Books like Thud! — picked by fans

Forget the show, read the books.

This fantasy series reads like a medieval history lesson come to life. They live in a world where power is dispensed with decrees, armies, and combat. But the real battles are fought among the kingdoms with verbal confrontations.

Tyrion is the jewel of the series as the despised dwarf of one of the great noble houses who must use his wit and words as both weapons and armor to overcome his lack of stature. He doesn't compete where he is weak, but rather redefines the game where his opponent's strength is irrelevant.

"I have to be careful. Everything I say is a lie."

This book was my first introduction to One-dimensional Chess. I assumed the idea was as ridiculous as other impossible games in the story, such as Spotless Dominoes, but then it occurred to me that maybe not.

I devised a version with a King, Queen, Knight and three or four pawns facing each other along a single line of spaces and amazingly it does kind of work, though it is probably more of a puzzle than a game. I later learned that there are many other versions of One-dimensional Chess devised by chess fanatics over the years.

Apart from that, the story is a thought-provoking triple fantasy that plays with the notion that perhaps life itself is just a game, a puzzle we have to solve before we can move on.

Dunstan Ramsey is not supposed to be the main character, but the story cannot survive without him.

Ramsey drew my affection during my impressionable thirties. He was modest and kind, and showed an inner strength that was expressed with patience and good humor. He also represented a dramatic figure who was new to me, the obscure hero who stands outside of the spotlight and causes important things to happen.

Ramsey’s story is full and nuanced enough to enrich three complete novels, The Deptford Trilogy, each with its own kind heroes, though not so modest as Ramsey himself.

This book is the best I've come across that explores the overlap between games and fortune-telling with detailed examples from cultures around the world.

The suggestion in the book's title that board games originated from attempts to divine the future is perhaps questionable, but there is no doubt that the two have been entwined from the earliest times, which is not surprising because all games try to some extent to create a microcosm of some of life's aspects and people have never been able to resist trying to nudge things in a favorable direction. Or at least get a heads up on what lies around the corner.

Ludomancy, it's called–a lovely word. Personally, I find that playing some form of Patience is a great way of ordering the mind before tackling any piece of work or, in fact, any tricky life decision. The flickering images conjured by the cards help… show more.

I laughed out loud and had moments of deep philosophical reflection, normally at the same time, with this book. I loved the clever and deep meanings and parodies of faith and the divine. I think that this book taught me to always take things with a pinch of salt, and I started thinking critically because of it.

I could not stop reading it and devoured the other books in the series and I think this is one of my favourite authors. I am inspired to emulate some aspects of the author’s thinking and this book is why. 

This is one of my favorite Discworld books. It’s hard to choose between it, Carpe Jugulum, and Reaper Man, but I went with this one because the sequence during the finale where Vimes is totally off his rocket and knows he’s missing bedtime storytime with his son is simultaneously so epic and so ridiculous. 

If you’re a parent who has ever tried to balance the demands of family life with the demands of life in general, you’re gonna empathize with Vimes so hard.

The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley is a book that, well, the first time I read it my mind was blown. This is a self-help book for all humans in a picture book. It takes our thirst to live forever, to always want more, be more, see more, do more, look better, and compares that with the wonderful Riley, who is happy with some fruit and maybe a couple of slugs on Tuesday or Friday.

He likes a little stick that can scratch his back.
He looks like Riley. Why would he want to look like anything else?

This is a beautifully written and illustrated book on being grateful for what we have.

Did you remember when Jill Peel won an Oscar in 1950s Hollywood, and then destroyed her career by standing up to sexist producers? Then past her prime, she attempted a creative comeback by embarking on her directorial debut? Of course not! It’s all fiction, of course. But with McMurtry at the helm, you can’t help but mistake it for real life. One of my all-time favorite writers, the talented Texan manages to capture Hollywood, sexism, and complex people in an honest way. If you’re a fan of the everyday situational humor exuding in his works like Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this still very relevant look at aging and gender in the motion picture industry. 

I liked the concept of man being small and adrift in the darkness of the wide world. This book taught me to see through politics, grandstanding, and the grandiose nonsense of man. Swift is my kind of guy, brutally satirical and profound. This book is really not for children. We see Gulliver travel on many adventures and experience Swift's disappointment as he engages different cultures, small and large, rational and irrational. 

His adventures demolish Gulliver’s sense of humanity to the point that when he is about to be rescued, at first, he rejects the offer like a misanthrope before finally climbing aboard. Swift is very dark here. Why would anyone want to return to the same old life after having their eyes opened?

First published in 1959, Naked Lunch was shocking then, and it still retains its power today. Both in content and structure, Naked Lunch is powerful and wholly original. In effect, it becomes more than a work of fiction, it becomes an experience. Burroughs invented a technique called the “cut-up method,” where he cut up his coherent storyline into paragraphs, scenes, and even sentences, then reordered them both randomly and editorially. The disorder thematically represents the chaos of existence and the universe, and it also disrupts the reader. Like the book or not, it shakes you into realizing that there are possibilities beyond the conventional.

Burrough’s language is honed to a razor’s edge, and I find that many of the sentences in Naked Lunch burn like fire. The meaning of the title as Burroughs explains it is to bare the naked truth of reality on the end of a fork. From… show more.