Shantaram

Books like Shantaram

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September 12, 2022
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#1 Wings Of Fire

The son of a poorly educated boat owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam had an exceptional career as a defense scientist that culminated in receiving the highest civilian honor in India, the Bharat Ratna. In his role as director of the nation’s defense R&D program, Kalam showed the enormous potential for dynamism and creativity present in what appeared to be dormant research institutions. This is the tale of Kalam’s ascent from obscurity, his difficulties on the personal and professional fronts, and the development of the Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul, and Nag missiles, which have made India a missile power of note in the world stage. This is a story about internal and international politics as well as science, and it is also the story of independent India’s quest for scientific self-sufficiency and defense autonomy.

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#2 Maid

Stephanie Land’s aspirations to leave her small village in the Pacific Northwest at the age of 28 and follow her goals of going to college and becoming a writer were derailed when a summer romance resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. To make ends meet, she started working as a housekeeper. Determined to provide her daughter the greatest life possible, Stephanie worked long days, pursued her college degree online, and started writing nonstop.

The movie Maid delves into the dark side of upper-middle-class America and the truth of what it’s like to work for them. Stephanie describes her interactions with her clients, many of whom she knows a lot about but who don’t recognize her from any other cleaner, as “I’d become a nameless ghost.” She starts to find optimism in her own direction as she learns more about the tragic and loving aspects of her clients’ life. She gives the “servant” worker and those living in poverty who are pursuing the American Dream a voice through her journalism. The story of Maid is not just Stephanie’s.

#3 The Dirt

The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Famous Rock Band is a joint autobiography of Mötley Crüe written by Neil Strauss of the New York Times and the band members Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, and Nikki Sixx. It was first released in 2001 and details the band’s beginnings, as well as their fame and highs and lows. Over 100 images, largely in black and white, are included in the book. In the center of the book, there is a 16-page color section.

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#4 Can’t Hurt Me

Childhood for David Goggins was a nightmare filled with deprivation, discrimination, and physical abuse. However, Goggins changed himself from a hopeless, obese young man into one of the best endurance athletes in the world via self-control, mental fortitude, and hard training. He was the only man in history to successfully complete the rigorous training required to become a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller. He then broke records in a number of endurance competitions, earning him the title of “The Fittest (Real) Man in America” from Outside magazine.

He discusses his incredible life experience in Can’t Hurt Me and demonstrates that most people only use 40% of their potential. This is what Goggins refers to as The 40% Rule, and his life narrative shows how anyone can use it to overcome sorrow, face fear, and realize their full potential.

#5 Walden

Walden; or, Life in the Woods, first published in 1854, is a vivid depiction of Henry D. Thoreau’s time spent alone in a remote hut at Walden Pond. It is among the most important and captivating works of literature in the United States. This new paperback edition commemorates the 150th anniversary of this timeless book and was introduced by renowned American author John Updike. The majority of Walden’s content, which includes interesting passages like “Reading” and “The Pond in the Winter,” is taken from Thoreau’s notebooks. A trip to Concord, a description of his bean field, and Thoreau’s encounters with an Irish family and a Canadian woodcutter are among his other well-known passages. This is the definitive version of Walden, as close to Thoreau’s original purpose as the evidence permits. This is the appropriate presentation of Thoreau’s monumental role of social critique and dissent for the student and the general reader.

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#6 Wolf Of Wall Street

One of the most notorious figures in American finance during the 1990s was Jordan Belfort, the former boss of the infamous investment firm Stratton Oakmont. A brilliant and cunning stock-chopper, Belfort took his merry gang on a crazy ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a sizable office on Long Island. Belfort now tells a story of greed, status, and luxury that no one could have imagined in his astonishing and entertaining tell-all autobiography.

Belfort’s hyped-up, stoned-out traders browbeat clients into a stock purchase that was promised to make huge profits—for the house—at Stratton Oakmont, which is rumored to be the inspiration for the movie Boiler Room. But an insatiable thirst for vice, dubious methods, and a tragic alliance with up-and-coming shoe designer Steve Madden would put Belfort in trouble with the police and plunge him into terrifying darkness of his own.

#7 A Beautiful Terrible Thing

What happens when you learn that the guy you’ve centered your life around didn’t actually exist? When something that you thought “it could never happen to me” does?

When Jen Waite starts to discover that her devoted husband—the father of her little daughter, her best friend, and the love of her life—fits the standard definition of a psychopath, she asks herself these questions. Waite details every tragic find, every life-ending deception, and what transpires after the dust settles on her broken marriage in a candid, first-person account.

#8 Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

In Zen & the Art of Motorbike Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, a father and his young son travel across the American Northwest on a motorcycle during the summer. The book is an analysis of how we live and a meditation on how to live better.

Robert M. Pirsig wrote a book titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, which was initially released in 1974. It is the first of Pirsig’s books to examine his idea of Quality and is a dramatized autobiography.

#9 Smile

Raina merely desires to be a typical sixth-grader. However, after leaving Girl Scouts one evening, she trips and hurts her two front teeth badly. This sets off a protracted and stressful process that includes surgery, headgear that is embarrassing, and even a retainer with false teeth attached. Additionally, there are still other issues to contend with, like a significant earthquake, boy confusion, and unfriendly friends. Anyone who attended middle school will be able to relate to this authentic coming-of-age story, especially those who have experienced some dental drama of their own.

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#10 Glass Castle

A tender, poignant story of unwavering love in a family that gave the author the ferocious desire to build out a prosperous life on her own terms despite its obvious imperfections.

Jeannette Walls was raised by parents whose values and obstinate nonconformity served as both a curse and a blessing for them. Four kids were born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls. They initially led a nomadic lifestyle, traveling between Southwest desert settlements and camping in the mountains. When Rex was sober, he captivated his children’s attention by teaching them about physics, geology, and, most importantly, how to live freely. Rex was a captivating, bright man. Rose Mary, a writer and painter who couldn’t stomach having to support her family, referred to herself as an “excitement addict.” Making an artwork that would endure a lifetime was more appealing than preparing a dinner that would be eaten in fifteen minutes.

#11 Educated

The first time Tara Westover entered a classroom, she was 17 years old. She was raised by survivalists in the highlands of Idaho, where she stocked up on home-canned peaches and slept with her “head-for-the-hills bag” in case the world ended. She salvaged in her father’s junkyard in the winter and boiled herbs for her mother, a midwife, and healer, in the summer.

Tara saw a doctor or nurse because her father forbids going to hospitals. Herbalism was used to heal burns from explosions as well as gashings and concussions at home. The family was so cut off from society that no one was there to make sure the kids went to school or to step in when Tara’s older brother started acting violently.

#12 Untamed

Untamed is a powerful wake-up call as well as an intimate narrative that is simultaneously soulful and hilarious, aggressive and sympathetic. It is the tale of how one woman came to understand that a good mother does not slowly die for her kids, but rather teaches them how to live completely. It is the tale of navigating divorce, creating a new blended family, and realizing that whether a family is fractured or entire depends less on its makeup than on each individual’s capacity to contribute her whole self to the table. And it’s the tale of how every one of us can start to believe in ourselves enough to establish boundaries, come to terms with our bodies, honor our rage and heartache, and unlock new our most real, wildest instincts in order to transform into women who can, at long last, look in the mirror and declare: There She Is.

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#13 The Glass Castle

A tender, poignant story of unwavering love in a family that gave the author the ferocious desire to carve out a prosperous life on her own terms despite its obvious imperfections.

Jeannette Walls was raised by parents whose values and obstinate nonconformity served as both a curse and a blessing for them. Four kids were born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls. They initially led a nomadic lifestyle, traveling between Southwest desert settlements and camping in the mountains. When Rex was sober, he captivated his children’s attention by teaching them about physics, geology, and, most importantly, how to live freely. Rex was a captivating, bright man. Rose Mary, a writer and painter who couldn’t stomach having to support her family, referred to herself as an “excitement addict.” Making an artwork that would endure a lifetime was more appealing than preparing a dinner that would be eaten in fifteen minutes.

#14 Wild

The 2012 memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by American author, writer, and podcaster Cheryl Strayed. In her memoir, Strayed refers to her 1995 1,100-mile trek over the Pacific Crest Trail as a voyage of self-discovery.

Cheryl Strayed believed she had lost everything when she was twenty-two. After her mother passed away, her family dispersed, and her marriage quickly fell apart. With nothing left to lose, she took the rashest choice of her life four years later. She would travel more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, without any expertise or preparation, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State.

#15 When Breath Becomes Air

A young neurosurgeon who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer seeks to respond to the question, “What makes a life worth living?” in this profoundly touching and precisely observed memoir. Readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott will find this work to be highly recommended.

On the cusp of finishing ten years of training to become a neurosurgeon at the age of 36, Paul Kalanithi received a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis. He alternated between working as a doctor caring for the terminally ill and being patient fighting for life. The future he and his wife had envisioned vanished in an instant. When Breath Becomes Air follows Kalanithi’s development from a gullible medical student who was “possessed,” as he put it, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life,” to a Stanford neurosurgeon who works in the brain, the most important location for a person’s identity, and then to a patient and new father who must face his own mortality.

#16 The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath, an American author, and poet, only wrote one book, The Bell Jar. The book, which was first released in 1963 under the alias “Victoria Lucas,” is semi-autobiographical, albeit places and people’s identities have been changed.

The Bell Jar details Esther Greenwood’s breakdown: clever, attractive, incredibly gifted, and accomplished, but slowly crumbling—possibly for the final time. Sylvia Plath expertly engrosses the reader in Esther’s breakdown to the point where Esther’s insane behavior seems entirely plausible and approachable like watching a movie. The Bell Jar is a disturbing American classic thanks to its astounding achievement of penetrating so deeply into the terrifying recesses of the psyche.

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#17 Marching Powder

When Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who offered tours inside Bolivia’s famed San Pedro prison, was discovered, backpacker Rusty Young was traveling throughout South America. Young Australian journalists traveled to La Paz to attend one of Thomas’s illicit tours out of curiosity. As they worked together to document Thomas’s experiences in jail, they quickly became friends and then collaborators. For the following three months, Rusty lived within the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas, and documenting one of the oddest and most captivating prison tales ever. He did this by bribing the guards to let him stay. Marching Powder is the end product.

The premise of this book is that San Pedro is not your typical jail. It is predicted that inmates will purchase their cells from real estate agents. Some people own and operate businesses. Families who are in prison house women and kids. It is a place where drug lords and dishonest politicians reside in opulent homes while the lowest inmates endure conditions of poverty and misery.

#18 Bravo Two Zero

McNab’s work, a work of fiction titled “Remote Control,” has already earned him a spot on this list. The former member of the SAS makes a second appearance in his book that was published in 1993 and is about a mission that took place behind enemy lines during the 1991 Gulf War. During that conflict, eight members of the SAS regiment set out on a top-secret mission that was intended to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines.

They were to locate and destroy mobile Scud launchers, as well as sever the underground network connection that connected Baghdad and the northwestern part of Iraq. This was to be done under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab. Others who were involved in the mission have claimed that certain aspects of the book are either made up or exaggerated to heighten the sense of suspense. McNab weaves a compelling tale of bravery in the face of overwhelming challenges, and this story is compelling regardless of the truth regarding the mission.

#19 If You Tell

Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Sisterhood Bond are depicted in this True Story. When Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word “mom” after more than a decade, it triggers memories that they have kept hidden since they were young and nails like an eagle’s talons. Before now. Their evil mother, Shelly, tortured and mistreated her daughters for years in secret in their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, subjecting them to unspeakable humiliation, abuse, and mental terrors. Despite everything, Nikki, Sami, and Tori formed a resilient friendship that made them less exposed than Shelly had anticipated. The sisters discovered the fortitude and strength to flee an intensifying nightmare that resulted in several murders, even as others were dragged into their mother’s sinister web.

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#20 True Detective

Private eye Nathan Heller might be willing to put his life in danger to make a Depression dollar in 1932’s mob-ridden Chicago, but he never compromises his razor-sharp wit. That’s why both mystery enthusiasts and critics place the historical thriller True Detective at the top of their lists, and why the book won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best novel. Author Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) has just released a new edition of the modern classic that features Nathan Heller in all his guts and glory. Nathan Heller of the pickpocket detail, the city’s youngest plainclothes officer, is tasked with cleaning up Chicago’s tarnished reputation in time for the World’s Fair.

Heller finds himself an inadvertent and unwilling participant in an assassination attempt on Frank Nitti, the heir to Al Capone when the Mayor’s “Hoodlum Squad” drags him along on a raid with no instructions other than to keep his mouth shut and his gun nearby. He soon finds himself in the thick of a mob vs. mayor power struggle, and the young detective must foil a political assassination that could have global repercussions in Miami Beach. Readers interact with historical figures like “Dutch” Reagan, George Raft, and FDR himself as Collins’ explosive and evocative large-landscape historical thriller mixes the complex history of Chicago’s Century of Progress with a classic noir mystery.

#21 Clue

All of Mr. Boddy’s enigmatic guests are made suspects after he is killed at Hill House.

#22 Monster

Steve Harmon, a 16-year-old, is on trial for murder. According to reports, Steve acted as the lookout when the proprietor of a drugstore in Harlem was shot and killed inside of his business. Steve is used as a pawn by “the system,” which is filled with cynical officials and dishonest inmates who will turn anyone in to reduce their own sentences, whether or not they are guilty. Steve is forced to consider his identity for the first time as he prepares to enter prison, where he may spend the rest of his days.

Steve, an aspiring filmmaker, attempts to turn his trial into a script in order to cope with the horrifying circumstances that surround him. Scene by scene, he records the entire account of how his entire life was abruptly changed. But despite his efforts, reality becomes hazy and his vision becomes distorted to the point where he is unable to distinguish between himself and the truth. The writing of Walter Dean Myers is at its finest in this gripping book.

#23 The Pact

The Hartes and the Golds have shared everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duties over the course of their eighteen years of living next to one another. They have become so close that it appears as though they have known each other forever. It’s hardly surprising that Chris and Emily’s friendship develops into something more in high school since they’ve always been best friends—parents and kids alike. Ever since they were born, they have been soul mates.

No one is prepared for the shocking reality that Emily is dead at the age of 17 after suffering a head injury from a gunshot when midnight hospital calls start coming in. The firearm Chris grabbed from his father’s cabinet had one live round that is still in it; Chris claims to have intended to use it for himself. But the suicide pact Chris has outlined raises questions in the mind of a nearby detective.

#24 I Am Pilgrim

A frantic race against the clock…and an unforgiving foe. An unidentified young woman was killed in a run-down hotel, her identifying features destroyed by acid. In the sweltering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square, a parent was executed publicly. An infamous Syrian biotech expert was discovered blind in a junkyard near Damascus. Human remains in flames on an isolated Afghan mountainside. A perfect scheme to execute a terrible crime against humanity. Only one man may travel the route that connects them all.’

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#25 Hard Rain Falling

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter is a dour narrative of crime, retribution, and the search for ever-elusive forgiveness. It is a story of being down and out but never down for good. The story revolves around the exploits of Jack Levitt, an orphaned youngster scraping by in the dingy pool halls and sleazy hotels of Portland, Oregon. Billy Lancing, a talented pool hustler and young black runaway, becomes pals with Jack. Jack is transferred to a reform school after a failed theft, where he is abused and placed in seclusion until being released. Billy has since become a member of the middle class, getting married, having a son, owning a business, and having a mistress. However, neither Jack nor Billy can avoid their troubled pasts, and before their unusual double drama reaches to a violent and revelatory conclusion, they will reunite in San Quentin.

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#26 Books Like Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

In Zen & the Art of Motorbike Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, a father and his young son travel across the American Northwest on a motorcycle during the summer. The book is an analysis of how we live and a reflection on how to live better.

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#27 Books Like Westworld

At Westworld, the ultimate resort, you can live out your desires for $1,000 per day. Any human need, including murder, violence, and wild sexual abandonment, is satisfied by fully automated, humanoid robots created solely for your amusement.

Up until a single man stands alone against the crazy machines bent on complete carnage as a little computer casualty spreads like wildfire!