86 Books Like Elsewhere

I love this book because of Katniss Everdeen's depth. She’s not just another “kickass hottie”, she’s complex, with a powerful character arc driven by a deep sense of responsibility.

The book’s commentary on mental health and Katniss' parentification resonated with me personally. The story world of all the districts and President Snow's iron grip on them is well-drawn and has parallels to our own, too. 

For all the highly enjoyable shenanigans around using time travel to prevent JFK’s assassination, I came away loving this book for reasons I don’t normally associate with King–I genuinely loved his characters. Jake Epping is a sympathetic lead, and I became far more invested in his love for Sadie than in the assassination-thwarting.

I’d hesitate to say this is King’s finest book, but of those I’ve read, it’s definitely my favourite. I found the climax so emotionally satisfying; it genuinely moved me.

Talk about crazy experiments! Maze Runner is an epic quest combined with a nod to those who love solving puzzles on steroids. This is truly an end-of-the-world scenario, or I surely hope it is. While I can see some mad scientists excited about such an experiment today, it is still frowned upon. Thank goodness. But Maze Runner explores “science” gone rogue.

Indifference again plays a central role in the plot as those outside the experiment use a variety of psychological warfare techniques to keep the participants engaged in the game. The reader feels sorry for them having to overcome everything that’s thrown at them or die. I loved how the group of teens had to work together to figure out what was going on and then face the difficulty of extracting themselves from the maze. Ultimately, I loved that friendship and working together triumphed at the end of the day.

“What is this?” I asked myself on first reading. “Fiction?”

Each short piece contained a moving story that was like a jewel to view and think about, but something was strange, in a wondrous way. It seemed like fiction posing as journalism, like the great classical Chinese tale “A Record of the Peach Blossom Land” by Tao Yuanming (6th century) that inspired my most popular play.

It upended my concept of short story, and of art, opening doors to ways of writing. “Fiction in disguise.” Astonishingly creative, yet peaceful and profound. Wildly creative themes and twists narrated by a quiet objective voice. Maestro Borges taught me that you can shock an audience through very calm narrative, and how profound creativity starts with format.

A master class in creativity that ends with compassion.

Barker's theory of parallel worlds in this book totally captivated me. The story world is so layered and nuanced—and nightmarish! Themes of God, gender, sex, and death weave together effortlessly.

I love it so much that I read this book at least once a year! What I liked most was the journey of the dual protagonists, Gentle and Jude, not to mention that killer twist at the end. 

David Arnold's The Electric Kingdom is a beautifully written narrative imbued with love, tragedy, fear, and hope. It is a brilliant love letter to storytelling – a novel that cleverly subverts dystopian conventions and instead paints a wholly original painting of something deeply affecting and inspiring.

I don't want to mention any plot points at all for fear of giving too much away (the official synopsis should be more than enough to hook you). I will say this: I read the entire second half of the book in one sitting. His characters are fully realized—the secrets and tension always growing in a slow burn.

Arnold masterfully connects all his story elements in a riveting third act. And, once I came to the end, I found the book had changed me in subtle ways—as all the greats do.

I cannot recommend TEK enough. Arnold has written what is nothing short of… show more.

Over the years, I’ve read hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Many of them have moved, stretched, and entertained me, but there are only a few I wandered into and realized early on that I would not get out of this one unchanged.

The author's inventiveness is astonishing, managing to create not one new world we inhabit but three, all deftly interconnected by the unlikely thread of a simple fable passed from generation to generation. Perhaps most striking to me is the sheer power of the book, its capacity to take us places and share lives we would otherwise never dreamed of.

While the mysterious document—itself a fascinating story within a story—wends its way through a narrative that spans a thousand years, its message is less important than the lives it touches.

And what lives. Each character is drawn so vividly and infused with such essential, defining human traits that we… show more.

This book by Jane Langton, which inspired me to write my own books, is another one of my all-time favorite magical middle-grade books. Written in the 1960s and set in Concord, Massachusetts, it drew me in right away when siblings Eleanor and Eddie discover a magic attic room with a roadmap to treasure that might just save their remarkable old home.

My favorite chapters deal with the self-acceptance that helps Eleanor choose wisely for her future (The Gift of the Mirror) and Eddie’s discovery of the importance of helping others (The Chambered Nautilus).

I loved this book because it has mathematics to the nth degree! Some of it in the form of inside jokes like “easy to use partial differential equations” that made me laugh out loud. Some of it, such as “equations that had sadness as a constant,” are in a “techno-poetic” style that I strive to achieve in my own writing. But this “meta-science fiction” novel is also filled with musings on writing and creativity. The self-referential recursion of a book within a book within a book makes the paradoxes of time travel even more interesting. The “reality portions” in which the main character pursues his quest to “find his father” are as deep and well done a theme as any I have read in sci-fi.

Even now, I can’t read this without getting goosebumps. No other writer matches L. M. Boston for creating an enchanting, intriguing atmosphere that leads the reader, along with the story’s main character, 7-year-old Tolly, to feel the ghost children long before they appear. When they do, the combination they bring of joy, playful behaviour, and wistfulness – there is a reason, after all, that they are all ghosts together – goes straight to the heart.