100 Books Like Frankenstein

This book hit me as both tragic and strangely hopeful.

Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a backpack and a stubborn streak, and people have argued ever since: was he brave, reckless, or just plain stupid? But his compulsion isn’t as rare as we might think. In my book, Cole feels the same tug—escape the sterile shoebox apartment and the $8 lattes. This can’t be all there is.

What drew me in wasn’t the verdict but his hunger for something real—stripping away every layer of artifice most of us cling to. Krakauer tells it with empathy and curiosity, letting you wrestle with the questions instead of handing you neatly typed answers. I recommend it because it forces you to stare down your own compromises: freedom versus responsibility, idealism versus pragmatism.

Admire Chris or dismiss him, you won’t forget him. And the story lingers like a… show more.

In the year after my father’s death in a car crash, I was a young person in New York, trying to break into the world of magazine journalism.

I had been given half of an insurance settlement after my dad’s crash, which I used to survive while I applied for jobs every day. I was too zoned out to work at the time. But one thing I did do a lot of was read. I started with a book recommended by Sharon Stone on Oprah. The Alchemist.

What I loved the most about Santiago’s journey was the unexpected lessons that reveal his true path, the omens he finds along the way, and the belief he develops that when you go after your heart’s desire, the universe supports you.

All of these ideas would end up in my book, 20 years later, and this is because The Alchemist saved my… show more.

I think this novel, by physicist Gregory Benford, is one of the best fictional representations of how science is really done and of the real world of scientists and graduate students.

It is also an early exploration of the concept of tachyons, particles that cannot move slower or as slow as the speed of light but always have to go faster. (These have been proposed only in theory, but what makes them exciting is that they would travel backward in time.) In the book, that property enables people in the future to communicate with us in their past.

Another thing I like about this book is that some of his characters are thinly disguised (or not disguised) versions of real astronomers of the time.

I’m going to stick my neck out and say that, in my opinion, this book is the greatest ever retelling of the Arthurian story. Why do I love it? Primarily I think because his characters are so well-defined and crafted—they have feelings and families, emotions and frustrations—and are frequently not at all heroic. 

I love the elements of the book that play out within the animal kingdom—the rigid, controlled society of the Ants, the free and liberal existence of the Wild Geese—all brought to life by an author who was a renowned natural historian and who is using the power of his fantastical imagination to provide insight into the broad spectrum of political models and options for ruling. 

I first read this book when I was studying Politics and Philosophy as an undergraduate, and I was blown away by White’s insight, humanity, and the choices he… show more.

This book is part odyssey, part ghost story, and part passion play. Toni Morrison is one of the patron saints of American literature whom I was fortunate to discover at an early age. This is her masterpiece, an example of what is possible when a writer’s heart, mind, and spirit are aligned.

The fact that the unfathomable sacrifice around which Beloved is imagined is based upon an actual event speaks volumes about the innate horrors of slavery. In matters of race, America’s skeletons are buried in shallow graves.

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.

One of the classic novels about monsters having internal lives. Grendel doesn’t even survive the first half of the Beowulf poem.

But what was his life like? This creature who went into rages over music and merriment? This outsider who clearly had no one to commune with? Where there could just be pathos, Gardner injects surprising dorkiness and humor that further round out Grendel’s existence. And there’s a huge bonus in the poem’s dragon also showing up as an utter weirdo neighbor.

I was about thirteen years old when I picked up Charles Portis’ book, and from the very first line, I wanted to be Mattie Ross. The novel was the first Western I remember reading and remains imprinted on my brain as a first to mash up the traditional themes of the righteous Code of the West and the hopelessness of a world awash in lawlessness and violence, all the while eliciting whoops of laughter.

Mattie was the first female protagonist I remember encountering with pluck and impertinence to match the infamous U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn and inspire my own.

This book is prophecy, power, and paranoia wrapped in a sandstorm.

It was the first book that showed me how deeply philosophy and politics could be embedded in a fantastical world. It taught me that “epic” doesn’t mean loud—it means legacy. I still marvel at Herbert’s precision—his control of tone, symbolism, and tension.

It’s the rare kind of book that makes you feel like you’re trespassing into something sacred and dangerous. Every time I return to it, I leave with something new—and a little unsettled.

This book is one of my all-time favorites, because even though I knew it was fiction, it felt like nonfiction as I was reading it. It was that authentic, and that alive. I truly felt like I was reading an actual history book about an event from my own world. 

The narrative structure was also amazing, telling the entire story through interviews with survivors of the zombie war, and I was riveted by those stories. They showed me what it was like to face that zombie horror, which made me desperate to know what happened, how they survived, and how they managed. Although I was reading, it felt like I was watching actual people tell their tales.