Books like The Amazing Spider-Man — picked by fans

As a young man I had a prolonged bout of mental illness. What saved me was my struggle to become a writer. This was my secret identity. I had to find other writers to inspire me, whose books offered hope, and could help me channel the restless energy that I felt within that had not yet found a purpose. I found such a writer in Henry Miller.

Miller is out of fashion now, even though George Orwell called him "the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past". Like DH Lawrence, he tangled with the censors repeatedly – to his credit.

He was as uncompromising about his art as Lawrence. Unlike him, he had no hang-ups about moralism and guilt. Far from it. Reading him was like sipping nectar. It was a tonic for the mind. His exuberant language was… show more.

Looking around me as a young man I found a grey world that had been stripped of all its glory and fabulousness by the exploitation and utilitarianism of human beings. 

Alexandra David-Neel was an amazing explorer. She was the first European woman to meet the Dalai Lama and in 1924 became the first to enter the forbidden Tibetan capital, Lhasa. She had already spent a decade travelling through China, living in a cave on the Tibetan border, where she learned about Buddhism from hermits, mystics, and bandits. 

She describes in this book how these people learnt such seemingly impossible skills such as telepathy, defying gravity, running for days without food or drink or sleep, and surviving with hardly any clothes in the subzero Himalayan blizzards. 

This magical world vanished when the Chinese invaded in 1947. 

To think that this miraculous way of life existed in the same century as me… show more.

I’m a sucker for a gilded-age story, and Renee Rosen’s latest novel ticks all the boxes for a truly immersive read. Chronicling the high society rivalry between Caroline Astor and Alva Vanderbilt, The Social Graces takes readers into the truly baffling feud between old and new money, making you all but feel as though you’re at parties with the Four Hundred, backbiting and gossiping behind the fold of an open fan. 

This book is an unfinished work, hard to follow, because it is a draft never reviewed by the author and published posthumously.

However, it is a must-read, so please do not be discouraged as I was, for the ideas that it encloses picture a more equalized society practically based on the changing of our economic road, nothing else than ending capitalism as we know it.

Two subjects are of particular interest: first, how to correctly retribute people for the wealth they generate through their work; and second, a demonstration of how excess production and money amassing do not amount to wealth. An interesting lesson in economics.

If mystery and suspense are your thing, this is a who-dun-it that will suck you in quickly. This book totally captivated me from start to finish. I think what hooked me was the way the author took the prologue to actually show the past, and then when the novel started, all the threads of the story were sewn together so beautifully. Full of twists and turns which make a great suspense experience. There is some romantic drama tossed in which is always the icing on the cake for me as well.

Everyone reveres Grace Paley, but what if you could read a fictionalized account of Paley and the young writer she mentored—and even created a publishing company to publish her?

That’s writer Leora Skolkin-Smith’s story and it’s so gripping, so passionate, so real. Set in the tumultuous 1970s, it’s about female power, trauma, and how mentoring works—and sometimes doesn’t work. Plus it is so gorgeously written, a gripping page-turner about finding our voices, both on the page, and off. I just adored it—so much that I got all of Skolkin-Smith’s other books, too.

Oh man, this book! It’s everything I want: Sweet, simple, cute, nostalgic, at times, just awful. Gutterboys taught me that a book with a soul and a soundtrack and a firm jab in the gut is the type of book I want to make. Set in the 80s, Jeremy is a naïve suburban Jewish teen who falls crazy-stupid in love with a gorgeous older hustler. Colin won’t date Jeremy, but he does take him on a New York adventure that will only unhinge innocent Jeremy more and more. If you like that intoxicatingly toxic unrequited gay love, give it a go!

This is one of my all-time favorite books about alcoholism because it’s hilarious. The title has a double meaning because the book is about the author’s attempt to stop drinking but also because Augusten’s humor is incredibly dry.

I found this book before I ever even entertained the notion that I, too, might have an issue with alcohol, and yet, I loved it. I’ve probably read this book at least 10 times, and it still makes me laugh despite the fact that it’s become all too real for me. 

I heard Marilyn Monroe in everything Holly Golightly said. I heard her witticisms. Turned out Truman Capote wrote it using Marilyn’s voice.

Holly, a hooker, her protagonist (apartment neighbor) was an in-the-closet gay man. Holly would climb the fire escape and crawl into his room and snuggle in bed with him as if they were lovers. She never denied she was a hooker – but never hid that she had standards and would expect fifty-dollar tips for washroom attendants.

This novella, as does Grapes and Old Man, demonstrates to me the stage play of life we choose to be in is in acts—we know our assets, limitations and to survive we follow them—in Grapes pickers followed a dream to orange groves—in Old Man—a fisher needed to prove he could get his luck back—and in Tiffany—if she could find playgrounds of the rich, she’d survive.

Like Cheever, Shaw was a fellow New Yorker contributor but his work is grittier than Cheever’s and was best summed up in The New York Times: “[Shaw] has a primitive skill possessed by very few sophisticated men.” Winner of two O. Henry awards, I would say he is the “meat and potatoes” short story master - but it’s Prime USDA.