100 Books Like Lost Horizon

This is a slow-burn book. 

It is very sparse and meditative, with few fireworks that go off. It’s one of those books that when you finish, you don’t think, “What a great story!” Rather, it’s a “...wait, what just happened?”

Where The Alchemist frames purpose as something discovered and Tuesdays with Morrie offers wisdom at the end of life, Siddhartha finds meaning in the realization that every mistake, every heartache, and every detour was a necessary part of his transformation.

I reflected on this book for a while. I found that growth, for me, often comes not from choosing the right path but from finding peace through embracing life’s totality.

A mix of coming of age in the first half of the twentieth century, and Bradbury’s peculiar brand of very earthly oddness and sci-fi strangeness, Dandelion Wine is full of all sorts of magic. It reminds you of what it is to be a small human again, when everything seems possible, and aliens and monsters are as likely (and as important) as long summer days spent outside, barefoot and sunburnt and a little feral. Even when we don’t recognise the details of the childhood described, we remember the feeling, and it reawakens a sense of wonder that’s incredibly precious.

This is a sci-fi book from famous sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick. Besides suggesting some big, scary questions, it didn't exactly stick to what I usually go for in a sci-fi book.

For a while, it involved this product, Ubik, which has so many uses that it's everywhere. But the story drew me in with a relatively everyman-type guy on a team of psionic corporate spies—and then things get weird. It's the kind of weird like when I was struggling to remember this amazing horror movie I had seen, only to realize the media in question had actually been this unforgettable book.

Salinger’s post-Catcher in the Rye stories blew the minds of spiritual seekers, especially those who loved great prose. These related stories about a sister and brother introduced the Glass family and foreshadowed the journey upon which countless people embarked: smart, sensitive college student in an existential crisis tries to unlock the secrets to life with the help of mystical teachings.

The location is not India but a Manhattan apartment; the spiritual guide is not a guru but her brother, who imparts the wisdom of their deceased older sibling, Seymour, who is basically the family Zen master. The Glass kids are social misfits trying to be authentically spiritual in the midst of modern life. So was I, and they made me feel less weird and less alone.

I love ghost stories. But I am rather tired of old houses with creaky furniture. The strangest and most dangerous monsters lurk in the wilderness, in the remote and inaccessible corners of the natural world. And what is more remote and inaccessible than Kanchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, located on the border between Nepal and India?

I have always admired those mountain climbers of the past who, with inadequate equipment and minimal knowledge, braved the unknown dangers of the heights. Paver’s beautifully written novel is a historical mystery and a ghost story at one, whose final twist is as vertiginous as the pinnacle of the sacred mountain. 

Betty Stark was the aunt of a friend of mine, and she was part of the first all women Himalayan expedition in 1955. It is an antidote to the very all-male outlook and structures of many climbs of that time. It had no leader, no ‘lead climbers’. Instead, they were a small team of friends, all experienced and capable, who wished only to explore, encounter, and climb as high and hard as they could. It is anti-heroic, recording the pains, sufferings, and losses and highs, quietly downplaying and yet the efforts and dangers come through. They were outliers and trailblazers. They made their point. They were the point.

In my twenties, two friends and I climbed Mt. Hood, 11,249' in Oregon. The snow cracked loudly at night, and I worried about an avalanche. When I was in my 40s, Galon Rowell, a famous mountain photographer, and I, on an assignment from National Geographic to find the source of the Brahmaputra River, climbed from the flat terrain at 16,000' up into Mt. Khalish, 21,778.' in Tibet. We looked down at the Himalayas. K-2, at 28,251", is the second highest mountain in the world (Everest is 29,032'), on the Chinese-Pakistani border, and is considered by mountaineers to be the hardest to climb.

I loved the story, written by a fellow climber, about the boldness, tenacity, camaraderie, and competition of men, and women, pushing for weeks through rough storms to make the team that would go for the summit. What I love most is the story of Jim Wickwire approaching the… show more.

If you’re a Himalayan enthusiast, this book is a must. Heck, even if you’re not yet an enthusiast, you will be after you start reading Fallen Giants. Its sweep is magnificent, its story-telling superb. You’d think this book would get repetitive, so many mountains and so many climbs, but you’d be wrong.

If you are looking for more than the usual travel images and want to buy only one photography book about the Himalaya, then this is your book. The author is a world-acclaimed photographer and the imagery in this book is absolutely stunning. It’s a very large book, with the photographs presented in two-page spreads that beautifully capture the detail and atmosphere of the scenes.

Hard science fiction, firmly based on scientific concepts, is a constant source of wonder. This classic collection—one of my first contacts with the genre maybe thirty-five years ago—is still one of my favorites! 

Since Clarke wrote these stories in the 1950s and 60s, science, technology, and the world have changed dramatically. But his writing aged well. The moral despair of the protagonist of The Star when he uncovers the relationship between a supernova's remains and humanity's history is timeless. The warning, “There is always a last time for everything,” at the closing of the tale The Nine Billion Names of God, still rings prophetic.