Books like The Good Bear — picked by fans

This book is gripping. From the first sentence I was hooked as the autistic heroine showed me what life is like when no one understands you. When no one thinks like you. And when almost everyone underestimates you. I have learned so much from this book and am grateful for it. I love Addie. I love how empathetic she is as she campaigns for a memorial for the accused witches executed by her village centuries earlier. And I love her passion for sharks and her desire for them to live free and natural lives. I am certain that she would not visit aquariums because she knows how cruel captivity is. She is a bright, brave soul and I highly recommend that you read her story.

This is very hard to put down and an absolute joy to read. Two boys find themselves swimming in cash that was destined for destruction and decide to make the most of it. Problem is, in a few weeks this dosh won't be legal tender, so they've got to spend it fast! Anthony wants to invest in real estate, but younger brother Damian wants to do good with it and earn rungs on the ladder to Heaven, where his mum is. Sadly, doing good is not as straightforward as it might seem. My favourite bit is when he buys two dozen birds from a pet shop and sets them free. The liberated birds reappear from time to time throughout the story. 

I loved Wilder’s entire Little House series and read them several times, but this was the most memorable.

I found Laura’s voice thoroughly engaging and identified with her shyness, and the realistic details of pioneer life, and in this case, of survival, fascinated me. I especially appreciated the Ingalls family’s ability to experience the joy of simple pleasures and activities. I had to laugh when Charles lamented their dependence on newfangled inventions like kerosene and railroads.

When I read it most recently, I found it even more meaningful after learning that one of my ancestors also lived in South Dakota during the brutal winter of 1880-81. 

Armpit (aka Theodore), after his release from Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility, follows his counsellor's advice to take small steps to get his life back on track. Unfortunately, because of how other people perceive him, one of his steps – avoiding situations that might turn violent – is not always easy to do. I've read this a few times and love it because Theodore is such a kind character. If you've ever been in a situation where you're trying to do the right thing while juggling the conflicting needs of a friend who wants help, and a boss who depends on you, you'll relate. The story is fast-paced, funny at times, filled with diverse characters, and has plenty of dialogue, which I love.

I set out very determined to despise this first book of Knausgard’s series. Knausgard’s life is no more fascinating than anyone’s. This is not necessarily his life but some reasonable facsimile that dips in and out of reverie, philosophy, and the hardcore reality of cleaning up after an alcoholic parent dies. Hoarding, self-loathing, and Nordic landscape are all features. I mean, what is NOT to love about that?

My lust for this book is not so much what it is about, though, as how it does this thing of drawing me along in its unadorned vocabulary to wholesale belief in everything that is put down. It is a supreme hoax that I am grateful to have encountered. 

Although I knew that this novel was unlikely to have a happy ending because few women emerge intact after being accused of witchcraft, I couldn’t put this book down. I became attached to the characters, reading on well past midnight to find out whether they would escape a terrible fate.

Women who didn’t conform to the strict code of female behavior in seventeenth-century Norway were all possible targets of the witch hunters. I was filled with admiration for those imprisoned women who held out against demands that they incriminate others and even felt sympathy for those who succumbed to torture to become informers or were cleverly manipulated by promises of leniency.

For me, the plot and subplots were fascinating; all the characters were vivid, and some displayed unbelievable heroism.

I love cold, northern places and dogs, and, if you haven’t already noticed, warts-and-all stories about women finding strength they didn’t know they had in the wilderness. Blair Braverman’s memoir checks all these boxes. As a teenager, she goes to a folk school in the Norwegian Arctic and learns to work with sled dogs, something she later continues as a guide in Alaska. (Braverman is now a professional musher and has run the Iditarod.) The book’s subtitle is Chasing Fear and Finding Home In the Great White North, and Braverman is unsparing in her exploration of fear rooted in both the human and natural world. I read this book on a series of airplanes in one long travel day, and I’m still reminded of it every time I see Braverman’s delightful Twitter stories about her dogs.

Knut Hamsun is one the greatest writers of all time, in my opinion.

And yes, I am separating the work from the person and the political views. Hamsun was a strange guy and he wrote mainly about strange guys.

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn is one of them, the protagonist of Pan. Glahn is an ex-soldier, living in a hunting hut near a small harbour town in Norway. Technically, Pan is a love story. But it is not a typical love story. It is so co-dependent and twisted that it literally hurts.

Glahn is at best an idiot, at worst some kind of a sociopath. He thinks he is in love but his “love” is not innocent and pure but ugly and even dirty. It is easy to feel sorry for Glahn, easier to simply hate him.

But the book is so well written and the story so fascinating that the… show more.

As a lover of folk-tale, legend, and myth—and having an especial love for Norse Myth—I soon sought out the folk-tales of Norway.

Asbjorsen and Moe are the Norwegian answer to the Brothers Grimm. Their collection is superb. There’s the Ash-Lad, who is rather like Jack of Beanstalk fame, and many trolls. There are twelve princes searching for twelve lost princesses, helpful griffins, abandoned babies, and ancient Norse gods pitching up in thin disguise.

And, of course, as the people who told these tales lived between mountains, sky, and sea, there are many tales of animals and birds.

Occupied is a fictionalized story of the author’s father, Trygve Borstad, during WWII. I recommend this book because I think the novel gives a realistic portrayal of ordinary life in occupied Norway as he tells the story of his family and their struggles to survive during the German occupation of their country. Trygve was only 7 years old in 1936 when he was living with his grandparents in Norway. His father had gone back to the States to find a place for the family to live and raise money for their passage for them to travel. Ten years will pass until he will see his father again. As he grows into a teenager, he is entrusted with a job that will protect a resistance group in the town.