Here are 100 books that The Bonfire of the Vanities fans have personally recommended if you like
The Bonfire of the Vanities.
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I used to be a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where I covered markets and economics. I had a front-row seat for the dot-com boom, the financial crisis, the rise of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and the 2020 crash. I was immersed in money and the culture of money, and how it drives and distorts society. I regularly talked to brokers, analysts, executives, investors, politicians, and entrepreneurs. I had billionaires’ phone numbers. And being around all that made me wonder, what is money, and why do we value it so? Why is the pursuit of wealth seen as a virtue? So I started studying our culture of money.
I started working for Dow Jones Newswires during the dot-com boom and saw how greed could drive markets. I worked through the housing boom in the Aughts and the financial crisis, and then started covering bitcoin around 2013. So by the time I got to Lewis’s book, I had a good understanding of how people can become obsessed with money.
But Lewis is just such a good writer, and has such insights into how markets work, that a book about bond buyers in the 1980s still feels like it’s about people trading so many other things today.
Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street's premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar's Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years-a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am the product of a love triangle—an unusual one, between a French Holocaust survivor, an African student from France’s colonies, and a black GI. My parents came of age during really turbulent times and led big, bold lives. They rarely spoke about their pasts, but once I began digging—in the letters they exchanged, in conversations with my grandmother and aunts, with their childhood friends—I realized that all three had witnessed up close so much of the drama and horrors of the twentieth century and that what they had lived together merited being told. My parents’ love triangle is at the heart of my love of love-triangle stories.
Another classic—this one, from 1955, which was twice made into a movie, in 1958 and in the superior 2002 remake, with Brendan Frazier and Michael Cain. The Quiet American is described as many things—as a Vietnam war book, as a critique of American imperialist impulses. But at heart, it’s the story of a love triangle.
And the woman at the center of the love triangle, Phuong, is an all-time favorite character of mine. With watchful attention and subtle silences, she dictates the fate of the two men. More important than anything we ever see her say are the things we see her do and not do.
I love the novel’s spare prose and its observations and asides, which are astute and oftentimes quite funny. And in the book’s pages, Vietnam, in the years just before the disastrous French then American wars, comes vividly to life. But Phuong is the reason…
Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.
As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But…
I have picked these books because I have a passion for good reading material. All the books I have chosen have become reading classics in their own way. They are well written and have plots that go well beyond normal literature in a sense that they unveil the 'human condition' into the realm of the protagonist being up against all odds, where in the end, truth reveals all!
Everybody loves this book because it, of course, has become an international classic of literature and one of the best works F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, which takes the reader on a time-traveling secretive world of the upper-class set in New England life in the 1920s.
In F. Scott's work, we are casually and comfortably introduced to an America where new money met old money, and the tender tightrope one had to walk in order to vie for position, marriage, and peer acceptance in a world founded on wealth and prestige.
As the summer unfolds, Nick is drawn into Gatsby's world of luxury cars, speedboats and extravagant parties. But the more he hears about Gatsby - even from what Gatsby himself tells him - the less he seems to believe. Did he really go to Oxford University? Was Gatsby a hero in the war? Did he once kill a man? Nick recalls how he comes to know Gatsby and how he also enters the world of his cousin Daisy and her wealthy husband Tom. Does their money make them any happier? Do the stories all connect? Shall we come to know…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am an author, attorney, artist, and entrepreneur. My experience as a litigator for over forty years, as well as my experience as a painter and an investor, has inspired and influenced me to write the Chance Cormac legal thrillers series.
Connelly is the GOAT of the legal thriller genre. He is the creator of Mickey Haller and Hieronymus Bosch.
The Lincoln Lawyer introduces Mickey Haller, the LA lawyer whose office is his Lincoln Town Car. A criminal defense lawyer, Haller agrees to defend a prominent real estate agent who claims he is being framed for assault and attempted murder.
In Connelly’s novels, things are never what they seem. Connelly understands the challenges facing attorneys in investigating and trying difficult cases for difficult clients.
They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln car, travelling between the courthouses of Los Angeles county to take whatever cases the system throws in their path.
Mickey Haller has been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it, how to grease the right wheels and palms, to keep the engine of justice working in his favour. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years.…
As a UK registered lawyer, I have spent most of the past 35 years writing about my work. But what has always excited me, from my childhood, is the science fiction worlds which state a truth which is yet to happen, The worlds of H.G Wells; Huxley; Aldous; Orwell; Bradbury; and Atwell. An individual's struggle against overwhelming odds. Not always somewhere where you would want to go. But from which you will always take something away.
I'd heard about this famous book many years before I actually got around to reading it. What I loved about this book was its originality.
I am always reminded about Orwell's book whenever I hear phrases like ‘ thought police’ or ‘big brother’, which have become part of our everyday language. Probably one of the most influential books ever written. For me, the message of Orwell’s book is that the State will always win.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I’ve wanted to travel the world since I could look out a window. It’s been an honor to spend my life exploring this planet, despite some of its inhabitants. I knew I’d write books about it, even before I could write my own name. It’s a joy to realize such a deep and early dream. My books are love letters to places I’ve lived and people I’ve met, plus some joking around in order not to scream or weep at some of what’s out there. I’ve been a teacher, film editor, comedian, librarian, and now writer. Wherever you are, on whatever path: happy trails to you.
I always enjoy Bill Bryson’s stories, wherever he travels. He’s like my favorite funny uncle, and I never tire of hearing from him.
After a couple of decades as a Yank in the UK, he was going to move back home. First, he takes us on one last meandering trip all around the nation, to pay homage, to enjoy good memories, and to get amusingly grumpy about inconveniences. His sense of humor is self-effacing, silly, bungling, and very entertaining.
I love his keen nose for the absurd differences between the two cultures, his collections of comedy place names, and the British slang phrases he never understood. I grew up in the USA but spent all my adult life in the UK, and this had me laughing out loud, frequently.
In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite; a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named…
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
I am a retired psychotherapist and teacher, but if someone asked me what the purpose of life is, I’d say, “to become aware.” Awareness is the capacity to see without prejudice, bias, or conditioning. I don’t like being in the dark, and so I have been on a lifelong journey to become aware. I have stepped into seeing several times in my life, so now my task is to teach others. It’s who I am—my essence is to continue teaching, to set people free from societal conditioning and their upbringings. Growing up means losing certain comforting illusions, but greater understanding fills their place.
I liked the concept of man being small and adrift in the darkness of the wide world. This book taught me to see through politics, grandstanding, and the grandiose nonsense of man. Swift is my kind of guy, brutally satirical and profound. This book is really not for children. We see Gulliver travel on many adventures and experience Swift's disappointment as he engages different cultures, small and large, rational and irrational.
His adventures demolish Gulliver’s sense of humanity to the point that when he is about to be rescued, at first, he rejects the offer like a misanthrope before finally climbing aboard. Swift is very dark here. Why would anyone want to return to the same old life after having their eyes opened?
'Thus, gentle Reader, I have given thee a faithful History of my Travels for Sixteen Years, and above Seven Months; wherein I have not been so studious of Ornament as of Truth.'
In these words Gulliver represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just set down; but how far can we rely on a narrator whose identity is elusive and whoses inventiveness is self-evident? Gulliver's Travels purports to be a travel book, and describes Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consummately skilful…
Anyone who’s attended high school knows it’s often survival of the fittest outside class and a sort of shadow-boxing inside of it. At my late-1970s prep school in the suburbs of Los Angeles, some days unfolded like a “Mad Max” meets “Dead Society” cage match. While everything changed when the school went coed in 1980, the scars would last into the next millennia for many. Mine did, and it’d thrust me on a journey not only into classic literature of the young-male archetype, but also historical figures who dared to challenge the Establishment for something bigger than themselves. I couldn’t have written my second novel, Later Days, without living what I wrote or eagerly reading the books below.
This book, a classic of the atomic age, knocked my socks off rereading it.
While outwardly about a group of marooned boys scrapping for dominance on a remote island, it also resembled my late-seventies, Southern California prep school.
Some kids survived there by physically menacing playground “Piggy’s.” Others, like decent-hearted Jack, appealed for unity, demanding they keep a fire stoked for potential rescue before the savages within all of them aren’t worth saving anymore.
With that conch and bloody glasses, we appreciate mankind’s warring dualities.
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.
First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern…
Growing up in theatre, I was completely immersed in plays, which tend to be deep dives of the human psyche, and I latched on to those examinations like a dog with a bone. I’ve always loved the complexities of the human mind, specifically how we so desperately want to believe that anything beautiful, expensive, or exclusive must mean that the person, place, or thing is of more value. But if we pull back the curtain, and really take a raw look, we see that nothing is exempt from smudges of ugliness. It’s the ugliness, especially in regard to human character, that I find most fascinating.
For me, insight into the extravagant celebrity status-like lives of the characters in this movie is akin to the guilty pleasure of watching reality TV. This book brings out the voyeur in me, giving me permission to explore a perfect example of rich kids gone wild and the horrific consequences of unchecked actions.
I grew up in a lower economic class family surrounded by very wealthy, undisciplined friends, and so many of the characters and decisions hit close to home. I won’t lie; I felt a little better about myself and my own life after I finished reading. Yet, I’ll also admit that I didn’t want the train wreck to end.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York Times They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches,…
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called ‘the blackmail of his circumstances’: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I could have chosen any Raymond Chandler novel for this list; he is such a brilliant stylist, one of the best in the language.
His lugubrious, heavy-drinking, first-person detective Philip Marlowe is my kind of fictional hero, a genre-defining character, perpetually alone though he yearns for the glamorous women he meets.
Raymond Chandler's first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Big Sleep, Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder.
In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women.
In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself…
