100 Books Like To Shape a Dragon's Breath

This book is unhinged in the best way. I love Gideon’s unique voice. Around her is a deadly-serious necromancer murder mystery with interplanetary stakes, and she cares more about cracking dirty jokes and finally eating some warm food. Her relationship with her arch-nemesis/only friend Harrow leaps off the page.

I love the scene where they get into a pool so Harrow can finally confess to Gideon her darkest secret—so hot and so disturbing all at the same time. While this book isn’t technically a romance and the genre feels more like a horror fantasy set in space, I couldn’t resist putting it on the list. As Gideon says to Harrow, “One flesh, one end, bitch.”

As a professor, I know that sometimes just getting through four years of college can be its own epic struggle, especially when you’re queer and half-Nigerian, like Sahara.

“The unfortunates” is the name Sahara and her friends use to describe the deaths of too many of their fellow Black students. As if that isn’t enough, Sahara sometimes feels like her only companion is her “Life Partner,” the name she gives to the ugly voice of her depression.

I loved the way The Unfortunates is told as an in-your-face “thesis” to Sahara’s university committee that mixes humor with high-stakes struggles. Follow along as Sahara figures out how to survive in the face of a campus and culture that is not just indifferent, but outright hostile.

From the moment I met Carlotta Mercedes, the main character in this book, I was rooting for her. She’s a convicted felon, up for parole for the fifth time, but she’s pretty sure she’ll be denied: “Them sonofabitches said I had bad behavior, but they definition a bad behavior’s if you scream when a CO whupping yo ass like a Betty Crocker fudge cake.” I’m a sucker for books with lively, laugh-out-loud language. 

Carlotta is all dynamic energy and jambalaya metaphor, even though she has spent twenty years in prison for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and has endured rape and physical abuse because she’s a trans woman in a men’s cell block. 

I am cheering for Carlotta when she’s released and begins making her way through our modern world, “like a brain-damaged African elephant trying to jump into a game of double Dutch.” She laughs… show more.

In this book, I admire how author Vanessa Hua blends intimate storytelling about one teenager into a vast historical saga—drawing on her research skills as a journalist, a background we have in common. In this coming-of-age tale about a secret enclave of pampered and abused teenage girls, I could see why Mei was lured by a promise with feminist allure: that girls can become heroes.

My life experience told me she would get used, yet I loved Mei’s awakening: an idealist transformed into a sexual slave sharpens her wits against Chairman Mao’s even as she becomes his prey, then must use all she’s learned to save herself. Mei’s story is a wake-up call about the dangers women face when societies decline and the price we pay to become heroes.

Just Listen has one of my favorite male protagonists of all time, the guy I wish I would have met in high school. As a music-head, I also love the way Annabel and Owen bond over their favorite songs. Getting over an assault requires support. On one hand, you have to be incredibly strong to tell the truth about what happened. But once you tell your people, they hold you up as you walk through healing. Telling is so hard, but support is key.

Being a poet, I love verse novels, and this one grows richer every time I read it. Seventh-grader Selah works hard to follow rigid, self-imposed rules so she’ll be seen as a “normal” girl in school, someone who doesn’t get overwhelmed by crowds or noise or jump from unexpected touch as though she’s been shocked.

What’s amazing about Selah is that, when keeping to those rules proves impossible and she gets in trouble, she trusts herself. With a few clues, she comes to understand she’s on the autism spectrum and finds simple tools that make a big difference.

She also starts expressing herself by writing poems. It moves me so much that poetry is represented here as a source of strength and that being unique is recognized as an asset.  

First things first, Simone Elkeles is my favorite YA author, and I couldn’t do a list of recs without mentioning one of her books, and my all-time favorite has always been Leaving Paradise. I also recommend LP because it’s close to my own book in that it features a reformed bad boy, Caleb, freshly on probation who’s trying to navigate his way into society and fix his “mistakes.” I so love the sorta forbidden dynamic between him and Maggie, because Caleb is actually on probation for hitting Maggie in a hit-and-run while drinking and driving. So not only is he trying to win over his former friends, parents, and town, he’s gotta make things right with Maggie, who is not giving him any play whatsoever—in the beginning! Love love Caleb’s voice in this novel.

A big part of lifelong learning involves experimenting, trying new things, and picking up new skills. I must confess this can be challenging for me; I’m one of those people who sometimes gets frustrated or embarrassed when I try something new and find it doesn’t come easily to me. Maybe you’re the same way--if so, all the more reason to take inspiration from Vanderbilt’s book, which chronicles his efforts to learn how to play chess, surf, sing, juggle, and more. Woven in with those entertaining experiences are larger lessons about how we learn, and why it’s so beneficial to keep doing so. In the hands of a less skilled writer, a book like this--in which a journalist tries on a series of new hats--might seem gimmicky. But Vanderbilt is an insightful observer and storyteller who can even make traffic fascinating (that was the subject of a previous book of his,… show more.

Far too many people are stuck in life and don’t even know what they are passionate about. A few years ago, I read this book and took the test. I not only found my top five passions, but it also helped me hone into my top five passions simultaneously. I am now living them, loving them, and being quite abundant for them. It was the starting point that got me where I am today.

This starting point led me to a successful business in an industry I love. I found new ways to grow and become a leader, so much so that I was inspired to write my book a few years later. 

In the pages of The Interrogative Mood, Powell pulls off a seemingly impossible feat: he writes an entire novel structured as a series of questions (no answers!), all asked by the same unnamed and never described narrator. The questions range from “In your view, do children smell good?” to “Could you lie down and a take a rest on the sidewalk?” to “Are your emotions pure?” The questions force the reader to do some serious—and often deeply funny—introspection, mostly about hypothetical situations; and as they accumulate, so too does the psyche—the character, to use the word loosely—from which this riveting, rapid-fire interrogation originates.