100 Books Like Of Human Bondage

I first read Lolita when I was 14 and have read it every few decades since, learning something new each time.

I love the first-person immediacy of it and the way it is a crime novel in reverse: the narrator is already imprisoned but not for the crime he describes. It is a love story turned on its head: what the narrator says is love is in fact abuse.

It is a road trip across the vastness of the US, like one I took when I was a student.

What I love about this short story collection by a true master of the writing craft is how psychedelic it is, without any actual references to drugs or counterculture.

Every story is a mind-bending trip delivered straight to the dome through innovative language and upended logic. I love the rabbit holes Borges sends his readers down, like the first story’s development of an entire other human civilization through the discovery of its never-ending encyclopedia.

The title Labyrinths is so fitting – reading these stories is like making your way through a literary maze with psychic surprises and twists around every turn of the page. 

This is such an insightful glimpse into what happens when an artist—in this case, an architect—stops creating, that’s both hilarious and heartbreaking.

Describing the price of privilege, but without preciousness, Maria Semple illustrates the decline of a mother and professional, doing what seem like the right things while producing disastrous results that really ring true.

Fatigued by the priorities of high-tech Seattle, Bernadette loses her confidence and misplaces her trust. Then it’s her daughter who has to pull her back from the brink. Their love withstands the tests of culture, community, and commodity, reminding us of the remarkable symbiosis between mothers and daughters while showcasing Semple’s irrepressible, satiric wit.

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.

This is a big ambitious book with a huge literary and emotional payoff.

It’s set in Chicago, a town I don’t know well during the AIDS epidemic, an experience that has stayed with me. It’s also set in Paris, a place we all love to read about, in the art world, where I like to linger. I don’t always appreciate a multiple timeline structure; here, however, it really enriches the plot, heightens the stakes, and amplifies the theme of love within tragedy.

Every character is well-drawn and makes a lasting impression as you jump into not only a community in crisis, but also a world of visual art, found families, mortality, and memory. It’s a stunningly sublime story about the experiences and people who forever change us.

For years, I refused to re-embrace Holden Caulfield, because Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s assassin, declared it inspired him to bloodshed. I’m glad I did, getting the juices circulating for my novel.

Holden, manic-depressed over his brother’s death, cut loose from his prep school, may speak in a stream-of-consciousness babble, but he enunciated an old-soul contempt of Ivy-League elitism that reverberates today.

When Holden declares, “The more expensive a school, the more crooks it has,” it’s a literary MRI on American classism still tearing us asunder.

When I first read this book, I was somewhat mystified by what the fuss was all about. All I could see was a story of a group of dissolute and disillusioned expats living a pointless life of pettiness and drinking. However, as I separately learned more about Hemingway and his writing style, I was drawn back to the book, and on subsequent readings, I was able to discern more in the characters and the plot than was apparent in my first reading.

The protagonist Jake Barnes, impotent because his penis appears to have been shot off as a result of a wound in World War I, is further emotionally damaged, possibly with PTSD from his war experiences and with a cynicism and sadness that engage the reader’s attention. 

The book, set in the early 1930s, is from a fleeting period when the liberal pleasures of the German capital made it the European place to be. An English teacher of reserved social origins, Isherwood writes of the Berlin characters who enlivened his life, against the forbidding backdrop of Hitler's rise to power. Cabaret, the film adapted from the book, led Isherwood to insist his version of events was far nearer to how things were.

I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.

I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.  

If forced to pick a favorite book, I’d probably pick this one. Set in Paris and so well crafted, it’s the ultimate demonstration of how shared ideas about beauty bind us together.

“Old-souled” Paloma is only twelve and can not only recognize but also aptly describe their superficiality. Her point of view alternates with Renée, the luxury building’s invisible yet brilliant concierge. Together, they demonstrate how seemingly different people can galvanize around life’s ineffable elements.  

Their surprising friendship is catalyzed by a lovely Japanese tenant who sees beyond the surface and invites them into his world where he celebrates the quiet, elegant offerings overlooked by so many.

The bonds of these international, inter-generational friends make perfect sense as you grow to know and love the characters, and I relish how they become less isolated, frustrated, and disappointed through their connection. Yet as we’re seduced by their life of the… show more.