Here are 100 books that The Magic Kingdom fans have personally recommended if you like
The Magic Kingdom.
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I‘ve been thinking about the forces that drive humanity together and pull us apart at the same time since my late teens; back then, I started reading the classical dystopian tales. The (perceived) end of time always speaks to me, because I think it‘s in those moments of existential dread that we learn who we really are. That‘s why I like reading (and reviewing) books, and also why those topics are an undertone in my own writings. I do hope you enjoy these 5 books as much as I have.
This was probably one of the most intense experiences with non-linear storytelling I ever had, and that did something to me I could not have predicted.
In fact, while reading this book, I started to turn the story into something of a philosophical discourse in my head.
I really like how this book is at the same time utterly insane in parts—and I do say that with the greatest respect, it‘s the good kind of insane—while at the same time, it explores themes of dealing with earth-shattering events on a very individual level.
For me, the icing on the cake is that Kurt Vonnegut manages to even mix in a little history lesson there, because that bombing of the prisoners in Dresden? That did happen. And I didn‘t even learn about it in school—I learned it from this novel!
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
As a great-great-great-great-grandchild of Irish immigrants, I come from a long, proud line of alcoholics, especially on my mother’s side. My childhood was a masterclass in chaos: family scream-fests, flung insults, and someone cracking a joke while dodging a punch. It was painful, yes, but also absurd and often hilarious. That’s where my dark wit comes from. Razor-sharp humor was how we made it out alive. It becomes a lens you’re trained to observe the world through since you were a wee lad. I’ve always been drawn to stories where grief and laughter sit at the same table, clinking pints. Satire and absurdity aren’t interests for me. They’re muscle memory.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or stage an intervention. This book introduced me to Ignatius J. Reilly, a character so insufferable and absurdly grandiose that I kept turning pages just to see how much worse he could get. I was horrified and hypnotized. I couldn’t look away.
What I love about this book is that it doesn’t ask you to like anyone. It asks you to witness the glorious wreckage of human delusion. It is chaotic, bloated, brilliant, and somehow still moving. Toole gave me a character I wanted to strangle, and a novel I wanted to reread. That kind of friction is rare, and I live for it.
'This is probably my favourite book of all time' Billy Connolly
A pithy, laugh-out-loud story following John Kennedy Toole's larger-than-life Ignatius J. Reilly, floundering his way through 1960s New Orleans, beautifully resigned with cover art by Gary Taxali _____________
'This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians . . . don't make the mistake of bothering me.'
Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent and almost unemployable. By the standards of ordinary folk he is pretty much…
For me, the most affecting stories are those that are leavened with a sardonic sensibility. Italo Calvino, one of my favorite writers, notes “th[e] particular connection between melancholy and humor,” speaking of how great writing “foregrounds [with] tiny, luminous traces that counterpoint the dark catastrophe.” I’ve always veered toward the great literary comic writers—from Cervantes to Laurence Sterne to Pynchon, with a particular reverence for Nabokov. For me, there is no greater exposition of the underbelly of love and madness than Lolita; of artistic obsession than Pale Fire. Nabokov believed that the best writing places the reader under a spell, enchanting them with the magic of words — and I concur!
DFW’s hyperbolic virtuosity is on display in this collection of stories about fakery, imposterdom, trauma, and the nature of consciousness, of which Good Old Neon, the monologue of a salesman who traffics in fakeries, is the showstopper. DFW knew depression well as he did psychopharmacology and rehab and our mental health apparatus—his work is imbued with the details of these worlds and he conveys possibly better than any other what it is like to be trapped in a depressed, quizzical mind. The collection is a moving and hilarious tour-de-force.
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness -- a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his.
These are worlds undreamt of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
During my 25-year journalism career and now, in my books, I’ve specialized in telling powerful, human stories that are often humorous and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. To me, humor is an essential part of life. Real stories might make us cry, but just as often, they make us laugh. That’s the balance I try to achieve with all my writing.
There are a lot of books about Florida that are bad or shallowly written, but these days, some real writers are setting their books in the Sunshine State. Kristen Arnett, a Florida resident, uses the backdrop of a failing taxidermy business to write about a crazy family and an odd Central Florida town.
As a fourth-generation Floridian, I found the book true to life and extremely funny. That’s quite an accomplishment.
'Messed-up families, scandalous love affairs, art, life, death and the great state of Florida in one delicious, darkly funny package. Kristen Arnett is a wickedly talented and a wholly original voice' Jami Attenberg
What does it take to come back to life?
In the wake of her father's suicide, Jessa-Lynn Morton has stepped up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the Morton family falls apart. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make alarming art with stuffed animals; and while her brother Milo withdraws, his wife, Brynn - the only person Jessa's ever been in…
I am a romantic; I live to love. My books Eve’s Blessing and Subjectified both help women build great sex and love lives. As a therapist and sex educator, I help people connect with their partners and build the relationships of their dreams. I am currently working on a romance novel with spiritual and psychedelic themes. I love books that introduce us to new worlds as we explore the inner world of each character.
This classic romance novel—and, now, movie—features a love story not just between a woman and a man but also between two sisters struggling to find themselves and overcome self-destructive behavior.
By the end, you'll experience catharsis as both women confront their longstanding self-confidence issues and make peace with themselves and each other.
Rose Feller is thirty years old, a high-powered attorney, with a secret passion for romance novels, an exercise regime she's going to start next week, and dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her that she's beautiful.
Meet Rose's sister Maggie. Twenty-eight years old, drop-dead gorgeous and only occasionally employed, Maggie is a backing singer in a band called. She dreams of fame and fortune -- and of getting her dowdy big sister to stick to a skin-care regime.
These two women with nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, shared…
I’ve been captivated by interesting people since I was a kid. Family
members always thought I asked too many questions of people, trying to
learn more about who they are. For that reason, when I started reading
fiction, I looked for characters with originality who opened new
horizons and who I wanted to hang out with. (That’s also why I host the
Novelist Spotlight podcast.) I agree 100 percent with novelist Larry
McMurtry, who said: “For me, the novel is character creation. Unless the
characters convince and live, the book’s got no chance.” The books I
placed on my list reflect this belief. I hope you dig them.
I found this book hysterically funny, and the dialogue more imaginative than any book I’ve ever read. The characters are without equal in terms of their originality, including the children of Jack and Babette Gladney.
The sheer number of meaningful topics this story covers is also without equal. The author’s observations are extremely keen. At its core, it is about the fear of death, though it is not a depressing story in any sense. It’s no wonder why it won the 1985 National Book Award.
The National Book Award-winning classic from the author of Underworld and Libra-an "eerie, brilliant, and touching" (New York Times) family drama about mass culture and the numbing effects of technology-soon to be a major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
I grew up in central Arkansas, which means I experienced first-hand the fiction I describe here. The South in these books - its religion, poverty, and beauty, not to mention its capacity for real ugliness - is not simply an atmosphere these authors have used to decorate their sets. The South in these books is a place where real people live, in exactly the ways these writers have described. My novella, Six Mile Store, is my own take on the real South. These are the books that showed me that these kinds of Southern stories are worth telling.
The film adaptations make True Grit look like a Western. It is not.
It is an Arkansas book, and Mattie Ross is an Arkansas character: fourteen years old, tiny, and completely on board with the violence she knows avenging her father's murder will require. She has courage and goal-oriented ruthlessness.
Mattie’s fortitude underlines the gap between what my characters can see for themselves and what they can actually reach. That gap is at the heart of what my novella is about.
There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down…
Before I was an author-illustrator, I was an elementary school teacher for many years. One of my favorite things about teaching was reading to students and helping them find books they love. Seeing kids connect with books motivated me to write and illustrate books; the character Reggie is very much inspired by my young students! Humorous books with lots of pictures often get kids hooked on reading, which is why I’ve selected funny graphic novels for this list. There’s no shortage of great comics for kids, so I chose books I also would have loved as a kid–silly and sweet, starring animal characters with real, kid-like feelings.
I love the energetic ink and watercolor illustrations and the silly squirrel protagonists. The sequence where the squirrels interfere with a donut-making machine has a classic cartoon feel. This sweet, fun adventure story will leave you smiling–and craving donuts!
Two squirrel best friends meet their match: a donut food truck! This Eisner-nominated hilarious young graphic novel is perfect for fans of Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea and anyone who would do ANYTHING for a donut.
Norma and Belly would really really really really really like a donut.
With a burned breakfast and a cranky donut seller at the local food truck, they may be stuck with only nuts to eat . . . unless they can steal the biggest, most delicious donut of their tiny lives!
Mika Song gives readers something to laugh at as these squirrels try their…
I am a lover of champagne and popular culture and am fascinated with how humor can be used to confront taboo topics and subvert familiar orthodoxies. As a cultural critic, I study how visual artists challenge notions of childhood innocence by adding images of drinking and drunkenness to their adaptations of children’s texts and childish objects. Through these re-imaginings, we see how children’s culture is drinking culture. The most important lessons about alcohol and childhood in the drinking curriculum walk a fine line between humor and dread. My other books include Graphic Girlhoods: Visualizing Education and Violence and Witnessing Girlhood: Toward an Intersectional Tradition of Life Writing (with Leigh Gilmore).
This picture book is one of the only contemporary books for children that shows drinking for pleasure.
After a mouse gets eaten up by a wolf, he meets a duck that lives in “the belly of the beast.” The two become fast friends and live happily in the wolf’s stomach. Together they make soup, dance to records, and enjoy the finer things in life. When the wolf complains of a stomachache, the duck calls up a cure for him—advising that he eat a hunk of good chess, a flagon of wine, and some beeswax candles.
After the wolf does so, mouse and duck don top hats, tuxedo jackets, bow ties and sit down to feast, raising their glasses of wine to the health of the wolf. Ultimately, duck and mouse save the wolf’s life and in return he grants them their wish to return to their home in his stomach.
They may have been swallowed, but they have no intention of being eaten... A new comedy from the unparalleled team of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.
"A subversive delight ... an unexpected, hilarious collaboration" Guardian
Early one morning a mouse met a wolf and was quickly gobbled up...
When a woeful mouse is swallowed up by a wolf, he quickly learns he is not alone: a duck has already set up digs and, boy, has that duck got it figured out! Turns out it's pretty nice inside the belly of the beast - there's delicious food, elegant table settings and,…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Time travel has always been my favorite genre of storytelling. Devouring every time travel book, movie, TV series, or comic strip I’ve come across in my life got me thinking a lot about cause and effect, chicken and egg, before and after. I eventually came to realize the literary world of prequels and sequels with multiple book series didn’t always have to be read in the order of release, especially if, as a reader, you had a late start that was still “new to you.”
Sequel/prequel/sidequel/timequel: reading a series out of order is a whole new type of adventure.
I’d never heard the term “epistolary novel” prior to reading Michael Kun’s The Locklear Letters, but was immediately smitten with the concept of telling a story solely through a series of letters and/or emails sent by the narrator.
This sequel follows the same template and the same protagonist a decade down the line. I liken it to finding a boxful of letters and using them to piece together a hilarious comedy of errors. Maybe you’ll keep digging and find an older box later, or maybe the archivist kept orderly annals, allowing you to move forward through the years.
Sequencing doesn’t matter, but the written words will leave you in stitches.
Sid Straw, the author of the correspondence that forms Everybody Says Hello, isn t Everyman, but he is someone everyone knows. He tries just a little too hard, says just a little too much, and that extra effort and those extra words are often his undoing. If only Sid could get out of his own way, his life would be wonderful. While Sid Straw may frustrate you at times, you ll end up rooting for him the same way you root for your own equally imperfect friends.
