Books like Wolves of the Calla — picked by fans

This book filled me with pure wonder. The futuristic setting felt like a glimpse into a world we’re on the brink of creating, where technology can be both a refuge and a battlefield. I loved the way it combined a digital universe with a gritty, imperfect reality—it made me think about how much potential the future holds, both thrilling and terrifying.

The sense of exploration and possibility was so vivid that I found myself daydreaming about what could be long after I turned the last page. It’s a story that reminds me how powerful imagination can be. The characters aren’t perfect, which made them feel real, and I was hooked by the idea of ordinary kids taking on extraordinary challenges. This one made me feel like anything was possible in the future.

When I was a teenager, I would have felt very much at home at the vintage record store in London where this story is set. (In fact, my hometown is named London, except my London is in Canada.) The quirky clerks who work there adore their boss, Rob Fleming, and spend their days attempting to outwit one another with music trivia and compiling funny and far-reaching Top Five lists.

As Rob negotiates a recent breakup, he must sort through his ex-girlfriend’s belongings and the emotional baggage he’s collected over the years. Though Rob is an adult, this still feels like a coming-of-age tale. I came away from the book resonating with the bittersweet awareness of what it means to become an adult with a list of careers if time and money were no object.

Amazing title aside, I love David Sedaris because he makes discomfort feel like a private joke you’re lucky enough to overhear. The way he writes about insecurity, awkwardness, and deeply flawed family life struck something real in me. His humor sneaks up on you, often in the middle of a sentence you weren’t prepared to laugh at.

What I admire most is how he never tries to impress. His voice is honest, a little absurd, and somehow both cynical and strangely tender. I didn’t just laugh; I felt understood. Sedaris showed me that writing can be honest without being sentimental, funny without being safe, and deeply human without needing a resolution.

I truly believe that video games are the art form that defines our present and, at least, our near-ish future. So, it was a great pleasure to encounter Zevin’s novel about the relationships behind a video game studio’s origins, which both elevates and scrutinizes the medium’s potential to revolutionize narrative storytelling.

Zevin deftly translates gaming's embodied perspective, including one stand-out moment in the back half that is perhaps the book’s defining triumph. Through her expansive prose, Sam, Sadie, and Marx play out their lives: their moments of intense and sometimes myopic creativity, their intricate interpersonal joys and devastations, and the fantastically rendered worlds, some built from reality and others from pixels which bring them together, push them apart, and might just bring them together again.

I love this book because it demands my full attention and rewards me for giving it.

I first read it as a teenager, long before the films became the version most people knew, and I was struck by how much deeper the world felt on the page. I consider Tolkien’s writing masterful, especially in the way he gives every place, history, and character a sense of age and importance.

I loved discovering characters like Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, and I loved the feeling that Tolkien’s world was not merely invented, but ancient, layered, and connected to our own. I know the long passages and dense exposition can test modern readers, but that is exactly what I value. I want fantasy to pull me completely into another world, not linger in the background like a television left on while I do chores.

I really connected with evil genius Doctor Impossible and his whacky world of superheroes. In grade and high school, I felt like I was the one who was overlooked, which was often the good days; getting noticed generally meant I was being made fun of and bullied. But to take revenge, to show my plebeian classmates the (imagined) might that lay within me, how glorious that would be! Hahaha! Evil laugh aside, as Doctor Impossible does just that, I also enjoyed his vulnerable needs, longings, and regrets. And the lives of the heroes are not all they are cracked up to be. While not as stark (or violent) as The Boys, Grossman also exposes the toll superhero biology can take on the mind and body. A fun and poignant read.

I enjoyed The Eye of the World because Robert Jordan makes his world feel vast before the greater story fully reveals itself.

It may not be the most entertaining book in the series, but as the plank-holder novel, it patiently establishes the cultures, magic, history, and conflicts that shape everything to come. I especially value Rand’s beginning. He is not a polished hero, but a frightened, naïve twenty-year-old whose later confidence, arrogance, and acceptance of his destiny feel earned across several books.

I love experiencing that growth through Jordan’s storytelling. For me, the novels and audiobooks remain the truest way to enter this world. I recommend skipping the streaming show because I believe the adaptation fails at every level to capture what Jordan built.

For me, the Dark Tower series is an easy first pick as it so thoroughly encompasses everything I love about speculative fiction: big ideas, compelling, at times mysterious but ultimately fully realized characters, and a healthy, rich, and potent dose of world-building.

Over the years, I’ve reluctantly come to accept that this book and series are not necessarily for everyone, but they are absolutely for me, and I always find myself feeling a sort of kinship with other readers who love them as much as I do.

This book is definitely one of my favorites. It has everything I love in a gothic children’s book: orphans, evil governesses, stolen inheritances, cruel orphanages, cool secret passages, and courage. It also has the eerie setting of a grand English estate.

The three wicked adults, Letitia Slighcarp, Josiah Grimshaw, and Mrs Brisket, gave me proper villain chills. I was with Bonnie every step of the way as she tried to overcome the greedy villains. I loved the air of menace in this novel. The wicked wolves, the landscape, and the menacing governess stayed in my head long after I turned the last page. 

This was one of the first fiction books I read that set before me a world that is ordinary interrupted, and affected by another world that is supernatural.

In this book, when the main character goes to sleep, he wakes up in another world populated by mysterious beings and people.

Perhaps most interesting about this set up, is that events in this “dream world” affect events in the waking one.

While the main character only retains a passive ability (entering this other world and healing) the whole traveling between both spaces, his interactions with both divine and malevolent beings, and his race to stop his world from destruction all pulled me into the story in such a way that I could not put down.