BVBook Verdict

If you liked

Books like The rambler

Loved The rambler by Samuel Johnson? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from essays, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.

10 books · ranked

  1. 1

    Slouching Towards Bethlehem

    Joan Didion · 1968 · Essays

    Sharp, cool essays on 1960s America; the book that set the standard for the personal essay.

  2. 2

    The Fire Next Time

    James Baldwin · 1963 · Essays

    Two searing essays on race, faith and America; as urgent now as when they were written.

  3. 3

    A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

    Alfred Klemmt · 1710 · Essays

    In this exceptional work, Berkeley makes the striking claim that physical things consist of nothing but ideas and therefore do not exist outside the mind. This claim establishes him as the founder of

  4. 4

    The Age of Reason

    Thomas Paine · 1794 · Essays

    Thomas Paine who was a dynamic philosophical presence in the American Revolution of 1776 wrote his last book in 1795 on an investigation and commentary of organized religion with a focus on Christiani

  5. 5

    The essays of Elia, first series

    Charles Lamb · 1800 · Essays

    Published under the pseudonym 'Elia,' Charles Lamb's series of essays on subjects ranging from the impressionability of schoolboys to the peculiarity of one's relations, from the pitfalls of lending b

  6. 6

    Works (American Notes

    Charles Dickens · 1800 · Essays

    American Notes was the result of the author's five-month trip to America in 1842. Dickens's travelogue includes the glitter of Boston; a Broadway swarming with hogs; a gruesome penitentiary in Philade

  7. 7

    Consider the Lobster

    David Foster Wallace · 2005 · Essays

    Restless, footnote-laden essays on everything from tennis to ethics; brilliant and exhausting in the best way.

  8. 8

    Men Explain Things to Me

    Rebecca Solnit · 2014 · Essays

    The essay collection that helped popularise a now-famous idea; sharp feminist criticism.

  9. 9

    Feel Free

    Zadie Smith · 2018 · Essays

    Wide-ranging essays on culture, books and life; smart, generous and curious.

  10. 10

    A Grief Observed

    C. S. Lewis · 1961 · Essays

    Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moment," A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the mid

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