100 Books Like Waylaid

Many dystopian books focus on the horror and give us little information about the event that led to the situation. In this one, I loved that I got a lot of backstory; I liked getting to know the main character, Candace, and learning how she ended up in her predicament.

The details of her job in publishing was strangely fascinating, the mundanity of her work life set against the dystopia was a unique perspective, it was also filled with humor that I found refreshing.

Ding Ling’s stories are bold.

In the title story, Ling grants us access to the diaries of Miss Sophie, a young woman living in Beijing ill with tuberculosis who grapples with her attraction to guys, gals, idiots, and the jealous–all while latticing these contradictions together through a diary. Sophie spouts sick burns like she’s made for Twitter.

And if that wasn’t enough, much of the other stories seem like autofiction, documenting her time as a communist revolutionary in jail, like how in “A Certain Night,” we see the protagonist in jail writing the story that comes later in the collection “From Night to Dawn.”

When I really started writing, I sought out books with punchy prose that connected to some of my experiences.

Don Lee’s Yellow was one of the few books of short stories I found that did that. What’s cool about the title story “Yellow” is that it talks about an Asian guy who learns to box who is known to be sexy, and grapples with issues of courage.

Growing up as a young Asian guy, I was never handed a story about an Asian guy struggling to be a man like all other guys growing up in America. Reading this collection changed that and changed my own perceptions of what stories are possible when you’re coming to age as an Asian in America. 

This is my favorite book, ever. In part because it’s the story of the greatest of all Samurai. But there’s more to that.

In the long run, martial arts are an exercise of self-development. Of tapping into your inner beast, setting it free, then controlling it back. No book ever written tells that journey as beautifully as Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa.

Often called “Japan’s Gone with the Wind,” the book marches from cliffhanger to cliffhanger through the glorious life of the protagonist, although for me its mark was deeper than any of these electrical moments of adventure. For my eyes, once I crossed the last words of the book, what was left was the realization of how long and chained true change really is.

I fell for this book because of its lyrical sentences, multiple narratives uncovering long-buried secrets, and exploration of the tensions and traumas of family, friendship, romantic love, and the immigrant experience. The people in this novel are all memorable and well-developed—even the adults, which can sometimes be hard to come by in YA books.

I was swept up in the world of the high-pressure Cupertino suburbs, and I love that nearly all the characters were Asian American. It also didn’t hurt that it’s narrated by a talented and troubled teen artist.

This is pure, classic fantasy with dragons and wizards. Full of magic and gripping action scenes, including aerial battles between dragons, this is also a beautifully written coming-of-age story.

Le Guin’s world building is utterly believable; there are tense moments of human doubt and despair, evil antagonists, and a story that has kept me turning the pages for years – even though I know what is going to happen. Another example of top class, classic fantasy that offers more on each reading. 

This book kept me turning the pages well into the night.

The Rev Jack Brooks moves to a new parish for a fresh start with her teenage daughter but they have barely unpacked when strange things begin to happen.

The book is well-paced with clever use of local superstitions which gives the story a supernatural feel. There is a looming threat to the main protagonist which builds the unease till the explosive end.

What comfort library would be complete without Emily Henry?

I’ll read anything she writes, but Poppy and Alex’s love story is the stuff of my dreams. Friends to lovers, split timelines, and more yearning than I know what to do with Seamlessly blending humour and heart and set between Palm Springs, New York, Italy, and somewhere in the sedate American midwest, You and Me on Vacation was the antidote to my mid-lockdown claustrophobia.

I like to read my fluff on the treadmill – it keeps my brain more occupied than music or podcasts, so I’m less likely to remember how much I hate working out – and it was so delicious I found myself looking forward to time at the gym. A true feat.

There isn’t another young adult book out there that makes me feel as seen as Lucy and Linh, alternately titled Laurinda in its native Australia.

It was the first novel I’d ever come across with a Chinese Vietnamese protagonist, and the details about her life as the daughter of working-class refugees really hit home.

That the prose is impeccable, the social observations incisive, and the themes not at all didactic (the main character Lucy makes plenty of mistakes) instantly turned me into an Alice Pung superfan. 

This book made me want to write a book of my own.

So many stories of the mountains are about bravado, grit, or conquest. Yet I go to the mountains for beauty and connection. Those are values that the Italian writer Paolo Cognetti prizes. His gentle novel uses the mountains as a setting for the relationship between two people.

The book chronicles a lifetime of friendship between a pair of boys who grow apart over the years. For a time, their shared history in the outdoors and love of the alpine is enough to maintain a connection. And then life intervenes. Yet the steady majesty of the Italian Alps remains a constant. I took my novel’s epigraph from this book: “It was impossible to convey what it feels like up there to those who have stayed below.”