100 Books Like Cujo

This is my candidate for the Great American Novel. Read it for its storyline and its fascinating chapters on whales. Along the way, you’ll encounter discussions about race, religion, friendship, and the virtuous life.

Some of my students ask, “Why does Melville digress so much?” My response: persist in reading this work. What at first seems extraneous becomes vital. You’ll discover a masterpiece.

I love this book so much, I have read it at least three times. It is a classic gothic novel with an eerie setting and interesting characters, including those with psychosis that add to the mystery of he novel.

While the film version is undoubtedly a classic, the novel is by far better.

I loved this book because it was so gripping. It made me long to be a writer. Although it was written over a hundred years ago, the dark story spoke directly to me.

I read it at the darkest time in my life. I was fourteen, and my alcoholic father had become a terrifying force in our home, just like Dr. Moreau, who rules his island with vicious power. I had never dreamed that a crazed leader could break an entire population, but the idea seems shockingly prescient now.

The book made me realize that I, too, could escape from the trap around me, just like the book’s hero, and learn to use my imagination to tell stories.

You want heartwarming books about man’s best friend? You’ve come to the wrong place. Novels with dogs don’t have to be heart-warming. They can be quite strange, sinister or both.

Here’s a prime example: The Dogs of Babel, which starts as the heartbroken narrator discovers his artsy, Goth wife has fallen from a tree and died. There are plenty of clues that this was not an accident. But there are no witnesses, except for poor Lorelei the dog. What starts out as a heartbreaking account of grief then takes a sharp turn into the bizarre as the narrator tries to teach Lorelei to speak so he can reconstruct his wife’s last hours. It descends into a seething underground, complete with people operating on dogs’ vocal chords to make them speak. Have I mentioned my list isn’t heartwarming? Did I swipe elements of this novel for my book? You bet… show more.

For me, Hyperion epitomizes the Gothic space opera.

It may not sound like it on the surface, with the book often being described as a sci-fi spin on the Canterbury Tales, but the devil’s in the details, and Hyperion has many details indeed, with each character’s story bringing us deeper into both their personal darkness and the darkness of the larger world: the labyrinthine Time Tombs; the Cruciform parasite that turns immortality into a curse; and of course, the eldritch godlike entity known as The Shrike.

As an easily-bored reader, I was floored by how easily Hyperion held my attention, as each of the characters’ stories not only made me care about them more, but also contributed to the adventure they shared...especially when it all came to a head in the sequel, Fall of Hyperion.

Spanning multiple worlds, time periods, and philosophical ideas, Hyperion has everything I want… show more.

I believe this book is one of the classic staples of surreal fiction. Its disjointed, spiraling narrative and sprawling non-linear plot lines challenge the definition of what a ‘book’ is. It uses everything from footnotes to text alignment to color schemes to make the act of reading itself increasingly difficult, which matches the house’s influence on the narrators’ memories and interests.

Reading it for me was like learning Latin or watching Casablanca–it gave context to decades of experimental media inspired by it, from TV shows to DOOM game mods. Love it or hate it, it’s a solid tool for any inhuman’s toolkit. 

This was pretty much the first true horror book I read.

My mother, who had read it, thought I'd like it. Reading as a teenager, the scenarios of giant rats attacking people were frightening, and Herbert's description lent a realism to those scenes which I'd not encountered before. I found myself eagerly turning the pages to feast on the horrors of that which was contained within with relish. I was also fortunate, in my adult life, to meet and interview James Herbert and gain an insight into how he wrote and came up with the stories he told. 

There's that moment in any thriller where you happily suspend all disbelief because outright fear insists upon it. That's the case with The Ruins, a bizarre man-versus-nature tale where poisonous vines kill anyone who dares come close to them.

I remember reading this, thinking, "What the hell is happening?" Then I just accepted the premise and blazed through the book with my stomach in my throat the entire time.

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 a unique entry in that the cursed place is a framing device, for this collection of mostly disturbing tales. For his first-ever collection of short stories, Palahniuk brings his wretched cast of characters to a haunted house, where each in turn offers his or her own demented tale. They don’t all work, but a number of the stories really stick with you, and this spooky old house at the center of it ratchets the intensity up another level—it’s not a static situation they are in, there, so the plot progresses to its own warped conclusion on this front as well.