automated content production. . . . Masterful and provocative.”—Mustafa Suleyman, author of The Coming Wave

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests,…


Book cover of Pony Confidential

Nancy Shaw Author Of Sheep on a Ship

From Nancy's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Picture-book author Eclectic reader

Nancy's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Nancy Shaw Why Nancy loves this book

I loved this novel for the distinctive voice of the pony, who wants to get even with humans for breaking his heart. Penny, the girl who loved him years ago, suddenly went away. "I am the Iago of ponies, a furry Fury. I am both adorable and devious.” He has startling abilities to bend minds and find things by long-gone smells. Embittered, he misbehaves his way into a rock-bottom existence. When he learns Penny has been hauled off to prison for a crime she didn't commit, he embarks on an odyssey to make things right.

The chapters in which Penny is trapped in a heedless justice system are painful to read. But the pony and his new friends, a goat and a hound dog, are on the case, and bring about a satisfying comeuppance, equine-style.

By Christina Lynch ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pony Confidential as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this one-of-a-kind mystery with heart and humor, a hilariously grumpy pony must save the only human he’s ever loved after discovering she stands accused of a murder he knows she didn’t commit.

Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with Penny, the little girl who he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.

Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder…


Book cover of The Book of Doors

Karen C. Murdarasi Author Of The Apprentice Highwayman

From Karen's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historian Glaswegian Christian Linguist Crafter

Karen's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Karen C. Murdarasi Why Karen loves this book

I only discovered this book because it was shelved wrongly in the bookshop - a serendipity that feels appropriate, given the plot! Like most writers and readers, I'm a sucker for a book about books or libraries or bookshops, but I often find them a bit soppy or twee. This one is not twee! A fantasy that reads like a thriller - at times a very gritty one. So many twists and turns, but everything coming together perfectly in the end. And it also manages to be a meditation on regret that made me bawl my eyes out over the last two chapters. Beautiful, cathartic and not at all twee.

By Gareth Brown ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Book of Doors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** A FINAL ROUND NOMINEE FOR READERS' FAVOURITE FANTASY NOVEL AND READERS' FAVOURITE DEBUT NOVEL IN THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS 2024 **

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING DEBUT AND ONE OF THE BBC'S BEST DEBUTS OF 2024 **

'Joyful, exuberant, and crackling with adventure.' STUART TURTON

'A truly magical book: exciting, intricately plotted and emotionally compelling.' THE GUARDIAN

'A clever and beautiful novel about the power of books.' SUNYI DEAN

'Full of magic, wonder and heart.' ANITA FRANK

'A magical, mesmerising adventure from the very first page.' A. J. WEST

'A stunning fever dream of a story.' LEE CHILD

'A beautiful,…


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Book cover of My Book Boyfriend

My Book Boyfriend by Kathy Strobos,

Lily loves her community garden. Rupert wants to bulldoze it. When feelings grow, will they blossom or turn to rubble?

"It literally had everything! - Bookworm Characters - Humor - Banter - Swoon-worthy lines."  - Book Reviewer.

Book cover of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!

Angela Champ Author Of The Squiggly Line Career: How Changing Professions Can Advance a Career in Unexpected Ways

From Angela's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Angela's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Angela Champ Why Angela loves this book

I was spending all day on my laptop for work, and evenings scrolling (or doom-scrolling) through social media on my phone. This book nudged me into re-thinking my social media habits and things that were sucking up my time and energy. With practical ideas on not only how to unsubscribe from useless emails but also on how to create an in-real-life community around me, this book reminded me to live my life outside my devices.

By Julio Vincent Gambuto ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Atomic Habits meets The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k in this life-changing guide to freeing yourself from the automated behaviours, values, and relationships that keep you from being happy.

When the pandemic essentially brought the world to a standstill, author Julio Gambuto came to understand a powerful truth: in the pre-pandemic world, people were exhausted, lonely, unhappy, wildly overworked and overbooked, drowning in sea of constantly being on the go and needing to buy more, more, more. But when that pressure disappeared, people rediscovered what was important to them. They quit jobs that made them unhappy and moved…


Book cover of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Book cover of The Likeness
Book cover of Means of Ascent

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