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Suggestion Thread
I feel like a lot of book lovers have a least one passionate suggestion for a “Oh if you liked [very popular book] then you’ll love [lesser known book of the same genre/trope/vibe].” Like, you’re low-key mad that the book doesn’t get the love it deserves and you wish that every person who likes a specific popular book would also read this less popular book. And I think it would be fun to have a thread of “if you liked x, then you’ll love y” suggestions.
I’ll start: If you liked Dune, then you’ll love Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.
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If you liked Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams and have always wanted to read more classics, you will love, love, love Don Quixote. Especially with a little bit of research about why it was written.
I also LOVE the musical lol
Wait wait wait wait. Hold up. Stop everything. There’s… a musical?!
The Man of La Mancha, it's a film from 1972
Like, the 400 year old book? It really shares that much similarities with those authors?
That’s the one! Miguel de Cervantes was the OG meta-satirist. Edith Grossman’s translation from 2003 is accurate, modern, and provides excellent context before reading. Highly recommend.
Project Hail Mary and The Bobiverse have similar vibes.
The Bobiverse really lost me after the 3rd book. I DNF the 4th book after chapters and chapters and chapters of alien beavers and nothing happening.
This somehow makes me want to read it just to find out about said species 😂
Yeah the series definitely started strong and got weaker. Though in saying that, I've done a couple re reads, and I'm excited for book 5
Easy one but 1984 and Brave New World
And if you liked Brave New World, you should check out Huxley’s other novel Island.
I love 1984 since I read it in high school. I come back to it every few years. Just started Brave New World for the first time. So far, I think 84 is more compelling. I'm finding bnw a bit boring. Maybe that's on purpose?
This may be cheating a bit, but if you like 1984, you GOTTA read "Julia" by Sandra Newman.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've been trying to read more female authors, so this is perfect.
I read both and felt the same way. I wanted to like bnw more than I did.
I feel like those two books are thematically similar but they style is so different it feels like a completely different genre.
Brave New World feels more like HG Wells Things to come. The story is second place to the futurist speculation
If you liked Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer), you will also like World of Wonders (Aimee Nezhukumatahil).
Also Braiding Sweetgrass and The Overstory
Oooh, this is the winner. This is the best recommendation.
I also suggest Neither Wolf Nor Dog by Kent Nerburn and its sequels
I loved both of these books!
if you liked Harry Potter, you will like Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud.
But they will love the Bartimaeus sequence by the same author!
Just finished the first Bartimaeus (audiobook version) and will recommend it to anyone who'll hear me out. I could continue right away with the second book but decided to listen to something different to make the series last longer. You can only experience it for the first time once.
If anyone asks me what book would you like to read for the first time again, it’s this sequence! I’ve only come to appreciate it more with getting older and rereading.
I can imagine that! I was older than Nathaniel when the first book was released, but I guess if I had been aroubdthat age and read the book I'd have sided more with him. Now I see him more from Bartimaeus' perspective, a driven, ambitious child with limited knowledge and experience (though far greater knowledge than most of his peers, but still!). And I just love Bartimaeus' dry wit and sarcasm.
Oh yes, absolutely but Bartimaeus is quite well known while Lockwood & Co seems to have slipped under the radar.
I always thought about it the other way around! Even more so since Lockwood & Co has a successful Netflix show.
And the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones
If you liked The Giver by Lois Lowry, you’ll love The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
If you liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, you’ll love The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
If you liked The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, you’ll (probably) love Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
If you liked The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, you’ll love Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
I’ll never forget the post about how Eleanor Oliphant should come with a trigger warning and how it was “harrowing” and the reader felt like she needed therapy after it 🤣🤣🤣
Lmao I should probably throw in that The Rosie Project—while still containing the same depression element that Eleanor Oliphant had, as well as similar feeling characters—does not have the type of er… plot twist that Eleanor Oliphant does
Poor reader 😂😂
If you liked Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, read How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by J.C. Lillis
If you liked The Giver, read The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow
If you liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, read Space Opera by Catherynne Valente
If you liked The Phantom Tollbooth, you’ll like Lauren Ipsum by Carlos Bueno
This sounds fascinating and your username makes me smile!
If you liked Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell you'll love Lud-in-the-Mist!
And The King of Elfland's Daughter!
It's honestly a travesty that I haven't read this yet,.I need to get on it!
We need to read each other's recommendations, because I even own a copy of Lud-in-the-Mist (and I'm a library kind of woman, it hardly ever happens that I own a book) yet I still haven't read it! A fact I like is that The King of Elfland's Daughter is in the public domain, so if you're fine with e-books you can find it legal for free at places like Project Gutenberg.
Oh that's wonderful! I will search it out and see if I can get it to talk to my Kindle!
Also yes, read it, I think you'll like it a lot.
If you liked Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, you will like The Patient Assassin by Anita Anand.
If you liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, you will like both Home Stretch by Graham Norton and All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle
If you liked Pride and Prejudice (and felt sorry for Mary), you will like The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow
If you liked Julie Garwood’s historical romances, you will like Alice Coldbreath.
Add Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent to Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine!
And I’m glad my mom died memoire if you enjoyed Eleanor.
If you liked Rebecca you'll like Dragonwyck
I thought Dragonwyck would be a fantasy novel. I was so confused. It's not fantasy, right? Dragonwyck is the name of a manor?
Someone lumped together Rebecca, The Bell Jar and The Goldfinch a few days ago. I might give these a try.
Not a fantasy novel! It's a fantastic dark Gothic around an unbalanced-power-dynamic relationship (like Rebecca!), and I think it's such a shame more people haven't read it
Ooh, I will give Dragonwyck a try!
If you like Library at Mount Char you’ll love Between Two Fires. They’re both absolutely bizarre in the most fascinating, unexpected ways. A freak show carnival of horrific wonderment you can’t look away from.
There are a lot of books called between two fires. Can you mention the author?
Christopher Buehlman
Thank you, library at Mount char was the best book I read last year. Will give this one a try and go in blind.
Don’t tell me anything about it - but my next read is Library at Mount Char and I know literally nothing about it except the title and the fact that it is a book that someone recommended going in to blind. I’m glad to see this comment - made me more excited to get to it!
very strange book indeed. i've read it 2 years ago and i'm still thinking about it.
I have heard very little about it as well and picked it as my next read. I'm excited!
I envy you reading this book for the first time. Enjoy!
Ooh, I loved Mount Char, I'll need to give this a go!
I loved Between Two Fires. I’m putting this at the top of my tbr list
Hope this counts. My "very popular book" isn't even that popular, but it's definitely more popular than my "lesser known book"...
If you liked Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami (or if you liked the idea of it but didn't like its execution) then you'd love I'll Go On by Hwang Jungeun.
Ooh, thank you for this! There should be a whole thread for “if you liked the idea of x but didn’t like its execution, you should read y”
if you liked A Short Stay in Hell, you'll love I Who Have Never Know Men.
thank you for the rec! A short stay in hell is one of my favorite books and I've been looking for something similar
If you love Percy Jackson, you’ll love the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud. I see it’s already been recommended here, but it’s so perfect! It’s absolutely hilarious yet has really great social commentary at the same time. The downwards arc of one of our main characters over the course of the series is just fascinating. I will note, though, that it’s really best read physically due to formatting stuff- it doesn’t quite work on ebooks in my experience.
If you love Picture of Dorian Gray, you’ll love Perfume by Patrick Suskind. Perfume is my favorite book I’ve ever read, and it’s sense of humor reminds me of Dorian Gray. I read them very close to one another, so they really are sisters to each other in my mind. Please give Perfume a try!
If you love A Series of Unfortunate Events, you’ll love Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
If you love Sharp Objects but Gillian Flynn, you might like Lullabies for Little Criminals by heather O’Neil - or maybe White Oleander but Janet Fitch
If you like Bunny by Mona Awad you might like The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
If you liked Harry Potter, you might like The Luminariesby Susan Dennard
If you loved a Series of Unfortunate Events in your youth, you'll love Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes now!
If you liked The Lord of the Rings and the fact that the hobbits were main characters, you'll like Watership Down by Richard Adams. Same premise of very small heroes sticking together through big perils in a world they don't fully understand. Same bucolic feeling and slowish pace, following the travel day-by-day and incidentally teaching you plant-names you didn't know before. Same use of storytelling by characters to give a break in the tension and add some lore to the world. Same feeling that the author was writing this for himself and had no idea what the "rules" for a novel were but didn't need them anyway.
100% to all of this, especially the last sentence!
If you like Flannery O'Connor, you might like Out by Natsuo Kirino or In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami.
If you like the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, you might like the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, or the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce.
If you like Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, you might like Fablehaven by Brandon Mull, the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, or Percy Jackson / especially the spinoff series Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan.
If you like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you might like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
If you like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, you might like The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.
If you like Kurt Vonnegut, you might like the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.
Interesting! I often recommend Out by Natsuo Kirino but haven’t read any Flannery O’Connor. She’s one of those classic authors who I feel meh about for absolutely no reason.
I’d love to hear which work(s) of hers made you think of Out — your comment is making me think I should give her a shot!
Everything That Rises Must Converge. It's not so much about the content of the stories, although there are similarities. It's more about the type of reader who finds something to appreciate or value in what are objectively pretty grim plots.
I recommend Out any chance I get, but I've never seen anyone else mention it!
I just realized I don't read enough lesser known book.
I had the opposite reaction. I need to read more classics.
If you liked Irvine Welsh you'll love John Niven, Chris McQueer and JD Kirk
If you liked The Wind Up Bird Chronicles I think you’d also like When I’m Gone, Look For Me In The East by Quan Barry
If you liked Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross then you'd like The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen.
If you liked the works of Franz Kafka, you’ll likely also enjoy the works of Kobo Abe
If you liked The Trial you might like All the Names by Jose Saramago.
I keep hearing good things about Jose Saramago. Will definitely check him out
this is the opposite of what you asked for haha but I feel like if you love "A Little Life" then you probably won't like "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" and vice versa.
idk why but I often talk to/see on reddit folks who love one or the other but not both.
I personally lovvvve OEWBG but can't stand A Little Life.
The Stand and Swansong. I love reading these back to back.
"In this stunningly assured, immersive and vividly atmospheric first novel, a young woman comes face-to-face with the volatile, haunted wilderness of the Scottish Highlands."
ok, sounds weird at first. But I'll give Swansong a try, since I really liked The Stand.
Wait, what? No, lol.
Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
If you liked 100 Years of Solitude, you’ll love the masterpiece Juan Rulfo which inspired it.
if you liked winter's orbit by everina maxwell, read a taste of gold and iron by alexandra rowland
If you liked the ACOTAR series, you'll love these hollow vows duology.
If you like East of Eden, you’ll love The Power of the Dog (Thomas Savage - not so obscure since the film though)
If you like IQ84, you'll like Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World
if you liked the lord of the rings, then you'll love wheel of time
If you liked Harry Potter you will love Neverwhere - Neil Gaimen
If you like Thomas Pynchon’s and early Neal Stephenson’s sprawling noir novels set in California you will really enjoy Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s a very different beast from the movie and provides a surprisingly literary take on the same plot.
If you liked Good Omens, try Humans by Donald Westlake
If you liked Harry Potter you will like the "Rivers of London" series by Ben Aaronovitch. First title is Midnight Riot. A biracial probationary cop is looking at a paper pushing job when a routine interview with a witness turns out to have been a ghost. He's recruited by a clandestine department that deals with odd things. So good!
If you like Discworld, you'll love King Purple's Jester by D. H. Chapman. It's a sadly out of print fantasy about a free-spirited lad who takes a job as a royal jester, then gets involved in the king's problems and wacky family. The writing is absolutely delightful. If I could wave a magic wand and bring one book back into print, this would be it.