Book Recommendations Based on Other Books

After enjoying a book, it’s common to want to read similar ones. They don’t have to necessarily have an almost equivalent plot or include characters who have the same personalities, but it’s appealing when they share a couple of features. Wanting to read comparable books is also a good opportunity to discover ones that are not as renowned. Having three worldwide famous books as a starting point, I have three book recommendations for you. They are not necessarily unknown or obscure, particularly not in the countries that their authors are from. However, they are not as universally celebrated.

 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante ⇒ Nada by Carmen Laforet

The first book in The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend, is well known and loved by many. It explores the first years of Elena and Lila’s convoluted friendship. They are two underprivileged girls who met at primary school in a problematic neighbourhood in Naples. As we are being presented with their story, we also learn more about the Italian society of the time, since Elena Ferrante explored themes connected with equality, class, social mobility and the role of education.

Other novel that isn’t only character focused, but that also delves into social issues is Nada by Carmen Laforet. The main character is Andrea, a young woman who is trying to lead an independent life in Barcelona, the city she moved to in order to attend university. She struggles to reconcile her family’s poverty with the way of life of her new friends. It is an involving read about female friendship and a broken family.

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Books in Primary Colours: Red

In order to succinctly comment on some of the books that I’ve either read before I started blogging or that I feel that I should talk about more often, I decided to write a three-part series of posts about three books whose covers are predominantly yellow, blue or red. Besides their covers being dominated by a primary colour, these books just have one more thing in common – they still have a place on my shelves.

This third and last instalment is all about the colour red. Or it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, when I came up with the idea for this series of posts, I didn’t realise that I had already written in depth about almost all of the books on my shelves whose covers are predominantly red, since they are mostly recent reads. So, as you can see from the picture above, I’m slightly cheating. Two of the books have white covers. But, in my defence, it’s the elements in red that stand out.

 

Amor de Perdição (Love of Perdition) by Camilo Castelo Branco

This is one of the most famous books by the Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco. It was written in the 19th century and is an example of the romanticism movement. The forbidden love between Simão Botelho and Teresa Albuquerque is at the core of this novel and is used to condemn the social impositions of the time when it came to relationships.

My First Loves from Various Book Genres

‘What is your favourite book genre?’. Here is a question I haven’t got an answer for. Lately, I have been mainly reading books that can be categorised as literary fiction, a term I use despite having various reservations about it (an interesting topic for discussion which I’m not focusing on today). However, I also really like fantasy, dystopian novels and horror, for example. My reading taste is fairly varied in this regard.

When it comes to some genres, I clearly remember the book that made me want to read more of the same sort. The books mentioned below are my first loves from a specific genre, although some of them show influences from various other ones. They may not be my favourite books from that genre anymore, but I liked them enough when I first read them to continue picking up books with some of the same characteristics.

 

Fantasy

Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Having the third book of the Harry Potter series as my first love in the fantasy category may seem a bit strange. But this was the first book that I read in the series. I was around 13 years old, and it was recommended and lent to me by a friend, who apparently didn’t consider necessary to start the series from the beginning. And to be honest I don’t remember struggling to understand the plot at all. After falling in love with the characters and the world portrayed, I then bought Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone and from there read all the others books in order.