Here are 100 books that Young Men in Spats fans have personally recommended if you like
Young Men in Spats.
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I learnt to read at about the age of three or four and have been devouring books ever since. However, it took a few decades for me to begin creating my own stories. I have a passion for writing and whenever I can, I try to help new writers improve their expertise. I’m a strong believer in writing groups, for that reason. My first book, born from a few-hundred-word short story at my writing group, turned into a three-book thriller series. Since then I’ve branched out by publishing a rom/com, a humorous ghost story as well as a standalone thriller.
I’ve selected this title as it’s one of the first Jeeves and Wooster books but, to be honest, you could choose any one; they’re all brilliant.
That goes for pretty much all of Wodehouse’s stories. I realise everyone knows these two characters from the various TV series produced over the years. But they may not have read the books. They should. It’s a great credit to the author that whichever actors portray this pair, and others such as Lord Emsworth of Blandings, the characters are instantly recognisable.
I think PG Wodehouse’s characterisation is superb. I admire his eye for details, not only in appearance but in mannerisms and speech. Wooster – the young gentleman – is wealthy, foppish, dapper, scatterbrained and idle. Jeeves – the gentleman’s gentleman – is someone who “from the collar upwards, stands alone.” That phrase alone tells the reader everything they need to know about the…
As a child, Robin Bayley was enchanted by his grandmother's stories of Mexican adventures: of bandits, wild jungle journeys, hidden bags of silver and a narrow escape from the bloody Mexican Revolution. But Robin sensed there was more to these stories than anyone knew, and so he set out to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather.
The Mango Orchard is the story of parallel journeys' a hundred years apart, into the heart of Latin America. Undaunted by the passage of time and a paucity of information, Robin seeks out the places where his great grandfather Arthur 'Arturo' Greenhalgh travelled…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I write about inequality in international development, American communities, environmental movements, and workplaces. I’ve been doing this reporting for over a decade. I’ve also worked in global health, an experience that has given me a first-hand glimpse into the depths and texture of inequality we have manufactured in our current world, including within the organizations and movements that purportedly challenge such global inequality. As a reader, I’m equally passionate about immersive nonfiction and fiction. I’ll dive into anything that’s driven by a good story.
I should start by saying that Thiong'o has recently been accused, by his son, of beating his former wife, claims I take very seriously (and which has put my reading of Thiong'o’s female characters in a new light).
In this book, I found a sharp, cunning satire of despotic post-colonial governments working with and shaped by international funders and Western policymakers. Having worked in NGOs, I found Thiong'o’s characterization of “development” to be darkly funny and cringe-worthily accurate.
Informed by traditional African storytelling, discover Ngugi wa Thiong'o's masterpiece.
To honour the Ruler's birthday, the Free Republic of Aburiria set out to build a tower; a modern wonder of the world that will reach the gates of Heaven. But behind this pillar of unity a battle for control of the Aburirian people rages. Among the contenders: the eponymous Wizard, an avatar of folklore and wisdom; the corrupt Christian Ministry; and the nefarious Global Bank.
I started drawing comics in the first grade and have never stopped. My syndicated comic strip, Cow & Boy, ran for eight years, and now I write and draw the middle-grade fantasy series Quest Kids. I am so fortunate to have cobbled together my love of comics into a career and to have been inspired by so many talented people along the way. Below is a collection of some of the best.
My newspaper comic strip had just finished its run, and I was looking for my next big thing. That’s when I came across Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
The drawings were simple and hilarious, and the clever writing didn’t seem to be just for kids. Greg Heffley has this flawed prickly everyman edge which makes him easy to identify with. But as good as this book and series are, I was more impressed with the new way Jeff Kinney had found to sneak comics into chapter books.
The launch of an exciting and innovatively illustrated new series narrated by an unforgettable kid every family can relate to
It's a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you're ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary.
In book one of this debut series, Greg is happy to have Rowley, his sidekick, along for the ride. But when Rowley's star…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
I’ve loved animals for as long as I can remember. When I was young, girls my age were seeking out babies to admire. I was around the corner looking for puppies, frogs, or any other animal I could get my hands on. I’ve spent decades seeking out animals, and the more I learn about them, the more I realize how much they can teach us, point out what we otherwise might have missed, or offer a startlingly different (and often more helpful) perspective on things. The following books are some of my favorites that bring to light the unique and profound truths animals reveal to us.
In most stories, animals don’t exist for their own reasons—their purpose is simply to serve the needs of the main characters or the machinations of the plot. In Barn 8, however, chickens not only have agency and their own raison d’etre, but they catalyze every single major turn of events.
I love the premise—a group of unlikely activists decides to free the million-plus chickens suffering on an egg farm—and its quirky, clever style. But the best part is the chickens at the heart of the tale. Unferth gets inside their heads, showing their loyalty and love, their distinctive personalities, and their undeniable, fierce intelligence.
It's a captivating glimpse into the inner world of extraordinary animals who deserve to be the heroes of their own stories.
One disaffected administrator, one disenchanted teenager, four hundred and twenty-one vegan extremists, sixty trucks, and nine hundred thousand grumpy layer hens awaiting liberation. In barns. Six barns. No, wait, seven. No, wait ...
Two auditors for the US egg industry conceive a plot to liberate an entire egg farm's worth of animals, with catastrophic results. This wildly inventive but utterly plausible novel about a heist of a very unusual kind swirls with a rich array of voices: a farmer's daughter, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger who stumbles upon forty thousand hens, and a security guard abandoned for years on…
I was old (or young) enough to have only seen two Kubrick films in the cinema: Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. I began teaching film studies and Hollywood in 1998, and I have been teaching and researching Kubrick intensively since 2007, visiting his archive in London on numerous occasions. At one point, I held the record for the researcher who had spent the most hours in the Archive. I also met Christiane and Jan and spoke to many others who knew and worked with Kubrick. Having been familiar with Robert Kolker’s work, it became clear that collaborating with an international authority on film was a necessity as well as a pleasure.
This novel follows a famous Hollywood director called Boris Adrian but known as "King B" who is shooting a big-budget arthouse porn film.
The auteur was allegedly based on Kubrick, with whom Southern collaborated on Dr. Strangelove, and the book is dedicated to "the great Stanley K" whom Southern alleges wanted to make such a film. As Southern also had screenwriting credits for Easy Rider and Casino Royale, it offers a first-hand account, albeit fictionalized, of someone who worked with the director but also with others in Hollywood.
“Terry Southern writes a mean, coolly deliberate, and murderous prose.” ―Norman Mailer
King B., an Oscar-winning director, is now determined to shoot the dirtiest and most expensive X-rated movie ever made. Displaced to Liechtenstein (which, in order to boost tourism, has negotiated the exclusive rights to show the film for ten years) and fueled by suspiciously rejuvenating vitamin B-12 injections, the set of The Faces of Love is fraught with monstrous egos and enormous libidos ― the kind of situation that could only come from the imagination of the irrepressible Terry Southern.
My first job upon graduating from college was working for an invention-marketing firm. This wasn’t my intention; armed with a degree in journalism, I was ready to take on the world. Unfortunately, the country was enduring a recession, and after six months of unemployment, I was happy to be offered a copywriting position. So often during the two years I spent there, I would think to myself, “This could make such a great novel.” It took me a while—and with more than a few rejections along the way—but inspired by the writers and books I’ve included in my collection, I finally got around to penning my own tale.
My son’s a young adult now, but I treasure the memories of the hours we spent reading together. We went down all the well-trodden paths and shared countless joyful hours with J.K. Rowling and Dav Pilkey and The Mysterious Benedict Society, but the creativity of this book is exceeded only by its humor. Also, it clocks in at around 700 pages, so it’ll entertain you and your children for a good while. I always enjoy a laugh as a reader, and if my work elicits a chuckle from you, then I feel my mission is complete.
Unlike cats, bluebears have 27 lives, which can be very handy when one considers the manner in which the hero of this story repeatedly manages to avoid death only by a paw's breadth. The story describes Captain Bluebear's first 13 and a half lives.
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
I grew up in central Arkansas, which means I experienced first-hand the fiction I describe here. The South in these books - its religion, poverty, and beauty, not to mention its capacity for real ugliness - is not simply an atmosphere these authors have used to decorate their sets. The South in these books is a place where real people live, in exactly the ways these writers have described. My novella, Six Mile Store, is my own take on the real South. These are the books that showed me that these kinds of Southern stories are worth telling.
The film adaptations make True Grit look like a Western. It is not.
It is an Arkansas book, and Mattie Ross is an Arkansas character: fourteen years old, tiny, and completely on board with the violence she knows avenging her father's murder will require. She has courage and goal-oriented ruthlessness.
Mattie’s fortitude underlines the gap between what my characters can see for themselves and what they can actually reach. That gap is at the heart of what my novella is about.
There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down…
As a practicing clinical psychologist, teacher of psychotherapy theory and technique, and author (Barbarians at the PTA, Madmen on the Couch, Money Talks) who writes about the psychopathology of daily life for various online and print publications, I am a participant in/observer of mom culture. I love a juicy mother-child story.
This is mom culture at its best: Wolitzer traces the members of a clique who drop their kids at pre-k and enjoy over the ensuing years the gravitational pull of parenting, school volunteering, and part-time work.
She explores familiar dilemmas about aging, career versus family, and female friendship, while offering a sometimes heartbreaking, but always realistic, look at the choices moms face as they watch their kids grow.
The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion that woke up critics, book clubs, and women everywhere.
For a group of four New York friends the past decade has been defined largely by marriage and motherhood, but it wasn’t always that way. Growing up, they had been told that their generation would be different. And for a while this was true. They went to good colleges and began high-powered careers. But after marriage and babies, for a variety of reasons, they decided to stay home, temporarily, to raise their children. Now, ten…
I am the author of three novels that all explore contemporary notions of fidentity. In 2016 I received a scholarship to travel from New Zealand to Berlin for three months and fell in love with the city. I ended up staying there for nearly four years, until the pandemic started. As a writer I liked the way that being detached from your regular life, and living in a country where you are unfamiliar with the language and the rules, makes you alert to the quirks. It helps you to gain a fresh perspective about the place that you came from, and also the place that you are in.
A Kirkus review aptly described this novel as “mysterious, bizarre, frustrating, weirdly smart and pretty cool”.
It’s mostly a fiercely intelligent exploration of both political and personal crises in 2017, the year of Trump and Brexit. Radical feminist Kathy has also fairly inexplicably agreed to get married. Pre-wedding she travels to a resort in Italy with her fiancé where she tumbles through a range of highly-emotive stances on intimacy and closeness.
After an argument about prosciutto and fig ciabattas with her husband “she hated him, she hated any kind of warmth or dependency, she wanted to take up residence as an ice cube in a long glass of aqua frizzante.” Her fury quickly dissolves “anyway they sorted it out” and the novel travels brilliantly onwards.
"She had no idea what to do with love, she experienced it as invasion, as the prelude to loss and pain, she really didn't have a clue."
Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It's the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker.
From a Tuscan hotel for the superrich to a Brexit-paralyzed United Kingdom, Kathy spends the first summer of her forties adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
The heroes and heroines in the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales face challenges inspired by my own fears, like giving a presentation in the front of the class, getting lost in an unfamiliar place, finding my place in a new school, or working out how to be fair to my friends when we disagree about the rules. Fears tell us a boring life is “safe.” They hide our extraordinary life behind their backs. I write books for and about kids attempting things that are absolutely positively “not for them”. Because kids are the bravest people around. That’s why they’re so magical.
Another hilarious tale about trying something new!
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias sets out to find fame when she starts piano lessons, but the road to Carnegie Hall isn’t as straightforward as she expects. Then her Dad accidentally purchases an electric Hammond organ at the local shopping mall, Zoe is propelled into a whole new world.
I love the way her ambition gradually grows into compassion for others, and making music for the joy of it.
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias dreams of playing a baby grand piano at Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life that's off-kilter, what with Mum constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day. Yet when Zoe enters the annual…
