100 Books Like The Pinch Runner Memorandum

As shocking as I felt Kubrick’s film was, I think the book is possibly more startling. Some scenes Kubrick played for laughs are described as violent and sadistic in the novel. If, like me, you are a fan of the film, it’ll fill in some blanks for you. Ever wonder why Alex and his friends drink milk?

The book is written in futuristic teen-speak that did take me a while to get my head around, but this ultimately adds to the strangeness of the insular world these ‘droogs’ inhabit. Though it was first published in 1962, I think this is still a very relevant and unflinching look at the place of violence in society.

Haruki Murakami is probably the most famous Japanese author in the world and the father of Japanese magical realism. I have read a large portion of his work, and I have enjoyed many of his books (even with his weird ear fetish).

This one, however, is one of my favorites. It’s two stories in one, and although others sometimes criticize it for not being a good blend between the two stories, it is that separation that actually makes this book a gem for me. It captures your imagination as you follow a human computer down into a psychological miasma of perception and thought.

If that seems confusing, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to spoil for you one of my all-time favorite Murakami books. Also, if you want to know what I mean by human-computer, I guess you’ll just have to pick up the book.

After I published Blubber Island, I received messages from readers telling me BI was one of the best Splatterpunk books they’ve read. The funny part was I had no idea the genre existed. In order to sample a range, I ordered Sammon’s anthology. These guys were hardcore! They are what makes slasher movies awesome and hilarious. No apologies, no prisoners taken. With pornographic levels of hyper-violence, SP’s collects writers who found the edge and flew over it on dirt bikes.

This is a cyberpunk classic, but what I really love about it is the combination of modern computer technology with Sumerian mythology, the Tower of Babel myth, and how well Stephenson is able to integrate them, so we have hackers throwing around Sumerian terms like 'me' and 'nam-shub'.

And for me, I love that there’s just a lot of cool stuff happening here, like a biker with an atomic bomb on a deadman switch, a nuclear-powered needle gun. And our lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. But probably the biggest point for me is that despite the dystopian setting, there really is more hope in this story than one would think.

As I did with the first twenty-four books by Lee Child, I have read all of Cussler’s original works, not those that were supposedly “co-written.” I loved them, and I remember this as being the one that I loved best. I always enjoyed how these grand action thrillers began with a prologue that seemed to have nothing to do with the plot until later, when the reader would think, “Oh wow. That was a brilliant connection!”

I recall Dirk Pitt as a tall and strong hero with no extra weight on his body, a resourceful, likable man who couldn’t do without his tough and loyal sidekick, Al Giordino. After one of these international adventures, Pitt would always stagger back to his car museum, have a tequila on ice, a roll in the hay with his lady friend, sleep for 24 hours, and then it was back to the battlefield. And… show more.

This book doesn’t have a catchy title and sounds rather pedestrian, but we are told never to judge a book by its cover and in this case it’s true about the title as well! Mark Parillo’s magisterial thesis taught me a great deal about why the Japanese lost the Pacific War. He explains why they stubbornly refused to convoy their merchant fleet even when, by failing to do so, they were aiding the enemy’s cause. Japan needed to import most of its war material, but once the US submarine campaign began to decimate the ships that were bringing in those vital supplies in 1944-45 the game was essentially up. Therefore, a case can be made that the war was effectively lost before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Written by the 20th century’s leading interpreter of things Japanese, this travel memoir has a timeless, elegiac quality. Donald Richie lived in Tokyo, but he based this work on a series of trips through the waterways and fishing villages of the glittering Inland Sea. Beyond his beautiful sketches of the seascape itself, his warm, human interactions with fishermen, aunties, merchants, and monks give voice to a disappearing side of Japan. They also serve as a mirror into the metaphorical inland sea within himself––the good, bad, and ugly––which he freely reveals. Seeing the world Richie describes vanish evermore in the decades since, the book’s resonance only grows with age. This is why I find myself diving back into it again and again.

I know nearly nothing about the Far East—so was delighted to experience a taste of Japan through this compassionate, original novel told from the point of view of young American nurse, Diana, as she takes the job of nanny to the toddler Yuki, after divorce has forced Yuki’s mother from the family home. Immersed in a different culture, Diana feels confusion, fascination, and a growing love for Yuki. The tension builds as she begins to understand the real danger the child is in. Diana faces psychological peril as she tries to break the chain of damage for Yuki—and herself. As a mother of three, I often can’t bear child jeopardy in a plot, but the author’s intelligent writing is compelling and sensitive, not gratuitous. 

This is an extremely well-researched book which provides an in-depth look at how the design fields developed and have evolved in Japan.

Though airing on the academic, I find it very readable, and I consult it when I wish to know more about a particular period of Japanese design history. Having scoured the landscape myself, I have great admiration for the author’s ability to ferret out information – there is no central design museum or archive in Japan – and present it cogently.

If you know your Pacific War and are familiar with all the major land and sea battles, you may think there’s not much that’s new to discover about the campaign for Okinawa. And maybe there isn’t. But for those who aren’t specialists, this book will prove fascinating. It’s not a page-turner in the accepted sense of the term because most pages appall with the dreadful futility of it all. I couldn’t read more than a dozen pages at a time without feeling a sense of desperation at the almost casual sacrifice of lives on both sides in this war of attrition. No wonder many veterans of Okinawa found it difficult to talk about the horror of it afterward and carried dark memories of their tortured experiences to their graves.