100 Books Like Sputnik Sweetheart

Again, it was a book I read when I was lost, lacking motivation, and in dear need of guidance.

The hero’s journey made me understand the unimportance of my own personal struggles in the greater scheme of things and let me proceed with ease and nonchalance, though slowly and cautiously, like an old blind man tapping the floor in front of him with his white walking stick.

This 1925 autobiographical novel dropped me into the middle of New York’s Lower East Side Jewish neighborhoods in the early 20th century. The main character has a life of substantial struggle with and against her family, employers, landlords, and an American society that seems intent on erasing her.

While the book has elements of both a classic immigrant story and a coming-of-age tale, I love how it reveals the realities of urban living for a young immigrant woman. The pace and practices of making a home in a too-small space, getting by on minimal resources, scrumming for work, and avoiding harassment fill this book’s chapters. As a social and cultural historian, reading about daily activities–both struggles and joys–in a different time and place helps fire my imagination about not just what happened but how it might have felt to experience it.  

I feel as though this book isn’t widely known. The plot is quite bizarre and surreal–a man falls in love with a woman who is growing a water lily in her lung.

The novel’s theme of grief stood out to me, and I feel it was perfectly illustrated by Collin’s desperate attempts to keep his wife alive. It is evident that Vian used Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy as inspiration for this novel.

Malamud isn’t thought of as a crime writer, but this story of a robber who goes to work for the man he robbed as a kind of silent penance is very much a story of crime and punishment, of sin and redemption, and it directly inspired one of my own stories about a killer who winds up working for the mother of the man he killed.

A sad and troubling book, this book is about how even good intentions can lead to bad outcomes and how atonement might never be enough but is still necessary.

Vaporis’ Breaking Barriers gave me the background knowledge to understand how developed the system of travel was in Edo Japan. Both in relation to the infrastructure and the regulations imposed by the Bakufu under the Tokugawa regime. I was particularly impressed to learn about the sankin kotai, which is the travel expeditions of the regional lords (the daimyo) for their mandatory alternate residency in Tokyo, and the different protocols and checks across the roads.

Despite the harsh laws of the Tokugawa’s system of roads, barriers, relays, and permits, I was surprised to discover the social reality of the roads and how travelers managed to overcome the regulations and escape from social restrictions. I also enjoyed the multiplicity of sources that Vaporis is using to describe the culture of the road beyond the official records: from diaries and literary sources to woodblock prints.  

This is one of the best books in Eisler’s John Rain series, featuring half-American, half-Japanese assassin and Vietnam veteran John Rain.

Eisler himself was a covert operative with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, and his descriptions of fieldcraft, surveillance, torture, and killing techniques all ring so true, as does his extensive knowledge of modern Japan.

Tokyo is, of course, a fascinating playground for Rain’s adventures. Eisler’s books and unputdownable, and well worth discovering.

This book is the first-person narrative of a young woman experiencing the shock of incapacitating grief after the death of her grandmother, who had been her only family. 

When I was a young woman myself, I lost someone close to me. I had trouble getting out of bed and lost interest in other people and activities. I had just graduated from college and, due to the impending death, had not made plans; as a result, I had no structure to fall back on, no concept of the future to keep me going. There was a sensation that time had stopped.

While stuck in this emotional space, one of the only books that helped me was a translation of this book. Yoshimoto depicts in striking and lyrical detail the sense of apartness and timelessness that grief can engender, and the ways that focusing on details of daily living—like cooking—can assist with… show more.

The Elephant Vanishes includes two of my favorite stories by any contemporary writer.

Set in the forested vicinity of a factory that makes elephants, “The Dancing Dwarf” follows the adventures of a marvelous dwarf who once danced for the king, alas, now pursued by soldiers of the revolution. The other side of the spectrum, “The Last Lawn of the Afternoon” partakes of the fantastic only by osmosis. The care this teenage boy takes mowing and trimming his assigned lawns feels so real it reminds me of myself.

This range keeps the reader slightly off balance and full of expectation, which might not be so exciting if we weren’t in the hands of one of the finest practitioners of the craft anywhere in the world.  

The Woman in the Dunes (Suna No Onna, Sand Woman) was a 1962 novel written by Kobo Abe. The story is about an amateur entomologist who ends up as a forced partner to a recently widowed woman living at the bottom of a sand dune. The story, of course, goes far deeper than that.

While reading the book I recalled the Tottori Sand Dunes on Japan’s West Coast, one of the most surprising landscapes in the island nation. After reading the book and visiting Tottori I watched the 1964 film adaption of the book directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starring Eiji Okada and Kyoko Kishida. It is one of the few instances where the film is at least equal to or perhaps surpasses the book version. I highly recommend first reading both books then watching the films to see how skillfully the written word can be converted… show more.

This book came out only a few years after my first encounter with anime and just blew me away, introducing me to a completely different world – a world that at the time was mostly out of reach because Western translations were still rare. 

Having been published in 1983, it may be considered outdated, but manga translator and historian Frederick Schodt is a master narrator and does a great job of explaining how Japanese comics evolved during manga’s golden age. Now we can find any kind of information on the internet, but Schodt’s thorough analysis and engaging prose are second to none. 

If you are into cultural history and like to go beyond simple manga talk, this is still a must-read.