Books like Rabbit, Run — picked by fans

I love this book because of Katniss Everdeen's depth. She’s not just another “kickass hottie”, she’s complex, with a powerful character arc driven by a deep sense of responsibility.

The book’s commentary on mental health and Katniss' parentification resonated with me personally. The story world of all the districts and President Snow's iron grip on them is well-drawn and has parallels to our own, too. 

The omniscient narrator in this classic novel speaks to the reader in a dispassionate present-tense voice that helps reinforce the satirical tone and immediacy of the novel. Dickens, who grew up in a debtor’s prison and included his bleak observations of life in a debtor’s prison in many of his great novels, used his fiction to shine a light on the social injustices of Victorian life. Bleak House shines much of that light on the punitive legal system (sound like today?), which Dickens exposed in some of his other novels as well. In thinking about the many theatrical and film adaptations made of this novel, we can see how much easier that work was due to the present tense writing, which creates the immediacy and suspense found in many great films.

I read this probably when I was in my early twenties. Randle McMurphy was, and still is, to some degree, an inspiring character: a rebellious soul, a flawed genius, a bit of a wrong’un at times, but also a hilariously cocky piss-taker.

There’s something deeply human in the portrayal of this character and his conflict with institutionalised authority, as represented by the frankly terrifying Nurse Ratched. It may be set in a psychiatric hospital, but I find the themes relatable to the wider world, the constant pressure to conform or be crushed. I still feel incensed by it.

This has been my favourite book since I read it as a child.

I love Jane’s courage in the face of adversity, both in her childhood and as a woman. It is her moral compass that guides her through her life, determining the rightness and wrongness of situations. She grows up in a world that believes she should be silent and accept the single path offered to her.

The message in the book emboldened me as I grew up and had to make decisions to challenge the expected norms. I can’t help but find joy in the cyclic nature of the love story here. In patience, in steadfastness, she finds love and does not lose herself in the process.

This superb book provides deep insights into the relationship between Indigenous peoples and encroaching European settlers and convincingly emphasizes that the striving of land developers, such as George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Patrick Henry, was a major cause of the American rebellion. He describes in detail the Native societies, their customs, interactions, and political alliances. The early chapters provide accounts of settlers of both sexes who were captured, adopted, nurtured, and trained by the Natives. In the case of the Girty brothers, their seizures led to their wartime careers as accomplished, multi-lingual interpreters and as fighting partisans in the British Indian Department. In addition to an amazing array of Native tribes, two companies of Butler’s Rangers operated out of Detroit assisted by the Girtys. 

I liked this book so much, I read it twice. What made it so good? O’Dell’s mastery of creating “real” people. I cared about them. I wanted to be in the story with them such was the power of her writing—a captivating story with an unusual set of characters, their lives intersecting in unexpected ways. Spain, the US, bulls and bullfighters, an old lady, a couple of teen brothers, a dysfunctional family, love and hate, baseball…

Why did I love this book? Am I allowed to just say “dinosaurs ghosts?” In all seriousness, this story uses dinosaurs in a way that very few stories have ever dared to try, that being in a supernatural horror story.

I cannot help but admire the author's commitment to this premise. The author’s impressive knowledge of actual paleontology cannot be understated. As a mental health worker myself, I also love the story’s realistic depiction of a main character working through grief and trauma.

Add all of this to a story about the ancient spirits of dinosaurs haunting a museum, and I found myself enthralled by this book from start to finish.

I found McBride’s novel a wild ride, full of humor, unexpected twists, and a dazzling array of quirky characters. Set in Chicken Hill, a neighborhood on the proverbial “other side of the tracks,” the residents––Blacks, Jews, Italians, the disabled, and other assorted folks––come to depend on each other. I admire how he treats all, except the bigots, with deep respect and love, notwithstanding their failings or moral flaws. After all, life is complicated.

McBride captures each of their individual dialects and rhythms of speech. So many characters! But every single one turns out to be necessary, because in the end it is the community they co-create that matters. Community, compassion, bonds across race, ethnicity, ability, and age: I believe this book carries an essential message for our time.

I live in the same world where too many modern novels (including mine!) take place—a world of professionals and students, people whose hands get dirty only if we’re repotting our tomato plants. So it’s wonderfully eye-opening to enter the setting of this book, along with farmers, prison guards, nurses, and other rural folks who are actually living out the current debate over natural-gas fracking. While the gas-company officials are clear villains, the townspeople on both sides are portrayed with compassion and complexity. Who are the “good guys” and “bad guys” when a prison guard sells his mineral rights to the frackers for the cash to start a dairy farm? Or when a gas driller has an affair with a woman whose husband died of environmental cancer? 

What an exciting tale! I've done lots of research about life on the American frontier during the Revolutionary War, but Gary Paulsen provided information that was new to me about British attacks on small frontier villages and prison ships anchored in New York Harbor. I couldn't stop reading. The author alternated the fiction story with nonfiction segments providing further explanation. Rather than interrupt the reading, they enhanced it, elevating the excitement I felt as Samuel searched for his missing parents.