100 Books Like Rape of the Rose

This remains one of the most haunting novels I have ever read. I cannot shake the character of Judge Holden, a formidable man both physically and intellectually, who deploys his insidious intellect to justify acts of abject violence seemingly only for the sake of violence itself. I was mesmerized by a world where “all covenants were brittle.” This was no straight-up Western as I had expected. It was something more.

McCarthy pushed the boundaries of the classic Western by challenging the notion that good will ultimately overcome evil and the hero will save the day. There was no hero here, and the day was truly lost to forces beyond the characters’ control, hallmarks of the Southern Gothic tradition. I was hooked on this curious blend of genres!

All hail the queen. Sally Rooney makes it look easy, with just the right amount of Irish, nothing-is-easy-you-insufferable-wanker on the side. This book has it all: awkward yet undeniably hot sexual tension! Arguments! Cool names! A house that is bigger than yours!

And within Rooney’s stupidly gorgeous prose, we find ourselves not only yelling “EXACTLY!” out loud, many times, to an empty room but answering the book’s central question: right here. As long as we have a good book, that beautiful world is right here.

Machine Dreams is a wrenching novel that chronicles an American family through decades of reflection and turbulence, culminating in the shattering ramifications of the Vietnam War. For those of us who learned to refract the U.S. through the prism of that savagery, which left millions of Vietnamese dead and vast stretches of their country burned and poisoned, Machine Dreams was a novel that radiated the heartsickness of that era on the home front. American families were, indeed, torn apart by that war, but the weaknesses of those bonds had abiding roots. I was weeping by the time I finished this novel but hasten to add that I have no regrets about the experience, only gratitude. 

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows Theo Decker, a young man grappling with trauma, loss, and guilt. Themes of friendship, mentorship (through his relationship with Hobie), and the search for redemption are central to the story.

This book has the best opening scene of any book I’ve ever read. No matter what, I needed to be on this journey with the characters Tartt had drawn so evocatively. 

But can you fight the future? Isn’t it inevitable? This is often how tech companies try to make us think, and that anyone who opposes “progress” is a Luddite. But, as Patrick Sale makes clear in this excellent and heartbreaking historical study, the original Luddites—a protest movement that swept the industrial heartland of 19th Century England—were not anti-technology; they merely thought technology should serve people, not profit. Faced with the destruction of their livelihoods and their traditional way of life, they destroyed machines and burnt factories because that was the only outlet they had for their rage and desperation. And when the “inevitable march of progress” comes to trample you too, you may see that they had a point.

Not just one house, this time, but houses - a whole village in fact.  Adam Thorpe’s dazzlingly inventive novel is the story of a rural community over three and half centuries, narrated by a chorus of different voices.  Human dramas proliferate: love affairs, murders, executions, violent uprisings. But as people come and go, things stay put, outlasting them. An adulterous eighteenth-century lady is confined to her shuttered bed-chamber, forbidden to go down the creaky old stairs. Fifty years later a garrulous carpenter, reminiscing in the pub, describes the cutting of the wooden scroll that finished the banister of the new staircase he and his mates have built in the Hall, once that lady’s home. Two generations later a consumptive young lawyer, taking down the testimony of dozens of Luddite machine-breakers, visits the Hall, notices the stairs, judges them dark and old-fashioned. Time passes again and a 20th-century television cameraman leans… show more.

This excellent book provides a detailed history of technology and employment during the Industrial Revolution and up to the present. It is very well-researched and provides many useful insights.

For example, although the term ‘Luddite’ is often used negatively to describe those resistant to technology, the real Luddites were justified in their concerns as they were ultimately displaced due to automation. People were even put to death because they destroyed some of the new machines.

One of the main ways AI might affect our lives is in terms of employment, or rather, a lack of employment.

Frey empowers us to have a greater understanding of previous technological innovations and how they affected workers so that we are able to have more nuanced opinions on the matter. 

Brian Merchant is a journalist known for his critical coverage of the tech industry. This is a book about the first Luddite uprising, which took place two hundred years ago in England in response to machines being used to replace human jobs. It’s a captivating read that immerses you in an important moment in history, one that is often neglected or misunderstood.

In our current era, this book makes for crucial reading, as it gives us a historical precedent that helps us understand both the driving forces behind the current threat of automation as well as possibilities for resistance. This book made me ask myself whether the Luddites might have been right, after all.

This book has given me more delight than just about any other book dealing with the woodlands. It is not a herbarium or any other dry enumeration of plants. The Oxford Don takes us by the hand and shows us enchanted spinneys, lovely copses, ancient savannas, woodland pastures, and so much more that were once enchanting. In the everyday environment, the inspiration of poets, the meeting place of lovers, and the haunt of human beings seeking solitude. 

"A state-of-the-art survey of Britain’s woods by the acknowledged expert in the field… He seems to know woods like old friends, each with its unique past, its cranky or capricious personality, and its hoard of secrets. And he writes like an angel.” - The Times 

Using the modern view of science, many economic historians have sought to diminish the effects of science on the technologies in the 18th and 19th centuries. This wonderful book by a sociologist documents how science, as it was then practiced, pervaded the whole structure of British society, from preachers teaching that Newton had revealed the architecture that God had imposed during creation, to a journal teaching Newtonian science to women. As Jacob puts it: “The role of science…was not that of general laws leading to the development of specific applications. Instead it…[provided] the theoretical mechanics and the practical mathematics that facilitated technological change. Brought together by a shared technical vocabulary of Newtonian origin, engineers and entrepreneurs…negotiated…the mechanization of workshops or the improvement of canals, mines, and harbours.