72 Books Like Goat Mountain

Eileen is one of the most twisted and unconventional literary heroines I’ve ever read. Behind her quiet demeanor and dull face hides her mind, which is like a killer’s, always furious and seething.

While working at a juvenile correctional facility, Eileen meets Rebecca, another key character far removed from most women of their generation. Seductive and deceitful, Rebecca cajoles Eileen into joining her act of crime–a violent, underhanded plan to restore her idea of justice. 

Subversive, edifying, and laugh-out-loud funny, Yeatman’s satirical novel follows Victoria, a woman in a failing marriage, from her initial fantasies of dispatching her clueless husband to the act itself. And no less employing the necessary help of her too-sweet and clueless gal-pal, Holly. 

A book about a bookworm, Victoria, it contains countless Easter Eggs and riffs on some of the greats while spinning out a wholly engaging and, by all means, original and captivating story.

A tour de force thriller set in Paris, this book assembles, through a mysterious observer, a disparate and culturally rich cast of characters, all of whom, ultimately, converge over an act of terrorism.

The book's beauty is in its finely nuanced and richly sympathetic portrayal of otherwise marginalized individuals, the Witch, the tale-teller, being one of them. It has brilliant execution, is sly, mysterious at times, and profound.

This book is a compelling and, at times, shockingly revealing story of a love that cannot be, should not be, but is. 

Seventeen-year-old Mari, after an altercation at the hotel where she works, becomes involved with the perpetrator of it, a much older man of, to all but Mari, unacceptable morals. Through its unsparingly graphic depiction of the lovers’ sometimes extreme but mutual intimacies, Ogawa’s novel navigates the rarely explored region between violence and impassioned love.

I recommended this book as it shows the mistakes that were made in the conduct of the Vietnam War from a military perspective and strategy. While I served in Vietnam, I could not understand some of the things we were asked and told to do.

This book shed new light on those orders and how those orders contributed to the end results of the war. I found it amazing that one man had the answers and yet was ignored by so many. I found it disturbing common sense threatened senior officers egos and the results were a war that America would be saddled with for ten years and countless lost lives. 

I stumbled on this book in a free box outside a bookstore when I was a teenager and the family I had moved across the country to be with had collapsed.

My sisters and stepmother moved out of state, my brother moved to California, and my dad, after borrowing my student loan money for truck driving school, went over the road.

Bloodsport was rain-rippled—with a gigantic, dried fly smashed flat in the middle, sliding like a secret toy over the page.

An entire world opened up. I felt no less alone, but the experience changed my understanding of realism, the mythic, and the surreal: a book of immense oddness about a father and son journey up an apocalyptic river, toward Ratnose, the leader of a motorcycle gang.

My copies of this series are so worn by reading and re-reading that they are falling apart. There’s no higher praise from me as a reader. 

This is my comfort read, which is odd because it’s about the fall of a civilization—and The Dark, in particular, is terrifying. We never really see them. That’s partly because they aren’t entirely corporeal and can change size and shape at will. It’s also because anyone we know in the story who encounters them is almost certainly fighting for their life.

Are The Dark one character or many? Certainly, what one of them knows, they all know. The key to this conundrum is what motivates them to do as they do, and alien as they are; their motivations are as unexpected as they are profound. 

This is beautifully written classic fantasy in all its glory. If you only read one book of these five,… show more.

I’ll end with a book that started it all for me!

I still remember, in the year 2010, reaching the end of the essay "Goodbye to All That" where the date of publication is noted—1967—and how startled I was to realize something that feels so contemporary and alive had been written decades earlier. As in so much of her work, in this collection Didion offers vivid details from her life and brings her extraordinary powers of analysis to understanding their meaning.

As she once put it herself—in another essay, "Why I Write"—"Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”

An introductory chapter describes our greater Bay Area climate and its microclimates. The plants listed are ones that will thrive in the region with a minimum of summer water. The glory of the book is in the photographs by Saxon Holt, which include close shots for identification and wider shots that will inspire you to combine plants handsomely in your garden. 

Mitali Perkins is a winsome, thoughtful writer who easily draws the reader into her discussions of the timelessness of each classic book. This book is a blend of memoir, literary criticism, and moral formation. My favorite part of Steeped in Stories was her contagious love for each book. She reminded me why I loved them, and why I wanted my children to read them when they were younger. Not only does Mitali guide the reader through what makes these books classics in a good sense, she also helps us see them with discerning eyes so that instead of ditching old books for problematic parts, she helps us navigate them with young readers in mind. Steeped in Stories discusses The Hobbit, Heidi, Emily of Deep Valley, Little Women, and The Silver Chair.