100 books like A Thousand Acres

Not necessarily the world’s first novel (the world’s first novel is probably lost) nor even the world’s first great novel (that would be Petronius’ Satyricon, which you should also not get caught reading), The Golden Ass is definitely the world’s first great novel that has survived through the centuries intact.

It’s the story of a man who tries just one time to dabble in magic and accidentally turns himself into a donkey. The poor guy has a bunch of adventures as he tries to figure out how to, you know, stop being a donkey.

That doesn’t sound so bad, but no one’s ever going to let you read a book with the title The Golden Ass. It just means the golden donkey! There’s nothing filthy about it! But no one will believe you!

Almost all the survivors of the Holocaust have now died, which makes it more important than ever that we pass on knowledge about this incomparably brutal crime against humanity – and do our best to prevent future genocides.

Survival in Auschwitz is a highly detailed, profoundly disturbing, and, in the end, intensely moving account of Italian chemist Primo Levi’s eleven months in the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz.

If you wish to understand what the Holocaust meant to its victims – and how the prisoners did their heroic best to resist dehumanization, hopelessness, and death – you would do well to start with this important work.  

This was the first book I read about Basilicata, and it is essential for anyone interested in Southern Italian roots. Written in staggeringly poetic language, it offers a sad but beautiful introduction to the culture and history of the region, which is hardly ever written about and barely even visited, even by Italians.

During WWII, Levi was sent as a prisoner to Basilicata as punishment, to work as a doctor among the peasants there. The book taught me about the feudal farm system still in place there well into the 20th century, about its inhospitable landscape, and its isolated, poverty-stricken population – my ancestors.

It set the bar high for me to write my own memoir and continues to inspire me. The title refers to the fact that the train line only went as far as Eboli – that Christianity and civilization stopped short of Basilicata.

When I first watched the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead film starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, I was enamoured by the rhythm and dialogue. Reading the play, however, is even more brilliant. It’s fast-paced, confusing, and hilarious. In fact, it played a huge hand in inspiring my latest book. I would never have grasped the English language so tightly had it not been for this book. 

Nearly any of Christopher Moore’s other books would have better fit this list generically, but I am relying (heavily) on the presence of fantastical creatures and magic spells to maintain the necessary toe in the fantasy pool for my non-sequitur selection of Fool. Based skeletally on Shakespeare’s King Lear, Fool credits Lear’s court jester, Pocket—along with MacBeth’s trio of witches, a “bloody ghost,” and other foils—for engendering the war that followed the king’s tragic decision to disinherit his kindest daughter in favor of his other conniving offspring. Linguistic and bawdy humor are packaged in Moore’s cockeyed and delightfully Will-esque prose, rendering half the fun—at least for readers fond of the Bard—the detection of Shakespearean elements amidst olde-timey twists on today’s ruder colloquialisms.

This story is a work of family saga art, honestly. In discovering the ins, outs, ups, and downs of Marilyn and David’s loving relationship, we come to know their four adult daughters who are each experiencing life-changing events of their own.

It is both a beautiful and heartbreaking depiction of family dynamics, coming of age, parenthood, and finding one’s way. It’s reconciliation with the past and finding the courage to face the future. It’s a love story, in the traditional sense, but also one between parents and children and among the sisters themselves…all intricately woven into one truly intriguing family story.

No skipping pages for me in this one: I didn’t want to miss a thing!

Siblings tend to circle the wagon around one another. Sure, we squabble amongst ourselves, but when the outside world comes at one of us, it might as well have come for all of us. At least that’s been my experience. But honestly, this constant rescuing can be tiresome and perhaps it asks too much of us—especially if we’re dealing with our own unresolved heartache. This novel is so honest in its portrayal of three sisters, frantic to save a sister and finally forced to share in the grief and blame. I also loved that the main character, a former college professor, turns to literature to help her find her moral way. 

It’s hard for me to imagine a family where the siblings are more uninterested in one another than the Oppenheimer triplets in this novel. But I do love a twin story (am, in fact, fascinated by the twin thing) so triplets really intrigued me. These siblings, however, are determined to disengage from one another and stalk off into their solo adulthood. And they manage to do so with just enough hubris to make a mess of it. But can we ever really cut the ties that bind? Thankfully—probably not. 

Maggie and Ira Moran's daylong trip to a funeral becomes a journey into and through their lives, family, marriage, and, yes, love. 

The story is so deceptively simple that you think nothing is going on, but by the end, it left me floored with its humanity. The characters are supremely relatable, so much so that you're in the car with Maggie and Ira for every mile of the trip. When it won the Pulitzer Prize, I applauded.

World War I caused 20 million deaths and left 21 million wounded.

Soldiers who survived the gas attacks and trench warfare often returned to societies eager to forget the atrocities of the conflict and move on. Remarque’s insightfully written novel details the struggles of three German soldiers who return home only to discover that they may have no place in a nation that has learned almost nothing from what they regard as a senseless and immoral war.

In May of 1933, this novel and the rest of Remarque's writing were declared “unpatriotic” by the Nazi dictatorship and all his novels were banned.