Here are 100 books that The Archivist fans have personally recommended if you like
The Archivist.
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I love historical settings and detail – I love coming away from a novel feeling like I’ve also learned something about the world. But I also like lots and lots of plot and intensity. Historical fiction slash mystery novels hit the spot just right. Though my own work thus far is more on the historical fiction side, I do try to plot it like a mystery, with lots of questions, revelations, and discoveries to be made as you go along.
A gorgeous, extravagant dual-timeline historical mystery about late-20th-century academics researching a pair of (fictional) Victorian poets – did they or didn’t they?
If you like library settings, fictional documents (letters, poems – lots of poems), and a good dose of poking-fun-at-academia, you’ll love it. Yes, it is also a movie (though I can’t speak to it).
Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Having worked in archives, I know that they are utterly magical places full of hidden treasures, precious memories, and poignant, tiny moments that tell us so much about our humanity. I’ve spent a lifetime living in the past, hunting through unusual objects, reels of film, letters, and documents that may have once been discarded, but form an essential part of microhistories that might otherwise be forgotten. That’s why I’ve written about the marginalised filmmakers of Northern Ireland – amateur and independent creatives who were shooting alternative images of a place whose conflict was seen all across the world, but whose daily life was not recorded in any meaningful way by broadcast cameras.
This is the best book out there about the ups and downs, the value and the degradation, the profundity and the shallow pettiness of universities.
It is also an achingly profound commentary on the disappointment of life, when beauty and fulfilment are always just out of reach.
Stoner reminds me that the vast archive of books out there is always growing, and there’ll never be enough time to read the best of what’s already been written, never mind try to grapple with a steady stream of new classics. Even so, I know I’ll read this book again and again.
'It's the most marvellous discovery for everyone who loves literature' Ian McEwan, BBC Radio 4
Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013 translations of Stoner began appearing on bestseller lists across Europe. Forty-eight years after its first, quiet publication in the US, Stoner is finally finding the wide and devoted readership it deserves. Have you read it yet?
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature…
I’ve been an archivist at Canada’s national archives for more than twenty years. I love my job. Archives are, by their very nature, a collection of miscellany that weren’t created to be preserved or remembered. They are the scraps of paper and hurriedly sent emails produced while the world is out making history. As a result, they offer unselfconscious glimpses into the past. Archives are poorly understood, which means that the folks who decide to devote their professional lives to them are often a little quirky and a bit odd. This makes books featuring archivists celebrations of the off-kilter, the overlooked, and the frankly strange.
Bear is a slim, easy-to-read story about an archivist who travels to a remote northern cabin to catalog its contents, discovering surprising insights about herself and the world. It is funny, it is insightful. It is also marketed as “a tale of erotic love between an archivist and a bear.” Yup. I promise you, though, that somehow it’s not weird – just delightful and strange and highly enjoyable.
As a young archivist, did I make my first professional conference presentation about this novel? Yes!
Did it limit my career?
Possibly!
Does that paper hold the record for most times “bestiality” was mentioned in an Association of Ontario Archivists conference?
'A strange and wonderful book, plausible as kitchens, but shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.' -- Margaret Atwood
'Bear,' she cried. 'I love you. Pull my head off.'
Lou is a librarian at the local Heritage Institute who lives a mole-like existence, buried among maps and manuscripts in her dusty basement office.
The chance to escape the monotony of her city life comes when she is summoned to a remote island to inventory the late Colonel Jocelyn Cary's estate. Hoping for an industrious summer of cataloguing, Lou heads north.
Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.
I am both a writer and a teacher of writing at the university. I have always wanted to be a writer, even though one of my aunts lied to me when I was five that writers would be poor and would die of tuberculosis. I like listening to stories of ordinary people and can learn so much from them. I studied English literature and psychology in my undergraduate studies. I hold a PhD in applied linguistics. I enjoy reading about the subject of philosophy and am fascinated by the theories revolving around ethics. Naturally, I challenge my characters with moral dilemmas so I can write about their struggles.
I love All the Names so much that I read it twice in a gap of ten years. I love it for two main reasons: how ordinary people can be immortalized by powerful writing and what decisions good people make in a moral dilemma. In his Nobel Prize award ceremony speech in Stockholm in 1998, Saramago said that his writings were to transform ordinary people into literary figures in order that he would not forget them.
He did exactly that in this book. An unknown woman was immortalized by the main protagonist, who was portrayed as an unloved, lonely clerk working at the Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Lisbon. As I was reading his story, I wondered what turned this unassuming, timid worker into a forger. Given the opportunity, would a good person turn into a tyrant?
José Saramago's mesmerizing, classic narrative about the loneliness of individual lives and the universal need for human connection.
Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor José sets off to follow the thread that may lead…
I’ve been an archivist at Canada’s national archives for more than twenty years. I love my job. Archives are, by their very nature, a collection of miscellany that weren’t created to be preserved or remembered. They are the scraps of paper and hurriedly sent emails produced while the world is out making history. As a result, they offer unselfconscious glimpses into the past. Archives are poorly understood, which means that the folks who decide to devote their professional lives to them are often a little quirky and a bit odd. This makes books featuring archivists celebrations of the off-kilter, the overlooked, and the frankly strange.
This story is centred around Grace, a recently dumped library technician who is assigned to catalogue a previously “lost” trove of letters from Amelia Earhart. It’s a wonderful back-and-forth through Grace’s attempts to recover from her grief and move on with life while learning valuable lessons in courage and staying true to yourself from her immersion in the life of Amelia Earhart.
Grace Porter is reeling from grief after her partner of seven years unexpectedly leaves. Amidst her heartache, the 30 year-old library tech is tasked with reading newly discovered letters that Amelia Earhart wrote to her lover, Gene Vidal. She becomes captivated by the famous pilot who disappeared in 1937. Letter by letter, she understands more about the aviation hero while piecing her own life back together. When Grace discovers she is pregnant, her life becomes more intertwined with the mysterious pilot and Grace begins to write her own letters to Amelia. While navigating her third trimester, amidst new conspiracy theories…
Having worked in archives, I know that they are utterly magical places full of hidden treasures, precious memories, and poignant, tiny moments that tell us so much about our humanity. I’ve spent a lifetime living in the past, hunting through unusual objects, reels of film, letters, and documents that may have once been discarded, but form an essential part of microhistories that might otherwise be forgotten. That’s why I’ve written about the marginalised filmmakers of Northern Ireland – amateur and independent creatives who were shooting alternative images of a place whose conflict was seen all across the world, but whose daily life was not recorded in any meaningful way by broadcast cameras.
A stunning collection of images of actors captured across a generation in the elusive space of “the half” – the thirty minutes of intensity just before the curtain is raised.
It’s a window into the private space of the actor as they prepare to share their craft with the audience. It also demonstrates how an archive of photographs, captured over several decades, can take on new meaning when represented as a full collection.
For me, the most striking image is one of Natasha Richardson, arms outstretched, in a partially transparent flowing gown as she prepares to appear in The Seagull by Anton Chekov. She is ghostly and ethereal in this breathtaking black-and-white portrait from 1985. Her sister Joely adorns the opposite page, taking to Old Vic in the same year.
For twenty-five years, actors have given Simon Annand unprecedented access to photograph them in the intimacy of their dressing-rooms during the 30 minutes before curtain-up - 'the half'. This magnificent book offers not only a dazzling gallery of actors - including Anthony Hopkins, Cate Blanchett, Daniel Day Lewis, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, Jeremy Irons, Glenda Jackson, Jude Law, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Martin Sheen, Felicity Kendal, Kevin Spacey and Ralph Fiennes - but also a meditation on the mystery of the final stage of an actor's journey.
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
Having worked in archives, I know that they are utterly magical places full of hidden treasures, precious memories, and poignant, tiny moments that tell us so much about our humanity. I’ve spent a lifetime living in the past, hunting through unusual objects, reels of film, letters, and documents that may have once been discarded, but form an essential part of microhistories that might otherwise be forgotten. That’s why I’ve written about the marginalised filmmakers of Northern Ireland – amateur and independent creatives who were shooting alternative images of a place whose conflict was seen all across the world, but whose daily life was not recorded in any meaningful way by broadcast cameras.
A book about how the microhistories found in personal archives are essential to our understanding of how people respond to the world around them, how they form and document their own identities, and how, sometimes, a true understanding of a life may come only through sifting through the ephemera of a person after their death.
But do we have the right to look? The author asks us to think of how we view the dead and whether the rights they held during life should still be attributed to them when they no longer inhabit this world.
A book full of the ideas of other writers and cultural theorists that moves deftly between memoir, history, and poetry.
With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century.
In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping…
Having worked in archives, I know that they are utterly magical places full of hidden treasures, precious memories, and poignant, tiny moments that tell us so much about our humanity. I’ve spent a lifetime living in the past, hunting through unusual objects, reels of film, letters, and documents that may have once been discarded, but form an essential part of microhistories that might otherwise be forgotten. That’s why I’ve written about the marginalised filmmakers of Northern Ireland – amateur and independent creatives who were shooting alternative images of a place whose conflict was seen all across the world, but whose daily life was not recorded in any meaningful way by broadcast cameras.
I felt incredibly voyeuristic reading the letters of an eager child, a sensitive teenager, and an impressive young student.
These are letters by someone with a ravenous appetite for all that life has to offer: food, company, experiences, books, history, and travel. We see the writer blossom through the excerpts of her poetry that are included, but also in the heartfelt, lyrical, and eloquent letters to family, friends, and boyfriends.
Her life is packed full of a dizzying array of activity, and, as she admits herself, she loves to alternate periods of intense study with social life and excursions with friends as far as she can travel.
Not a minute is wasted, even during the dark times that she documents, and the melancholy that is felt by the reader who possesses hindsight intensifies the feeling that we have no right to read these words, and yet they are so compelling,…
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was one of the writers who defined the course of twentieth-century poetry. Her vivid, daring and complex poetry continues to captivate new generations of readers and writers.
In the Letters, we discover the art of Plath's correspondence, most of which has never before been published and is here presented unabridged, without revision, so that she speaks directly in her own words. Refreshingly candid and offering intimate details of her personal life, Plath is playful, too, entertaining a wide range of addressees, including family, friends and professional contacts, with inimitable wit and verve. The letters document Plath's extraordinary…
I started my journey as an author writing YA fantasy books—then the pandemic came, publishing collapsed for a moment, and I found myself at a loss of what sort of author I wanted to be. YA didn’t call to me as it once did—and I was struggling as many of us were then. Then I found romance—it healed me, brought joy and hope back into my life, and made me love writing in a new and powerful way. The Irish Goodbye is my debut adult romance, and I hope to keep writing in this genre for many years!
This book has one of the most unique premises I’ve ever come across in any book, much less a romance—Tiffy is just out of a toxic relationship and needs a cheap apartment fast. Leon is a palliative care nurse who is working graveyard shifts and needs extra money to help his brother. They come to an agreement—without ever actually meeting each other—to split the flat: Tiffy is there while Leon works and vice versa.
They begin to communicate through Post-it notes, and it’s honestly the most beautiful development of a relationship I’ve ever read. I was tearing through the pages to eagerly find the moment when they finally—finally!—meet in real life. An exceptional book from start to finish!
'Beth O'Leary crafts novels with such wit, heart and truth' Sophie Kinsella
'Beth O'Leary is that rare, one-in-a-million talent who can make you laugh, swoon, cry and ache all in the same book' Emily Henry
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Tiffy and Leon share a flat Tiffy and Leon share a bed Tiffy and Leon have never met...
Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they're crazy, but it's the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy's at work in the day, and she has the…
Karl's War is a coming-of-age-meets-thriller set in Germany on the eve of Hitler coming to power. Karl – a reluctant poster boy for the Nazis – meets Jewish Ben and his world is up-turned.
Ben and his family flee to France. Karl joins the German army but deserts and finds…
I love mixing the known with something new and creative–molding two universes in a way that still feels whole and plausible for the reader. Reading is, for me, part entertainment and recreation and also part education. I refuse to divide books into instructive and non-instructive–because broadening my horizon can happen while I enjoy myself. It’s something I treasure in my favorite authors and, therefore, also aim to provide. This requires a certain insight into human nature to build a credible story about how we, as a species, would deal with different circumstances; also the ability and patience to do some proper research before sitting down and shaping it all into a story.
Vampire stories are out there–plenty of them. So many, in fact, that they are starting to bore me. What I find refreshing about these books is that the vampire part takes a back seat–it’s merely a circumstance that reveals the protagonist’s character when suddenly confronted with entirely different circumstances in her life, i.e., becoming a Vampire unplanned.
The protagonist remains true to her ironic and sarcastic self and is still insecure as a person even though she is now super-strong and fast. She learns over time to outgrow some of her less productive behavioral patterns, just as she likely would have as a human.
The first in the Half-Moon Hollow series is “wry, delicious fun” (Susan Andersen, New York Times bestselling author) as it follows a librarian whose life is turned upside down by a tempestuous and sexy vampire.
Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children’s librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed twenty-five dollars in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that’s sure to become Half Moon Hollow legend. On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer, shot, and left…
