100 Books Like Sing Anyway

This is classic, quintessential British humor, the kind of dry wit that makes you laugh out loud as you’re reading. I didn’t want it to end because of how hilarious I found the main character. Even while being funny, the book does a great job establishing the imposter syndrome the main character feels as a member of the middle class attempting to enter the elite halls of academia as an older graduate student.

He is a fish out of water, incapable of having normal social interactions with his peers, “betters,” or students. Possibly, the best-ever hangover scene in writing occurs in this book. 

Smith is a master at depicting multi-racial families (something she knows all about, as she grew up in one).

Her narratives take up the complex nature of the relationships between parents, children, and siblings, while delving into issues of race, class, politics, infidelity, and self-knowledge. Smith is expert with her use of voice, as she composes character through idiosyncratic styles of language and expression.

Life in this novel is colorful and messy, as it cleverly investigates the impossibility of really knowing those closest to you.

This is a fast, fun, star-studded read.

Hoffs is one of the founding members of The Bangles, and one can’t help but imagine that it is all true in one way or another. There’s a character who is an awful lot like Prince and...well, that makes the story particularly fun for me. 

One of the most underrated novels of the twentieth century.

Patrick O’Brian is known first and foremost for his exceptional Aubrey-Maturin series about the British Navy during the age of sail. I love those books as much as any on my shelf. Yet before he found his way to that subject, O’Brian wrote other novels, including this exquisite love story set in a Welsh mountain valley.

Published in 1952, Testimonies is haunting, tragic, and remarkably self-assured. It captures as well as any book the romance of the mountains and their invigorating effect on the spirit: “the vast country opened and strengthened my being in ways that I had never imagined. Many things that had appeared all-important dwindled to trifles, and other values rose.” I return to this book frequently and often give it as a gift.

And then there was Campusland… Fast, funny, and brutal in its satirical account of today’s campuses, with their “safe spaces” and identity politics and administrators and students alike running amok, this is a book with an agenda (be forewarned) but which executes that agenda extremely well. Johnston really nails certain character types present on many liberal arts colleges and elite campuses, as well as the dynamics as those characters execute their own agendas. If you share the author’s agenda you will lap it up; if not, you will be enraged; but either way you will be entertained. And if you haven’t been paying attention to the campus scene for a while—prepare to be shocked.  

One of the common reactions to the death of a loved family member–especially any death we perceive to be unnecessary or unnatural–is extreme anger. We have to blame someone, and yes, there’s plenty of reproach and self-recrimination in John Burnham Schwartz’s novel, Reservation Road. But there’s a clear culprit–a hit and run driver–and it seems the police are hardly bothering to investigate, and in a case like that, anyone would have a target for their helpless rage. We see Ethan, a father who witnessed his ten-year-old son killed, become obsessed with tracking down the perpetrator himself to accomplish some justice. I understand that kind of anger and frustration, and I know many others do, too. I think it’s useful to both accept that it’s normal, but to look at how destructive it can become to carry it, and to consider how to let it go. 

Reservation Road is also… show more.

Ezekiel Farragut is a former university professor and current inmate at Falconer prison.

A drug addict and a murderer for killing his own brother during an argument, while incarcerated Farragut must wean himself from his addiction with methadone, and suffer visits from his profoundly disappointed wife. He is also involved romantically with a fellow prisoner—the captivating Jody, who all the guys want to screw.

When Jody successfully escapes, Farragut is left to contemplate how his own failures got him to this lonely place, and how to be a better man if he is ever able to leave it. This is where the grim, dreamlike beauty of Cheever’s best-known signature works shines through.

If you like this, also check out Blake Bailey’s biography of Cheever. The parallels between fact and fiction are fascinating.

Abbott Awaits follows the spectacularly ordinary life of a father with a two-year-old; husband to an insomniac, pregnant wife; and university teacher. Bachelder evokes beauty in the mundane, dazzling splendor in domestic tedium, and in the middle of cleaning up his daughter’s vomited-up raspberries, a revelation that gets to the heart of Abbot’s heart-crushing yet devastatingly funny tour of his wildly imaginative inner life: “The following propositions are both true: A) Abbott would not, given the opportunity, change one significant element of his life, but B) Abbot cannot stand his life.”

Based on a simple question: “Can a man escape from a high-security prison cell using only his mind?” The Problem of Cell 13 is everyone’s favorite. The story offers a convincing answer and a mind-bending ending you just don’t see coming.

This collection of short stories demonstrates how someone can solve even the most impossible mysteries if one harnesses the formidable power of one’s mind. As I walk mentally side-by-side with Futrelle’s protagonist, Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, I find myself consistently unable to solve each puzzle first.

Unfortunately, Futrelle died young on the Titanic, taking several new stories down with him. At least we can still enjoy what he left behind, one of the greatest collections of mysteries you’ll find anywhere.

Helen McInnes books made their way into my family via those Readers Digest Condensed books that used to come in the mail. They were hard bound and heavy to hold, but it was fun to open them and explore new books. The only one I remember, though, is one by Helen McInnes. I had to go find the complete book because when they condense? You miss a lot. I recommend starting with her first book, Above Suspicion. I loved her characters right off. This isn’t one of those stories that starts with a big bang. The tension rises very slowly and you don’t realize you are being wound up like a spring until it’s too late to put it down. And cool factoid, the author was in the OAS in World War II. She knew her stuff.