Here are 100 books that Lucky Jim fans have personally recommended if you like
Lucky Jim.
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As a former graduate student who holds an MA and Ph.D in English with a Creative Writing emphasis, but also as the child of immigrants and the first in my family to go to college, I love when writers deflate the pretensions of academia. I didn’t grow up around formally educated people so I can relate to the imposter syndrome some of the characters in these books experience. I don’t know who recommended Lucky Jim to me, but that book began my infatuation with the genre of academic satires or campus novels, of which there are many others.
What’s amazing about this book is that it’s told through recommendation letters written for students and colleagues by the main character, Professor Jason Fitger.
Each letter reveals more and more about his life, his failing romances, his dismal work environment, and his floundering creative efforts. In other words, topics that are completely inappropriate for these types of letters, which makes them all the more hysterical.
Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary."
Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Maybe it's me, but the stories I tell are often about people who insist they're absolutely fine. When they're not. Perhaps that's the most British thing in the world: to paint on a smile, say 'I'm fine,' and hope nobody asks again. The novels on my list have stayed with me because they catch people in the middle of pretending. They've made me laugh out loud on crowded trains. And nudge my sleeping husband because I had to tell him what just happened. More than anything, they reminded me that when we stop pretending… that's when the real story starts.
Bridget turns private humiliation into public comedy without ever giving up on her bruised heart.
I like to kid on that I read the classics, and Fielding's book is a true modern classic. Bridget Jones is the uber-loser turned winner. I remember reading this and feeling that delicious shock of recognition: my terrible choices, my doomed self-improvement plans, the way one bad decision always blossomed into five.
What I still love is how Fielding catches the gap between who Bridget thinks she ought to be and first-rate hopeful hot mess.
A dazzlingly urban satire on modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something?
As Bridget documents her struggles through the social minefield of her thirties and tries to weigh up the eternal question (Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?), she turns for support to four indispensable friends: Shazzer, Jude, Tom and a bottle of chardonnay.
Welcome to Bridget's first diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly touching and utterly addictive.
Helen Fielding's first Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, sparked a phenomenon that has seen…
I’m primarily a music composer for film and TV, but I’ve also ventured into filmmaking, with one of my films being featured at an international film festival, so my journey in storytelling spans many years, and comedy has always been at its heart. Growing up, my father worked as a pit musician, which gave me exposure to the comedy acts of the time. Humor was a constant in our home, so when I started writing fiction, it felt only natural my writing would find a home in comedy.
This book is an unyielding portrayal of the excesses of 1980s consumerism, hedonism, and self-destruction. Amis pulls no punches in his depiction of John Self, a 35-year-old director of TV commercials who lives a life of excess driven by his appetites—primarily for food, drugs, alcohol, sex, and, of course, money. Through John Self’s descent, the novel delivers a harsh commentary on the culture of greed and indulgence that characterized the decade.
The novel's portrayal of greed, addiction, and sexism rubbed some readers and critics the wrong way. Some saw it as too nihilistic or excessively grim in its critique of 1980s culture, where everything seemed for sale, including morality. However, in this age of trigger warnings, safe spaces, and pervasive purity spirals, I personally found its unapologetically gritty satire a breath of fresh air.
This book will appeal not only to fans of dark humor and satire but also to…
One of Time's 100 best novels in the English language-by the acclaimed author of Lionel Asbo: State of England and London Fields
Part of Martin Amis's "London Trilogy," along with the novel London Fields and The Information, Money was hailed as "a sprawling, fierce, vulgar display" (The New Republic) and "exhilarating, skillful, savvy" (The Times Literary Supplement) when it made its first appearance in the mid-1980s. Amis's shocking, funny, and on-target portraits of life in the fast lane form a bold and frightening portrait of Ronald Reagan's America and Margaret Thatcher's England.
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
I teach and have written too many articles on these books as an English professor. There’s a time for tragic or difficult books (James Joyce, anyone?), but also a time for fun, and I believe it’s good for my students to giggle and enjoy reading while they learn. As a Canadian, I’m told my humor is dry but warmer, and accordingly, the books I prefer make me think—and some break my heart—but my favorites also make me laugh. If you want a quality read but aren’t above a fart joke, I hope you will check out my list.
This book has always hit the trifecta for me—interesting, moving, and funny. A story about London immigrant families in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it shows a lesser-known side of society and certainly is the raunchiest book in my list—there’s a lot of sex among its confused screw-ups.
I admit my mind was opened, and my sympathies widened by this book, and after re-reading, I can appreciate it as a masterpiece of comic chaos. I wouldn’t want to be these characters—how many books begin with a failed suicide attempt?—but I’m glad they let me into their lives.
One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, "White Teeth" is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.
I came out as a gay man later in life (at age 24) just as the AIDS crisis was beginning, and the deaths and societal backlash during that time almost pushed me back in the closet. The books I listed here were instrumental in helping me find my author’s “voice” while I struggled to fully accept my identity. I feel passionate about the list because the books contain elements essential for every decent fiction author: humour, pathos, grief, joy, empathy, love, and understanding of the human condition. In developing this list of books, I’m reminded of how crucial it is for writers to read and often study the work and style of other authors.
This book affected me profoundly as a teenager who was questioning his own sexual identity in the early 1970s.
The novel is a study of friendship between two teenage boys at a boarding school after World War II. They’re co-dependent, and the elements of suppression and the threat of violence between the two mirrored my own confusion with close male friends “in real life” at the same time.
This is a book that shaped my early understanding of sexuality, even though the author denied any homoerotic undertones in the story.
'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen that I can still conjure the atmosphere in my fifties: of yearning, infatuation mingled indistinguishably with envy, and remorse' Lionel Shriver
An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual.…
I’ve always thought that the most clear-eyed, unforgiving observers in literature are teenagers, not because adolescence is simple (it’s the opposite), but because young people haven’t yet learned to shrug and look away. The novels I've chosen here all have central characters who see the adult world's failures, hypocrisies, and prejudices with a directness that most of us gradually lose; and they all use coming of age as a way to confront a world that is already, in some fundamental way, broken – by grief, violence, or the gap between what adults promise and what they deliver. Those are exactly the themes I love to write about.
I’ve always been fascinated by strange social enclaves and secretive, sealed-off, private worlds, and this book has both.
But in fact, the thing I admire most here is the sense of place and atmosphere. Tartt writes with a lush, immersive style which I found is increasingly compelling as the book went on.
Using a murder as the gateway drug to what’s really a literary fiction character study is both sneaky and brilliant: I was hooked by the story in the first chapter, but once I’d finished the book, it was Richard’s voice, those eerie characters, their strange insular co-dependency, and the biting Vermont winter landscape that really stayed with me.
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries.…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
I was named after my father’s aunt, who moved from Canada to Switzerland in the 1920s to join a travelling church. Family lore remembers she rode a bicycle in the mountains and when she was dying, her sisters sent her maple leaves in the mail to remind her where she started. As a child, I was fascinated by this mysterious other Katie. Why did my father choose her name for me? Would I be like her? Did I get to choose? As a novelist, I love choosing names. Their power is subtle but strong, and when a writer gives a character more than one name, new layers emerge and stories bloom.
Gentlemen and Players is a boarding house story with a dark heart. I picked this one from an aunt’s bookshelf and read it expecting something of the sweetness of Chocolat, but found a far more satisfying story, with twisting questions of identity, class, and revenge. I liked the clever split narrative, which used chess imagery, and the mystery of the Black Pawn, whose identity is deftly concealed until the close of the book. This is a surprising psychological thriller that would make a great book club pick, and I will not forget the rooftop chase nor that bonfire night.
Perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves, Susan Hill, Nicci French and Val McDermid, this is an astute and intelligent psychological thriller centring around obsession and rage from international multi-million copy seller Joanne Harris. Fast paced with unexpected twists and turns, it will get right under the skin...
'[A] gripping psychological thriller... Harris is one of our most accomplished novelists and Gentlemen & Players, with its pace, wit and acute observation, shows her at the top of her form' -- DAILY EXPRESS '[A] delicious black comedy ... the plot is so cleverly constructed, the tension so unflagging, you'd think she'd been…
A lifelong horror fan, I have always been fascinated by haunted landscapes and creepy buildings. My childhood in the Midlands of England prepared me for my career as a horror writer and filmmaker with its abundance of spooky ruins and foggy canal paths. I have since explored ancient sites all across the U.K. and Europe and my novels are inspired by these field trips into the uncanny, where the contemporary every day rubs shoulders with the ancient and occult. Places become characters in their own right in my work and I think this list of books celebrates that. I hope you find them as disturbing and thought-provoking as I have.
I read this book during my school days, which we are often told are the best of our lives. I enjoyed school, overall, but did encounter more than my fair share of bullies and vindictive teachers. Reading in the school library became my favourite escape, and I devoured this book in one lengthy sitting. I was fascinated and appalled in equal measure by secret society The Vandals, who made the kids at my school look like rank amateurs! After reading this book, the reader is left shell-shocked and wondering if it’s better to comply or to ‘disturb the universe’ as Cormier provocatively puts it.
The bestselling controversial novel about corruption and misuse of power in an American boys' school. The headmaster of Trinity College asks Archie Costello, the leader of the Vigils, a secret society that rules the school, to help with the selling of 20,000 boxes of chocolates in the annual fund-raising effort. Archie sees the chance of adding to his power - he is the Assigner, handing out to the boys tasks to be performed if they are to survive in the school. Freshman, Jerry Renault, a newcomer to the corrupt regime, refuses to sell chocolates. Enormous mental and physical pressure is…
Maybe because I’m a novelist, I’ve always loved reading novels about writers—it’s a joy to see my passionate relationship with my own work reflected in these fictional solitary obsessives, my literary siblings. Reading about their own writing gives me a sense of recognition, community, and solidarity, and makes me feel less alone in this odd vocation, which is no small thing. I can’t get enough fictional evocations of the daily discipline of the writer’s life—as well as the trajectory of a literary career—from adolescence (Jo March) to old age (Leonard Schiller).
How could I not love this book? It’s set in the lovely (really!) city of Pittsburgh, and it’s about a lost weekend of literary hijinks and stoned debauchery.
The protagonist, Grady Tripp, is a young male writer making something of an ass of himself, but Chabon makes him so sympathetic, I can’t help rooting for him even as he digs himself in even deeper.
The dialogue crackles, the supporting characters are vivid and colorful, and the plot sweeps the reader up into a whirlwind of incredibly fun trouble.
A deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, WONDER BOYS is a modern classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY.
Grady Tripp is an over-sexed, pot-bellied, pot-smoking, ageing wunderkind of a novelist now teaching creative writing at a Pittsburgh college while working on his 2,000-page masterpiece, WONDER BOYS. When his rumbustious editor and friend, Terry Crabtree, arrives in town, a chaotic weekend follows - involving a tuba, a dead dog, Marilyn Monroe's ermine-lined jacket and a squashed boa constrictor.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I teach and have written too many articles on these books as an English professor. There’s a time for tragic or difficult books (James Joyce, anyone?), but also a time for fun, and I believe it’s good for my students to giggle and enjoy reading while they learn. As a Canadian, I’m told my humor is dry but warmer, and accordingly, the books I prefer make me think—and some break my heart—but my favorites also make me laugh. If you want a quality read but aren’t above a fart joke, I hope you will check out my list.
How often have I heard, “Oh, Q. W. Aardvark’s fantasy is awesome, but you really need to read all 8,326 books in the series to get it”! How about no? Fortunately, I learned the secret of Pratchett’s Discworld series: each novel is freestanding.
I like this book because it’s like a cynical, bitter uncle who secretly has a teddy bear—despite the outward grime and gloom of the setting, there’s a hilarious wit, punning, and barrage of pop references underlying the story that gives it a heart. It’s fantasy for those who don’t think they like it.
First book of the original and best CITY WATCH series, now reinterpreted in BBC's The Watch
'This is one of Pratchett's best books. Hilarious and highly recommended' The Times
The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . . _________________
'It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the…
