Books like Chopper — picked by fans

What can you really say about this one—besides the obvious: it’s perfect. 

Chuck Palahniuk isn’t like the rest of us. He’s sharper, more cynical, funnier, more original. Calling myself a writer in his presence would be like hanging a finger-painting at the Louvre.

Fight Club digs straight into the restless undercurrent of modern life—that gnawing sense that comfort, convenience, and consumerism have carved a hollow right through your chest. We’re one Amazon delivery away from losing whatever’s left of our humanity. Or our masculinity. It reminds me of that line in Jurassic Park: “A T-rex doesn’t want to be fed, he wants to hunt.” More applicable to us now than we’d like to admit.

I love this book because it doesn’t let up where others might. It doesn’t edit its message to fit some form of Overton window. It laughs in your face while stripping everything down to bone. Less… show more.

I’m not going to lie. I find the life of Houdini fascinating. It would be easy to focus on the magician/escape artist parts of his persona. However, the book details his drive and intentions from a young age to absorb information and develop his craft are inspiring. Before he was even a teenager, Houdini was walking 20+ miles (one way) to the neighboring town to find work and develop his craft.

As he became the worldwide phenomenon he is known for today, Houdini used his talents and never abused his notoriety. Houdini was very intentional in how he wanted to entertain the masses. But when other groups (alleged psychics and spiritual mediums) started to abuse the power of (dis)belief, Houdini took it upon himself to discredit the practice of these scam artists based on his sense of social awareness.

I instinctively gravitate toward characters stricken with identity issues. It's one of the reasons I've spent years specialising in writing comics, where alternate personae and false realities are fundamental storytelling tools. Growing up, I first read the story of Robinson in a conjuring book, and it caught my imagination fiercely. Like Houdini, Robinson's commitment to maintaining his performance identity was full-blooded—to the point that the myths surrounding his death have virtually swallowed the story of his life. Steinmeyer navigates a complex tale of dual identities with the ease of a seasoned magician. Chung Ling Soo, one of the world's greatest vaudeville stars, died on stage in 1918 when a bullet catch trick went tragically wrong. William Robinson, however, had been fading away for many years by then.

This book, for me, stands alongside The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a necessary stepping stone toward all modern 'dark double' fiction. I actually first encountered the book via one of its looser adaptations, The Man Who Haunted Himself, starring Roger Moore. I must have seen that some time in the 70s, and it stuck with me across five decades without losing its core power. The Armstrong original, written in 1940 then expanded later, is still a legitimately creepy tale, particularly in terms of the questions it refuses to answer. Watching Pelham's slow-motion collapse into paranoia and chaos is a genuinely uneasy experience, like seeing The Picture of Dorian Gray through the eyes of the portrait itself.

In 1940 London, Maggie Hope, a brilliant mind who graduated top of her class, is recruited by Number 10 Downing Street to be…a typist. Of course. She’s a woman. She’s also a crackerjack code breaker. I think you know where this is going. The character is wonderful, the writing strong, the story tight. A highlight for me was when Maggie –a young, virginal, cerebral type—pulls off a daring motorcycle jump with a man on the back because she has to. I don’t know, I think there’s a life lesson somewhere in there.

Mathew Harffy has a lot going for him in the historical fiction world. His fight scenes are not overly technical and are easy to follow. They have just the right amount of blood and gore to make you believe the characters are really in danger but are not simply gratuitous violence. What I really love about this book is his voice when he writes descriptions of the forest and the people who live in it. I grew up in the woods of a small town in Canada, and I know how the forest can be a peaceful, tranquil setting one moment and then suddenly transform into a place of shadows and dread. Judging by the cover of this book, I think Harffy knows this as well.

Vanessa O'Brien recounts her journey from busy businesswoman to badass mountaineer. She is now the fastest woman to complete the seven summits (both versions just in case you had anything to say about that!) She's brash and gutsy, doesn't hold back what she really thinks, and addresses some of the human and environmental issues facing the world's biggest and ever increasingly popular peaks.

I am fascinated by how different countries approach intelligence, both from how they organize intelligence activities and how intelligence informs policymaking. These various approaches highlight there is not a common approach to intelligence and help explain why simple definitions of intelligence are insufficient at capturing various intelligence activities and organizations. The Black Door looks at how British Prime Ministers have used intelligence and their relationships with intelligence organizations over the past century. A well-written account by two thoughtful and prolific scholars, the reader will appreciate how British Prime Ministers have used intelligence to not only understand the world but to also act.  

If I’d been a London teenager at the outbreak of WW2, Joan is who I’d choose to have as my best friend. Joan’s memoirs, taken from her actual diaries, which were written secretly during bombing raids, reveal a conflicted, hormonally charged, humorous woman. This snippet gives you an idea: “Well here I sit in the air-raid shelter with screaming bombs falling right and left…I can’t help feeling that each moment may be my last, and as the opposite of death is life, I think I shall get seduced by Rupert tomorrow.” Written with great wit, and full of joie de vivre, Love Lessons is a wonderful read.

I’ve read it multiple times and also listened to an audiobook. Of course, there are movies, too. I read it on my own out of pure interest as a young woman and then again repeatedly as an adult.

I get wildly involved in Dickens’ plots. (Most of his novels would fulfill my category of children overcoming odds.) David is bereft, having lost his father. He has a loving but weak mother. He experiences beatings, hunger (Oh, I hate hunger), and loneliness as he is tossed about the world. And yet he never loses his humanity, that is, his native kindness.

Somehow, Dickens finds ways to leverage all the pain with comedy. Amazing. I love his strange characters (Peggoty, Mr. Dick) and thrill to his evil characters (Uriah Heep) because Dickens has the gift to often make them comic.