Here are 100 books that The Sun Also Rises fans have personally recommended if you like
The Sun Also Rises.
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I didnât sit down to write Carried Away with a personal sermon in my back pocket. No buried lessons or hidden curriculumâit was just a story I wanted to tell. But stories have a way of outsmarting you.Â
So when I chose these books, I wasnât looking for perfect comparisonsâI was looking for echoes. Some of these books will drag you through POW camps or strand you on a lifeboat with a tiger; others will lean in and whisper that youâve been running a program and calling it personality. A few say the quiet part out loudâabout grit, meaning, and purpose. Others ring you up with fable, abstractions, or science, but they leave their mark just the same.Â
Almost impossible to put downâthis was the first book that made me physically feel the words.
I wouldnât call it enjoyable in the usual sense; the experience was excruciating. But thatâs exactly what makes it unforgettable. Hillenbrandâs prose, paired with the true story of Louis Zamperiniâs plunge from Olympic track star to the unrelenting hell of a POW camp, smacks you off your cozy little couch and right into a world where Sleepytime tea, candles, and Netflix donât exist.
What struck me most was how it captured not only the brutality of survival, but the stubborn, almost irrational resolve of the human spiritâand the possibility of forgiveness that would defy logic. This isnât a book thatâs light to holdâitâs grit, torment, and triumph in equal parts. I recommend it because it inspires without sugarcoatingâharrowing and uplifting in the same breath.
For anyone who wants proof of just how deep theâŚ
From the author of the bestselling and much-loved Seabiscuit, an unforgettable story of one man's journey into extremity. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood,âŚ
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn theâŚ
Iâve wanted to travel the world since I could look out a window. Itâs been an honor to spend my life exploring this planet, despite some of its inhabitants. I knew Iâd write books about it, even before I could write my own name. Itâs a joy to realize such a deep and early dream. My books are love letters to places Iâve lived and people Iâve met, plus some joking around in order not to scream or weep at some of whatâs out there. Iâve been a teacher, film editor, comedian, librarian, and now writer. Wherever you are, on whatever path: happy trails to you.Â
How perfect to go on a road trip with one of my favorite writers plus his gentlemanly, loveable dog!
I smile just thinking about this book. I was delighted every step of the way. I felt like I was in the passenger seat, handing biscuits to Charley, stopping to meet strangers, and ruminating on how the USA has changed over the decades.
I loved hearing his thoughts in his older, wiser years, after his great successes, but still passionate, or slyly ironic, on so many topics. I love that heâs matter-of-fact in discussing disillusionment, loneliness, racism, or anything â but heâs hopeful in the end, always.
I want to buy a stack of these and hand them out as gifts.
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light-these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, theâŚ
In addition to writing novels, Iâm also a playwright. Whatever form I work in, Iâm drawn to character, drama, and emotion. I aspire to write literary page-turners that feel as rich and complicated as real life. Also, I want the endings of my books to slay readers and break their hearts. Of course, when I say that, Iâm not necessarily speaking of sorrow; sometimes your heart breaks from expanding, from a surfeit of feeling. Your heart breaks only to grow larger.
This literary rendering of Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century comprises fifteen stories. Whenever I read them, I can feel Joyceâs adoration for this cityâand the last story, "The Dead," is glorious.
The final line always slays me: âHis soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the deadâ
A definitive edition of perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language
James Joyce's Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as "Araby," "Grace," and "The Dead," delve into the heart of the city of Joyce's birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners' speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound, and this edition is the definitive text, authorized by the Joyce estate and collated fromâŚ
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is realâbut hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to actâŚ
I am a romantic who believes in love and loves poetry, yet is also fascinated by WWI. I remember watching the movie All Quiet on the Western Front on television with my grandmother on a Saturday afternoon and being completely mesmerized. Over the years since then, Iâve even traveled to Sarajevo, where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set the war in motion, and to Gallipoli in Turkey, where a disastrous trench battle took place for almost a year. When I read about WWI Trench Artâart made by the soldiers awaiting battle in the trenchesâmy fiction writer's imagination was struck by the idea for my book below.
I love this book because it is a war novel without a single battlefield or battle, except the one for Siegfried Sassoonâs sanity. I became fascinated by WWI as a teenager. I canât say why this war caught my imagination, but it did, and that fascination has continued for my whole life.
I gobbled up books, movies, and history about the war, and I especially loved the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, a noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to continue fighting in 1917. When I re-read his poetry fifty years later, I found a kinship with that refusal and the boys around me who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.
I was a dreamy, romantic teenager, which is why Sassoonâs words pierced my heart: âSoldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.â Oh! How I cried over his poemsâŚ
"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe
The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him backâŚ
I was sick as a child and bedridden for several months. This was before 24/7 TV and computers. I began to read A LOT. I read everything and anything that I could find, but my favorite topics were animals and nature. I also read science fiction and fantasy. Itâs not a surprise that those topics merged into my writing and life. I currently live on five acres that Iâve left mostly for the wildlife. My nephew calls me his aunt who lives in the forest with reindeer. That is way cooler than my real life, so Iâm good with that. All my books have nature and friendship as main themes.
This entire series was amazing. Okay, a few of the books were a bit slow, but overall, it was great. The new worlds, the political intrigue, everything about this story was great. There were histories that drove the characters that were only hinted at or mentioned in passing, but they brought life to them. Just like we are all shaped by our past, our countries, and our places in society, so are all the characters in this book.
My favorite character wasnât Paul, though; it was Duncan Idaho. I was so sad when he was killed, but I was fascinated when they brought him back from the dead in the second book and others because Herbert made it so interesting. The bodyguard programmed, created even, to kill the one he once died to protect. Now, thatâs some drama right there. đÂ
The twists, turns, and world-building were amazing. I learnedâŚ
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
I like fiction which makes a character confront what the poet Thom Gunn called âthe blackmail of his circumstancesâ: where you are born, the expectations of you. I like to think I am very much a self-created individual, but I can never escape what I was born into; the self is a prison that the will is trying to break out of. I like literature which reflects that challenge.
I first read Lolita when I was 14 and have read it every few decades since, learning something new each time.
I love the first-person immediacy of it and the way it is a crime novel in reverse: the narrator is already imprisoned but not for the crime he describes. It is a love story turned on its head: what the narrator says is love is in fact abuse.
It is a road trip across the vastness of the US, like one I took when I was a student.
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.
Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he allâŚ
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New Yorkâs wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, itâs time to dig into the details and seeâŚ
I was a wild card in the industry heavy town where I was born and raised, destined to burn out my days early in a factory or steel mill. But I worked my way through college, survived several close calls in Vietnam and bull headed my way into a series of jobs that pushed me toward Hollywood assignments as a writer, producer and director.
I liked this hundred-year-old novel because it explores some darker doubts and concerns I have always had about âthe hidden heart of mankind unrestrained.â Whatâs more, the theme of Heart Of Darkness is reflected in the movie Apocalypse Now, with stark modern-day observations on the wounds the violence of war can inflict on the hearts and minds of humans.
Although Polish by birth, Joseph Conrad (1857â1924) is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, and Heart of Darkness, first published in 1902, is considered by many his "most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story." â Encyclopaedia Britannica. The tale concerns the journey of the narrator (Marlow) up the Congo River on behalf of a Belgian trading company. Far upriver, he encounters the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who exercises an almost godlike sway over the inhabitants of the region. Both repelled and fascinated by the man, Marlow is brought face to face with the corruption and despairâŚ
I am an American citizen who taught Classical Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. I have taught Homer (in translation and in Greek), ancient myth, and âreceptionâ of ancient myth. All the books that I discuss below I have taught many times in a first-year seminar about creative âreceptionâ of the Odyssey. Other topics include comparable stories (like The Tempest by Shakespeare) and other great works of reception (like Derek Walcottâs stage version of the Odyssey and his epic poem "Omeros"). Every time Iâve taught the class, Iâve learned the most from free-wheeling discussions with students.
Though I love to read Homerâs Odyssey in the original Greek, I also appreciate translations that allow particular themes to emerge in new ways.
All translations of the ancient epic are necessarily inventive recreations of the ancient Greek Homeric story, and I like the way this translation employs a quick-paced poetic meter and updates the tale to suit modern sensibilities on uncomfortable aspects of the Odyssey (e.g., misogyny, slavery).
The introduction also provides an authoritative explanation of the Homeric Odyssey.
The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage, family and identity; and about travellers, hospitality and the changing meanings of home in a strange world.
This vivid new translation-the first by a woman-matches the number of lines in the Greek original, striding at Homer's sprightly pace. Emily Wilson employs elemental, resonant language and an iambic pentameter to produce a translation with an enchanting "rhythm and rumble" that avoids proclaiming its own grandeur. An engrossing tale told in a compelling newâŚ
Whenever in Oxford, I feel Iâve come âhome.â Itâs a magical city steeped in beauty, history, literature, culture, and fascinating people. Iâve been blessed to have taken graduate courses at the University, participated in numerous conferences, brought tour groups, lived âin college,â and conducted walking tours of the town. My familiarity with the city enabled me to write the original chapter on Oxford for Rick Stevesâ England guidebook, and itâs where I set my fictional series, The Oxford Chronicles. When I canât be there in person, I love to visit vicariously through good books. I hope these novels will enable you to experience some of the magic of Oxford too.
I first became acquainted with this 20th-century classic when it was turned into a popular miniseries, and I felt compelled to read the novel for myself.
Although the narrative traverses settings from London and a great English country house to Europe and even the Americas, the inception of the story is grounded in post-WWI Oxford, where the narrator introduces us to Waughâs memorably charming but doomed character, Lord Sebastian Flyte.
Waughâs portrayal of the exuberance of youthful college high-jinx juxtaposed against the perils of dissipation powerfully depicts the inner struggle of his narratorâs search for love, meaning, and ultimately faith.
I greatly admire Waughâs hauntingly lyrical prose, which vividly captures the aching beauty and mystique of Oxford.
It is WW2 and Captain Charles Ryder reflects on his time at Oxford during the twenties and a world now changed. As a lonely student Charles was captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte and invited to spend time at the Flyte's family home - the magnificent Brideshead. Here Charles becomes infatuated by its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, and in particular with Julia, Sebastian's startling and remote sister. But as his own spiritual and social distance becomes marked, Charles discovers a crueller world, where duty and desire, faith and happiness can only ever conflict.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesâall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueâŚ
I was raised in a large family, and we were taught to be respectful, honest, and polite to everyone. I've never been able to understand the mind of a 'nasty' person or how a person can hurt another. When these people are brought to justice, how can we know they are telling the truth?
Expanding on this, I started thinking about Artificial Intelligenceâcould this be the creation that gives us the way to see into a person's mind; to find out what crime they have committed? But then I thought, what if the actual creator was a criminal? How would anyone even know? That was the route of my research which led to i4Ni being written.
I bought this book because of the great write-ups about it. The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and this was his first book following that award, so for me, it was recommended as soon as the author won the award.
It's a great read and has filled me with a mixture of emotions, so it will be interesting to see how you feel after reading it. For me personally, it's a book to study and learn from, as there is always room for learning in any career you decide to do.
It fascinated me because Klara is an 'Artificial Friend', which ties in with my research and interests in Artificial Intelligence.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller* *Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021* *A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'A delicate, haunting story' The Washington Post 'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emergesâŚ
