Books like House

This book was written in the mid-70s and “set in a dystopian America in the near future.” Fortunately, our present isn’t quite like this. Five 16-year-old orphans awaken to find themselves in a building with no ceiling, walls, or floor—only endless flights of stairs in every direction. It’s a story about human nature and the human condition, as well as a cautionary tale about government control. Supposedly written for young readers (what we’d consider “middle grade” today), I believe it’s better suited for teens and adults.

Agent Scylla was dead, but they brought him back because someone is holding a contest, a contest to see who can create the deadliest weapon. As Scylla navigates a world he’s been out of touch with for too long, he finds that there’s something on its outskirts, pulling all the wrong strings. A thrilling espionage adventure drenched in paranoia, this was the most fun I ever had being terrified to learn the truth. The only book I ever read that I literally could not put down. Its momentum – the need to find out what the contest was about and where the search would lead Scylla – was so powerful, I could not stop my fingers from turning the pages.  

Philip K Dick is the king of dual reality, and although Time Out of Joint may not be as well-known as some of his other stories, it is one of his early masterpieces that paints the picture of ordinariness until reality begins to tip towards a far darker truth, which, as Jack Nicholson once famously said, "You can’t handle the truth!"

What I love about this book, and probably almost all his others, is that Dick is warning anyone who is prepared to listen that there are people out there who can destroy the world, and then pretend it didn’t happen. A sobering thought, bigger than simulation theory, because there are people out there extinguishing the world and pretending it isn’t them that’s doing it! Now who could that be?

It’s the post-modern apotheosis of all conspiracy theories: convince enough people something is true, it becomes true. Doesn’t matter how far-fetched – the Earth is flat, the world is overcome with Bigfoots, shape-changing lizardmen are secretly controlling everything – convince enough people, and it happens. Except, who’s trying to convince people? And who’s trying to stop them? And are either of them on our side? It’s really a bottomless hole in the most enjoyable way (if paranoid fables are your thing): no matter how bad you realize it is, it’s actually worse. But wait, it’s even worse than that. And even worse than that. This is an ongoing comic series (even the art makes reality seem haunted and insubstantial), so while there are already several collected editions, there’s no end in sight.

Chocolates for Breakfast was frequently compared to Bonjour Tristesse and Moore was called “the American Sagan.” Like Sagan, Moore was only eighteen when she wrote the bestselling novel. Written in the third person, it tells the story of a young woman’s sexual exploration and her feelings of depression. Courtney, a child of divorce, moves from her posh Connecticut boarding school to Beverly Hills when her depression keeps her from performing at school. She grapples with her mother, a down-on-her-heels alcoholic actress; explores her sexuality with both a gay male actor and an older straight manager in Hollywood; then relocates to New York where she drifts through cocktail parties, having affairs, until her best friend Janet commits suicide. Like Bonjour Tristesse, the novel flirts with existentialism but ultimately adopts a more hopeful tone as Courtney matures and aims to create meaning in her life.

This author blows me away with her unflinching approach to sex and sexuality.

This exposes complex and rarely approached relationships in a fresh and startling way. The issue of pain transference isn’t something often dealt with in fiction.

I think I love this book because it’s unsettling and honest. I like a book that upends me and makes me consider life in ways I hadn’t before.

Two words: Wesley Rush. I’m a sucker for a bad boy with charisma. And Bianca—my girl!—definitely gives Wesley a run for his money. I love her feistiness. Wesley dubs Bianca the “Designated Ugly Fat Friend” which is a huge no-no, but somehow he and Bianca began a steamy enemies with benefits fling and I lived for it. Naturally, their walls began to come down the closer they got, and there’s a line in the book (I will not spoil it) that took my breath away and made me fall completely in love with Wesley. Skip the movie, read the book! I loved Keplinger’s authentic uncensored teen voice in this. It made me a fan.

Everyone needs a little camp in their lives. This book is about the “OG” group of friends who get entangled in a hush-hush death and are hunted and haunted (literally!) by the secret. It even inspired an equally campy and fun-filled movie starring young Hollywood stars from the ’90s!

We literary types often forget that books are meant to entertain. I love being transported to an absurd world with high drama, rollercoaster twists and turns, and a central mystery so far out there that you’ll roll your eyes, laugh, and keep turning those pages with abandon.

A modestly-paced and personally relatable tale of the author's experience volunteering for an invasive ivy cleanup crew. The semi-fictionalized account highlights various social struggles and teen drama as well as difficulties with personal identity along the way. The energy this book captures is palpable and it's very easy as a reader to be drawn into Hazel's retelling of their memorable experience throttling ivy with their peers, confronting their own fears and biases along the way.

This Field Party series starter is my go-to when I need a good dose of Friday Night Lights, a splash of steam, and a heavy dose of drama. I mean, football meets love in bloom—can you get any more Southern that that? Main characters West and Maggie are both suffering through a recent/impending significant loss in their families, and this pain unites them on a deeper level than either has known before against the backdrop of a small Alabama town.