Books like To Kill a Mockingbird, according to Reddit

The read-alike list

Ranked by co-mention strength — how often each book shares a thread with To Kill a Mockingbird, normalized so ubiquitous books don't dominate.

#1

Shōgun

James Clavell

A shipwrecked English pilot washes up in feudal Japan and gets pulled between warlords, Jesuit priests, and Spanish traders, and has to pick a side to survive.

3 shared threads

#2

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Brandon Sanderson

A street thief who can swallow metal and burn it for power gets recruited into a heist crew whose actual target is the immortal emperor who's ruled for a thousand years.

4 shared threads

#3

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkien

A hobbit who has never left his own pantry gets recruited by thirteen dwarves and a wizard to steal treasure back from a dragon.

3 shared threads

#4

The Way of Kings

Brandon Sanderson

A bridgeman slave carries spears through a warzone he's not allowed to fight in, until he decides to become the soldier no one will follow.

3 shared threads

#5

Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson

A continent-spanning empire's mage-soldiers besiege a city that might already be doomed by gods playing a board game with human pieces.

4 shared threads

#6

Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card

A child prodigy recruited into Battle School at six ends up commanding real war fleets, believing until the end that it's all just a simulation.

6 shared threads

#7

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin

A proud boy on a poor island learns real magic, casts one spell out of arrogance, and spends the rest of the book hunted by what it let loose.

4 shared threads

#8

The Eye of the World

Robert Jordan

Trollocs burn a village hunting for one of three farm boys, so an Aes Sedai spirits all three out before anyone learns which.

3 shared threads

#9

Dune

Frank Herbert

Paul Atreides survives his family's massacre on a desert planet and becomes the messiah the empire engineered him to be, then has to live with it.

8 shared threads

#10

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Earth gets demolished to build a hyperspace bypass, and the last man alive escapes only because an alien researching a galactic encyclopedia needed an assistant.

4 shared threads

#11

Hyperion

Dan Simmons

Seven pilgrims travel together to a planet that kills, each one carrying the private story of why they volunteered to go.

7 shared threads

#12

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for the Mafia, moonlights as a hacker-samurai, and stumbles into a virus that infects minds instead of computers.

4 shared threads

The overlap, in numbers

Where each pairing actually shows up. Click through for the full Reddit verdict on each book.

1. #1 Shōgun by James Clavell — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
2. #2 Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
3. #3 The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
4. #4 The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
5. #5 Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
6. #6 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card — 6 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
7. #7 A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
8. #8 The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
9. #9 Dune by Frank Herbert — 8 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
10. #10 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
11. #11 Hyperion by Dan Simmons — 7 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
12. #12 Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF