Here are 100 books that Julia fans have personally recommended if you like
Julia.
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Every book in my list is about change and exploring alternative lifestyles. More specifically, they are all about lifestyle change, with some very dystopian. Meaning the change was the result of the old way no longer being available. Each book is different, but all result in a different way of life, one that includes the basics we all strive for: survival, safety, consistency, family, friendship, love, with a creative outlet. These all nurture our passions and provide for a life that respects our beliefs, morals, and spirituality. And all have extremely strong characters. I also embrace change and look forward to the new, the innovative, and the unknown.
This series is the epitome of change from a world order in chaos towards a solution to survive. The creativity explodes from every page, as you immerse yourself in a new environment full of amazing and wonderful characters, experiencing insane challenges, personal and professional, as well as moral and emotional. The whole evolution of the ‘silo’ world is seamlessly integration into the story, making it all seem so normal.
This series is absolutely the best ever! I never wanted it to end!
SOON TO BE A MAJOR APPLE TV SERIES __________________________ 'Thrilling, thought-provoking and memorable ... one of dystopian fiction's masterpieces alongside the likes of 1984 and Brave New World.' DAILY EXPRESS
In a ruined and hostile landscape, in a future few have been unlucky enough to survive, a community exists in a giant underground silo.
Inside, men and women live an enclosed life full of rules and regulations, of secrets and lies.
To live, you must follow the rules. But some don't. These are the dangerous ones; these are the people who dare to hope and dream, and who infect others…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Since first reading dystopian novels as a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by the new worlds that authors create and the fight that the protagonist endures to survive a hostile world. The difference from then to now is that it was previously a mostly male-dominated world. We like to see ourselves reflected in the protagonist, so I’ve been delighted to find so many strong and powerful women at the core of many contemporary dystopian novels. I find that they often include more thoughtful and complex characters with subtle storytelling.
I read this while on vacation, and though it was a wonderful trip, I kept thinking how much I was looking forward to getting back to the hotel room to continue reading.
The protagonist’s all-consuming job working for a tech company made me realize how much I wished I had used social media less. I loved how the book made us see how Mae’s job, at first exciting, took her to places she didn’t want to go.
In today’s online world, the completely interconnected one of this book is a cautionary tale.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - a dark, thrilling and unputdownable novel about our obsession with the internet
'Prepare to be addicted' Daily Mail
'A gripping and highly unsettling read' Sunday Times
'The Circle is 'Brave New World' for our brave new world... Fast, witty and troubling' Washington Post
When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails,…
Since first reading dystopian novels as a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by the new worlds that authors create and the fight that the protagonist endures to survive a hostile world. The difference from then to now is that it was previously a mostly male-dominated world. We like to see ourselves reflected in the protagonist, so I’ve been delighted to find so many strong and powerful women at the core of many contemporary dystopian novels. I find that they often include more thoughtful and complex characters with subtle storytelling.
Many dystopian books focus on the horror and give us little information about the event that led to the situation. In this one, I loved that I got a lot of backstory; I liked getting to know the main character, Candace, and learning how she ended up in her predicament.
The details of her job in publishing was strangely fascinating, the mundanity of her work life set against the dystopia was a unique perspective, it was also filled with humor that I found refreshing.
Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.
"A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." ―Michael Schaub, NPR.org
“A satirical spin on the end times-- kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” --Estelle Tang, Elle
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker ("Books We Loved") * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
Since first reading dystopian novels as a teenager, I’ve been fascinated by the new worlds that authors create and the fight that the protagonist endures to survive a hostile world. The difference from then to now is that it was previously a mostly male-dominated world. We like to see ourselves reflected in the protagonist, so I’ve been delighted to find so many strong and powerful women at the core of many contemporary dystopian novels. I find that they often include more thoughtful and complex characters with subtle storytelling.
A badass woman whose not quite a woman. I was absorbed in this speculative sci-fi tale. It’s an easy and quick read yet the characters are well enough developed that I became furious on the protagonist’s behalf. I liked that it had me asking many questions on the grey moral landscape that is robotics and artificial intelligence.
I found the protagonist relatable in spite of the fact she wasn’t human. She was programmed to please a man, yet discovered a form of self-actualization through reading. Her growth as a character was refreshing and I was rooting for her the whole way. Under a desert sky as sweat trickled down my back, I couldn’t move, I had to keep reading.
"Provocative...a Frankenstein for the digital age...a rich text about power, autonomy, and what happens when our creations outgrow us." — Esquire
"Unexpected and subtle...delicious and thought-provoking." — New Scientist
For fans of Never Let Me Go and My Dark Vanessa, a powerful, provocative novel about the relationship between a female robot and her human owner, exploring questions of intimacy, power, autonomy, and control.
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for…
As a UK registered lawyer, I have spent most of the past 35 years writing about my work. But what has always excited me, from my childhood, is the science fiction worlds which state a truth which is yet to happen, The worlds of H.G Wells; Huxley; Aldous; Orwell; Bradbury; and Atwell. An individual's struggle against overwhelming odds. Not always somewhere where you would want to go. But from which you will always take something away.
I'd heard about this famous book many years before I actually got around to reading it. What I loved about this book was its originality.
I am always reminded about Orwell's book whenever I hear phrases like ‘ thought police’ or ‘big brother’, which have become part of our everyday language. Probably one of the most influential books ever written. For me, the message of Orwell’s book is that the State will always win.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I was sick as a child and bedridden for several months. This was before 24/7 TV and computers. I began to read A LOT. I read everything and anything that I could find, but my favorite topics were animals and nature. I also read science fiction and fantasy. It’s not a surprise that those topics merged into my writing and life. I currently live on five acres that I’ve left mostly for the wildlife. My nephew calls me his aunt who lives in the forest with reindeer. That is way cooler than my real life, so I’m good with that. All my books have nature and friendship as main themes.
I found this a fun and brilliant story. I actually read it to my three nieces when they were 5, 7, and 11. It was great hearing their opinions on the story. It’s one of those books that can be understood on different levels.
In the simplest form, it is exactly what is written on the pages—a story about some farm animals who take over the farm. However, there are many layers to this simple tale.
I love being able to re-read a book and understand it on a different level each time. To me, that is excellent writing, especially when combined with a fun and entertaining tale.
The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
From a young age, I've been captivated by evolution and its implications for the future. I immersed myself in classical works of philosophy and literature that explored human emotions and our relentless drive to succeed against all odds, advancing human knowledge and shaping society. This fascination with understanding the future led me to write op-ed pieces on foreign policy and geopolitics for prominent newspapers in South Asia. My desire to contribute to a better future inspired me to author three nonfiction books covering topics such as the Islamic Social Contract, Lessons from the Quran, and Reflections on God, Science, and Human Nature.
I have always been fascinated by Russian authors because of their command of presenting human nature and its fears. I picked up this book because the author is from Russia.
Yevgeny wrote this novel at the height of the Russian Revolution in the aftermath of the First World War. He projected a society in a distant future, fearing that complete control of the state would turn us into monotonous machines. Anyone daring to be different would be eliminated to ensure compliance and similarity.
My only reservation is that the book borders on science fiction rather than historical fiction.
A seminal work of dystopian fiction that foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian with an introduction by Clarence Brown.
In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD,…
For ten years I’ve been perfecting my own dystopian saga, and with that has come a great love for the genre as I’ve studied and dissected it. Having been involved in the political arena as well, the utopian language politicians have always caused some great concern for me, and through my study of dystopias, these great authors have not only seen dark futures of their respective countries and times, but they’ve always tried to bridge the gap between fiction and societal reality, which I am a great admirer of.
Although technically a “graphic novel”, Moore’s novel has nonetheless been a relevant warning on both complacency and ignorance. Powerful entities not only use the “shove it under the rug” to their advantage, but they both incentivize and negatively reinforce behavior to promote this kind of mindset.
This is a story about re-empowering the individual, not only for their self-worth and pride, but to have the courage to stand against tyranny in order to choose true freedom over the chains of oppression. People should never be afraid of their governments, but rather the governments should remain fearful of their people.
In the near future, England has become a corrupt, totalitarian state, opposed only by V, the mystery man wearing a white porcelain mask who intends to free the masses through absurd acts of terrorism.
In The Ministry of Truth, I wanted to bring together two longstanding interests: dystopian fiction and the history of totalitarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course a landmark work in both categories. In trying to explain how and why Orwell came to write his masterpiece, and its subsequent influence on fiction and political thought, I read a huge range of books that wrestled with the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism and asked how they were able to hold sway, physically and mentally, over tens of millions of people. Many of them are gripping and valuable but these five in particular make for great companions to 1984.
The identity of “Murray Constantine” wasn’t uncovered until the 1980s, long after Burdekin’s death, but only a woman could have created such a persuasive patriarchal dystopia, half a century before The Handmaid’s Tale. Burdekin’s futuristic Nazi empire, a brutally misogynist quasi-religion, is dying slowly from within and an English airman named Alfred has been given explosive proof that Hitler was not in fact a Thor-like deity. Though the plot fizzles out, the ideas are extraordinarily ahead of their time.
Published in 1937, twelve years before Orwell's 1984, Swastika Night projects a totally male-controlled fascist world that has eliminated women as we know them. Women are breeders, kept as cattle, while men in this post-Hitlerian world are embittered automatons, fearful of all feelings, having abolished all history, education, creativity, books, and art. The plot centers on a “misfit” who asks, “How could this have happened?”
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
As a UK registered lawyer, I have spent most of the past 35 years writing about my work. But what has always excited me, from my childhood, is the science fiction worlds which state a truth which is yet to happen, The worlds of H.G Wells; Huxley; Aldous; Orwell; Bradbury; and Atwell. An individual's struggle against overwhelming odds. Not always somewhere where you would want to go. But from which you will always take something away.
I used this book to relieve the boredom of a long daily commute.
Instead of looking out of a train window at the same old scenery I'd passed a thousand times before, I was now taken to a dystopian society in which everything which I had taken for granted about family life was turned upside down. Where humans are manufactured to a specification instead of being born. A new pseudo religion where everyone makes the sign of the ‘T’, to signify their devotion to the original Ford Model T, which was the first vehicle to be manufactured on an assembly line.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
EVERYONE BELONGS TO EVERYONE ELSE. Read the dystopian classic that inspired the hit Sky TV series.
'A masterpiece of speculation... As vibrant, fresh, and somehow shocking as it was when I first read it' Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale.
Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs.
You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills.
