93 Books Like Suspicious Minds

Obviously, some of us are more aware of patterns than others. Simon Baron-Cohen—a psychologist at Cambridge, and one of the world’s leading authorities on autism—has found that a facility for pattern recognition is strongly correlated not only with gender (males predominate) but with autism.

He led a survey of 600,000 Britons aimed at determining if they were primarily empathizers, adept at connecting with other people, or systemizers, more interested in detecting patterns and learning how things work. Those at the extreme end of systemizing were considerably more likely to be autistic.

Baron-Cohen’s empathizer/systemizer questionnaire is included at the back of the book. Taking the bait, I found myself on the cusp of extreme. Which may explain a lot.

Okay, this one could surely be part of a list of books on artificial intelligence, but it's more than that: it's about the effects of networks of information—both real and fabricated, hallucinated, or intentionally-distorted —and their evolution and spread over the history of human culture, and secondarily, perhaps, about AI and its growing role as part of those information networks.

Despite a few flaws I found maddening (a brief section early in the book argues that genes don’t carry information), it is a very thoughtful and provocative work.

Gladwell became famous for uncovering patterns in the social behavior of humans; I wanted to find the patterns—some would say formulas—that characterize his books. Why are these books so popular? Why are critics so disdainful?

Here he revisits his first, a huge bestseller, and finds that the model of viral contagion that seemed hopeful and bright a quarter-century ago now looks dark and foreboding.

What makes both books work is a combination of diligent reporting, narrative sleight-of-hand, and a nose for patterns. “There must be a set of rules,” he writes, “buried somewhere below the surface.” No, his rules don’t always hold. But our need for patterns that explain the chaos around us has a lot to do with his success. 

The most basic, the most life-determining story is the one you tell yourself about yourself. Who are you? How did you get to be that way? And by the way, what is reality?

I reviewed this book for The Wall Street Journal and found it eye-opening. I was struck by Berns’s account of “how other people’s narratives worm their way into our brains,” creating a consensus version of reality he calls “a shared delusion.”

This delusion can become self-limiting, even self-destructive. And so we have counterfactuals, the narratives of possibiity that allow us to escape these constraints—to change our story, if we have the will to do so.

Nick Mamatas never writes a typical novel and his latest offering is no exception. Built on the very real rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding mass shooting events in the United States, Mamatas' work offers hints and innuendos throughout of an invisible force seeking to create chaos, death, and destruction in collusion with a conspiracy theorist radio host fanning the flames. Like a real-life conspiracy theory, it’s all connected — somehow. Mamatas’ ability to draw a plot line and themes so at odds with our general perception of reality, the story, sadly, begins to reflect our real world of conspiracy theories and political paranoia in what has become a bat-shit age of American life.

Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style is more a work of historiography than history and attempted to explain the rise of a right-wing “paranoia” to a liberal intellectual audience in the early 1960s. By contrast, Jesse Walker’s book offers a more detailed, engaging, and sympathetic history of U.S. conspiracy theories and the individuals and groups who have made and circulated them. It’s funny and deadpan, with a keen eye for subcultural details and the singular American oddballs that have traveled from the margins to the mainstream. As Walker demonstrates, Qanon is not the first example of a bizarre, syncretic set of beliefs that has attracted a surprisingly large number of adherents.

I’ve never read another book that got under my skin like A Head Full of Ghosts.

I felt unsettled, not just by the horror, but by the way Tremblay made me question memory, faith, and family. I remember finishing it and just sitting there, trying to figure out what was what. It’s rare for a book to make me feel compassionate and terrified at the same time. 

That’s why I recommend it: because it doesn’t leave you when you close the cover. It lingers, and I love that.

Agent Scylla was dead, but they brought him back because someone is holding a contest, a contest to see who can create the deadliest weapon. As Scylla navigates a world he’s been out of touch with for too long, he finds that there’s something on its outskirts, pulling all the wrong strings. A thrilling espionage adventure drenched in paranoia, this was the most fun I ever had being terrified to learn the truth. The only book I ever read that I literally could not put down. Its momentum – the need to find out what the contest was about and where the search would lead Scylla – was so powerful, I could not stop my fingers from turning the pages.  

John Steinbeck wrote the Working Days... journals while writing The Grapes of Wrath.

The intent of the journal was to establish a schedule, including a completion date for the novel. What he reveals about his self-doubt is tonic for any writer who is haunted by the same malaise.

Here is the entry for June 18, "…I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty to it… If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time."

Sometimes, I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity…John Steinbeck’s honesty and humility remind me that self-doubt is a part of the creative process.

I sometimes read entries from… show more.

While the argument can be made that Julius Caesar was the original conspiracy thriller, this book set the stage for conspiracy theories in the modern era. With two film adaptations and multiple TV references, there’s a reason the book’s premise has imbedded itself into our popular culture.

A recurring question was constantly popping into my head as I was reading it: How deep does the deep state really go? One thing is for certain, you’ll never look at an election the same way again.