Books like Moby-Dick

01

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho · Religion & Spirituality

The Alchemist is a Brazilian novel first published in 1988 and translated into 80 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse · Religion & Spirituality

Siddhartha is Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel of spiritual seeking, written at a time when Hesse was deeply studying Buddhist and Hindu texts.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus · Philosophy

The Myth of Sisyphus begins with what Camus calls the only truly serious philosophical question: why not commit suicide?

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Dee Brown · History

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, published in 1970, is Dee Brown's account of the systematic dispossession of Native American peoples across the American West between 1860 and 1890.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy · Literary fiction

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West is set along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1840s and loosely follows a teenage runaway known only as the kid, who falls in with the Glanton gang — a historical band of scalp hunters hired by the Mexican government to kill Apache raiders.

Both dig into fate and free will.

07

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction

Kafka on the Shore runs two parallel narratives that eventually, obliquely, converge.

Both dig into fate and free will.

08

Barbarian Days

William Finnegan · Memoir

Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's memoir of a life spent surfing — from his childhood in Los Angeles and Hawaii through decades of obsessive searching for waves across the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and eventually the cold waters of New York.

Both dig into obsession.

09

Fermat's Enigma

Simon Singh · Science

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a mathematics book claiming to have found a proof that no three positive integers can satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than 2 — but that the margin was too narrow to contain it.

Both dig into obsession.

10

November 9

Colleen Hoover · Contemporary fiction

Fallon and Ben meet in a diner on November 9th, the day Fallon is leaving Los Angeles to move across the country.

Both dig into obsession.

11

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke · Fantasy

Piranesi is structured as the journal of a man who calls himself Piranesi, living in a House that contains the world: a vast and apparently infinite series of halls filled with marble statues, where the tides come in twice a day and the skies are visible through the upper floors.

Both dig into knowledge and its limits.

12

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

Kirk Wallace Johnson · Memoir

The Feather Thief tells two intertwined stories.

Both dig into obsession.