Here are 100 books that The Measure fans have personally recommended if you like
The Measure.
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A close college friend lost a child and dear friends to the group's suicide death at the hands of the Rev. Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana. As a physician, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, I made the decision to use my knowledge, training, and skill in individual, group, and family therapy to explore and try to help others and myself understand and stand up to destructive, controlling gurus of all kinds…from destructive, exploitive religious cults to violent terror group cults like that of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. It has been a moving and emotional journey.
We humans, for all our accomplishments in science, art, engineering, architecture, and literature, are haunted psychologically by the stark awareness of the reality that we all die. The various individual, group, and collective unconscious ways of trying to deny the reality of death are legion.
Becker stunned me with the way he organized a penetrating discussion of how many domains the effort to deny the reality of death enters. In the process of exploring these roads of travel to deny death, I found myself searching my own efforts to get meaning in my own life and try to prepare for my death.
Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work,The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.
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 grew up hearing Scottish folklore told as truth, stories of spirits, warnings, and strange kindnesses passed off as everyday fact. I have always been fascinated by the idea that there is something more, something hidden just out of sight. As a child I was scared of everything, so I forced myself to watch old Hammer horror films to toughen up. It worked a bit too well and left me with a lifelong love of the dark underside of things. Now, as a stand-up comedian and writer, I have learned there can be humour in anything, and sometimes the best way to make something real is to laugh at the awful.
This is the first book I’ve read where I truly believed in a world existing alongside our own.
One where the ordinary and the supernatural live side by side and quietly shape each other, even if they don’t fully realise it. I absolutely loved the humour.
It’s a remarkable book that made me feel like I’d been pulled into another world entirely. One that’s dirtier, stranger, more magical, and just a little bit beyond understanding.
I’ve been fascinated by how people behave and how in-group bias can change who they are. That interest led me into computational sociology (I study human behavior for a living), with my work appearing in The New York Times, USA Today, WIRED, and more. But my deepest fascination has always been with people’s propensity for the horrific. I LOVE the liminal space where fear, secrecy, and belonging collide. Being neurodivergent, living in a small Virginia town with my wife and our neurodivergent, queer son, I see how communities can both shelter and suffocate. That tension is why I’m drawn to stories saturated in dread, beauty, and what lives in the shadows.
This is the book that taught me how powerful loneliness can be.
Every time I return to it, I feel one character’s ache settle into me, that desperate want to belong somewhere, even if it’s a house that doesn’t love you back. I recommend it because it still feels as if I’m attempting to figure out what is happening alongside the characters, the way only great writing can.
Jackson makes you realize that the scariest hauntings aren’t in the walls, they’re the ones we carry within us.
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
I stumbled across this book, written by a Nobel prize winner I had never heard of, when I was researching “comps” for my new novel. Both turn on the premise that suddenly death ceases to happen to people after a certain point in time; in Saramago’s novel, this is because Death is a female deity who gets really tired of her job.
It’s utterly fanciful but scathingly satirical in portraying humankind’s reactions to what they always thought would be a boon but soon realize is a catastrophe. It made me change some aspects of my book to try to emulate Saramago’s level of sophistication—and sense of humor—about human nature.
Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's brilliant novel poses the question—what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death? On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials…
I’ve loved portal fantasies since childhood—after all, who has never imagined being swept away to another world, particularly one in which magic is more than mere illusion? (The trick, of course, is then finding your way back…) Since the wardrobes in my life have thus far refused to open onto snowy forests, however, I write my own stories these days.
The Magicians is what happens when a kid who’s obsessed with a series like The Chronicles of Narnia grows up, is accepted into a magical university, and discovers along the way that the fantasy world he so loved reading about is real…but not quitewhat he imagined. This novel, the first in a trilogy, offers a more jaded look at some of the beloved aspects of children’s fantasy and how they might play out with young adults discovering themselves and seeking purpose.
When I was eleven, I immigrated to a new country and was bullied at school. I retreated into books where I could visit secret worlds filled with ghosts, magicians, and dark power. I needed a place to hide and dream up my revenge. It seems I was destined to write scary novels. My books and various short stories are a blend of mystery, psychological thriller, romance, paranormal, and the supernatural. I still love to visit new worlds but am content to live near an official Halloween town with my young family. If you haven’t read these books yet, I envy you for the mind-bending journey you’re about to embark upon. Bon Voyage.
You know that frightening jolt when a painting reaches out and grabs you? Duma Keyis your own private gallery you might never (want to) escape from.
I love this book not only because it was written by one of my all-time favorite writers but it’s about an artist and the act of creating art, which is King’s specialty (think Lisey’s Story, The Shining, or Bag of Bones).
The protagonist Edgar Freemantle is a successful contractor in Minnesota until he suffers a terrible accident. He flees to Duma Key, a lush, oppressive island packed with mystery and malevolence, and unwillingly begins to paint these amazing terrifying works with life-altering results.
Paintings that might possess you, islands with dark pasts, curses coming true?
Master storyteller Stephen King’s classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller of what happens when the barrier between our world and that of the supernatural is breached.
After a terrible construction site accident severs Edgar Freemantle’s right arm, scrambles his mind, and implodes his marriage, the wealthy Minnesota builder faces the ordeal of rehabilitation, all alone and full of rage. Renting a house on Duma Key—a stunningly beautiful and eerily undeveloped splinter off the Florida coast—Edgar slowly emerges from his prison of pain to bond with Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick, elderly woman whose roots are tangled deep in this place.…
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…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
The title itself is a consolation to me, and it turns out there really are several strong arguments for why we should be glad we don’t live forever, no matter how appealing that may seem. I found Stark’s whimsical tone throughout the book to be a pleasant departure from the leaden prose of most academic philosophers.
This book didn’t completely convince me that worrying about death is a waste of time, but it did get me part of the way there, and that was and is an enormous comfort to me.
A penetrating and provocative exploration of human mortality, from Epicurus to Joan Didion
For those who don't believe in an afterlife, the wisdom of the ages offers four great consolations for mortality: that death is benign and good; that mortal life provides its own kind of immortality; that true immortality would be awful; and that we experience the kinds of losses in life that we will eventually face in death. Can any of these consolations honestly reconcile us to our inevitable demise?
In this timely book, Andrew Stark tests the psychological truth of these consolations and searches our collective literary,…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
I first read this book not long after my mother passed away, and its argument against the over-medicalization of death and dying resonated powerfully with me since she died after spending her last weeks in a hospital. It revisits Ernest Becker's insight in a different way, that rather than treating death and dying as something that can be “fixed,” we need to acknowledge and embrace the end to give greater meaning to what leads up to it.
A Columbia University physician comes across a popular medieval text on dying well written after the horror of the Black Plague and discovers ancient wisdom for rethinking death and gaining insight today on how we can learn the lost art of dying well in this wise, clear-eyed book that is as compelling and soulful as Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
As a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients, Dr. L. S. Dugdale knows a great deal about the end of life. Far too many of us die poorly,…
I have always been drawn to the ocean. When I decided to start writing novels, I knew that I wanted to set them in coastal locations. I live in the Boston suburbs and spend time whenever I can at the beach. I have written books centered in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod. I am working on a story set on the north shore of Massachusetts. I am a high school social studies teacher of twenty-four years and a parent of two teenagers. All of my writing includes cooking and the enjoyment of good food as a major focus. I hope my books make you hungry!
I was a huge fan of the original The Parent Trap movie as a kid, and this adult book version is absolutely addicting.
With a coastal Florida setting, it was perfect to read on a beach vacation. The main characters are loads of fun, and the two book boyfriends are charming in very different ways.
Two best friends torn apart by a life-altering secret. One summer to set the record straight.
When twelve-year-olds Kat Steiner and Blake O’Neill meet at Camp Chickawah, they have an instant connection. But everything falls apart when they learn they’re not just best friends—they’re also half sisters. Confused and betrayed, the girls break off all contact.
Fifteen years later, when their father dies suddenly, Kat and Blake discover he’s left them a joint inheritance: the family beach house in Destin, Florida. The two sisters are immediately at odds. Blake, who has recently been demoted from regular nanny to dog nanny,…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a bestselling ghostwriter, I spend a lot of time reading what everyone’s reading—the chart-toppers and book club favorites. But when I stepped out of the shadows to write my own memoir about love and loss, I leaned on less obvious writers to inspire me forward. I believe that everyone has a story to tell and a unique way to tell it, and one of the more magical aspects of being a reader is discovering those voices that speak directly to you, who make you laugh when you want to cry, and allow you to breathe again. I hope my favorites list similarly lifts you up!
I do not easily fall in love, but I fell hard for Phoebe, an imperfect protagonist who navigates life’s difficulties and hard disappointments with dark humor and depth.
I thought I knew where this story was headed and was delighted to be proven dead wrong. This unlikely love story reminded me to trust in the unexpected—not only from life and from the people who drift in and out of it, but also by how we can most often surprise ourselves.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick
A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming…
