Here are 15 books that Hum fans have personally recommended if you like
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I loved the original story, heartfelt characters, and authentic dialogue in this emotionally gripping yet relatable book. I also loved the 90s nostalgia.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest, examining identity, creativity and our need to connect.
This is not a romance, but it is about love.
'I just love this book and I hope you love it too' JOHN GREEN, TikTok
Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital in 1987. Sadie is visiting her sister, Sam is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there, but playing together brings joy, escape, fierce competition -- and a special friendship. Then all too soon that time is…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a philosopher and writer, but I have equally been a soldier, designer, educator, and farmer. Thus, I am a product of this history. At the center of my gravity are concerns with environmental and climatic issues, conflict reduction, social justice, and political change predicated upon conditions of sustainability. I live in Australia but have worked in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. I have written over twenty books because I am driven to understand the complexity of the world in which I live. I am an activist, and so I strive to act affirmatively based on the knowledge I have gained.
This is an award-winning book that will take you somewhere you are unlikely to have been before. I recommend having been a soldier, as someone who directly and indirectly writes on war, and with the knowledge of it being a domain of human folly, enfolding extreme emotions extending from hate to love. It held me in its grip. It made the familiar unfamiliar in a way that invited self-reflection. While a translation, its command of language was evident
A driving force behind so many fiction writers is not just to tell a compelling story but to expose particular aspects of the human condition. Diop’s book does this very powerfully. He puts the tragedy of racism, the consequence of colonialism, and questions of masculinity directly before the reader with no option to look away, but with an implied command to look at your own views and values.
Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France's German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open.
Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost amidst the savagery of the conflict. He devotes himself to the war, to violence and death, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades in arms. How far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?
A monster story, in the voices of those who knew and loved the monster.
Quick digression: Every pedant loves to say that "Frankenstein," contrary to popular belief, is not the monster; Frankenstein is the *scientist* who *made* the monster. But of course, Shelley's novel reveals that Dr. Frankenstein *is* the real monster: it's his careless act of creation that's monstrous, not the poor suffering thing who was thereby created.
Anyway, back to Labatut's book: here, the creature is artificial intelligence, or the computer itself, or maybe our whole mad digital age -- and the monster who birthed it is a real historical mathematician.
From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control…
Dr. Power is promoted to a chair of forensic psychiatry at Allminster University and selected by the Vice Chancellor for a key task which stokes the jealousy of the Deans, and he is plunged into a precariously dangerous situation when there is a series of deaths and the deputy Vice…
I love books that reimagine a story that is well known, challenging reader's assumptions about the characters or the circumstances they find themselves in, while also standing on its own for readers that haven't read the inspiration. JAMES brings Huck Finn's companion to life, giving him wit, intelligence, and agency. I read it twice, back-to-back. Easily my favorite read of 2025!
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
Richard Powers never fails to engage and move me with his brilliant writing and profound insight into the worlds we inhabit. This exploration of the riches of the oceans left me inspired.
A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while…
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of…
The Whale Surfaces follows a daughter of Holocaust survivors who tries to deal with trans-generational trauma.
From the age of eleven to 22, she struggles to be ‘normal’ and to conceal the demons haunting her. Her sensitivity to her parents’ past and to injustices everywhere prevents her from enjoying life.…
The Beatles turned the 1960s on its head with their music, their hair, and their fashion style. Starting with the bespoke suits their manager Brian Epstein had made for them to replace the rough leather jackets and pants that defined their Hamburg era to the psychedelic prints that they used on their clothes, cars, and even musical instruments. The Beatles were the driving force for the apparel of the youth culture. Deirdre Kelly chronicles the rapidly changing look of the Beatles through the decade. They influenced the style of contemporary bands and the shops of Carnaby Street and the Swinging Sixties. From facial hair during the Sgt. Pepper recordings, Indian clothing during their meditation training in Rishikesh, to setting up their clothing store, The Apple Boutique. It is almost impossible, from this distance, to realize how revolutionary The Beatles were, but the fact that current designers are still influenced by…
John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sgt. Pepper to Nehru collars and psychedelia, the Beatles used clothing to express their individual and group identities and, especially, to grow their following.
They did it without benefit of stylists or consultants, making their own rules and changing their looks as many as five times a year to keep a few steps ahead of the crowd in the tumultuous, fashion-obsessed sixties. More than…
In a world devastated by World War I and the Spanish Flu, spiritualism has found its place. People want closure for people who have died so suddenly. When Evelyn finds out that her husband says he can hear messages from the dead is skeptical. When he becomes a celebrity in their community she is attracted to the country house parties and all the new upper-class acquaintances. As she begins to question if her husband is telling the truth she is afraid he will find out a secret of hers that she has never told him. The setting in early 20th century Scotland helped form the story and we feel Evelyn’s conflicting emotions as she seeks help for her husband while trying to keep his ‘talent’ under wraps from others and trying to accept what he has become.
“Equal parts lush Gothic mystery and delicately wrought 1920s domestic drama. . . . a riveting exploration of the unknowable―whether it’s ghosts, spirits, or the people we love most.”―Tara Isabella Burton, author of The World Cannot Give
In 1920s Edinburgh, Scotland, Evelyn Hazard is a young, middle-class housewife living the life she’s always expected―until her husband, Robert, upends everything with a startling announcement: he can communicate with the dead.
The couple is pulled into the spiritualist movement―a religious society of mediums and psychics that emerged following the mass deaths of the Spanish flu…
I read everything Karl Ove Knausgaard writes -- the thousands and thousands of pages he's penned. I have heard he's called the modern day Proust, and I would second that. In his My Struggle, almost nothing happens, yet it's impossible to put down. In this series, which started with The Morning Star, much happens, but we still get the rich internal life of the characters in their first person perspective. The Third Realm is the third of four books in the series, and I can't wait for the next one to be translated into English. I love listening to Knausgaard on audiobook. I feel like I have a front row seat to hearing his thoughts unspool, and this mind wonders in the most interesting and unexpected directions.
'Ferociously readable. . . I still can't get enough' The Times
If no one ever died, what would happen then?
For several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below. Tove, an artist, is consumed by intense creativity as she spirals towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician named Valdemar and is lured to a secret death metal gig in a remote forest. Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something more horrifying even than the bodies in the trees - the last…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
This is Joseph O'Neill's best book yet (he's also the author of The Dog and Netherland, among others). It's a gripping tale of global sports capitalism that shades into neo-colonialism. The characters are so vividly drawn -- and come from three different continents. Both narrators have compellingly unique voices.
'A fantastic novel, brilliantly crafted' MARCUS DU SAUTOY
'Enthralling ... not to be missed'
GUARDIAN
'A meticulously constructed marvel' WASHINGTON POST
'I wish there were more books like this' ELIF BATUMAN
The return of Joseph O'Neill, with a story on the scale of the international phenomenon Netherland: the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African football prodigy who might change their fortunes.
Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football…
