Books like The Possessed — picked by fans

First, because it’s incredibly funny. Geoff Dyer set out—he says—to write a sober, serious study of D. H. Lawrence, but life, travel arrangements, random people and his own inertia kept getting in the way. The story of his odyssey doesn’t just evoke all the things about writing that we’ve always suspected (that it’s hard; that it’s easy; that we often wonder why on earth we do it; that we never question that we want to do it). It also, by stealth, evokes and explains an amazing amount about Lawrence, and why he’s a writer that so many people love—or hate—so passionately. 

What do the writers you are drawn to reveal about you? Why at certain points in our lives do we become “attached” to certain authors? The process of attachment is mysterious. As we age (and change) some things remain constant. Our attachment to a particular author may have begun in our youth, but evolved as we have. To reconnect with a favorite author can put us in touch with our younger self in unexpected ways. Mead shows how much Middlemarch has “spoken” to her throughout her life. This book is perhaps more in harmony with my own than any on the list. I have come to love books that underscore how what we read can be inseparable from the person we become.

In U and I: A True Story, the death of Donald Barthelme inspires Nicholson Baker to write a book about his obsession with John Updike while his muse is still alive. Coining the term “memory criticism,” which he defines as “a form of commentary that relies entirely on what has survived in a reader’s mind from a particular writer over at least ten years of spotty perusal,” Baker embarks upon a wildly entertaining meditation that reveals as much about the writing process as it does about Updike (and Baker) himself.

“About seven years ago,” Rachel Cohen writes at the beginning of Austen Years, “not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author.” Weaving together memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Cohen draws upon five of Austen’s novels to make sense of her own life and work as she raises young children, moves across the country, and grapples with her father’s death. The result is a brilliant and beautiful reflection upon family and loss, isolation and transcendence, and reading and rereading.

Set in 1820s Russia, Eugen Onegin is a novel written in verse, a story about love, loss, and repentance, where bored, superfluous Onegin lives to regret his rejection of the shy young dreamer Tatyana and to feel remorse for his fatal duel with his best friend Lensky. Eugene Onegin is the masterwork of Pushkin, whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature, and is an amazingly engaging piece of writing, ironic and passionate, full of suspense, and rampant with political satire and philosophical digressions that make for the most beautiful read. Honestly, I never thought I would fall so hard for a novel written in another language and in verse.

Letters from Rifka is immediately appealing because the author tells us that it is based on memories.

I was immediately drawn into the story by the engaging voice of the 12-year-old narrator, who writes her story in letter form. Rifka is a Russian Jew fleeing with her family from persecution in 1919. It is a story of a desperate flight, across Ukraine and into Poland, and from there, hopefully, to America. But, so close to freedom, Rifka is detained in a hospital for contagious diseases on Ellis Island, and may not be allowed to travel on with her family. Rifka’s character is so well drawn, her impish, positive voice so lovable, that MG readers won’t fail to love this book and care deeply about the plight of people who are forced to leave their homes forever.

Patrick Thorne is one of the ultimate authorities on ski resorts. He has over 6000 ski resorts in his database, and most websites about skiing are founded on information that Patrick has gathered over the years. In this book, he chooses and describes some of the classic ski descents in the world. It is an excellent book from which to create your own bucket list. 

The Golden Age of Russian literature—think Pushkin, Lermontov, and other famous novelists and poets—was at the vanguard of the Russian elite’s meeting with the Caucasus. In what has become a “classic,” Susan Layton brilliantly shows how Russian writers imagined the Caucasus as an ambiguous place—both dangerous and welcoming—populated by “noble savages,” sympathetic freedom fighters, and brutal marauders.

To many Russian aristocrats ensconced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, this was a canvas on which to implement Russia’s own “civilizing mission” to prove to a skeptical Europe that the tsarist realm belonged in the pantheon of European civilization.

Humor has always pulled me through the hard parts of life, and laughter is the test that tells me if I’ll be compatible with someone when we first meet. So to read a ridiculous character who’s coming in hot right on page one, charging through the story with absolutely no filter, epic foibles fully (and uncomfortably) detailed, and unable to stop making terrible decisions had me cackling out loud.

I was initially drawn to this book for the perfect cover, but I quickly fell in love with the writing and a story that captures that frustrating push and pull of wanting what we can’t have. It’s a delightful mess of bees, goats, awkward sex, strange conversations, and women doing whatever they want. 

A long, complex, fascinating, and deeply personal book.

Jung (1875-1961), who departed from Freudian theory to develop the therapeutic system of Analytical Psychology, was a mystic who wrote more about his own complex inner life than outside events, discussing psychospiritual concepts such as mythology, the collective unconscious, and the archetypes.

He experienced visions, including a vivid near-death experience. Many of his beliefs resonate with the more modern “New Age” movement.