62 Books Like The Republic of Thieves

The Accidental Time Machine is one of the few novels that I’ve read beginning to end in one sitting because I found it so interesting. This isn’t the type of novel that will change your life or change how you feel about something. It’s just good. A good, fun book that can be read in a couple of hours. Haldeman doesn’t waste any time getting the story going and from there he takes you on a ride more enjoyable than novels twice the length.

This is a novel that explores all the complexities and paradoxes and oddities associated with time travel. It takes place in a future world in which time travel is a part of life, and so must be monitored and regulated like any other technology. Because time travel holds such a huge potential for disaster, strict rules must be established and enforced. But what happens when somebody flaunts those rules for their own personal enjoyment? This novel explores these concepts in a wild, and often erotic, fashion. 

This book really perpetuated my love of time-travel tales and all the complexities involved in a society where time travel is an accepted norm. It's a totally fun novel that deals with some truly existential concepts in an entertaining way and inspires that sense of wonder that fans of SF crave. It's one of those stories that stick with you for many, many years… show more.

This book should perhaps be classified as sci-fi, but hear me out: the bulk of this novella follows two characters, one who is technically supernatural (we just happen to call him an alien), as they break out of captivity and quest through a forest. That’s fantasy enough for me, and the syrupy sweetness of these two can overcome any hesitation over on-page, spacey jargon.

I’ve never read a book that so wholly gets into the head of a non-human species as this, and it also had me cracking up the entire time. Simmi, the alien in question, is a germaphobe, to put it lightly, but his partner in escaping, Aurora, is patient and kind with him, and the love that blossoms between them is kick-your-feet delightful.

This series of linked novels and stories—start reading at An Alien Heat—would also be called SF.  They deal with time travel, the end of human civilization, and all kinds of other science-fictiony ideas. But the science is blurred almost into invisibility: the people living at the End of Time have little to no idea of the eons that have passed before them—nor do they much care about the past, except as a source of themes for their decadent parties. (Their ignorance of historical fact is also where a lot of the humor comes from.) The End of Timers have power rings that draw energy from the “ancient cities”, and with them can basically do magic—rearrange geography, create and destroy apparently living beings, and change themselves into any shape they want. So science is way back on the back burner; what we have instead is essentially a society of idiot wizards whiling away the… show more.

This seventeenth-century offering is where the famous Molyneux Man first appears in the form of a question: If a man born blind and capable of distinguishing a cube from a sphere by touch, was suddenly made to see, would he be able to distinguish the two objects by sight alone? The answer was a resounding “no!” Just as we must learn to read, we must learn to see, gradually building up connections between our sense of touch and our sense of sight. This was a revelation to me when I encountered it as a person going blind and learning to not-see. If humans are not exactly born blank slates, we are certainly unfinished ones, whose environments and education supply us with knowledge and brain power to perceive the world.

I love the action. The main character’s first kill was more of an impulse and was very brutal and messy. Then he planned and learned as he went.

What made this story most different for me is the slow evolution the main character took to being a vigilante. It was fun being in Canada for the story and watching the characters evolve.

I loved the big twist that saves the vigilante. I enjoyed the multiple storylines that all converged. A very engaging psychological thriller. It kept me guessing until the end.

Money is often thought of as a valuable thing, like gold or silver. 

This leads us to presume that it must be finite in quality due to its scarcity. Drawing on anthropological studies of objects such as Yap stones, massive stone disks found on a far-flung island in the Pacific Ocean.

Martin shows instead that money is not so much a thing but an abstract system for tracking who has what and who is entitled to what, similar to what the anthropologist Keith Hart has called a “memory bank.” By rethinking money along these lines, we might be able to rethink how we decide who gets what and who doesn’t get what in our communities.

This is one of the strongest survivors I've met in historical fiction. I related to Gussie feeling like an outsider in her family, though for different reasons. I’m a mixed-race woman of Latina, Asian, and Anglo roots, and grew up bouncing between family members in an ethnic patchwork of neighborhoods. Like Gussie, I don’t look or act like anyone in my family—or anywhere.

Like Gussie, I’ve never conformed to society’s expectations of “ladies.” Some see my opinionated, independent, wandering nature as masculine—again, like Gussie. Her confidence, adventurousness, and determination are qualities I’ve cultivated with gusto. Her loneliness feels familiar, but it clarifies the bonds she creates and her loyalty to those she loves. Though most folks in Gussie’s world consider her plain, I find her beautiful.

Was Cicero even a Stoic? The answer, as with all things Cicero, is complicated. But Stoic or not, Cicero is one of our most important sources on ancient Stoicism. His last work, On Duties, on our “duties” (or responsibilities) to one another as human beings, is heavily indebted to the Stoic Panaetius. In it, he argues, among others, that, owing to our common human dignity, there ought to be strict rules for entering and conducting war—an idea which today is enshrined in international law. Following the invention of the printing press, On Duties was the third ever book to be printed. John Locke owned nine editions, and Voltaire praised it to the sky, saying, “no one will ever write anything more wise.”

Ricks unpacks the educational origins of the "Founding Generation’s" ideological orientation in this highly readable volume.

The classical underpinnings of American representative democracy and its notions of public virtue in ancient Greece and Rome are examined very carefully. He makes a compelling case for classical rather than English or Enlightenment political influence as the determining factor in our political development. He also implies an unfavorable comparison with the present and the lack of virtue he sees as evident in our public life. The book is a tonic for our political times.

One irritating element, however, is Ricks’s insistence on including the college class of each of the Founding Generation’s members beside their name, which, of course, excludes George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Not to mention Abraham Lincoln in the following century. This gives the book an elitist tint that no doubt would have alienated Zinn.