100 Books Like Riddley Walker

I was first introduced to the film adaptation of The Road in my early teens when I went through all five stages of grief in the span of 1 hour and 51 minutes.

I then made a beeline to the bookstore for a copy of McCarthy’s novel, which subsequently solidified my love of end-of-the-world stories in how they can examine what it means to survive.

The Road is a story that has stayed with me over the subsequent decade and a half and greatly influenced my post-apocalyptic novel.

I‘ve always been fascinated by the dividing line between human and monster. Because, what is a monster?

I know, this kind of question will usually get a quick answer, but I have been thinking about this particular question for quite some time now. I am Legend revolves around this question, and I love it for that. I also love it for the somewhat unexpected twist in the end, and that one can be interpreted as an answer.

Anyway, for me, this book got me thinking about morale and ethics and other stuff. I just like it when a book gets me to that point where I think: wait a moment, but what if…?

Reading this book reminded me that understanding another person is a continuous struggle, and that we lose the most when we mistake appearances for truth. Even for someone like Genly, an emissary whose role is to bridge cultures, truly understanding Estraven proves painfully difficult.

What stayed with me was the tragedy of that gap: how insight often arrives too late.

Estraven’s sacrifice, made so that Genly could reach safety, and Genly’s decision to visit Estraven’s family afterward, left me with a lingering sense that remembrance itself carries moral weight. Sometimes understanding cannot undo loss, but memory—how the living choose to carry it—can still salvage a trace of good from tragedy.

Le Guin’s novel taught me that empathy is not a destination, but an act that must be fought for, again and again.

This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.

As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb. 

This isn’t a typical murder story, but it has it all: personal dilemmas, paranormal lines, and killings wrapped around a dystopian world where good and evil are on a collision course. This is, perhaps my favorite book.

It was King’s gold standard for decades. The traveling east to west, the sages met, the people killed. Those turned against their friends. Twists galore. It is a long read, a bit over 1,100 pages. Don’t let that scare you, it is a page turner from start to finish. 

I love this book because Tolkien took the fantasy genre to a new, unprecedented level, resurrecting ancient legends of old, with countless mythical creatures.

His magnificent characters defined their races, occupations, and even their languages, later inspiring the game, Dungeons and Dragons, of which I was once a Dungeon Master. Many of The Fellowship serve messianic roles. Gandalf, for example, conquers death following his battle with a demon, and Stryder, an obscure ranger, turns out to be Aragorn, heir of the fallen kingdom.

Tolkien captures keen insight into the human condition regarding the struggle against sin. He also whispers a mystery; while an evil wizard created the One Ring to rule them all, a hidden, even more powerful force is clearly behind the ring’s eventual destruction.

I loved Mary Norton’s book for its narrative hook: size. This is Gulliver’s Lilliput without the satiric political overtones. The main characters are a miniature Edwardian family called the Clocks because they live underneath one. The father, Pod, his wife, Homily, and their daughter, Arietty, are so small they fit under the floorboards of a human-sized house.

All their ingenuity is devoted to adapting their smallness to the world of Big People while preventing them from being “seen” by them. Everything they use must be “borrowed” from the bigger world and adapted to their circumstances. Matchboxes become dressers and chests of drawers; postage stamps serve as wall hangings and pictures; a thimble does duty as a soup tureen, while an actual tureen becomes a bathtub.

The discovery of a fully furnished doll’s house has become an occasion for wholesale redecoration. A crisis comes when Arietty is “seen” by the human… show more.

With E.R. Eddison’s book, the hook is identity. I love that the major characters are all avatars, manifestations of each other, and that they don’t know it is the underlying mystery Eddison wants the reader to discover without being told.

All of his men derive from the godlike Mezentius, and all his women derive from the Goddess. Their lives and characters intertwine the real and imaginary worlds of Earth and Zimizmvia. The human Lady Mary is the real-world avatar of the Zimiamvian goddess Fiorinda, who is the lover of Duke Barganax, who is the otherworld personification of the real-world Lessingham, widower of Lady Mary and lover of the Zimizmvian princess Antiope.

If you start to get confused, you are on the right track! Eddison aims to confuse, mystify, and enter you all simultaneously.

I value this book as a lesson in engrossing story-building.

While ostensibly 'a young Egypt read,’ this novel is a consuming and thrilling read for anyone who loves intrigue and historical adventure. It's about a slave girl hungry for her freedom. Mara is a spy story of dangerous love and a central character torn by a monstrous dilemma. 

It's a gem to discover.

As a historical archaeologist, I find this book especially compelling. Stolen Childhood does a fine job of blending insights from a variety of primary-source narratives and recently uncovered archaeological artifacts; but these insights transcend the specific research questions regarding the conditions of daily life for slave youth in nineteenth-century America and indirectly make an intriguing case for why current archaeologists should pay as much attention to issues of childhood, parenting, and aging as they do to ethnicity, class, and gender.