Cosmos Reading List 2025 Updates
`Goals: 100 Books, 2,000 poems etc total 3,000 to 4,000 books/poems/stories listed numerically and chronologically by month
Read Classics finish reading books. You Must read series
One Thriller Per Month
One history/politics book per month
Read A Lot More Poetry
Read At Least One Book A Year in Spanish.
Read At Least One Book A Year in Korean
One classic book
One poetry book
One Sci-fi book
One history/politics book
One current event book
One thriller
Buy the 2024 best SciFi read in the fall
Buy the 2024 Best Poetry read in the fall
Re-do Mod Po following Mod Po plus poems
Start a different poetry course on Coursea
Start and complete All poetry poetry courses
Alternate between reading Kindle classics, poetry and other books
I will try to finish reading classic books. I have a collection from Kindle of 50 books to read before you die, in three volumes – 15O books in total. See the list below. I have read many of them already which I have noted by bolding. As I read them, I will add them to the chronological listing below, and also have the Harvard classic. I had a hard copy set, but donated it, I have to read it on Kindle. I will also continue to read lots of poetry from the Mod Po class, will do the slo-mo courses then re-do it in September, focusing on reading the additional poems I did not last time in Mod Po Plus.
I will alternate between reading Kindle and other books poetry and thrillers etc while in US will read a lot of books from the library but still read things on my Kindle classic list goal is to finish the classic list by next year !
Numerical Listing
Note: after reading each book, write a review for Bach’s Reading List and for Goodreads copy to my blog entry and cc Suback, Medium, Wattpad, Fan Story, and Writing.com.
Then save under Review when posting on the blog post, Zamzar audio clip into the blog piece, and do Spotify and Substack podcasts, later Threads and YouTube vblog starting in the fall
Before reading ask Co-pilot the following questions
Please provide a synopsis, list of characters, author bio, quotes, and list of books by the author, plus literary reputation. please do not format to make it easier to cut and paste
Fiction
- Cather, Willa: My Ántonia From 50 Books Volume One
- Chopin, Kate: The Awakening From 50 Books Volume One
- Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room. From 50 Books Volume One
- Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie in progress From 50 Books Volume One
- Janet Evanovich Plum Lucky Camp H library In Progress
- Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, the Job – Camp H Library
- Sharon Bolton, the Pact, Canal street library TBC
- Lisa Gardner One Step Too Far Canal Street Library TBC
- Stephannie Merritt, the Storm TBC
- Bobby Palmer Isaac and the Egg in progress
- Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones TBC
- Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Gorky, Maxim: The Mother TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- JM Baarre Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- BM Bower – Cabin Fever TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- – Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- -Robert William Chambers The King in Yellow TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Wilkie Collins The Woman in White TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Richard Connell The Most Dangerous Game TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition. TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Margaret Deland The Iron Woman TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Andrew Lang The Arabian Nights TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Michael Proust- Swann’s Way TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Emerson American Civilization (1862)
Once I finish the above, I will finish the Harvard Classic list.
Next Up Bacon TBC
Thomas Browne TBC
Poetry
Poetry
Bianca Boonstra
- Writer’s Cramp
Anne Frank
- Anne Frank’s Tree
- Anne Frank’s Tree
Entou
- Thunder and Lightning
- Almost Dead
Lawrencealot
- Throw Away Jay’s Way
Linda Varsell Smith
- Pathway
Robert Brewer Writers Digest
- Robert Lee Brewer – Give Me a Reason Zejel
- An Old Hymn Still Singing Zejel
Elegy
- David Romano’s “When Tomorrow Starts With Me”
- H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues”
- John Milton’s “Lycidas”
- Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods”
- Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”
- Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain”
Haiku
- Gypsy Blue Rose – Cows Wander at Night
- Zebras Zeal Gallop
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
- Edward Lee Masters – The Hill
- Fiddler Jones
- Petite The Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Miniver Cheevy
- Flood’s Party
James Weldon Johnson
- James Weldon Johnson
- The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar
- The Poet
- Life
- Life’s Tragedy
Robert Frost – Mod Po Selection
- The Death of the Hired Man
- Mending Wall
- Birches
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Tree in My Window
- Directive
Amy Lowell
- Patterns
Gertrude Stein – Mod Po Selections
- Susie Asado
- From Tender Buttons – A Box
- From Tender Buttons – A Plate
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
- I Sit and Sew
Carl Sandburg
- Grass
- Cahoots
Wallace Stevens – Mod Po Selections
- Peter Quince at the Clavier
- Disillusionment of 10:00
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
- The Emperor of Ice Cream
- A Mere Being
Angelina Weld Grimke
- Angelina Weld Grimke
- Fragment
William Carlos Williams – Mod Po Selections
- Tact
- Dance Ruse
- The Yachts
- From Apostle that Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 to 92
Sara Teasdale
- Moonlight
- There Will Come Soft Rains
Ezra Pound
- The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance
- The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
- In a Station of the Metro
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
- From Cantos: 56 Libretto – Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) – Mod Po Selections
- Sea Rose
- Helen
- From The Walls Do Not Fall – An Incident Here and There
- From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose and A Beggar – Why Did You Come?
- Take Me Anywhere
- Venus
Robinson Jeffers
- Gala in April
- Shine, Perishing Republic
- Clouds at Evening
- Credo
Marianne Moore
- Fish
- Poetry
T.S. Eliot
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- The Wasteland
Claude McKay
- If We Must Die
- The Harlem Dancer
Archibald MacLeish
- Ars Poetica
Edna St. Vincent Millay
- First Fig
- Recuerdo
- E. Cummings
- In Just-
- Buffalo Bill
- The Cambridge Ladies Who Lived in Furnished Souls
- Next to, Of Course, God, America
- Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond
- Rpophessagr
Jean Toomer
- Reapers
- November Cotton Flower
- Portrait in Georgia
Louise Bogan
- Medusa
- New Moon
Melvin B. Tolson
- Dark Symphony
- From Harlem Gallery: Psi – Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table
Hart Crane
- From The Bridge
- Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge
- From The Bridge – Section XI: Powhatan’s Daughter – The River
Robert Francis
- Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
- The Negro Speaks of Rivers
- I, Too, Sing America
- Dream Boogie
- Harlem
Countee Cullen
- Incident
- To John Keats, Poet, At Spring Time
- Yet Do I Marvel
- From The Dark Tower
Stanley Kunitz
- Father and Son
- The Portrait
- Touch Me
- H. Auden
- Musée des Beaux Arts
- Epitaph on a Tyrant
Theodore Roethke
- My Papa’s Waltz
- The Waking
- In a Dark Time
Charles Olson
- From The Maximus Poems: One – Maximus of Gloucester, To You
- The Distances
Elizabeth Bishop
- The Fish
- Sestina
- First Death in Nova Scotia
- Visit to St. Elizabeths
- One Art
Robert Hayden
- Middle Passage
- Those Winter Sundays
- Frederick Douglass
Muriel Rukeyser
- Effort at Speech Between Two People
- Then I Saw What the Calling Was
- The Poem as Mask
Delmore Schwartz
- The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
John Berryman
- From The Dream Songs
- Feeling Your Compact and Delicious Body
- Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So
- There Shut Down Once
- This World is Gradually Becoming a Place
- Henry’s Understanding
Randall Jarrell
- 90 North
- The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
- The Woman at the Washington Zoo
- Next Day
Weldon Kees
- To My Daughter
Dudley Randall
- A Different Image
William Stafford
- Traveling through the Dark
- At the Bomb Testing Site
Ruth Stone
- Scars
Margaret Walker
- For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks – Mod Po Selection
- The Mother
- A Song in the Front Yard
- The Bean Eaters
- The Lovers of the Poor
- We Real Cool
- The Blackstone Rangers
Robert Lowell
- To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage
- Skunk Hour
- For the Union Dead
Robert Duncan
- Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
- My Mother Would Be a Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Populist Manifesto
William Meredith
- Parents
Howard Nemerov
- Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
Hayden Carruth
- The Hyacinth Gardens in Brooklyn
- August 1945
Richard Wilbur
- Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
- Cottage Street
- The Writer
James Dickey
- The Sheep Child
Allen Ginsberg
- Howl
Richard Hugo
- Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg
- The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field
- The Poem Unwritten
- Cademon
- Swan in Falling Snow
- Who Is Simpson?
- American Poetry
Carolyn Kizer
- A Muse of Water
Kenneth Koch
- Fresh Air
Maxine Kumin
- Morning Swim
Gerald Stern
- Behaving Like a Jew
- The Dancing
- Another Insane Devotion
- R. Ammons
- The City Limits
- Corsons Inlet
Robert Bly
- Snowfall in the Afternoon
- Driving into Town to Mail a Letter
- Walking from Sleep
Robert Creeley
- The Flower
- I Know a Man
- The Language
- The Rain
- Bresson’s Movies
John Merrill
- Victor Dog
- Steps
Frank O’Hara – New York School
- Lana Turner Has Collapsed
- The Day Lady Died
John Ashbery – New York School
- Some Trees
- Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
- What Is Poetry?
Galway Kinnell
- The Bear
- After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
- Saint Francis and the Sow
- S. Merwin
- Air
- For the Anniversary of My Death
- Yesterday
- Chord
James Wright
- A Blessing
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
- Lying in a Hammock at
Wes Merwin
- Air
- For the Anniversary of My Death
- Yesterday
- Chord
- A Blessing
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, OH
- Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, MN
- In Response to the Rumor That Otis Warehouse in Wheeling, WV Has Been Condemned
- My Son, My Executioner
- Digging
- Rowing
- Orion Planetarium
- A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning
- From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules of Break Like a Thermometer
Gregory Corsa
- Gregory Corso
- Marriage
Gary Snyder
- Gary Snyder
- Hay for the Horses
- Riprap
- Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Derek Walcott
- A Far Cry from Africa
- Sea Grapes
- Find the Schooner Flight Part 11 After the Storm. There’s a Fresh Light That Follows
- The Light of the World
- From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing of Quiet, Achilles, Afrolabe’s Son
Miller Williams
- Let Me Tell You
Etheridge Knight
- Idea of Ancestry
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones
- Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
- Agony As Now
- SOS
- Black Art
Ted Berrigan
- Wrong Rain
- A Final Sonnet
Audre Lorde
- Power
Sonia Sanchez
- Poetry at 30
Mark Strand
- The Prediction
- The Night, The Porch
Russell Edson
- A Stone Is Nobody’s
Mary Oliver
- Singapore
- The Summer Day
Charles Wright
- Reunion
- Dead Color
- California Dreaming
Lucille Clifton
- Homage to My Hips
- At Least at Last We Killed the Roaches
- The Death of Fry, Alfred Clifton
June Jordan
- Home About My Rights
Frederick Seidel
- 1968
- K. Williams
- Find My Window
- Blades
Tony Hoagland
- The Mechanic
Michael S. Harper
- Dear John, Dear Coltrane
- Last Affair. Bessie’s Blues Song
- Grandfather
- Nightmare Begins Responsibility
Charles Simic
- Stone
- Fork
- Classic Ballroom Dances
Paula Gunn Allen
- Grandmother
Frank Bidart
- Ellen West
Carl Dennis
- Spring Letter
- Two or Three Wishes
Stephen Dunn
- Allegory of the Cave
- Tucson
Robert Pinsky
- History of My Heart
- The Questions
- Samurai Song
James Welch
- Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat
Billy Collins
- Introduction to Poetry
- The Dead
Toi Derricotte
- The Weakness
Stephen Dobyns
- How to Like It?
- Lullaby
Robert Hass
- Song
- That Photographer?
- Return of Robinson Jeffers
Lyn Hejinian
- From My Life: Trim with Colored Ribbons
- H. Fairchild
- The Machinist Teaching His Daughter to Play the Piano
Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)
- But He Was Cool or Even Stopped for Green Lights
- Upon To Compliment Other Poems
William Matthews
- In Memory of the Utah Stars
- The Accompanist
Sharon Olds
- The Language of the Brag
- The Lifting
Henry Taylor
- Barbed Wire
Tess Gallagher
- Black, Silver
- Under Stars
Michael Palmer
- I Do Not
James Tate
- The Lost Pilot
Norman Dubie
- Elizabeth’s War with the Christmas Bear
- The Funeral
Carol Muske Dukes
- August, Los Angeles Lullaby
Kay Ryan
- Turtle
- Bestiary
Larry Levis
- Childhood Ideogram
- Winter Stars
Adrian C. Louis
- Looking for Judas
- How Much Lux?
- The People of the Other Village
Marilyn Nelson
- The Ballad of Aunt Geneva
- Star Fix
Ai
- Cuba 1963
- The Kid
- Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
- Thanks
- To Do Street
- Facing It
- Nude Interrogation
Nathaniel Mackey
- Song of the Andoumboulou
Gregory Orr
- Gathering the Bones Together
- Two Lines from the Brother Grimm
- Origin of the Marble Forest
Robert Hill Long
- Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
- Away
Heather McHugh
- Language Lesson 1976
- What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
- In Cold Storm Light
Olga Broumas
- Calypso
Victor Hernández Cruz
- Latin & Soul
Jane Miller
- Miami Heart
David St. John
- Iris
- D. Wright
- Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
- Girlfriend Poem #3
- Crescent
Carolyn Forché
- Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
- San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
- What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
- She Had Some Horses
- My House Is the Red Earth
Garrett Hongo
- The Legend
Andrew Hudgins
- Begotten
- We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
- Imaging Their Own Hymns
- Song
Paul Muldoon
- Meeting the British
- Errata
- The Throwback
Judith Ortiz Cofer
- Quinceanera
Rita Dove
- Parsley
- Daystar
- After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
- Our Calling
Barbara Hamby
- Thinking of Galileo
- Hatred
Mark Jarman
- Unholy Sonnet
Naomi Shihab Nye
- The Traveling Onion
- Arabic
- Wedding Cake
Alberto Ríos
- Nani
- England Finally Like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
- Nocturne Blue Waves
- The Unfinished
Gary Soto
- Field Poem
- Oranges
- Black Hair
Susan Stewart
- Yellow Star and Ice
- The Forest
Mark Doty
- Brilliance
- Esta Noche
- Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
- Black Nikes
Franz Wright
- Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
- To My Brother
- Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros
- My Wicked, Wicked Ways
- Little Clowns, My Heart
Cornelius Eady
- Jack Johnson Does the Eagle Rock
- Crows in a Strong Wind
- I’m a Fool to Love You
Louise Erdrich
- Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
David Mason
- Spooning
Marilyn Chin
- How I Got That Name
- Compose Near the Bay Bridge
- The Survivor
Cathy Song
- The Youngest Daughter
Annie Finch
- Another Reluctance
- Insert
Li-Young Lee
- The Gift
- Eating Together
Carl Phillips
- Our Lady
- As from a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
- Bag of Mice
- Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
- The Venus Hottentot
Reetika Vazirani
- From White Elephants
- A Million Balconies
- Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
- What the Orphan Inherits
- The Powwow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethewey
- Hot Combs
- Amateur Fighter
- Flounder
- E. Stallings
- The Tantrum
Joana Klink
- Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
- Postfeminism
- Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
- Quivira City Limits
- Everywhere is Out of Town
- Whatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
- At Pegasus
- Lady Sings the Blues
Terrance Hayes
- At Pegasus
- Lady Sings the Blues
Pablo Neruda
- Viente Poemas De Amor Poems of Love 1924
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Cuerpo De Mujer (Body of a Woman)
- Ah Vastness of Pines
- Leaning Into the Afternoon
- Every Day You Play
- Thinking, Tingling Shadows
- Tonight I Write
- Pablo Neruda, “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”
Gypsy Blue Rose
- Gypsy Blue Rose Light of the Bright Moon
- Gypsy Blue Rose Love Birds
- Gypsy Blue Rose I see you dance across life’s stage
- Gypsy Blue Rose Adrift Cherita
Jejeu
- Gypsey Blue Rose Over Green Hills a limpid brook flows
- Pillow Woman
- Steady Breathing warms my Neck
- Brian Compton Might I Interject AHD
Judi Van Godner
Sioux
- Mask
| 429. Angel’s Dilemma
430. Where Frogs Are
431. Garland Seox
Quin Jejeu Chinese Form
432. Ishikawa Jozan Mount Fuji
433. Cheng Hao Autumn Moon
434. Gyspy Rose BLue
Waka
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist
435.
Free Verse
436. Sierra Scribbler BLISS
437. Crookston 2 Daffodil
438. Noland Reflections
Bragi
439. Judi Van Gorder Persimmon
440. Linda Versa Smith The snowplow heaves snow banks so high
Lune
441. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Lune
Rondel
442. Lady And Louis Two Silver Rings Rondel
443. Mountainwriter49 Forever In My Heart Rondel
Abhanga
444. Judi Can Gorder Incomplete Abhanga
445. Judi Can Gorder Magic Moment abhanga
446. Rachael the Library is Wwhere Abhanga
447. Astrologically Speaking Aghanga
448. Tukaram, Words Are The Only Jewels I possess Ahanga
Writing Com reviews
449. Dean Koontz Dragon Tears
450. Harlan Ellison“A Boy And His Dog.”
451. Fritz Leiber“Spacetime For Springers,”
452. Matt Griffin “Schrodinger’s Cat”
453. Larry Niven, Rescue Party,
454. Azimuth R. Daneel Olivaw
455. Roger Zelazny For A Breath I Tarry
456. Genesis
457. Goethe’s Faust
458. E. Housman A Shropshire Lad
459. Keith Laumer“Combat Unit”
460. Eregon Proofreading Hell
461. Christine B Demonstration of Proof
462. Allen Charles A Love Beyond Pain
463. Professor Moriatty’s True Confession
464. Bobby Lou Steveson Vanwolf
465. Beholden Seven
466. WD Wilcox Valkyrie
467. Kare Enga Pasta Alfredo Please
468. Gervic A Hawk’s Gift
469. Sumojo Vexatious Valentine
470. Cubby on the Road Again, Clinging Hearts
471. Peris Throckmortorf Hearts and Darts
472. Fye a Simple Blue Note Book
Manardina
473. Lawrencealot – Do All Deceive (Form: Manardina)
Free Verse
474. Kafka The Metamorpousis
475. John Gardner Grendel Old English Beowulf
476. John Gardner, The Art Of Fiction
477. Walt Whitman“Song of Myself.”
478. William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”
479. William Carlos Williams’“This Is Just to Say”
480. Gwendoly Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
481. TS Elliot the Waste Land
482. Sylvia Plath Daddy
483. Wallace Stevens Disissluionment of Ten O Clock
484. Allen Ginsberg America
485. David Ryan Do Not Resuscitate
Etheree
486. Judi Van Gorder Etheree
487. Andrea Dietrich Your Wild Awakening
488. Andrea Dietrich Anonymous Solitude
489. Andrea Dietrich The Lair
490. Marie Summer Red Poppy
491. Marie Summer Blurred Vision (Double Reversed Etheree)
492. Marie Summer Ashen Despair (Double Reversed Etheree)
Zen Haiku
493. ]
494. Gypsy Blue Rose at night zen haiku
495. Gypsy Blue Rose at the Bay zen Haiku
Japanese Love Poems
496. Gypsy Blue Rose When I am Gone Japanese Love Poem
knitelvers
497. Judi Van Gorder How Many Times Knitelvers
498. Larencealot Riskless Investment (Knittelvers)
499. EE Cummings 24 Xaipe One Day a Nigger Caught in his Hand
500. EE Cummings 48 Xiaipe A kite is the Most Dangerous Machine
TH Palmer
501. TH Palmer Try Again
Clerihew
502. E Clerihew Bentley Sir Humphrey Davy
503. Dan, I Am Taylor Swift
504. Alan Mc Alpine Douglas The Road Runner
505. James Dean Chase Diana Dalton
506. James Dean Chase Corporal Klinger
507. Judi Van Gorder The King Of Pop
508. Judi Van Gorder Ms. Amber Heard
509. Frank Gibbard Royal
510. Jay O Toole Clerihew Bob Denver
511. James And Marie Summers Garfield The Cat
512. Linda Varsell Smith Supreme Wordster
513. Linda Varsell Smith Electrifying Inventor
Tanka
514. Princess Nukada I wait for you
515. Takuboku I Shut My Eyes
516. Judi Van Gordner Chill of Soundless Night
517. Dendrobia A cool wind blows in
518. Can Sonmez Subtle hints of spring
519. Cheri L. Ahner Peaceful solitude
520. Ono no Komachi (825-900) Tanka –
521. Ono No Komachi See how the blossoms
522. Tada Chimako
523. A Spray of Water: Tanka
524. June Jordan On Time Tanka
525. Ono No Komachi The Ink Dark Moon Tanaka
526. Mrs. KT Early Spring Rains Thrum
Other famous poems
527. John Donne, “The Sun Rising”
528. Emily Dickinson, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
529. Richard Brautigan Gee You’r So Beautiful That is starting to rain
530. Chief Seattle Man Does not weave this web of life he is merely a strand of it What he does to the web, he does to himself
531. Anita Shreve A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house.
532. Anita Shreve A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house.
533. Benjamin Franklin You may delay, but time will not
534. Bill Keane Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present
535. Geoffrey Chaucer Time and tide wait for no man.
536. Horrace Mann Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
537. Nora Robert’s Three Fates The past is but a thread in the tapestry of our future
Mad Cow Pastoral Poem
538. Lawrencealot (December 18, 2014) Waiting for Us
539. John Keats’s Odes to a Nightingale
540. Joyce Kilmer Trees
541. Anonymous They Learn What We Live
542. Edward Lear’s the Owl and the Pussy Cat
TS Elliot
543. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock “
Allen Ginsberg
544. Allen Ginsberg Howl
Lune
545. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
546. Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
Pantoum
547. John Ashberry Hotel Lautréamont
548. Natalie Diaz My Brother At 3 A.M
549. Denrobia Osprey
550. Natalie E Illum Curious George Can’t Swim: A Pantoum
551. Blass Falconer A Ride in the Rain
552. Judi Van Gorder the Wanderer’s Return
553. Judi Van Gorder Seamrog
554. Judi Van Gorder Hello Goodbye
555. Maria Hummel Station
556. Kiandra Jimenez Halcyon Kitchen
557. Donald Justice Pantoum of the Great Depression
558. Chip Liningston Punta Del Este Pantoum
559. Hailey Leithauser O, She Says
560. Randal Mann Politics
561. Randal Mann Pantoum
562. Sally Ann Roberts It All Started with a Packet of Seeds
563. Clinton Scollard In The Sultan’s Garden
564. David Scheider Pins and Needles
565. Evie Shockley Pantoum Landing, 1975
566. Linda Vsrsell Smith Our Changing Cosmic Fabric
567. Linda Varsell Smith Grandchildren are Rainbow-light
568. Linda Varsell Smith an Eccentric Grandma
569. Linda Varsell Smith Mole Hole Mode
570. Linda Varsell Smith When Saturn Returned
571. Linda Varsell Smith In Gardens of Earthly Delights
572. Linda Varsell Smith Pantoum: Western version of a Malaysian
573. E Stallings Another Lullaby For Insomniacs
574. Marie Summers Celestial Dreams
575. Marie Summers Seasonal Whispers
576. Sasha Steensen Pantoum
577. Chellie Wood Dance In The Rain
578. Robert Lukeman Life – A Marriane Poem
579. Gypsy Rose Blue Billowing Clouds Chain Haiku’
580. Yamanoue no Okura When I eat Mellons Choka
581. anonymous They Learn What We Live
Acrostic
582. Gabriella 2 Masqueraders
583. .Dportwood Rejoice in Life
584. .Dportwood Boots and Spur
Funny Poems
585. Anne Scott Missing
586. Shel Silverstein Messy Room
587. My One-Eyed Love” by Andrew Jefferson
588. Larry Huggins Doggy Heaven
589. Cynthia C. Naspinksi Our Imperfect Dog”
590. Shelby Greer “The Life of a Cupcake”
591. Joanna Fuchs Yes! No!”
592. Cecilia L. Goodbody “Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Car”
593. Robert Lewis Stevenson My Shadow”
594. “I Atte a Chili Pepper” by Barbara Vance
595. Snap, Crackle, Pop” by Catherine Pulsifer
596. Ogden Nash “The People Upstairs”
597. Spike Milligan “Granny”
598. Julie Hebert ” Dessert Last”
599. Richard Leavesley “Belly Button Magic”
600. Anonymous “Have You Ever Seen”
601. Laura Elizabeth Richards “Ele telephony”
602. Anonymous “Do You Carrot All For Me?”
603. Darren Sardelli “My Doggy Ate My Essay”
604. Jack Prelutsky “Be Glad Your Nose is On Your Face”
605. Gelett Burgess “My Feet”
606. Inna Renko “Home Alone”
607. Nandita Shailesh Shanbhag Not Smart Enough For a Smart Phone”
LImericks
608. Edwar Lear Sit variorum megrim evacuation
609. Unknown There was a young lady of Niger
610. Judi Van Gorder The parrot was messy and loud.
611. Judi Van Gorder An Irishman came to my city
612. Judi Van Gorder In the flick of an eye she went down.
613. Judi Van Gorder There once was a poet called Tinker
614. Limericks I cannot compose,
615. There was a young woman named Bright,
616. There was an odd fellow named Gus,
617. There once was a fly on the wall
618. There once was a man from Tibet,
619. There was a young woman named Bright,
620. I need a front door for my hall,
621. There once was a boy named Dan,
622. A newspaperman named Fling,
623. I know an old owl named Boo,
624. I once fell in love with a blonde,
625. I’d rather have Fingers than Toes,
626. There was a Young Lady whose chin
627. Hickory Dickory Dock,
628. There was a faith healer of Deal
629. My dog is really quite hip,
630. A painter, who lived in Great Britain,
631. There is a young schoolboy named Mason,
632. There was a young schoolboy of Rye,
633. An elderly man called Keith
634. There was an old man of Peru,
635. The Incredible Wizard of Oz,
636. Once I visited France,
637. It goes quickly, you know,
638. Is it me or the nature of money,
639. There once was a farmer from Leeds
640. A fellow jumped off a high wall,
641. A man and his lady-love, Min,
642. There was a young lady of Cork,
643. There once was a Martian called Zed
644. There once was a girl named Sam
645. Said the man with a wink of his eye
646. A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
647. There was once a great man in Japan
648. There was a young man so benighted
649. There was an old man from Sudan,
650. A maiden at college, Miss Breeze,
651. A canner, exceedingly canny,
652. A mouse in her room woke Miss Dowd
653. There was a young woman named Kite,
654. A flea and a fly in a flue,
655. A major, with wonderful force,
656. A nifty young flapper named Jane
657. “There’s a train at 4:04,” said Miss Jenny.
658. A canny young fisher named Fisher
659. Here’s to the chigger,
660. A cheerful old bear at the Zoo
661. The bottle of perfume that Willie sent
662. I bought a new Hoover today,
663. A crossword compiler named Moss
664. I’m papering walls in the loo
665. There once was an old man of Esser,
666. To compose a sonata today,
667. There was a young lady named Perkins,
668. There was an old man of Nantucket
669. There was a young lady of Kent,
670. There was a young lady named Hannah
671. There was a dear lady of Eden,
672. A certain young fellow named Bee-Bee
673. Remember when nearly sixteen
674. There was an old person of Fratto
675. There was a young man from Dealing
676. As 007 walked by
677. A tutor who tooted the flute
678. No woodsman would cut a wood, would he
679. There once was a man from the sticks
680. A poet whose friends called him Steve
681. If you catch a chinchilla in Chile
682. There once was a man named Mauvette
683. There once was a beautiful nurse
684. There was a young girl from Flynn
685. There once was a man from Gorem
686. Dylan Thomas
687. The Hand that Signed the Paper
688.
689. W. H. Auden
690.
691. 2
866666
692. 8Political Poetry
Lune
Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
David Schneider Adrift WC Poets Place
Herman Melville Art
693. Occhtfochlach
(author unknown) The Ochtfochlach
Fochlach It (Ochtfochlach)
© Lawrencealot – December 4, 2013
Pen Allen of allpoetry Sixteen Thirty-four Door — Double Ochtfochlach
|
Note due to copy and paste errors the formating and numbering is SNAFU screwed up beyond repair will try to repair it latter will start numbering from this section onward
Political Poetry
| 1. Dylan Thomas, ‘The Hand That Signed the Paper
2. W. H. Auden, ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’
| 3. Audre Lorde, ‘Power
4. Maxine Kumin, ‘Woodchucks’
Monotetra
11. Linda Newman Paper Dreams
12. Michael Walker An Angel Spoke To Me Today
13. Allan J Wight A Poet On The Launching Pad
Aloulette
14. Jan Turner Spring Eternal
15. The Senses of Spring Jan Turner
16. SP Quill Magazine Spring 2006, Vol. #10
17. Andrea Ditrich A Summer Alouette
18. Judi Can Gorder Month of August
19. Linda Varsell Smith Future Possibilities
20. Linda Varsell Smith Fourth Dimensional Blueprint
-Anne Sexton Love Song
Robert Brewer
Robert Brewer Miss Shadorma
Robert Brewer Terminal Triolet
Robert Brewser “Terminal Triolet,”
Robert Brewer “Forget sleeping”
Robert Brewer “Semantically Speaking,”
Robert Brewer Full Throated
Robert Brewster No Chance
Robert Lee Brewer “Waiting for April Showers,”
Robert Brewer Give Me a Reason
Bianca Boonstra Thunder and Lightening Entou
Bianca Boonstra Almost Dead Entou
Zejel Spanish Verse
Linda Varsell Smith Pathway
Judi Van Gardner
An Old Hymn Still Singing Zejel
Lune
1. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
2. Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
Jay’s Way
Lawrencealot Throw-a-way (Form: Jay’s Way)
Sonnet
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Bianca Boonstra Writer’s Com
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Lawrencealot
Throw a Way Jay’s Way
Shakesphere
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Robert Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer Exchanging Words
PSH
Sheilye Anne Debo Whispering Junkyard Mountain
| Quotes to Ponder
| If we go down the rabbit hole of our unconsciousness and try to unravel the knotty points of our life story we may encounter a bunch of hidden niceties or emotional stowaways. Forgotten details in the windmill of our mind may daintily reveal, where things might have gone wrong. (I wonder what went wrong.)~~Erik PevernagieI love the rabbit hole. I spend a lot of time looking at images, Google mapping, etc. I also love to read court transcripts, FBI files, stuff like that. You go through vast, boring stretches, but the voices are always so fascinating and slowly a story begins to emerge. It’s very much like playing detective.~~Zachary Lazar
Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn’t shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery.~~Kate Morton
Dr. Seuss provided “ingenious and uniquely witty solutions to the standing problem of the juvenile fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole.~~Clifton Fadiman
Rabbit holes are my specialty. I live and breathe in them.~~Kara McDowell, One Way or Another |
|
|
Charles Baudelaire I must be dead.”
Annymous Worms Crawl In
Edgar Allen Poe Annabel Lee
Kai Carlson Wei Nomad Palindrome
Writer’s Digest
Lee Ellis Big Old Clap Clap,
Nicki Fitz-Gerald Long Walk Home,
Darin Rogers Abstract with Twirling Sparklers,
Martin Klein Unwavering,
Yinka Shonibare Resolution Kid,
Writng com
Capuchine Safety Dance
Solang Bring Be Careful Out There
Solang Bring Bermudagrass
Donald Justice“There is a gold light in certain old paintings,”
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Fall
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Hope
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Cards
Shelly Kaye Mirror OddquainMirror Oddquain Breeze
Shelly Kaye Butterfly Oddquain
Shelly Kaye Crown Oddquain
Other
Famous Prose Poetry Examples (I Told You I Wasn’t Making This Up!)
There are plenty of prose poetry examples out there, but here’s a few to get you started:
“Be Drunk” by Charles Baudelaire—The ultimate call to live passionately Read it here.
“The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché—A searing piece of political witness that reads like a nightmare you can’t shake. Read it here (18+)
“A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass—Rejection and desire with stark, unexpected imagery. Read it here.
“The Prose Poem” by Campbell McGrath—A winding journey with perfectly poetic language (I admit the title is a little less than poetic). Read it here.
The Ziggurat
Judi Van Gorder Appetite A Ziggurat
Jonathan Caswell Inspired
Paul Szlose Anti-Abstraction
Paul Szlose Depressive
Paul Szlose Funereal
Paul Szlose Recital
Paul Szlose Thaumaturgy
Robert Lee Brewer “Supernatural,”
Wallace Stevens “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”
Solang Bing Writing com
Rain and Drought”
“Never Explained”
“Not Funny”
“Wins-Day!”
“Over and Down”
“Death Cafe ”
“Serious, Lengthy, Russian”
“TGIF”
“The Big Game”
Capuchine Swizzle Stick
Elegy
David Romano’s “When Tomorrow Starts With Me”
W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,”
John Milton’s “Lycidas”
Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods”
Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”
Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain”
Triquint
Bianca Simple Chinquapin
Fan Story Haiku
Gypsy Blue Rose Cows Wander At Night
Gypsy Blue Rose zebra’s zeal gallops
Writer’s Digest
Robert Lee Brewer “If I had Not,” |
|
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Lawrencealot
Throw a Way Jay’s Way
Shakesphere
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Robert Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer Exchanging Words
Fan Story Review
Judi Van Gorder
- Morning Newscast
Maskr
Linda Varsell Smith
Angel’s Dilemma
JHE All Poetry
Where Frogs Are
Selma Martin
Garland Seox
Fan Story review
Other
Dean Koontz Dragon Tears
Harlan Ellison“A Boy And His Dog.”
Fritz Leiber“Spacetime For Springers,”
Matt Griffin “Schrodinger’s Cat” .
Larry Niven, Rescue Party,”
Azimoth R. Daneel Olivaw
Roger Zelazny For A Breath I Tarry
Genesis
Goethe’s Faust
- Housman A Shropshire Lad.
Keith Laumer“Combat Unit”
Kafka “The Metamorphosis”
John Gardner’grendel I
Old English Beowulf
— John Gardner, The Art Of Fiction
Fan Story Review
Anonymous Wildfire Naani
Anonymous – A Tick A Tock
Anonymous – To Shelter Feathered Songs
Anonymous Even the Odds contest Carl Sanberg
Anonymous Nonesense
Anonymous Female Strength in Nature
Anonymous Loon
Anonymous – Owl on the Hunt
Anonymous the Wild Side
Patrick Bernady Her Rage
Jamison Brown Before the Wind Calls
lJbutterfly Prayer for Debbie Pick Marquette
Debbie D’Arcy Anne Frank
Debie D’arcy James Baldwin
Debbie D’Arcy – Jimmy Carter
Harry Craft I Was a Spy
Harry Craft What Happened to the Word Groovy
Harry Craft What Does Freedom Mean to You?
Harry Craft – Peace
John Crawford Rudyard Kipling
Donald Saacca Forever friends
Donaldandvicki – Tender Trap
Rick Gardner the Sun, the Desert, the One
Douglas Goff – Perspective
Dolly Poems Granite Island
Elias Noor The Whispher of Time
Finback Never
Finback When Shadows Creep
Gypsey Rose Blue Gardens of Delight
Cecilia a Heikary Bobcat
Cecila Heiskary – Brown Bear
Cecilia A Hiskary Horses
Ceclia A Heiskary The Magic
Cecilia A Heiskary – Night Life
Cecila Heiskary – Snow
Christy 710 – Happy New Year from Aus
Marylyn Hamilton Darkness Descends
Marylyn Hamilton He Waits
Marylyn Hamilton Winging It
Tom Hormoz A Griever’s Prayer
Tom Horonzy Rumpelstilskin Unleashed
Kaput howling at Moon Haiku
Mrs. Kt Silent Dancers
KT Shades of Blue –
Mrs KTEnding Pain’s Servitude
5 fish JM Jenca
Debbie Pick Marquette Believe in Miracles
Debi Pick Marquette My Cornea Disease
Debbie Pick Marquette – Keeping Gypsy in Prayers
Debbie Pick Marquette – My Lifetime
Debbie Pick Marquette Romance on the Beach
Me and Erin G – Long Gone Away
Lana Marie Hairy Nipple
Paul McFarland January
JUMBO 1 Shame
Pam (respa) Black History Month
Tea for Two Eclectic Wordsmiths
Ean Black I Write
Richard Frohm Dreams
KiwiSteveh Sudden Tears
Lana Marie The Dash Between
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 1
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 2
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 3
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 4
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 5
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 6
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 7
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 8
Pamusart Rembering the Past
Pamusart Old Man at the River
Pamusart The Great Apes
Pamusart cooing doves
Pamusart Exploding Star
Pamusart Purple Flowers Wake
Pamusart the Search
Pamusart On Finding Peace
Pamusart Jean Marie Lane
Pamusart the cavesweet
Pamusart Independence
Pamusart the Broken Man
Lea Tonin – Famitree Flames
Lea Tonin1 – Humiston
Lea Toni1 – Mansion
Lea Toni1 – The Meet
Alexandra Trovato A Monster Schemes Under Your Bed
Alexandra Trovato A Timely Trump Limerick
Willie P Smith – Sleigh Ride
Willie P Smith – Walk with Me
Teafor2 – Last Night of the Year
Jessica Wheller – Waking Daisy
Jessica Wheller – January Wind
Nicki Nance Emotional Support
Cecilia A Heiskary Daffodils
Cecila A Heiskary Jaguaurs
Cecila A Heiskary Insane
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Anonymous Ode to My Scrunchies
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heikkary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jagaurs
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist Waka
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heikkary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jagaurs
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist Waka
Rick Gardner Innocent of Guilty
Harry Craft A Kangaroo from Baraboo
Nancyjam Love in the winter
Debbie Pick Marquette Finding the Bright Side
Debbie Pick Marquette March
Pamusart The Sword
Pamusart The Planet Earth
Barry Penfold Slow Dance with You
YM Roger Always For Now
Arabellesom Mom Truest Love Ever Known
Debbie D’Arcy Lord Bryon
Nicki B Robin Williams
Harry Craft the Cell Phone
Estory in this Autumn Time
Mrs Anna Howard Difficult Decisions
Debbie Pick Marquette Thelma and Louise
Pamusart Your Golden Aura
Rachell Allen Public Face/Private Face
Anonymous Today
Rachael Allen Exceptional Teacher
Debbie D’Arcy Voldymyr Zelensky
Kentucky Sweet Pea My Dogma
Pamusart The Kidnapping
Pamusart the Kidnapping Chapter Two
Pam Respa Rennoved Violinst
Rachael Allen Proud to Be His Daugther
Rick Gardner Wishes to Have
Cecilia A Heiskary Sumatran Orangutan
Cecilia A Heiskary Guiana Red-Face Monkey
Dolly’s Poems the Witching Hour
Kapot Swimming in Pain
Debbie Pick Marquette Men are from Mars, Women from Venus
Miss Merrie This Love
Nancyjam the Meadow
Gypsy Blue Rose Billowing Clouds
Pamusart the Kidnapping Chapter 3
Pamusart Colorful world
Pamusart the World Around Lavenders
Annoymous Maladorous
Tea for Two It Was the Shoes
Tea for Two Wordsmith with Big Faces
Iraven Prayers for Eva
Sally Law Blood Moon and Blood Rain
Jaquelyn Poop Living the Dream, No Thank You
Debi Pick Marquette My Bedroom Window
Debi Pick Marquette Happy St Patrick’s Birthday
Debi Pick Marquette My Bedroom Window
Debi Pick Marquette Happy St Patrick’s Birthday
Rven Prayers for Eva
Jennifer Secret Rendezvous
Sally Law’s Blood Moon and Blood Rain
Jaquelyn Poop Living the Dream, No Thank You
Sanku A New Day
Aiona I Am Photine
Annyomous Too Many Boyfriends For This Is Serious
Annyomous Cary Hope
Annyomous Cicada Watch
Annyomous Ned the Postman
Brad Bennett I Saw A Man Walking Crying
Carasdreams Betrayal
Cullen Bob I Just Want To Leave Things Be
Chris Davies Irish
Iza Dealeanu The Wandering Queen
Dolly’s Poems Graveyard Shift
Cecilia A Heiskary Fun Time
Rick Gardner April Is Today And The Next Day
Brenda Strauser Early Signs Of Spring
Alexandra Trovato Real Love
Fan Story Review
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
Annyomous A Tick a Tock
Annyomous TO Shelter feathered Songs
Debbie D’Arcy Jimmy Carter
Harry Craft Peace
KT Shades of Blue
Cecilia A Heiskary Beat of My Drum
Debbie Pick Marquette Instead of 2025 Resolutions
Debbie Pick Marquette Patch and Ruby, Catching Things
Lea Tonin1 Infanterei
Lea Tonin1 Miristone
Pam Respa Stylish Statues
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heiskary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jaguars
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gypsey Rose blue Geologist Waka
Jamison Brown Before the Wind Calls
J Butterfly Prayer for Debbie Pick Marquette
Debbie D’Arcy Anne Frank
Rick Gardner, the Sun, the Desert, the One
Cecilia, a Heikary Bobcat
JUMBO 1 Shame
Debi Pick, Marquette, My Cornea Disease
Pam (respa) Black History Month
Nancyjam Love in the w
Pamusart The Sword
Barry Penfold Slow Dance with You
Tea for Two Eclectic Wordsmiths
Mark Bibbins “At the End of the Endless Decade,
Annoymous dogsessive
Crystie Cookie 999
Trust Jessie James Doty
Debbie Pick Marque
Tim Margetts Four Paws, No Pause
Bianca Boonstra 2002 Septet
Anonymous Owl On the Hunt
Christy 710 Happy New Years from Aus
DonaldandVicki Tender Trap
Douglas Goff Perspective
Me and Erin G Long Gone Away
Cecilia A Heiskary Night Life
Lea Tonin1 Humiston
Lea Toni1 Mansione
Lea Toni1 The Meet
Willie P Smith Sleight Ride
Willie P Smith Walk With Me
Teafor2 Last Night of the Year
Jessica Wheller Waking Daisy
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Annyomous TO Shelter feathered Songs
Debbie D’Arcy Jimmy Carter
Cecila Heiskary Brown Bear
Cecila Heiskary Snow
Harry Craft Peace
KT Shades of Blue
Debbie Pick Marquette Keeping Gypsy in Prayers
Debbie Pick Marquette My Lifetime
Lea Tonin Famitree Flames
Jessica Wheller Janaury Wind
Anonymous They Learn What We Live
Pamusart Rembering the Past
Pamusart Old Man at the River
Lana Marie Hairy Nipple
Paul McFarland January
End Poetry
Begin Harvard Classics
Harvard Classics
The volumes are:
Bolded read
(1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn
(2) Plato, Epictetus,
Marcus, Aurelius Meditations
(3) Bacon,
Milton’s Prose,
Thomas Browne
(4) Complete Poems in English: Milton
(5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson (
6) Poems and Songs: Burns (7)
Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ
(8) Nine Greek Dramas (9)
Letters and Treatises of Cicero
Pliny
(10) Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith
(11) Origin of Species: Darwin
(12) Plutarch’s Lives (13)
Aeneid Virgil (14)
Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes
(15) Pilgrim’s Progress. Donne
Herbert. Bunyan, Walton
(16) The Thousand and One Night
(17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm,
Andersen
Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales
(18) Modern English Drama
(19) Faust,
Egmont Etc.
Doctor Faustus,
Goethe,
Marlowe
(20) The Divine Comedy: Dante
(21) I Promessi
Sposi,
Manzoni
(22) The Odyssey: Homer
(23) Two Years Before Mast. Dana
(24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke
(25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill,
- Carlyle
(26) Continental Drama
(27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
(28) Essays. English and American
(29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin (
30) Faraday,
Helmholtz,
Kelvin,
Newcomb,
Geikie
(31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini
(32) Literary and Philosophical Essays:
Montaigne,
Sainte Beuve,
Renan,
Lessing,
Schiller,
Kant,
Mazzini
(33) Voyages and Travels
(34) Descartes,
Voltaire,
Rousseau,
Hobbes
(35) Chronicle and Romance:
Froissart,
Malory,
Holinshed (36)
Machiavelli, the Prince
More,
Luther
(37) Locke,
Berkeley,
Hume
(38) Harvey,
Jenner,
Lister,
Pasteur
(39) Famous Prefaces
(40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray
(41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald
(42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
(43) American Historical Documents
Federalist Papers
Constitution
Bill of Rights
Declaration of Indepedence
(44) Sacred Writings 1
(45) Sacred Writings 2
The Bible
The Quaran
The Analect of Confucius
Mencius
Buddist Writing
Bhaga Vita
Lao Tzo The Tao
(46) Elizabethan Drama 1
(47) Elizabethan Drama 2
(48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal
(49) Epic and Saga (
50) Introduction, Readers Guide,
50 Books to Read Before You Die
Vol 1 starts with Volume One
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane: Emma
Balzac, Honoré de: Father Goriot
Barbusse, Henri: The Inferno
Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Cleland, John: Fanny Hill
Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Joseph: Nostromo
Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage
Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education
Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier
Forster, E. M.: A Room With a View
Forster, E. M.: Howard End
Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls
Gorky, Maxim: The Mother
Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mines
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
Homer: The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow
James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady
Volume 2
– Little Women [Louisa May Alcott]
– Sense and Sensibility [Jane Austen]
– Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) [J.M. Barrie]
– Cabin Fever [ B. M. Bower]
– The Secret Garden [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– A Little Princess [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]
– The King in Yellow [Robert William Chambers]
– The Man Who Knew Too Much [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Woman in White [Wilkie Collins]
– The Most Dangerous Game [Richard Connell]
– Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition [Charles Darwin]
– The Iron Woman [Margaret Deland]
– David Copperfield [Charles Dickens]
– Oliver Twist [Charles Dickens]
– A Tale of Two Cities [Charles Dickens]
– The Double [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– A Room with a View [E. M. Forster]
– Dream Psychology [Sigmund Freud]
– Tess of the d’Urbervilles [Thomas Hardy]
– Siddhartha [Hermann Hesse]
– Dubliners [James Joyce]
– The Fall of the House of Usher [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Arabian Nights [Andrew Lang]
– The Sea Wolf [Jack London]
– The Call of Cthulhu [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– Anne of Green Gables [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– Beyond Good and Evil [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Murders in the Rue Morgue [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Raven [Edgar Allan Poe]
– Swann’s Way [Marcel Proust]
– Romeo and Juliet [William Shakespeare]
– Treasure Island [Robert Louis Stevenson]
– The Elements of Style [William Strunk Jr.
Vol 3 finished keeping for the historical record
This book contains the following works arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names.
Starting with volume 3 then will go back and do volumes one, two, and the Harvard classics. The goal is to finish all of these by the end of next year. I almost finished Volume One. Will do some of the WC reading books as well.
– What’s Bred in the Bone [Grant Allen]
– The Golden Ass [Lucius Apuleius]
– Meditations [Marcus Aurelius]
– Northanger Abbey [Jane Austen]
– Lady Susan [Jane Austen]
– The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [Lyman Frank Baum]
– The Art of Public Speaking [Dale Breckenridge Carnegie]
– The Blazing World [Margaret Cavendish]
– The Wisdom of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Heretics [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Donnington Affair [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Innocence of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [John Cleland]
– The Moonstone [Wilkie Collins]
– Lord Jim [Joseph Conrad]
– The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– The Pickwick Papers [Charles Dickens]
– A Christmas Carol [Charles Dickens]
– Notes From The Underground [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Gambler par Fyodor [Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Lost World [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Hound of the Baskervilles [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Sign of the Four [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Man in the Iron Mask [Alexandre Dumas]
– The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas]
– This Side of Paradise [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– Curious, If True: Strange Tales [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell]
– King Solomon’s Mines [Henry Rider Haggard]
– The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Victor Hugo]
– Kim [Rudyard Kipling]
– Captain Courageous [Rudyard Kipling]
– The Jungle Book [Rudyard Kipling]
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover [David Herbert Lawrence]
– The Son of the Wolf [Jack London]
– The Einstein Theory of Relativity [Hendrik Antoon Lorentz]
– The Dunwich Horror [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– At the Mountains of Madness [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– The Prince [Niccolò Machiavelli]
– The Story Girl [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– The Antichrist [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Republic [Plato]
– The Last Man [Mary Shelley]
– Life On The Mississippi [Mark Twain]
– The Kama Sutra [Vatsyayana]
– In the Year 2889 [Jules Verne]
– Around the World in Eighty Days [Jules Verne]
– Four Just Men [Edgar Wallace]
– Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [Lewis Wallace]
– Jacob’s Room [Virginia Woolf]
Sci-Fi short stories
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a massive anthology of science fiction stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It covers the history and evolution of the genre from the early 20th century to the end of the millennium, featuring works from over 30 countries and many languages. The book contains 105 stories, ranging from classics by H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to lesser-known gems by W.E.B. Du Bois, David R. Bunch, and Liu Cixin. The book also includes comments from the editors and the authors, offering insights into their creative process and vision. The book is divided into 11 sections, each with a thematic focus and chronological order.
Here is the table of contents for the book1:
Goal read one to five per week alternating with Kindle classics and reading poetry collections finish by end of the year
Introduction: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Lens of Time: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing
H.G. Wells: “The Star” (1897)
Lu Xun: “The New Overworld” (1902)
Sultana’s Dream: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
Albert Robida: “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1908)
Miguel de Unamuno: “Mechanopolis” (1913)
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Comet” (1920)
Claude Farrère: “The Fate of the Poseidonia” (1923)
Edmond Hamilton: “The Star Stealers” (1929)
David H. Keller: “The Lost Language” (1934)
Stanislaw Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Jorge Luis Borges: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)
Cixin Liu: “The Poetry Cloud” (1997)
Invasions
Edgar Rice Burroughs: “A Princess of Mars” (1912) excerpt
Leslie F. Stone: “The Conquest of Gola” (1931)
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “A Martian Odyssey” (1934)
John W. Campbell Jr.: “Who Goes There?” (1938)
Ray Bradbury: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)
Katherine MacLean: “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951)
William Tenn: “The Liberation of Earth” (1953)
J.G. Ballard: “The Voices of Time” (1960)
Dino Buzzati: “Catastrophe” (1966)
James Tiptree Jr.: “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Joanna Russ: “When It Changed” (1972)
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “The Spontaneous Reflex” (1973) excerpt
Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild” (1984)
James Patrick Kelly: “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995)
Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)
Ray Bradbury: “The Foghorn” (1951)
Jerome Bixby: “It’s a Good Life” (1953)
Julio Cortázar: “Axolotl” (1956)
J.G. Ballard: “The Drowned Giant” (1964)
R.A. Lafferty: “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966)
Terry Carr: “The Dance of the Changer and the Three” (1968)
Harlan Ellison®: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967)
Lisa Tuttle & George R.R. Martin: “The Storms of Windhaven” (1975)
John Varley: “Air Raid” (1977)
William Gibson: “New Rose Hotel” (1984)
Ted Chiang: “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Experiments
Alfred Jarry: “Elements of Pataphysics” (1911)
Karel Čapek: “R.U.R.” (1920) excerpt
Stanisław Lem: “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” (1955)
William S. Burroughs: “Excerpt from Naked Lunch” (1959)
J.G. Ballard: “Chronopolis” (1960)
Philip K. Dick: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952)
Boris Vian: “Froth on the Daydream” (1947) excerpt
Joanna Russ: “Useful Phrases for the Tourist” (1970)
George Alec Effinger: “Two Sadnesses” (1973)
John Sladek: “Solar Shoe Salesman” (1974)
Dafydd ab Hugh: “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1986)
Generation Ships
Don Wilcox: “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940)
Judith Merril: “Daughters of Earth” (1952)
Brian W. Aldiss: “Non-Stop” (1958) excerpt
Robert Silverberg: “Sundance” (1969)
Pamela Zoline: “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967)
Gene Wolfe: “A Cabin on the Coast” (1984)
Bruce Sterling: “Swarm” (1982)
Geoff Ryman: “The Unconquered Country” (1984)
New Worlds
Cordwainer Smith: “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” (1961)
Samuel R. Delany: “Aye, and Gomorrah …” (1967)
Ursula K. Le Guin: “Vaster Than Empires and Slower” (1971)
James Tiptree Jr.: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1976)
Frederik Pohl: “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” (1972)
Angélica Gorodischer: “Of Navigators and Traitors” (1973) excerpt
John Crowley: “Snow” (1985)
Iain M. Banks: “A Gift from the Culture” (1987)
Greg Egan: “Learning to Be Me” (1990)
Future War
Jack London: “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The Coming Race” (1871) excerpt
George Griffith: “The War of the Viruses” (1895)
Philip Francis Nowlan: “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” (1928)
E.E. “Doc” Smith: “The Skylark of Space” (1928) excerpt
Olaf Stapledon: “Star Maker” (1937) excerpt
Robert A. Heinlein: “Solution Unsatisfactory” (1941)
C.M. Kornbluth: “Two Dooms” (1958)
Joe Haldeman: “Hero” (1972)
Harry Harrison: “The Streets of Ashkelon” (1962)
David R. Bunch: “Moderan” (1967)
Harlan Ellison®: “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)
James S.A. Corey: “Rates of Change” (2011)
Virtual Reality
Stanisław Lem: “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” (1965)
Philip K. Dick: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)
John Brunner: “The Vitanuls” (1967)
Roger Zelazny: “For a Breath I Tarry” (1966)
Robert Silverberg: “Passengers” (1968)
Rudy Rucker: “Software” (1982) excerpt
William Gibson: “Burning Chrome” (1982)
Pat Cadigan: “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
Neal Stephenson: “Snow Crash” (1992) excerpt
Humanity 2.0
Olaf Stapledon: “Odd John” (1935) excerpt
C.L. Moore: “No Woman Born” (1944)
Cordwainer Smith: “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950)
Algis Budrys: “Who?” (1955)
James Blish: “Surface Tension” (1952)
Gregory Benford: “Blood Music” (1983)
Bruce Sterling: “Mozart in Mirrorshades” (1985)
Vernor Vinge: “True Names” (1981)
Ted Chiang: “Understand” (1991)
Alien Minds
Arthur C. Clarke: “The Sentinel” (1951)
Isaac Asimov: “The Last Question” (1956)
Clifford D. Simak: “Desertion” (1944)
James H. Schmitz: “Grandpa” (1955)
Frank Herbert: “Try to Remember!” (1961)
Philip José Farmer: “Sail On! Sail On!” (1952)
Stanisław Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic” (1972) excerpt
Karen Joy Fowler & Pat Murphy: “Rachel in Love” (1987)
Ian McDonald: “The Tear” (2008)
After the End
- Walter M. Miller Jr.
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
BOLD read
Edward Lee Masters.
The Hil
Fiddler. Jones,
Petite the Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood’s Party.
James Weldon Johnson
The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The Poet
Life
Life’s Trajedy
Robert Frost.
The Death Of The Hired Man.
Mending Wall.
Birches
Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.
Tree In My Window.
Directive.
Amy Lowell
Patterns.
Getrude Stein
Susie Asado.
From Tender Buttons A Box.
From Tender Buttons, A Plate.
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew .
Carl Sandburg.
Grass.
Cahoots.
Wallace Stevens.
Peter Quince at the Clavier.
Disillusionment of 10:00.
13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.
Emperor Of Ice Cream.
A Mere Being.
Angelina Weld Grimke
Fragment.
William Carlos Williams.
Tact.
Dance Ruse
The Yachts.
From Apostlethat Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 To 92.
Sarah Teasdale.
Moonlight.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
Erza Pound
The Jewel Stairs Grievance.
The River Merchants Wife Letter.
In A Station At The Metro.
Hugh Selwyn Mulberry.
From Conto. 56 Libretto Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle, HD.
Sea Rose.
The Helen.
From The Walls Do Not Fall An Incident Here And There.
From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose And A Beggar. Why Did You Come?
Take Me Anywhere.
Venicc. Venus.
Robinson, Jeffers.
Gala in April.
Shine, Perishing Republic.
Cloudss at Evening.
Credo
Mararane Moore
Fish.
Poetry.
Poetry.
TS, Elliott.
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The Wasteland.
Claude McKay.
If We Must Die.
Harlem Dancer.
Archibald MacLeash,
Arts Poetica
Edna, Saint Vincent Millay.
First Fig
Recuerdo
E E Cummings.
In Just.
Buffalo Bill
The Cambridge Ladies Have Lived In Furnished Souls.
Next To, Of Course, God, America.
Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled Gladly Beyond.
Rpophessagr
Gene Toomor.
Reapers.
November Cotton Flowers.
Portrait in Georgia.
Louise Bogan
Medusa.
New moon.
Melvin B Tolson
Dark Symphony.
From Harlem Gallery PSI Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table.
Hart Crane
From the Bridge
Poem to Brooklyn Bridge
From 11 Powhatan’s Daughter the River.
Robert Francis.
Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
Nego speaks of rivers.
I, Too.
Dreams Boogie.
Harlem
Countee Cullan
Incident
To John Keats Poet at Springtime
Yes I Do Marvel
From the Dark Tower
Stanley Kutitz
Father and Son
The Protrait
Touch Me
WH Auden
Mussee Des Beaux Arts
Epitah on a Tryant
Theordore Roethke
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
In a Dark Time
Charles Olson.
From The Maximum Poems One Maximum Of Gloucester To You.
The Distances.
Elizabeth Bishop.
The Fish
Sestina
First Death In Nova Scotia.
Visit To Saint Elizabeths.
One Art.
Robert Hayden.
Morning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday.
Those Winter Sundays.
Frederick Douglass.
Middle Passage.
Muriel Rukeyser?
Effort At Speech Between Two People. ‘
Then I Saw What The Calling Was.
The Poem as Mask
Delmore Swartz.
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.
John Barryman.
From Dream Songs.
Feeling Your Compact And Delicious Body. ‘
Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So.
There Shut Down Once. ‘
This World Is Gradually Becoming A Place.
Henry’sUnderstanding
Randall, Jarell.
90 North.
The Death Of The Bell Turret Gunner.
The Woman At The Washington Zoo.
Next Day.
Weldon Kees.
To My Daughter?
Dudley Randall
A Different Image
William Stafford.
Traveling Through The Dark.
At The Bomb Testing Site.
Ruth Stone.
Scars.
Margaret Walker.
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Mother.
A Song In The Front Yard. ‘
The Bean Eaters
The Lovers Of The Poor.
We Real Cool. ‘
The Blackstone Rangers.
Robert Lowell.
To Speak Of Woe That Is In Marriage.
Skunk Hour .
For The Union Dead.
Robert Duncan.
Often I’m Permitted To Return To A Medow.
My Mother Would Be A Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto.
William Meredith.
Parents. Howard Nemeroff.
Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry.
Hayden Caruth.
The Hyacinth Gardens In Brooklyn.
August 1945.
Richard Wilber
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Cottage Street
The Writer
James Dickey
The Sheep Child
Alan Duncan.
Love song I And Thou
Anthony Act.
More light, More light.
Richard Hugo.
The Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.
The Freaks at Spring General Rd. Field.
Dennis Levertov.
The Unwritten Poem
Cademon.
Swan in Falling snow.
Who is Simpson?
American Poetry.
Carolyn Kaiser.
A Muse of water.
Kenneth Koch.
Fresh air.
Permanently.
Maxine Coleman.
Morning Swim.
How Is It?
Gerald Stern.
Behaving Like A Jew.
The Dancing.
Another Insane Devotion.
AR Ammons.
The City Limits.
Corson Inlet.
Robert Blye.
Snowfall In The Afternoon.
Driving Into Town Late To Mail A Letter.
Walking From Sleep.
Robert Creeley.
The Flower.
I Know A Man.
The Language.
The Rain.
Bresson’s Movies.
James Merrill.
Victor Dog.
Frank O’Hara New York School.
Steps.
Poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.
The Day Lady Died.
John Ashberry. New York School
Some Trees.
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror.
What Is Poetry?
Galway, Kennel.
The Bear.`
After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps.
Saint Francis And The Soul.
Ws Merwin.
Air.
For The Anniversary Of My Death.
Yesterday.
Chord .
James Wright.
A Blessing.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Oh.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Mn.
In Response To The Rumor That Otis Warehouse In Wheeling, Wv Has Been Condemned.
Donald Hall.
My Son, My Executioner.
Digging.
Philip Levine.
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives.
They Feed They Lion.
You Can Have It.
The Simple Truth.
Anne Sexton.
Her Kind
Adoption.
Waiting To Die.
In Celebration Of My Uterus.
Rowing
Adrienne Rich.
Orion
Planetarium.
A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning.
From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules Of Break Like A Thermometer.
Gregory Corso.
Marriage
Gary Snyder.
Hay, For The Horses.
Riprap.
Mid August As Sourdough Mountain Lookout.
Dereck Walcott.
A Far Cry From Africa.
Sea Grapes.
Find The Schooner Flight Part 11 After The Storm. There’s A Fresh Light That Follows.
The Light Of The World.
From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing Of Quiet,Achiles, Afrolabe’s Son.
Miller Williams.
Let Me tell you.
Etheridge Knight
Idea Of Ancestry.
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones.
Preface To A 20 Volume Suicide Note.
Agony As Now.
SOS.
Black Art.
Ted Berrigon .
Wrong Rain.
A Final Sonnet
Andre Lorde.
Power.
Sonia Sanchez.
Poetry at 30.
Mark Strand.
The Prediction.
The Night, The Porch.
Russell Edson.
A Stone Is Nobody’s.
Mary Oliver.
Singapore.
The Summer’s Day.
Charles Wright.
Reunion.
Dead Color.
California Dreaming.
Lucile Clifton.
Homage To My Hips.
At Least At Last We Killed The Roaches.
The Death Of Fry, Alfred Clifton.
To My Last.
June, Jordan.
Home About My Rights.
Frederick Seidel.
1968.
CK Williams.
Find My Window.
Blades
Tynan Wilkowski.’
The Mechanic.
Michael S Harper.
Dear John. Dear Coltrane.
Last Affair. Bessies Blues Song.
Grandfather.
Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
Charles Simik .
Stone.
Fork.
Classic Ballroom Dances.
Paula Gunn Allen.
Grandmother.
Frank Bidart.
Ellen West.
Carl Dennis.
Spring Letter.
Two Or Three Wishes.
Stephen Dunn.
Allegory Of The Cave.
Tucson.
Robert Pensky.
History Of My Heart.
The Questions.
Samurai Song.
James Welch.
Christmas Comes To Moccasin Flat.
Billy Collins.
Introduction To Poetry.
The Dead.
Toi Derricote .
Allen Ginsberg.
The Weakness.
Stephen Dobyns.
How To Like It?
Lullaby.
Robert Hass.
Song.
That Photographer?
Return Of Robinson Jeffers.
Lyn Hejinian
From My Life trim With Colored Ribbons.
BH Fairchild.
The Machinist Teaching His Daughter To Play The Piano.
Haik R Madhubuti Don L Lee.
But He Was Cool Or Even Stopped For Green Lights.
Upon To Compliment Other Poems.
William Matthews.
In Memory Of The Utah Stars.
The Accompanist
. Sharon Olds
The Language Of The Brag.
The Lifting.
Henry Taylor.
Barbed Wire.
Tess Gallagher.
Black, Silver.
Under Stars.
Michael Palmer.
I Do Not.
James Tate.
The Lost Pilot.
Norman Dubie.
Elizabeth War With The Christmas Bear.
The Funeral.
Carol Muske Dukes,.
August, Los Angeles Lullaby.
Kay Ryan.
Turtle
Bestiary
Larry Levis.
Childhood Ideogram
Winter Stars
Adrian C Lousis
Looking For Judas
How much lux?
The People of the Other Village.
Marilyn Nelson.
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.
Star Fix.
Run Stilleman
Albany
AI
Cuba 1963
The Kid
Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
Thanks
To Do Street
Facing It
Nude Interogation
Nathaniel Mc Kay
Song of the Aduumboulou
Gregory Orr
Gathering the Bones Together
Two Lines From the Brother Grimm
Origin of the Marble Forrest
Robert Hill Whiteman
Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
Away
Heather Mc Hugh
Language Lesson 1976
What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
In Cold Storm Light
Olga Boumas
Calypso
Victor Hernadez Soul
Latin and Soul
Jane Miller
Miami Heart
David St. James
Iris
CD Wright
Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
Girl Friend Poe # 3
Crescent
Carolyn Forche
Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
She Had Some Horses
My House is Red Earth
Garret Honjo
The Legend
Andrew Hugins
Beggoten
We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Peggen Kelly
Imaging Their Own Hyms
Song
Paul Muldoon
Meeting the British
Errata
The Throwback
Judith Orez Coffer
Quinceanera
Rita Dove
Parsley
Day Star
After Reading Mikey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
Our Calling
Barbara Hamby
Thinking of Galileo
Hatred
Mark Jarman
Unholy Sonnet
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Traveling Onion
Arabic
Wedding Cake
Alberto Rios
Nani
England Finally like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
Nocturne Blue Waves
The Unfinished
Gary Sotto
Field Poem
Oranges
Black Hair
Susan Stewart
Yellow Star and Ice
The Forrest
Mark Dotty
Brillance
Esta Noche
Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
Black Nikes
Franz Wright
Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
To My Brother
Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Little Clowns, My Heart.
Cornelius, Eady.
Jack Johnson Does The Eagle Rock.
Crows In A Strong Wind.
I’m A Fool To Love You.
Louise Eldritch
. Indian Boarding School. The Runaways.
David Mason.
Spooning.
Marilyn Chin.
How I Got That Name?
Compose Near The Bay Bridge
The Survivor
Cathy Song .
The Youngest Daughter.
Ann Finch.
Another Reluctance.
Insert
Lee Young Lee.
The Gift
Eating Together.
Carl Phillips
Our Lady
As From a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
Bag of Mice
Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
The Viena Hott not
Reetika Vazirani
From White Elephants
A million Balconies
Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
What the Orphan Inherits
The Pow Wow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethewey
Hot Combs
Amateur Fighter
Flounder
A E Stallings
The Tantrum
Joana Klink
Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
Post feminism
Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
Quivira City Limits
Everywhere is Out of Town
Whatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
At Pegasus
Lady Sings the Blues
Sci-Fi short stories
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a massive anthology of science fiction stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It covers the history and evolution of the genre from the early 20th century to the end of the millennium, featuring works from over 30 countries and many languages. The book contains 105 stories, ranging from classics by H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to lesser-known gems by W.E.B. Du Bois, David R. Bunch, and Liu Cixin. The book also includes comments from the editors and the authors, offering insights into their creative process and vision. The book is divided into 11 sections, each with a thematic focus and a chronological order.
Here is the table of contents for the book1:
Introduction: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Lens of Time: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing
H.G. Wells: “The Star” (1897)
Lu Xun: “The New Overworld” (1902)
Sultana’s Dream: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
Albert Robida: “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1908)
Miguel de Unamuno: “Mechanopolis” (1913)
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Comet” (1920)
Claude Farrère: “The Fate of the Poseidonia” (1923)
Edmond Hamilton: “The Star Stealers” (1929)
David H. Keller: “The Lost Language” (1934)
Stanislaw Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Jorge Luis Borges: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)
Cixin Liu: “The Poetry Cloud” (1997)
Invasions
Edgar Rice Burroughs: “A Princess of Mars” (1912) excerpt
Leslie F. Stone: “The Conquest of Gola” (1931)
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “A Martian Odyssey” (1934)
John W. Campbell Jr.: “Who Goes There?” (1938)
Ray Bradbury: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)
Katherine MacLean: “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951)
William Tenn: “The Liberation of Earth” (1953)
J.G. Ballard: “The Voices of Time” (1960)
Dino Buzzati: “Catastrophe” (1966)
James Tiptree Jr.: “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Joanna Russ: “When It Changed” (1972)
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “The Spontaneous Reflex” (1973) excerpt
Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild” (1984)
James Patrick Kelly: “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995)
Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)
Ray Bradbury: “The Foghorn” (1951)
Jerome Bixby: “It’s a Good Life” (1953)
Julio Cortázar: “Axolotl” (1956)
J.G. Ballard: “The Drowned Giant” (1964)
R.A. Lafferty: “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966)
Terry Carr: “The Dance of the Changer and the Three” (1968)
Harlan Ellison®: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967)
Lisa Tuttle & George R.R. Martin: “The Storms of Windhaven” (1975)
John Varley: “Air Raid” (1977)
William Gibson: “New Rose Hotel” (1984)
Ted Chiang: “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Experiments
Alfred Jarry: “Elements of Pataphysics” (1911)
Karel Čapek: “R.U.R.” (1920) excerpt
Stanisław Lem: “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” (1955)
William S. Burroughs: “Excerpt from Naked Lunch” (1959)
J.G. Ballard: “Chronopolis” (1960)
Philip K. Dick: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952)
Boris Vian: “Froth on the Daydream” (1947) excerpt
Joanna Russ: “Useful Phrases for the Tourist” (1970)
George Alec Effinger: “Two Sadnesses” (1973)
John Sladek: “Solar Shoe Salesman” (1974)
Dafydd ab Hugh: “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1986)
Generation Ships
Don Wilcox: “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940)
Judith Merril: “Daughters of Earth” (1952)
Brian W. Aldiss: “Non-Stop” (1958) excerpt
Robert Silverberg: “Sundance” (1969)
Pamela Zoline: “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967)
Gene Wolfe: “A Cabin on the Coast” (1984)
Bruce Sterling: “Swarm” (1982)
Geoff Ryman: “The Unconquered Country” (1984)
New Worlds
Cordwainer Smith: “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” (1961)
Samuel R. Delany: “Aye, and Gomorrah …” (1967)
Ursula K. Le Guin: “Vaster Than Empires and Slower” (1971)
James Tiptree Jr.: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1976)
Frederik Pohl: “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” (1972)
Angélica Gorodischer: “Of Navigators and Traitors” (1973) excerpt
John Crowley: “Snow” (1985)
Iain M. Banks: “A Gift from the Culture” (1987)
Greg Egan: “Learning to Be Me” (1990)
Future War
Jack London: “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The Coming Race” (1871) excerpt
George Griffith: “The War of the Viruses” (1895)
Philip Francis Nowlan: “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” (1928)
E.E. “Doc” Smith: “The Skylark of Space” (1928) excerpt
Olaf Stapledon: “Star Maker” (1937) excerpt
Robert A. Heinlein: “Solution Unsatisfactory” (1941)
C.M. Kornbluth: “Two Dooms” (1958)
Joe Haldeman: “Hero” (1972)
Harry Harrison: “The Streets of Ashkelon” (1962)
David R. Bunch: “Moderan” (1967)
Harlan Ellison®: “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)
James S.A. Corey: “Rates of Change” (2011)
Virtual Reality
Stanisław Lem: “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” (1965)
Philip K. Dick: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)
John Brunner: “The Vitanuls” (1967)
Roger Zelazny: “For a Breath I Tarry” (1966)
Robert Silverberg: “Passengers” (1968)
Rudy Rucker: “Software” (1982) excerpt
William Gibson: “Burning Chrome” (1982)
Pat Cadigan: “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
Neal Stephenson: “Snow Crash” (1992) excerpt
Humanity 2.0
Olaf Stapledon: “Odd John” (1935) excerpt
C.L. Moore: “No Woman Born” (1944)
Cordwainer Smith: “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950)
Algis Budrys: “Who?” (1955)
James Blish: “Surface Tension” (1952)
Gregory Benford: “Blood Music” (1983)
Bruce Sterling: “Mozart in Mirrorshades” (1985)
Vernor Vinge: “True Names” (1981)
Ted Chiang: “Understand” (1991)
Alien Minds
Arthur C. Clarke: “The Sentinel” (1951)
Isaac Asimov: “The Last Question” (1956)
Clifford D. Simak: “Desertion” (1944)
James H. Schmitz: “Grandpa” (1955)
Frank Herbert: “Try to Remember!” (1961)
Philip José Farmer: “Sail On! Sail On!” (1952)
Stanisław Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic” (1972) excerpt
Karen Joy Fowler & Pat Murphy: “Rachel in Love” (1987)
Ian McDonald: “The Tear” (2008)
After the End
Walter M. Miller Jr.: “The Darfsteller” (1955) J.G. Ballard: “The Terminal Beach” (1964) John Wyndham: ”
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
BOLD read
Edward Lee Masters.
The Hil
Fiddler. Jones,
Petite the Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood’s Party.
James Weldon Johnson
The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The Poet
Life
Life’s Trajedy
Robert Frost.
The Death Of The Hired Man.
Mending Wall.
Birches
Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.
Tree In My Window.
Directive.
Amy Lowell
Patterns.
Getrude Stein
Susie Asado.
From Tender Buttons A Box.
From Tender Buttons, A Plate.
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew .
Carl Sandburg.
Grass.
Cahoots.
Wallace Stevens.
Peter Quince at the Clavier.
Disillusionment of 10:00.
13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.
Emperor Of Ice Cream.
A Mere Being.
Angelina Weld Grimke
Fragment.
William Carlos Williams.
Tact.
Dance Ruse
The Yachts.
From Apostlethat Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 To 92.
Sarah Teasdale.
Moonlight.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
Erza Pound
The Jewel Stairs Grievance.
The River Merchants Wife Letter.
In A Station At The Metro.
Hugh Selwyn Mulberry.
From Conto. 56 Libretto Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle, HD.
Sea Rose.
The Helen.
From The Walls Do Not Fall An Incident Here And There.
From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose And A Beggar. Why Did You Come?
Take Me Anywhere.
Venicc. Venus.
Robinson, Jeffers.
Gala in April.
Shine, Perishing Republic.
Cloudss at Evening.
Credo
Mararane Moore
Fish.
Poetry.
TS, Elliott.
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The Wasteland.
Claude McKay.
If We Must Die.
Harlem Dancer.
Archibald MacLeash,
Arts Poetica
Edna, Saint Vincent Millay.
First Fig
Recuerdo
E E Cummings.
In Just.
Buffalo Bill
The Cambridge Ladies Have Lived In Furnished Souls.
Next To, Of Course, God, America.
Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled Gladly Beyond.
Rpophessagr
Gene Toomor.
Reapers.
November Cotton Flowers.
Portrait in Georgia.
Louise Bogan
Medusa.
New moon.
Melvin B Tolson
Dark Symphony.
From Harlem Gallery PSI Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table.
Hart Crane
From the Bridge
Poem to Brooklyn Bridge
From 11 Powhatan’s Daughter the River.
Robert Francis.
Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
Nego speaks of rivers.
I, Too.
Dreams Boogie.
Harlem
Countee Cullan
Incident
To John Keats Poet at Spring Time
Yes I Do Marvel
From the Dark Tower
Stanley Kutitz
Father and Son
The Protrait
Touch Me
WH Auden
Mussee Des Beaux Arts
Epitah on a Tryant
Theordore Roethke
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
In a Dark Time
Charles Olson.
From The Maximum Poems One Maximum Of Gloucester To You.
The Distances.
Elizabeth Bishop.
The Fish
Sestina
First Death In Nova Scotia.
Visit To Saint Elizabeths.
One Art.
Robert Hayden.
Morning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday.
Those Winter Sundays.
Frederick Douglass.
Middle Passage.
Muriel Rukeyser?
Effort At Speech Between Two People. ‘
Then I Saw What The Calling Was.
The Poem as Mask
Delmore Swartz.
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.
John Barryman.
From The Dream Songs.
Feeling Your Compact And Delicious Body. ‘
Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So.
There Shut Down Once. ‘
This World Is Gradually Becoming A Place.
Henry’sUnderstanding
Randall, Jarell.
90 North.
The Death Of The Bell Turret Gunner.
The Woman At The Washington Zoo.
Next Day.
Weldon Kees.
To My Daughter?
Dudley Randall
A Different Image
William Stafford.
Traveling Through The Dark.
At The Bomb Testing Site.
Ruth Stone.
Scars.
Margaret Walker.
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Mother.
A Song In The Front Yard. ‘
The Bean Eaters
The Lovers Of The Poor.
We Real Cool. ‘
The Blackstone Rangers.
Robert Lowell.
To Speak Of Woe That Is In Marriage.
Skunk Hour .
For The Union Dead.
Robert Duncan.
Often I’m Permitted To Return To A Medow.
My Mother Would Be A Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto.
William Meredith.
Parents. Howard Nemeroff.
Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry.
Hayden Caruth.
The Hyacinth Gardens In Brooklyn.
August 1945.
Richard Wilber
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Cottage Street
The Writer
James Dickey
The Sheep Child
Alan Duncan.
Love song I And Thou
Anthony Act.
More light, More light.
Richard Hugo.
The Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.
The Freaks at Spring General Rd. Field.
Dennis Levertov.
The Poem Unwritten
Cademon.
Swan in Falling snow.
Who is Simpson?
American Poetry.
Carolyn Kaiser.
A Muse of water.
Kenneth Koch.
Fresh air.
Permanently.
Maxine Coleman.
Morning Swim.
How It Is?
Gerald Stern.
Behaving Like A Jew.
The Dancing.
Another Insane Devotion.
AR Ammons.
The City Limits.
Corson Inlet.
Robert Blye.
Snowfall In The Afternoon.
Driving Into Town Late To Mail A Letter.
Walking From Sleep.
Robert Creeley.
The Flower.
I Know A Man.
The Language.
The Rain.
Bresson’s Movies.
James Merrill.
Victor Dog.
Frank O’Hara New York School.
Steps.
Poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.
The Day Lady Died.
John Ashberry. New York School
Some Trees.
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror.
What Is Poetry?
Galway, Kennel.
The Bear.`
After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps.
Saint Francis And The Soul.
Ws Merwin.
Air.
For The Anniversary Of My Death.
Yesterday.
Chord .
James Wright.
A Blessing.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Oh.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Mn.
In Response To The Rumor That Otis Warehouse In Wheeling, Wv Has Been Condemned.
Donald Hall.
My Son, My Executioner.
Digging.
Philip Levine.
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives.
They Feed They Lion.
You Can Have It.
The Simple Truth.
Anne Sexton.
Her Kind
Adoption.
Waiting To Die.
In Celebration Of My Uterus.
Rowing
Adrienne Rich.
Orion
Planetarium.
A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning.
From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules Of Break Like A Thermometer.
Gregory Corso.
Marriage
Gary Snyder.
Hay, For The Horses.
Riprap.
Mid August As Sourdough Mountain Lookout.
Dereck Walcott.
A Far Cry From Africa.
Sea Grapes.
Find The Schooner Flight Part 11 After The Storm. There’s A Fresh Light That Follows.
The Light Of The World.
From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing Of Quiet,Achiles, Afrolabe’s Son.
Miller Williams.
Let Me tell you.
Etheridge Knight
Idea Of Ancestry.
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones.
Preface To A 20 Volume Suicide Note.
Agony As Now.
SOS.
Black Art.
Ted Berrigon .
Wrong Rain.
A Final Sonnet
Andre Lorde.
Power.
Sonia Sanchez.
Poetry at 30.
Mark Strand.
The Prediction.
The Night, The Porch.
Russell Edson.
A Stone Is Nobody’s.
Mary Oliver.
Singapore.
The Summer’s Day.
Charles Wright.
Reunion.
Dead Color.
California Dreaming.
Lucile Clifton.
Homage To My Hips.
At Least At Last We Killed The Roaches.
The Death Of Fry, Alfred Clifton.
To My Last.
June, Jordan.
Home About My Rights.
Frederick Seidel.
1968.
CK Williams.
Find My Window.
Blades
Tynan Wilkowski.’
The Mechanic.
Michael S Harper.
Dear John. Dear Coltrane.
Last Affair. Bessies Blues Song.
Grandfather.
Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
Charles Simik .
Stone.
Fork.
Classic Ballroom Dances.
Paula Gunn Allen.
Grandmother.
Frank Bidart.
Ellen West.
Carl Dennis.
Spring Letter.
Two Or Three Wishes.
Stephen Dunn.
Allegory Of The Cave.
Tucson.
Robert Pensky.
History Of My Heart.
The Questions.
Samurai Song.
James Welch.
Christmas Comes To Moccasin Flat.
Billy Collins.
Introduction To Poetry.
The Dead.
Toi Derricote .
Allen Ginsberg.
The Weakness.
Stephen Dobyns.
How To Like It?
Lullaby.
Robert Hass.
Song.
That Photographer?
Return Of Robinson Jeffers.
Lyn Hejinian
From My Life trim With Colored Ribbons.
BH Fairchild.
The Machinist Teaching His Daughter To Play The Piano.
Haki R Madhubuti Don L Lee.
But He Was Cool Or Even Stopped For Green Lights.
Upon To Compliment Other Poems.
William Matthews.
In Memory Of The Utah Stars.
The Accompanist
. Sharon Olds
The Language Of The Brag.
The Lifting.
Henry Taylor.
Barbed Wire.
Tess Gallagher.
Black, Silver.
Under Stars.
Michael Palmer.
I Do Not.
James Tate.
The Lost Pilot.
Norman Dubie.
Elizabeth War With The Christmas Bear.
The Funeral.
Carol Muske Dukes,.
August, Los Angeles Lullaby.
Kay Ryan.
Turtle
Bestiary
Larry Levis.
Childhood Ideogram
Winter Stars
Adrian C Lousis
Looking For Judas
How much lux?
The People of the Other Village.
Marilyn Nelson.
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.
Star Fix.
Run Stilleman
Albany
AI
Cuba 1963
The Kid
Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
Thanks
To Do Street
Facing It
Nude Interogation
Nathaniel Mc Kay
Song of the Aduumboulou
Gregory Orr
Gathering the Bones Together
Two Lines From the Brother Grimm
Origin of the Marble Forrest
Robert Hill Whiteman
Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
Away
Heather Mc Hugh
Language Lesson 1976
What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
In Cold Storm Light
Olga Boumas
Calypso
Victor Hernadez Soul
Latin and Soul
Jane Miller
Miami Heart
David St. James
Iris
CD Wright
Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
Girl Friend Poe # 3
Crescent
Carolyn Forche
Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
She Had Some Horses
My House is the Red Earth
Garret Honjo
The Legend
Andrew Hugins
Beggoten
We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Peggen Kelly
Imaging Their Own Hyms
Song
Paul Muldoon
Meeting the British
Errata
The Throwback
Judith Orez Coffer
Quinceanera
Rita Dove
Parsely
Day Star
After Reading Mikey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
Our Calling
Brbar Hamby
Thinking of Galieo
Hatred
Mark Jarman
Unholly Sonnet
Naomi Shibab Nye
The Traveling Onion
Arabic
Wedding Cake
Alberto Rios
Nani
Enland Finally like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
Nocturne Blue Waves
The Unfinished
Gary Sotto
Field Poem
Oranges
Black Hair
Susan Stewart
Yellow Star and Ice
The Forrest
Mark Dotty
Brillance
Esta Noche
Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
Black Nikes
Franz Wright
Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
To My Brother
Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Little Clowns, My Heart.
Cornelius, Eady.
Jack Johnson Does The Eagle Rock.
Crows In A Strong Wind.
I’m A Fool To Love You.
Louise Eldritch
. Indian Boarding School. The Runaways.
David Mason.
Spooning.
Marilyn Chin.
How I Got That Name?
Compose Near The Bay Bridge
The Survivor
Cathysong .
The Youngest Daughter.
Ann Finch.
Another Reluctance.
Insert
Lee Young Lee.
The Gift
Eating Together.
Carl Philiphs
Our Lady
As From a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
Bag of Mice
Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
The Viena Hottenot
Reetivka Vazisrani
From White Elephants
A million Balconies
Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
What the Orphan Inherits
The Pow Wow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethevey
Hot Combs
Amateur Fighter
Flounder
A E Stallings
The Tantrum
Joana Klink
Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
Postfeminism
Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
Quivra City Limits
Everywhere is Out of Town
Whaatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
At Pegasus
Lady Sings the Blues
Monthly Themes enter one review per month
January
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Read
#1: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#2: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
#4: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
#5: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#6: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
#7: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
#8: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
#9: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
10: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#11: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#12: The Stranger by Albert Camus
#13: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
#14: Animal Farm by George Orwell
#15: Watership Down by Richard Adams
#16: Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#17: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#18: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#19: 1984 by George Orwell
#20: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
#24: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
#26: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Not read
#3: Night by Elie Wiesel
#21: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#22: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#23: Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges#25: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
16 Famous Books Everyone Pretends They’ve Read (But Haven’t)
Read
Moby-Dickby Herman Melville
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1984 by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
F Scott Fitsgerald the Great Gatsby
F Scott Fitsgerald This Side of Paradise
Yet to Read
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
F Scott Fitsgerald Tender is the Night
F Scott Fitsgerald The Last Tycoon
25 Classic Books You Have to Read in 2025
Read
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
1984 by George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Odyssey by Homer
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
CS Lewis Prince Caspian
CS Lewis the Voyage of the Dawn Begal
CS Lewis the Horse and His Boy
CS Lewis the the Magican’s Newphew
CS Lewis the Silver Chair
CS Lewis The Final Battle
Willa Cather My Antonio
Alice Walker The Color Purple
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The classic books everyone should read at least once before they die
Read
#35. The Old Man and the Sea
– Author: Ernest Hemingway
- The Canterbury Tales
– Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
#33. Othello
– Author: William Shakespeare
#32. Flowers for Algernon
– Author: Daniel Keyes
#30. A Tale of Two Cities
– Author: Charles Dickens
#30. A Tale of Two Cities
– Author: Charles Dickens
#31. Beowulf
– Author: Unknown
#29. Wuthering Heights
– Author: Emily Brontë
#28. The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)
– Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
#27. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
– Author: William Shakespeare
#26. The Grapes of Wrath
– Author: John Steinbeck
#25. Great Expectations
– Author: Charles Dickens
#24. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
– Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#23. Julius Caesar
– Author: William Shakespeare
#22. The Outsiders
– Author: S.E. Hinton
#21. Brave New World
– Author: Aldous Huxley
#19. The Crucible
– Author: Arthur Miller
#17. Jane Eyre
– Author: Charlotte Brontë
#16. Fahrenheit 451
– Author: Ray Bradbury
#15. Pride and Prejudice
– Author: Jane Austen
#14. The Odyssey
– Author: Homer
#12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
– Author: Mark Twain
#11. 1984
– Author: George Orwell
#10. The Scarlet Letter
– Author: Nathaniel Hawthorn
#9. Hamlet
– Author: William Shakespeare
#8. The Catcher in the Rye
– Author: J.D. Salinger
#7. Of Mice and Men
– Author: John Steinbeck
#6. Macbeth
– Author: William Shakespeare
#5. Animal Farm
– Author: George Orwel
#4. Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
#2. Romeo and Juliet
– Author: William Shakespeare
#1. To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
100 thriller novels everyone should read at least once
2024’s top 100 books: How many did you read? – jakecaller@gmail.com – Gmail
The 100 books that defined the past 100 years
1955: ‘Marjorie Morningstar’ by Herman Wouk©Goodreads
“Marjorie Morningstar” is the love story of a young woman who accepts a job in New York, leaving her traditional Jewish family to become immersed in the theater world.
The best new books to read in January 2025
The 14 best classic novels under 200 pages
42 Must-Read Short Stories on Science Fiction That Will Transform Your Reality
15 Beautiful Literary Spots Across America for Every Reader
100 of the Best Books of All Time
Baby Boy Laughs When Mom Reads Storybook
0
3. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein (1974)
The imagination and artistry of Shel Silverstein are on full display in this classic collection of short stories and poems. Where the Sidewalk Ends is truly one of the best poetry books of all time because of its staying power for children and adults alike. Whimsical and masterful, the stories of this American poet, author, singer, and folk artist have something for everyone.
4. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (1966)
Sex and drugs have a common allure, but they also have a common endgame: a downward spiral. In Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann offers in lurid detail the stories of three young women who want nothing more than to reach the pinnacle of life. But just as they see it in their grasp, they lose it all in a coil of sex, lust, romance, and abandonment. This page-turner is one of those classic beach reads you won’t be able to put down, and it paved the way for similar scintillating vacation books.
5. The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
The master of suspense must be included in any list of books you should read in a lifetime. That’s why you’ll find Stephen King’s The Shining here. Brought to life in cinematic perfection by Jack Nicholson, Jack Torrance is a middle-aged man looking for a fresh start. He thinks he’s found it when he lands a job as the off-season caretaker at an idyllic old hotel, the Overlook. But as snow piles higher outside, the secluded location begins to feel more confining and sinister, less freeing and more provoking. Horror fans, take note: This is one of the scariest and best Stephen King books of all time.
6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) on my 50 Books to read List
7. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
70 The Handmaids Tale By Margaret Atwood Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
8. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
9. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
11. All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974)
12. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)
13. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
14. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)
15. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (2007)
16. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) plus rest of the series
17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
20 Daring Greatly How The Courage To Be Vulnerable Transforms The Way We Live, Love, Parent, And Lead By Brené Brow© Provided by Reader’s Digest
18. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown (2012)
19. 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
20. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (1996)
21. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988)
22. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
23. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000)
24. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997) plus rest of the Series
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by J.K. Rowling
25. Selected Stories, 1968–1994 by Alice Munro (1996)
65 The Fault In Our Stars By John Green Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
26. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (2012)
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865)
28. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
29. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
30. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)
31. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
32. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2000)
35. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009)
36. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)
37. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)
38. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
39. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
40. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
41. Love Medicine by Louise Eldrich (1984)
42. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)
43. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
44. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
45. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
46. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (2003)
47. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
48. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
49. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1937)
50. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)
51. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
52. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
53. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)
54. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
55. The Age of Innocence by Edith Warton (1920)
56. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
57. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
58. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)
59. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
60. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
61. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride (1995)
62. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)
63. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
64. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (2003)
65. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
66. The Night Watchmen by Louise Erdrich (2020)
67. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1995)
68. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
69. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
70. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
71. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr (1995)
72. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (1953)
73. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (2006)
74. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Olive Sacks (1985)
75. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006)
76. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (1974)
77. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (1979)
78. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953)
84 The Road By Cormac Mccarthy Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
79. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
80. The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
81. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
82. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
83. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
84. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1994)
85. The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978) plus rest of his works
86. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1603) plus rest of his plays
87. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
88. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
89. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
90. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
91. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
92. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
93. Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
94. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
95. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1950) plus rest of the series
96. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)97. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
98. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
99. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
100. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Shakespear – plays and sonnets
The Call of the Wild
Water for Elephants
The Princess Bride
The Kite Runner
The Pillars of the Earth
Illusions
Watership Down
Nice Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Tuesdays with Morrie
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Ender’s Game
The Valley of Horses
It
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Screwtape Letters
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Clan of the Cave Bear
American Gods
The Stand
– “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” – Jean-Dominique Bauby
– “Hamlet” – William Shakespeare
– “Goodnight Opus” – Berkeley Breathed
– “The Devil in the White City” – Erik Larson
– “The Thief Lord” – Cornelia Funke
– “Indigo” – Alice Hoffman
– “Mythology” – Edith Hamilton
– “The Outsiders” – S.E. Hinton
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie on 50 books list
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde (if it’s a play, it’s probably not on the list, which is mostly novels)
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry
Dune, by Frank Herbert
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (again)
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery on 50 book list
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (the list is, I believe, strictly fiction)
New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven by Larry Niven
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton by Larry Niven
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Doorways in the Sand by Robert Zelazny
Creatures of Light and Darkness by Rober Zelazny
Portrait of a Killer: Jack The Ripper – Case Cl… by Patricia Cornwell
The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short S… by Arthur C. Clarke
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories by Alice Munro
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Ficciones is the piece that’s on the list, if you want to add it.
Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
The Immaculate Conception by Gaetan Soucy
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Double Helix by J. Watson
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White H… by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Broken Government: How the Republi…by John W. Dean
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase… by James L. Swanson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Pianist: The Extraordinary True… by Wladyslaw Szpilman
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
Leviathan by Paul Auster
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D’Aulaire
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein
The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe (Poe is on the list three times, but not for this one.)
The Bible
The Quoran
Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
Shogun, by James Clavell
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
White Oleander, by Janet Fitch
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson
Love Story, by Erich Segal
Love You Forever, by Robert N. Munsch
John Adams, by David McCullough
Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
The Aeneid, by Virgil
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
The World of Pooh, by A.A. Milne
Katherine, by Anya Seton
The Stand, by Stephen King (Mr. King is on, but only for The Shining.)
Daughter of the Forrest, by Juliet Marillier
World Without End, by Ken Follett
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Freakonomics, by Stephen D. Levitt
World War Z, by Max Brooks
The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
Roots, by Alex Haley
House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III
The Canterbury Tales, by Barbara Cohen
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper FfordeThe Ruins, by Scott B. Smith
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom
The Mammoth Hunters, by Jean Auel
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
100 Love Sonnets, by Pablo Neruda
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Shadow Kiss, by Richelle Mead
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The Shack, by William Young
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Urusula K. Le Guin
The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
Le Morte d’Arthur, by Thomas Malory
Fail Safe, by Eugene Burdick
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
Ripley’s Game, by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley is on, but this one isn’t.)
Watchers, by Dean Koontz
Paradise Lost, by John Milton and other works by Milton
The Twentieth Wife, by Indu Sundaresan
Angels in America, by Tony Kushner
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
1776, by David McCullough
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (Foundation is on, but the other two are not.)
Into the Wild, by Erin Hunter
The Republic, by Plato
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer
If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried is on; this isn’t.)
Blood Promise, by Richelle Mead
Final Exit, by Derek Humphry
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho
Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett
Frostbite, by Richelle Mead
The Zahir, by Paulo Coelho
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas (Monte Cristo, Reine Margot, and Three Musketeers are in; this isn’t.)
Burned, by P.C. Cast
Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare (There is no Shakespeare on this list.)
Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead
The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami
The Painted Veil, by Somerset Maugham
The History of the Pelopponnesian War, by Thucydides
Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card
Le Grand Meaulnes, by Henri Alain-Fournier
Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer
Dark Rivers of the Heart, by Dean Koontz
The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav
Starman Jones, by Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land is on.)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne
The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan
Maurice, by E.M. Forster
The Tale of Gilgamesh, by Anonymous
The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak
A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah
Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett
Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder
When Nietzsche Wept, by Irvin D. Yalom
Child of the Prophecy, by Juliet Marillier
Marley & Me, by John Grogan
The Color of Water, by James McBride
On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffennegger
The Onion Field, by Joseph Wambaugh
Insomnia, by Stephen King
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
Amazing Grace, by Kathleen Norris
Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard
The Three Questions, by Jon J. Muth
The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan
The Demigod Files, by Rick Riordan
The Study Series Bundle, by Maria V. Snyder
The Tea Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly
Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
Free Speech for Me, by Nat Hentoff
Moloka’i, by Alan Brennert
From a Buick 8, by Stephen King
The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
The Robe, by Lloyd C. Douglas
Nobody’s Fool, by Richard Russo
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
The March, by E.L. Doctorow
A Lesson Before Dying, by Earnest Gaines
The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
The Histories, by Herodotus
Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike (Oddly enough, the other three are on the list)
Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
The Essential Rumi, by Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
Duma Key, by Stephen King
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund
Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, by Tony Kushner (plays aren’t generally on this list)
American Nightmare, by Jerrold M. Packard
The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo
The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, by Barbara Kingsolver
Richard III, by William Shakespeare (Shakespeare is not on this list)
The Plains of Passage, by Jean M. Auel
QB VII, by Leon Uris
The Shelters of Stone, by Jean M. Auel
Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor
Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
Neither Here Nor There, by Bill Bryson
The Lightening Thief, by Rick Riordan
Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan
The Titan’s Curse, by Rick Riordan
The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan
The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams
Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein
Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy, by Charles Nordhoff
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
The Voyage of the Star Wolf
and
The War Against the Chtorr 1: A Matter For Men
by David Gerrold
The Holy Man
by Susan Trott
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Tiger Eyes
by Judy Blume
Song of the Sound
by ADAM ARMSTRONG
The Competitive Advantage of Nations
by Michael E. Porter
Atlantis Found
by Clive Cussler
Hellboy Volume 1: Seed of Destruction
by Mike Mignola
The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy: Second Edi…
by Vicki Iovine
NO: Why Kids–of All Ages–Need to Hear It and …
by David Walsh
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of …
by Robert A. Caro
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary C…
by Jim Collins
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of Presid…
by Vincent Bugliosi
Magic Study
and
Fire Study
and
Assassin Study
and
Storm Glass
and
Ice Study
by Maria V. Snyder
Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Id…
by Gary Paulsen
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
by Douglas Coupland
Angels In America
by Joseph Kushner
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
by Alberto Manguel
A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry
by Mark Hertsgaard
List of Book Recommendations
The 13 Best College-Set Novels of All Time
15 Captivating Books That Will Draw You In From the Very First Line
10 Literary Classics You Must Revisit As an Adult
15 Fantasy Books as Good as Lord of the Rings – The Quick Report
20 Ways Reading Will Change in 2025
20 Influential Places That Inspire Writers
11 Destinations To Visit For Fans Of Every Book Genre
Must-Read Historical Fiction That Will Take You Back in Time – authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com – Gmail
8 Dystopian Books Like Severance on Apple TV – authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com – Gmail
25 Literary Museums Literature Lovers Will Want to Visit
The 5 Stephen King Books You Should Read First
The Shinning
Skeleton Key
The Running Man
11/23/63
It
10 Long Books That Will Keep You Entertained for Hours (or Days!): Our Title Recommendations
26 Must-Read Novels Every Book Worm Should Read At Least Once
The 26 Most Famous Historical Fiction Books Worth Reading
Three Classical Reads That Are Anything But Boring
Six Books to Read by the Fire
33 Magnificent Libraries To Visit In America, Beyond
Forbidden Pages: 15 Banned Books in 19th Century America
Additional recommendations:
“The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine
Leaves from the Diary of an Old Lawyer” by Joseph M. Field
Description: A collection of essays and stories providing a critical look at various social issues, including slavery, legal corruption, and societal norms.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its critical stance on slavery and its portrayal of the legal system’s corruption. Its progressive views and social critique were deemed too radical and threatening by conservative groups.
“The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta” by John Rollin Ridge
Description: Often considered the first novel by a Native American author, this book tells the semi-fictionalized story of Joaquín Murieta, a Mexican outlaw in California.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its violent content and its sympathetic portrayal of a bandit who resisted oppression, which authorities feared might incite rebellion among marginalized communitie
The Blithedale Romance” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Description: A novel based on Hawthorne’s experiences at the utopian Brook Farm community, it critiques idealistic social experiments and explores themes of feminism and individualism.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its criticism of transcendentalism and for challenging traditional gender roles, particularly through its portrayal of strong-willed female characters
.“Wieland” by Charles Brockden Brown
Description: A Gothic novel exploring themes of religious fanaticism, psychological horror, and supernatural elements, featuring a protagonist who is driven to murder by perceived divine commands.
Reason for Ban: Considered dangerous for its portrayal of religious extremism and insanity, which some saw as an attack on religious authority and moral values.
“Herland” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Description: Though published later in 1915, early feminist works like Gilman’s were influenced by 19th-century thought. “Herland” is a utopian novel about an all-female society that thrives without men.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its radical feminist themes and its challenge to traditional gender roles, particularly its depiction of a successful, self-sufficient society without male dominance.
“Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter” by William Wells Brown
Description: The first novel by an African American author, it tells the tragic story of Clotel, a mixed-race daughter of Thomas Jefferson, and exposes the horrors of slavery.
Reason for Ban: Banned in slaveholding states for its abolitionist message and its direct implication of a U.S. president in the institution of slavery, which was seen as inflammatory.
“The Woman in the Nineteenth Century” by Margaret Fuller
Description: A foundational feminist text arguing for women’s intellectual and social equality, advocating for their right to education, employment, and political participation.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its advocacy of women’s rights, which was considered radical and threatening to the patriarchal structure of 19th-century American society.
20 Best science fiction novels for every sci-fi fan
Read
2) Dune by Frank Herbert
Focusing on the planet Arrakis, where the spice is extracted, Frank Herbert’s captivating picture of a feudal distant future transformed by the mind-altering capabilities of a drug called spice is a classic that yet feels revolutionary today. The book was so successful that it was adapted into three films and resurrected on television. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya were among the well-known actors who starred in the subsequent films.
4) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Earth is almost uninhabitable due to the effects of pollution and war. The wealthy have departed the planet, leaving the less fortunate, like Rick Deckard, to fend for themselves. During a particularly difficult assignment, Rick, who earns his livelihood by destroying rogue androids, is forced to consider his work and perhaps his identity. Perhaps the most comprehensible of Dick’s many writings, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an incredible book.
9) The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann Vandermeer
Since it includes works by many of the top science fiction authors we are talking about on our list, this anthology deserves to be on our “Best Of” lists, even though they don’t often. Wells, Clarke, Butler, Vonnegut, Asimov, Liu, Doctorow, Le Guin, and the list goes on and on! An excellent beginning for readers of science fiction.
1) The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
The Blazing World, an early female utopian and proto-science fiction book, is about a lady from Earth who enters another planet through a portal in the North Pole and ascends to the position of empress of a fantasy society composed of half-human, half-animal creatures. Cavendish imagines submarines, boats with motors, and an endless cosmos in this 1666 work, which embodies the theoretical science of the Enlightenment.
George Orwell 1984
George Orwell Animal Farm
Bradbery Farenhiet 451
Huxley Brave New World
To Read
1) Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
Twenty separate people would have different opinions about C.J. Cherryh’s finest novel since her body of work is so vast. However, a Hugo Award and a Locus finalist make it difficult to refute. Thus, in our opinion, Downbelow Station is the best place to start. As humanity spreads out among the stars, Downbelow Station, set in Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Universe, is the tale of corporate space exploration gone wrong.
3) Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Bellona is no longer the same city; the majority of its residents have left, leaving only the destitute, deranged, and criminals. And a young man, the Kid, who was a poet. This complex and nuanced story navigates racial, gender, and sexual concerns in a near-future, devastated setting in a way that is impossible to overlook.
5) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
The author of Upgrade, Recursion, and the Wayward Pines trilogy presents a “mind-blowing” (Entertainment Weekly) speculative thriller about a regular man who awakens in a world that is oddly different from the one he believed he knew. The narrative of Dark Matter is about decisions, unexplored avenues, and the lengths we will go to in order to live the lives we envision.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is a stand-alone tale that reads less like a contemporary fantasy and more like a traditional gothic fiction. Set in nineteenth-century Mexico, this rich historical drama reworking of The Island of Doctor Moreau comes from the acclaimed author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Nigh
8) The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
Even though the majority of the Sadiri survivors are men, they still have to figure out how to keep their people going after their homeworld is destroyed. Under the direction of a lady from the planet’s Central Government, they set out to preserve their disappearing species by traveling around the colony world of Cygnus Beta, where they come across a diverse range of people and civilizations.
10) Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor presented us with Binti, a young Himba girl who has the opportunity of a lifetime: to enroll in the esteemed Oomza University in her novella that won both Hugo and Nebula awards. Notwithstanding her family’s reservations, Binti is a strong contender to go on this intergalactic voyage because of her aptitude for astrolabes and her gift for mathematics. But everything changes when the Medusae, which resemble jellyfish, invade Binti’s spaceship, and she is the only one left alive. With only five days to get to her objective, Binti is now left to fight for herself aboard a ship full of the creatures who killed her crew
2) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
Nuclear war razed the Earth, plunging its survivors into a new dark age in which science is reviled and books are destroyed on sight. A small order of Catholic monks dedicated to a legendary miracle worker holds back the wave of ignorance as best that it can as barbarism swells at its gates. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a bittersweet tale that might make you worry about our future as a species.
16) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Tokyo is the setting, and the year is 1984. After heeding the mysterious advice of a cab driver, a young lady called Aomame starts to observe perplexing contradictions in her surroundings. In addition to being a dystopia to match George Orwell’s, 1Q84 is a love tale, mystery, fantasy, and self-discovery book.
10 Book Trilogies That Provide the Perfect Escape: From Romances to Dystopian Series and More
50 books for 50 states that should be on your must-read list
15 can’t-miss books to read in a lifetime, per reviews
25 Classic Books to Read Before They’re Banned
Read
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Mary-Shelley/dp/0486282112
Published in full in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a literary classic. The gothic tale explores the dark and brooding aspects of humanity.
The story’s two main characters—Victor Frankenstein and the creature he creates—interact in such a way that intrigues readers. It’s a story about tragedies and the implications of those tragedies.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne©Provided by ALot.com
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen©Provided by ALot.com
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Little-Women-Louisa-May-Alcott/dp/1503280292
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Odyssey by Homer©Provided by ALot.com
Reading Homer’s The Odyssey is a challenging task, but a task that’s worthwhile. This is because it was written sometime in the 8th century BCE. The epic poem was found engraved into a clay slab and has since been translated into modern English.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Wuthering-Heights-Wordsworth-Classics-Bronte/dp/1853260010
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte©Provided by ALot.com
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060850523
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Great-Expectations-Charles-Dickens/dp/1503275183
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis©Provided by ALot.com
My Antonia by Willa Cather©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/My-Ántonia-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486282406
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486278077
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is an enduringly popular novel that is both Gothic and philosophical. Although it was Wilde’s first and only published work, it’s created quite the impression.
To Read
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Dalloway-Virginia-Woolf/dp/0156628708
It’s likely you’ve heard of Virginia Woolf. She’s an English writer and one of the most prominent female authors in literary history. Her novel Mrs. Dalloway is unique because it was one of the first stories written using stream of consciousness.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Mockingbird-Harper-Lee/dp/0446310786
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Sylvia-Plath/dp/0061148512
There’s something to be said about novels like The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath’s female-driven narrative has lasting power. Many find this novel to be sad, but it’s so much more than that. It’s also incisive and witty.
Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, suffers from severe depression. Her coming-of-age story is filled with expectations and preconceived notions of what should be and what shouldn’t be. It’s impossible not to relate to the unsureness that Esther feels.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote©Provided by ALot.com
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is about the quadruple murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and it is one of the best selling true-crime novels ever published.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt©Provided by ALot.com
Frank McCourt’s childhood memoir is filled with heartbreak, self-doubt, and hardship. As McCourt grows up, he is overlooked at school and church because he’s from a lower class family, despite the fact that he is a smart child and desperate to learn.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Classic-Collection/dp/1480560103
Although Margaret Atwood didn’t release her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale until 1985, it’s a compelling classic. And it’s recently been adapted into a popular Hulu series.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Color-Purple-Alice-Walker/dp/0156028352
In 1982, Alice Walker published a novel that went on to become a contemporary classic and a cultural phenomena. That novel is The Color Purple. It became the first work by an African American woman to win the Pulitzer and National Book awards.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Menagerie-Tennessee-Williams/dp/0811214044
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Bluest-Eye-Vintage-International/dp/0307278441
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler©Provided by ALot.com
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Portrait-Artist-Young-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486280500
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10 Fantasy Book Series That Are Considered Masterpieces
Few fantasy book series are considered masterpieces; fantasy is a broad genre, spanning generations across various media formats. There are many subgenres within fantasy, such as urban fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, and more. The sky is the limit within this genre, containing fantasy books where the protagonist is the villain, books that blend fantasy with other genres, or fantasy books about revenge. Of course, with such a vast genre, there are some negative aspects, including fantasy movies that have aged badly and fantasy TV shows that have wasted their potential.
However, there are many amazing aspects to fantasy as well, including iconic book series that are true masterpieces. There are several reasons why certain fantasy book series are considered to be superior, including creative fantasy books that defy all the tropes, fantasy books that illustrate critical themes in groundbreaking ways, and fantasy books with villains just as compelling as the heroes. Regardless of the reason, there are at least 10 fantasy book series that are considered masterpieces in the genre; that revolutionized this genre in some form.
The Chronicles Of Narnia By C.S. Lewis
A Children’s Fantasy Series
This image shows the cover of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the second chronological book in The Chronicles of Narnia.© Provided by ScreenRant
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is a children’s fantasy series comprising seven installments. It revolves around human children discovering the magical world of Narnia, initially in Professor Digory Kirke’s wardrobe. As the series goes on, the narrative introduces new protagonists, including the Pevensies’ cousin, Eustace Scrubb, and his classmate, Jill Pole. Time passes differently in this magical world, so each Chronicles of Narnia book illustrates a different conflict within this realm.
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The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most beloved children’s classic book series. Two of the books are on TIME‘s 100 Best Fantasy Books list, demonstrating the timelessness of this story. Furthermore, The Chronicles of Narnia has largely influenced other works of fiction, including His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, and The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The Chronicles of Narnia continues to stand against the test of time, utilizing children’s fantasy to convey religious themes.
The Lord Of The Rings By J. R. R. Tolkien
An Epic High Fantasy Adventure Trilogy
The Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of The Rings.© Provided by ScreenRant
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien revolutionized modern fantasy and is largely credited as the reason for the genre’s popularity. This epic high fantasy trilogy is set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, depicting the fight against the Dark Lord Sauron, who uses The Lord of the Rings‘ One Ring to rule over the realm. The trilogy follows several characters, including the Hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin), the humans (Aragorn and Boromir), the elves (Legolas), the dwarves (Gimli), and Gandalf, the wizard.
The Lord of the Rings is a staple in fantasy literature. It is one of the bestselling book series of all time, with over 150 million copies sold. Tolkien’s works have transformed into a franchise that includes several The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie adaptations, a critically acclaimed TV show, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, games based on the books, and theatrical productions. The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece for many reasons, largely including the themes of love and friendship, oppression, and tyranny.
The Time Quintet By Madeleine L’Engle
A Young Adult Sci-Fi Fantasy Series
A Wrinkle In Time By Madeleine L’Engle (Time Quintet Book 1)
Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet is a book series that perfectly blends sci-fi and fantasy, revolving around Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O’Keefe as they save their universe from various dark forces. L’Engle also wrote several spinoff books, including The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters, and A House Like a Lotus. The Time Quintet’s first installment won the Newbery Medal, one of the highest and most prestigious achievements in children’s literature and a rare accomplishment for fantasy.
Although Disney’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time was unsuccessful, it does not tarnish the Time Quintet’s status as a masterpiece fantasy book series. L’Engle explores various themes, such as friendship, good and evil, religion, and grief. A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962, a time when fantasy began to grow, and young adult fantasy was largely unheard of. However, the Time Quintet defied the odds and remains a classic staple of young adult fantasy.
The Earthsea Cycle By Ursula K. Le Guin
A Young Adult High Fantasy Series
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle is a young adult high fantasy book series comprising six installments and an anthology of short stories. The series is set in the fictional universe Earthsea, a large ocean containing several islands. This universe thrives on an intricate magic system that illustrates how the people of Earthsea largely depend on magic. The series has won several accolades, including a Newbery Honor, the National Book Award for Children’s Books, two Locus Awards, and the Nebula Award for Best Novel.
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| A Song of Ice and Fire By George R.R. Martin |
| Book |
Publication Date |
Corresponding Game of Thrones Season |
| A Game of Thrones |
August 6, 1996 |
Season 1 |
| A Clash of Kings |
November 16, 1998 |
Season 2 |
| A Storm of Swords |
August 8, 2000 |
Season 3, Season 4 |
| A Feast for Crows |
October 17, 2005 |
Season 5 |
| A Dance with Dragons |
July 12, 2011 |
Season 5 |
| The Winds of Winter |
TBC |
N/A (Seasons 6 & 7 original material) |
| A Dream of Spring |
TBC |
” “ |
Although the series is notorious for its next installment being a fantasy book many have waited years for, it does not lessen its significant impact on the fantasy genre. Before A Song of Ice and Fire, very few fantasy book series featured strong female main characters. However, Martin’s novels revolutionized that aspect with the introduction of Daenerys Targaryen, one of the most popular fictional characters to date.
Covers of George R.R. Martin’s Dreamsongs and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms© Provided by ScreenRant
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The books also subvert the chosen one trope by making a female character (Daenerys) “the chosen one” (The Prince That Was Promised), also a rare occasion in fantasy before this series. The Prince That Was Promised exists in Game of Thrones, but the show does not particularly focus on the importance of this role or the prophecy the way the books do. Although the books do not officially confirm the identity of the Prince That Was Promised, several significant signs point to Daenerys holding this title.
The Broken Earth By N. K. Jemisin
A Sci-Fi Fantasy Trilogy
The Fifth Season By N.K. Jemisin
The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin is a sci-fi fantasy book series that focuses on one continent, the Stillness, that endures a cataclysmic climate change event that occurs every few hundred years. The first installment, The Fifth Season, follows this universe as it is about to enter a devastating Fifth Season event. The Broken Earth features a society that is constructed on the oppression of orogenes, people who can manipulate earth elements. This trilogy also explores critical themes such as oppression, climate change, motherhood, identity, and family.
Jemisin is the first person to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row and for all installments in a trilogy. The Broken Earth was also groundbreaking for the fantasy genre, illustrating how books can perfectly blend fantasy and sci-fi. This trilogy features some of the best world-building in fantasy books, detailing specific aspects that most stories do not consider. The Fifth Season was published in 2015, at a time when fantasy had already covered so much ground. Nevertheless, The Broken Earth reformed how multiple genres blend together.
Six Of Crows By Leigh Bardugo
A High Fantasy Young Adult Duology Part Of The Grishaverse
Six of Crows Cover featuring a grey background, black wings, and the cover© Provided by ScreenRant
The Six of Crows duology is not the first series within the Grishaverse, but it is the best one. This duology revolves around six vastly different characters who come together for an epic heist. Their commonality is their circumstances: Society works against all six protagonists in some way, so if they perished during the heist, no one would come looking for them. The Six of Crows duology is also one of Leigh Bardugo’s best books, illustrating her talent for complex characters, riveting dynamics, and critical themes.
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Shadow and Bone
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Six of Crows is also featured on TIME‘s 100 Best Fantasy Books list, illustrating its impact on the genre. The duology has received other accolades, including The Independent‘s 10 Best Fantasy Novels and The Wall Street Journal‘s Best Young Adult Books. Six of Crows will stand the test of time as one of the best young adult fantasy book series because of Bardugo’s stellar craft and the truly brilliant characters.
The Poppy War By R.F. Kuang
A High Fantasy Trilogy Based On The Second Sino-Japanese War & The Opium Wars
The covers of The Poppy War trilogy© Provided by ScreenRant
The Poppy War is a high fantasy trilogy by R. F. Kuang immersed in Chinese mythology and loosely based on historical events. The narrative follows Rin, a war orphan who moves to Sinegard to attend the most prestigious military academy in the Nikan Empire against all odds. However, dark forces unfold during Rin’s time in Sinegard, leading Rin to the third Poppy War in Nikan. The Poppy War is a groundbreaking fantasy series, exploring Chinese politics and the fraught, oppressive dynamics between the British Empire and China.
The covers of The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty and The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang with a fiery red background
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The Poppy War has numerous accolades, including nominations for the Nebula Awards and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Each installment in this trilogy makes its mark on the fantasy genre and pushes the boundaries of fantasy with its unique world-building and intricate politics. The Dragon Republic ties the entire narrative together with parallels to Britain, China, Japan, and Taiwan. Finally, The Burning God features an epic conclusion that depicts an alternate reality involving the Chinese Communist Revolution failing, having both positive and negative results.
The Scholomance Trilogy By Naomi Novik
A Dark Academia Young Adult Fantasy Trilogy
The Scholomance Trilogy By Naomi Novik
The Scholomance Trilogy is a dark academia fantasy series by Naomi Novik, revolving around Galadriel Higgins at the Scholomance in a universe where non-magical people cannot see magic, and wizards live in enclaves to fend off maleficaria. The Scholomance Trilogy is an excellent example of dark fantasy books and the unlimited potential they bring. The story surpasses other fantasy books about magical schools, moving into a darker realm, and deconstructing presumptions with this subgenre that is not always particularly dark.
The Scholomance Trilogy is notably different from Novik’s other works, such as Uprooted and Spinning Silver. However, this series, a departure from Novik’s fairy tale retellings, is a breath of fresh air that illustrates the exciting parts of dark academia, especially when mixed with fantasy. The Scholomance Trilogy stands out among magic school narratives because of its unique magic system combined with the grim aspects of the series.
Source: TIME, BBC, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal
5 Books You (Should Have) Read In High School That Are Worth Re-Reading As An Adult!
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- Brave New WorldBy Aldous Huxley
If you love Dystopian novels, this is the book for you, as it is definitely a blueprint for modern favorites like The Hunger Games and Divergent. The writing style definitely comes across as literary, which may be a positive or a negative depending on your tastes. The story is unique and still feels like a relevant critique of our society today.
- Of Mice and Menby John Steinbeck
This book is short and a very easy read, so it’s perfect if you don’t want to get into anything too long or complex while still reading a classic. It is so tragic throughout and ends with a shocking and sad twist. If you’ve never read this before and don’t know how it ends, you need to pick this book up right now, as reading it for the first time is truly a gut-wrenching experience! Even if you know what’s coming, the story is still both sad and sentimental, while also providing a tenderhearted take on the meaning of friendship.
- Lord of The Fliesby William Golding
This novel is a fever dream – one that may have ruined you when you were in middle school. There is so much imagery and hidden meaning behind every description that it’s worth looking back on years later. If you love crazy and weird commentary on human nature, this is the novel for you. If anything, it will make you glad you’re not 13 anymore!
- Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury
If you’re an avid fan of reading, this one might especially hit home for you because, if you don’t know, or don’t remember, it’s all about a futuristic society where they burn every book. Because it is a little dense, it will definitely be easier to understand on the second read. Like Brave New World, this is also a great option for fans of dystopian worlds.
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- The Outsidersby S.E. Hinton
If you’re anything like me, this book made you cry when you first read it. Sometimes called “the original YA novel”, The Outsiders is both simple and beautiful, as well as extremely nostalgic for those who read it in middle school or high school. If you remember having a crush on the actors in the movie, or if you have an emotional reaction to the phrase “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” you need to re-read this book ASAP!
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10 Modern Books Likely To Become Classics One Day
- Modern classics are determined by quality, subject matter, and relevance, along with reader engagement and interest.
- Modern literature uplifts voices overlooked by mainstream while exploring complex themes and compelling prose.
- Novels from the 21st century may not yet be classics, but some, like “Between the World and Me,” could earn that status.
It takes a lot for a contemporary book to be considered a modern classic, including the quality, subject matter, and relevancy of the text. These elements come together to create a novel that will join the ranks of the literary canon one day. One of the most exciting parts of modern literature is the elevation of voices previously overlooked by popular literature, leading to beautiful and compelling prose by people from all walks of life entering the mainstream. When considering what books will earn the title of classic, reader engagement, and interest must be taken into account alongside merit.
As an entrance into the larger literary exploration of World War II, The Book Thief stands out as the perfect place to start.
The Book Thief sees Liesel adapt to a new home with adoptive parents, help them conceal a Jewish man from the Nazis, and learn the power of the written word as she becomes literate and seeks to save books from being destroyed. The story is narrated by Death, but even in this supposed objectivity, Death cannot help but be moved to certain actions by the human spirit and the bravery of Liesel and her family. As an entrance into the larger literary exploration of World War II, The Book Thief stands out as the perfect place to start.
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The Hunger Games (2008)
Written by Suzanne Collins
Katniss hides up a tree in The Huger Games© Provided by ScreenRant
Expertly crafting not only an intricate but also a logical world with rules that make sense to the reader, The Hunger Games taught a generation of readers to expect more from the stories they engage with.
While novels written for adults are more typically discussed as hallmarks of the literary canon, that doesn’t mean that young adult or even children’s books are any less important. What young audiences read as they come of age has a direct impact on their views and social and cultural development. The Hunger Games was written when YA dystopian narratives were extremely popular, but Suzanne Collins wrote a story unlike anything else available. At once accessible and brutally honest in the violence and cruelty of the story’s world, The Hunger Games doesn’t pull punches in expressing its lessons and themes.
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Expertly crafting not only an intricate but also a logical world with rules that make sense to the reader, The Hunger Games taught a generation of readers to expect more from the stories they engage with. Every Hunger Games book has its pros and cons, but the first installment of the series is well-remembered as capturing the hearts and minds of everyone who reads it. Collins has released several prequels since the series’ popularity exploded thanks to the films. However, nothing will ever come close to the magic of The Hunger Games and Katniss’ first trip into the arena.
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Between The World And Me (2015)
Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The cover of Between The World And Me© Provided by ScreenRant
It can be difficult for memories, autobiography, and even autofiction to become a classic, as there’s an argument to be made for how universal and enduring personal stories can be. This is not an issue in Between the World and Me, which seamlessly connects the intimate experiences of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ life with the long and complex history of racial prejudice and injustice across the world. Coates is in conversation with his son throughout the work as he grapples with how to communicate the lessons and context that cannot be separated from how Black men and women are treated.
Race as a concept and a political agenda are some of the biggest themes in Between the World and Me, and Coates’s writing and style have drawn comparisons to James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. If Between the World and Me is any indication, Coates will go down in history as a pivotal voice in the literary canon, and Between the World and Me will be taught and celebrated for years to come. As a stunning and vulnerable non-fiction, the book should be read by audiences both inside the U.S. and out.
James (2024)
Written by Percival Everett
The cover of James© Provided by ScreenRant
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book that’s long been taught as one of the great works of American literature but has always been read with the caveat of racial prejudice of the time. Percival Everett’s James challenges the perspectives of the original book and Jim’s archetype. Jim, Huck’s travel companion who escapes enslavement, is not the man that Mark Twain wrote him to be. James is far more than a retelling of an American classic. It represents Jim as a vivid and fully formed character and expands upon his adventures with Huck with greater depth and complexity.
The connection between Jim and Huck is painted with newfound nuance in James, as there isn’t a moment when Jim isn’t aware of his position as a Black man next to a young white boy. Even as they become close and Huck begins to see Jim as a man, there’s no question that Jim can bring his guard down. Language and the written word play an enormous role in James, and Everett plays with this to great effect through his writing. The novel is not only necessary and compelling but highlights Everett as a once-in-a-generation writer.
All The Light We Cannot See (2014)
Written by Anthony Doerr
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There’s no shortage of amazing books about World War II from many perspectives, but All The Light We Cannot See looked at this well-known part of history in a new way. Doerr’s work is defined by his non-linear style of storytelling as well as his extremely lyrical prose that imbues light and beauty into the darkest moments of the narrative. As much as the novel is about the horrors of WWII on the millions it affected, it also highlights Doerr’s interest in technology and how communication has been altered so deeply due to technological innovation.
Relying on intricate descriptions of the senses and how humans interact with their world, All The Light We Cannot See is an immersive experience.
All The Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has skyrocketed Doerr and his other works to fame and popularity. The recent miniseries based on the novel was a solid effort, but it failed to capture the nuance and emotional realism of the book. It stands out not only in terms of critical reception but also in far-reaching popularity with readers. Transcending genre, the book appeals to readers of all kinds. Relying on intricate descriptions of the senses and how humans interact with their world, All The Light We Cannot See is an immersive experience.
My Brilliant Friend (2011)
Written by Elena Ferrante
The cover of My Brilliant Friend© Provided by ScreenRant
My Brilliant Friend is the first in the Neopolitan Novels series by Elena Ferrante, which chronicles a stunning portrait of true friendship between women in Italy throughout the latter half of the 20th century. It’s told from the perspective of Elena, or Lenù, about growing up with her mercurial and beautiful friend Lila. Elena considers Lila to be the smartest and most advanced person she knows, but Lila is forced to quit school and work for her father until marriage. Conversely, Elena is allowed to get a formal education but always feels equally inferior and drawn to Lila.
Much of My Brilliant Friend focuses on the limited opportunities afforded to the lower economic class in Italy, particularly for women. Ferrante frequently discusses what she refers to as the pleb, or plebian, class, which Elena comes to understand herself and the people of her community to be part of. Elena’s understanding of the world’s divisions and the invented separation between people shifts her relationship with Lila. Additionally, few books have so accurately captured the jealous, loving, and disappointing nature of a friendship between young women who mean more to each other than they can describe.
The Road (2006)
Written by Cormac McCarthy
Viggo Mortensen as Man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Boy in a scene from The Road.© Provided by ScreenRant
Outside of the brutal world of man versus man that the characters inhabit, there is an accessible and affecting tale of the bond between a father and son and the lengths a parent will go to protect their child.
The Road is one of the most instrumental works of post-apocalyptic fiction from the modern era, as it successfully capitalizes on the fears and hopes of a generation growing up facing an increasingly violent and environmentally volatile world. Cormac McCarthy is well-known for his biting works that tackle the legacy of American mythology with works like Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men. The Road lent itself to a film adaptation because McCarthy paints a vividly visual portrait in his prose alongside characters that become more real to the reader than themselves by the end of the story.
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McCarthy won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Road, and few other honors are so universally acknowledged as the highest recognition an author and novel can receive. Post-apocalyptic books like Fallout and other popular dystopian TV shows and movies have never been more popular, and the influence that prose like The Road has on these onscreen works is obvious. Outside of the brutal world of man versus man that the characters inhabit, there is an accessible and affecting tale of the bond between a father and son and the lengths a parent will go to protect their child.
The Round House (2012)
Written by Louise Erdrich
The cover of The Round House© Provided by ScreenRant
Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich has spent her career bringing to life her experience growing up as an Objibwe woman and discussing the far-reaching impact of the United States’ treatment of Indigenous communities. The Round House was Erdrich’s fourteenth novel, but her work never falters or flags, as there’s always a new story and brilliant characters to engage with. Erdrich is known for writing about subjects intersectionally, looking at feminism specifically through the lens of being an Ojibwe woman. This makes it interesting that the protagonist of The Round House is a young man named Joe.
Joe’s mother is assaulted, and he takes it upon himself to investigate the perpetrator because he understands, even at a young age, that he cannot rely on the criminal justice system to work as it should for an Indigenous woman. The Round House is open about the disproportionate number of attacks upon Indigenous women and how the law consistently fails to help, as well as the cycles of masculinity that lead to male violence. Winning the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction, The Round House has not diminished in its relevance or urgency since its publication.
Never Let Me Go (2005)
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
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Also known for his 1989 novel, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro penned his equally compelling, Never Let Me Go, in 2005. Adapted into a film starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Kiera Knightley in 2010, the story follows an alternate history where human cloning has become common practice, but these clones are raised to be living organ donors for other humans, with no rights of their own. It’s a tragic science fiction twist that adds an unending layer of melancholy to a narrative of human connection and struggle.
When drawing comparisons between the clones and the oppressed lower social classes of the UK, the novel’s setting, the metaphor becomes obvious.
The three main characters are confined by their circumstances, but it doesn’t stop them from experiencing the full scale of human emotion that every person goes through. Never Let Me Go engages with the question of what it means to be human. When drawing comparisons between the clones and the oppressed lower social classes of the UK, the novel’s setting, the metaphor becomes obvious. There’s no question that Never Let Me Go will end in tragedy, but that doesn’t make the beauty of the prose and the true love between the characters any less impactful.
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Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
Written by Bernardine Evaristo
The cover of Girl, Woman, Other© Provided by ScreenRant
Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other may have won the 2019 Booker Prize, but this accolade only further cemented what readers of the novel already knew: it was a book that changed the lives of those who read it. Told from multiple interweaving perspectives across decades in the United Kingdom, the novel swiftly provides context and characterization for each new person and subject it introduces. This is a clear example of the skill of the prose, as the reader never gets lost or bogged down by the changing settings and characters.
Everyone in the book feels like a separate and fully realized individual while being part of the larger whole. Girl, Woman, Other primarily grapples with and celebrates the joy and pain of being a Black woman, or non-man, in the modern era. While there are plenty of moments of struggle, the novel still lifts up its characters, providing an amazing representation of what human connection and strong relationships do for a person and a community. Regardless of the reader’s identity or where they live, there is something universal and poignant to be found in the novel’s pages.
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Parade’s Handy Guide to Its “Best Books of All Time” Lists
Here are the lists we’ve done so far!
222 Best Books of All Time That Deserve a Spot on Your Bookshelf, With Picks from Bestselling Authors and Indie Booksellers
George R.R. Martin and Anne Tyler are just two of the acclaimed authors who shared their personal picks with us.
May 17, 2024
Why 222 books? We think a list of The 100 Best Books sounds too definitive, too final. Hopefully, offering 222 titles feels like a treasure trove worth diving into and arguing over and enjoying. You’ll find all types of works of fiction—picture books and romances and fantasies and westerns and young adult novels and good ole fiction and mysteries and classics and recent works we believe will be classics in years to come. (Nonfiction will be its own list someday soon.) But they’re still just some of the best books of all time—if we made this list a thousand titles long, we’d still be missing so many.
To help us narrow this down to the absolute best books, we reached out to thirty-three acclaimed and best-selling authors. Everyone from Anne Tyler to George R.R. Martin to Karin Slaughter took the time to share their passionate recommendations. Then we called some of our favorite bookstores and asked for their suggestions. So you’ll find personal picks on the list by dozens of writers and staff members from indie booksellers all over the country. We even scoured sites like Goodreads to see what you love the most. Our guiding principle was to include as many types of books as possible, because a great picture book is just as worthy as Proust. And both deserve to be on our list.
We can name 100 great mysteries (in fact we have). We can name 100 great crime novels. (Yep, we’ve done that too.) So a list of the best books of all time from every genre is just a starting point. Tell us which ones you love. Tell us what’s missing. Tell us what shouldn’t be on here. And tell us what list you’d like to see next. (The 100 Best Sports Books? The 100 Best Memoirs/Biographies? The 100 Best Picture Books?) We’ll keep reading if you will.
‘7 Little Johnstons’ Star Liz Addresses Sister Anna’s Reported Family Rift (Exclusive)’7 Little Johnstons’ Star Liz Addresses Sister Anna’s Reported Family Rift (Exclusive)
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222 Best Books of All Time
The Remains of the Day
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The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Writer Anne Tyler said yes when asked to contribute to Parade’s list of some of the best books of all time. Yes, with one condition: the only book she wanted to talk about was The Remains of the Day. It’s that sort of book. The story of an English butler so devoted to service he misses his chance at love, it was hailed as an instant classic on publication in 1989. Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel isn’t path-breaking or stylistically shocking; it’s just very, very good and everyone knew it, right away. Tyler, author most recently of French Braid, cherishes the remarkable scene at its climax. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the heart-stopping moment near the end,” says Tyler, “when the central character all at once understands that his entire life has been wrong.”
Harold and the Purple Crayon (Purple Crayon Books)
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Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
You know how parents can spend a lot of money on a gift for kids, only to watch them play with the box it came in more than the toy itself? That embrace of imagination is at the heart of this picture book. Harold decides to go for a walk late at night. Armed with only a purple crayon, he embarks on all sorts of adventures before winding up right back where he started. Bookseller Nina Barrett of Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois loves handselling this one. It’s a classic, Barrett says, “for showing how, with just a few simple lines, a small child can follow his imagination anywhere it leads, and create his own destiny”
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Pride and Prejudice
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Austen went from an anonymous author (because nice women didn’t write) to being labeled a purveyor of mere romance novels (which are women’s stuff and so don’t really matter) to grudgingly called “beloved” (one way of admitting how wildly popular she is, without actually respecting her) to a full recognition that Austen’s novels are insightful, rich and intellectually complex. And what the heck is wrong with being entertaining, anyway? It took too long for Austen to gain her due. Still, we’ve always had the novels, at least four of which are practically perfect. Tomorrow we’ll pick Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion as our favorite. But today we’re choosing Pride and Prejudice with the willful and smart Elizabeth Bennett, the infuriating Mr. Darcy, that cad George Wickam and so many other memorable characters. Marriage is serious business—indeed, the most serious act a woman of a certain class makes in life—and Austen is as keen an observer of manners and mores as one could hope for.
The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume
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The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
A work of imagination so profound and unique, it stands alone…unless you count the modern fantasy genre that sprang up in its wake. Heck, even the idea of the trilogy that dominates sci-fi and fantasy is a cliche simply because this one, long novel was broken up into three parts by its publisher. Even the biggest names will take a moment to honor Tolkien. “It will surprise no one to learn that my favorite fantasy novel is The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien,” says writer George R.R. Martin, author most recently ofFull House: Wild Cards 30, which he edited, and The Rise Of The Dragon, with Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson. “Fantasy is the oldest branch of literature, with roots that go back as far as Gilgamesh and Homer, but Professor Tolkien redefined the genre, and every fantasist since has been writing in his shadow. He is as important to fantasy as Shakespeare is to the theatre… and like Shakespeare, his work will endure for centuries, being read, reread, and treasured.”
Gilead (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel
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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson wowed everyone in 1980 with her debut novel, Housekeeping, the story of an eccentric aunt who burdened (or freed?) her nieces with an unconventional approach to life. It became a marvelous film in 1987 starring Christine Lahti. Twenty-four years later, Robinson finally published her follow-up. Gilead was worth the wait. It’s a novel of faith and family, bringing to life John Ames, a minister dying of heart disease who wants to leave behind a document for the young son who will never really know him. Robinson tackles the Underground Railroad, John Brown, the unfair caricaturing of Calvinists as dour scolds and above all life in a small town for a man of faith. Ames wrestles with his conscience but Robinson never seems to struggle at all. Her novel is illuminated from within, like stained glass lit up by the sun.
Arrow of God
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Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
One work often becomes the gateway to an entire world of literature for outsiders. Latin America? Start with One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Spain? Don Quixote. Africa? For decades, African literature was represented by one book: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Happily, countless novels have come in its wake, not least Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And Adichie is here to champion not just the many authors who walked through the door Achebe opened, but his entire African Trilogy. It begins with Things Fall Apart, continues with No Longer At Ease and climaxes with Arrow of God, the story of a tragic clash between the chief priest of a small village and the Christian missionary John Goodcountry. “You know about the big historical events for which words like ‘colonization’ and ‘imperialism’ are used,” says Adichie, author most recently of Notes On Grief. “And then you read a novel like Arrow of God and you are struck by the beautiful, fragile, complicated humanity of the people whose lives were forever changed by history.”
Lonesome Dove: A Novel
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Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
If you’re going to name one book the “Great American Novel,” surely it should be in that most American of genres, the Western. Mind you, even people who never fantasize about heading to Deadwood fall under the spell of Larry McMurtry’s epic oater. Just ask bookseller Deb Leonard. “The romantic notion of cowboys permeates American culture,” says Leonard of Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Those stoic, laconic heroes risking life and limb to drive their cattle across deserts and raging rivers, battling blizzards, sandstorms, rattlesnakes, coyotes (pronounced ki-oats), and no-good rustlers loom large in our psyche. It is hard to believe those cattle-driving days lasted less than twenty years. This gorgeous novel chronicles one of those adventures: a couple of retired Texas Rangers on a drive from Mexico to Montana. Cattle-drives not your cup of tea? Then how about a soaring story full of vivid landscapes and absolutely unforgettable characters. It is a book that will make you laugh so hard that it hurts on one page, just to break your heart into pieces on the next. If you only read one Western in your life, make it this one.”
The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Sometimes you just want the bejesus scared out of you and if that’s your wish, bookseller Lisa Morton recommends The Haunting Of Hill House. “Not only was this modern classic the first major novel to deal with a paranormal investigation, it also contains what may be the most disturbing opening in all of literature,” says Morton of The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, California. “The entire paragraph is sublime, but the last five words—”whatever walked there, walked alone”—is the perfect evocative, chilling introduction to the story. Breathing walls, rattling door knobs, a damaged and fragile heroine…. Jackson may have produced equally fine novels (especially We Have Always Lived in the Castle) and one of literature’s great short stories (“The Lottery“), but she was never better or more frightening than here.”
Maggie the Mechanic: The Love & Rockets Library – Locas Book 1
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Heartbreak Soup (Love & Rockets)
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Love and Rockets: Maggie the Mechanic and Love and Rockets: Heartbreak Soup by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
For 40(!) years, Los Bros Hernandez have produced “alternative” comics that helped revolutionize the industry. Along the way, they’ve created two sprawling worlds peopled with vivid characters, crazy storylines and the quotidian challenges of everyday life. Gilbert is best known for the Palomar stories, set in a mythical Latin American country suffused with magic realism (natch) and featuring Heraclio and Carmen, a happy couple at the heart of early storylines. Jaime is best known for the Locas stories set in LA and centered by oft-time lovers Maggie and Hopey. It’s the serialized novel to end all novels, it’s Dickensian, it’s Borgesian and certainly Trollope would be proud. Start with these two collections from the early 1980s. Binge-watching has nothing on the binge-reading you’ll soon be doing.
Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Lee’s book is so wonderfully complex it boggles the mind. Lee covers 80 years of history from 1910 to 1989. And if you think the usual immigrant experience is complicated, imagine you’re a Korean moving to Japan, only to discover with a shock that your people are despised there and forced to live in a ghetto-ized area. Then the Japanese invade and occupy Korea. Conflicted much? Lee captures the inner turmoil these events create in her characters, along with everything from kimchi to pachinko parlors. A rich, rich novel that we believe will be considered a classic years from now. So why wait? (The TV series is good too.)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Judy Blume changed everything for young adult fiction, though Blume would be the first to highlight those who paved the way for her. But if Blume were just an Important Figure, she wouldn’t be so beloved. Kids still read her fiction, still get caught up in the drama and still find themselves in it. First among equals in her admirable body of work? It has to be Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. A girl on the cusp of puberty is worried when all her friends get their period before her. Will it ever come? Buying bras, worrying about breast size, spreading rumors about girls who seem a little faster when it comes to boys? This might be an episode of HBO’s Euphoria, though with less drugs and no actual sex. Margaret spends the book exploring different faiths, but kids quickly learned they could always have faith in a book with Judy Blume’s name on it. A classic.
Another Country
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Another Country by James Baldwin
One of our richest thinkers, James Baldwin shared the wealth with his autobiographical debut Go Tell It On The Mountain, the righteous essay collection The Fire Next Time, numerous short stories, his powerful work as a public intellectual and the groundbreaking Giovanni’s Room. Author Arundhati Roy is drawn, most of all, to his complex, troubling novel Another Country. It’s the story of jazz drummer Rufus Scott and his abusive relationship with Leona in 1950s Greenwich Village. “Rage. Poetry. Beauty,” says Roy, author most recently of Azadi. “A book in which writing meets music. In which literature shows the world its place in the universe—with precise coordinates.”
My Brilliant Friend (HBO Tie-in Edition): Book 1: Childhood and Adolescence
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My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
An Italian novel about female friendship amidst the backdrop of domestic violence shouldn’t be the stuff of bestsellers. When My Brilliant Friend turns out to be the first of four novels that tell one long story, when the whole thing is handled by the boutique label Europa Editions (rather than a big house with tons of marketing muscle) and when the author refuses to do most press and remains anonymous? Well, you’d be lucky to reach cult status. Instead, Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels became an absolute sensation, even getting adapted into a fine HBO series. Why? How did it happen? Just read it. Sometimes, great writing is enough.
The Stand (Movie Tie-in Edition)
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The Stand by Stephen King
As we said when choosing just one Stephen King novel for our list of the best thrillers of all time, pick one of his books and readers will invariably say, “But what about…?” We know, we know. We said it ourselves. What about The Dark Tower series? What about his marvelous collection of four novellas Different Seasons? What about Misery or Mr. Mercedes or 11/22/63 or It, for pete’s sake? What about It? Sure, but if we chose any of those books, we bet a lot more people would say loudly and clearly, what about The Stand? It’s the book that is the most Stephen King of Stephen King books. It’s big and sprawling and he’s come back to it and added in more because it needed more and we wanted more and it’s about a pandemic and god knows we can’t pretend that’s some fantastical conceit any more, can we? The Stand has it all. While the hardcore fans see his entire body of work centering on The Dark Tower, we say maybe, sure, you could be right. But start with The Stand.
Americanah: A novel
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Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
It seems like Americanah is Adichie’s masterpiece, but that’s probably because we haven’t read her next novel yet. Her debut, Purple Hibiscus, was a revelation. Then came her second novel, Half Of A Yellow Sun (another peak!). In 2013 she delivered Americanah, a remarkable, decades-spanning story of a young woman in Nigeria who falls in love but chooses to flee a military dictatorship and come to America. She is changed and also changes the U.S. in her way, by blogging on race and identity. Like so many people forced by circumstance to uproot, our heroine returns home when she can. Are the changes she has undergone going to mark her forever as not-Nigerian, as an “Americanah?” Must she change again? Or must Nigeria? And who decides? Praised by Beyoncé, who even sampled a speech by Adichie in a song, but that’s just the most glamorous of many accolades Adichie has received. So far.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Don’t panic! The Douglas Adams radio play turned franchise is an eco-friendly renewable resource, spinning off plays, movies, TV shows, comic books, computer games and a “trilogy” of novels that total six in all. If you enjoy the madcap new movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, then you’re ready for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the first book in the series. It begins with Earth being demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, soon sees our hero tortured by aliens (they read him their poetry) and includes all sorts of nonsense mixed up with concepts from philosophy, science, religion et al in the silly/smart way perfected by Monty Python. Gloriously bonkers and sneakily serious—think Candide, but with more spaceships. Bonus points if you also listen to the marvelous Stephen Fry reading it for the audiobook version.
Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Which Brontë sister is your favorite? This question can spark a knock-down drag out fight. Some of us, like perhaps Kate Bush, choose Emily Brontë and her only novel, the romantic classic Wuthering Heights. Others pick Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, preferring the brooding Mr. Rochester to the passionate Heathcliff or maybe the self-made Jane to the doomed Catherine. And someone, somewhere must be arguing for poor Anne and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as the best of the bunch, though they’re quite alone in that. We’ll take the wild abandon and disastrous mistakes of Wuthering Heights. Just consider this a placeholder for all the Brontës and what might have been if they hadn’t each died so very young.
A Perfect Spy: A Novel
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A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré
We put Le Carré’s novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on our list of the best mysteries of all time because it’s riveting to watch George Smiley ferret out a mole in Britain’s MI5 by sitting and thinking. It’s a true mystery, even though Le Carré is usually classified differently. Then we put his novel A Perfect Spy on our list of the greatest thrillers ever written. Either one could be on this list of the best books of all time. We chose A Perfect Spy in part because we could just as easily file it under “memoir.” Le Carré drew deeply upon the relationship he had (or lacked) with his own father. Dad was a con man that hobnobbed with violent London gangsters the Kray brothers, made and lost fortunes and charmed everyone within a mile of his magnetism. Jeffery Deaver, author most recently of Hunting Time, concurs. “No one writes about espionage like this author,” says Deaver. “But I’ve picked it because it is also one of the most engrossing—and harrowing—portraits of a father-son relationship I’ve ever read. It’s not for the faint of heart, and that warning is not because of car chases and shootouts.”
Madeline
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Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
Picture books are evocative for adults and few offer as Proustian a trigger as the opening lines of Madeline: “In an old house in Paris/that was covered in vines/lived twelve little girls/in two straight lines.” Picture books are powerful, especially when read again and again and again, as Kathy Doyle Thomas, of Half Price Books in Dallas, can attest. “My daughter loved the Madeline books and I loved my daughter sitting on my lap and us reading the books together,” says Thomas. “Madeline was smart, cute, French and adventurous, a fun role model for my daughter. I have two sons, so my daughter loved the idea of a little girl surrounded by other little girls instead of her BROTHERS!”
Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
One sign of a classic is the way it speaks in a fresh way to each new generation. Don Quixote’s tale of a woebegone knight errant and his blunt-spoken sidekick Sancho has been labeled comic, tragic, a defense of eternal values and a repudiation of the very idea of eternal values. Or it’s been seen as lacking only a song (and thus turned into the musical The Man Of La Mancha) or a little dance (and thus turned into a ballet by George Balanchine, among others). It certainly speaks to George Saunders, author most recently of A Swim In A Pond In the Rain. “What I love about Don Quixote is its energetic portraiture of someone who is, like all of us, sometimes very right and sometimes very wrong, but always sees himself as the former,” says Saunders. “The book is a vast canvas, gloriously full of ‘on the other hand’ thinking—no stolid, lazy truth is allowed to exist for long in its universe. So, to read it is to be reminded that our tendency to always know where we stand on things is a weakness—a very human weakness, the human weakness, really, part of what makes us both dangerous and dear.”
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition
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The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway
Not every great writer is influential. Not every influential writer is great. Hemingway is both. And he should be read by everyone. “I’d somehow managed to avoid reading Hemingway until my early thirties, when I was first beginning to write,” says Julie Otsuka, author most recently of The Swimmers. “I’d always thought he was ‘not for me’—I’m not white, I’m not a man, I’ve never stalked a lion, I haven’t been to war. And yet, as soon as I began to read him, I could not stop. It was the cadence of his sentences that first drew me in, the clarity and beauty of his language. Also, the humor and quiet melancholy. And his ‘iceberg theory’—in many of his stories, the war is only hinted at, obliquely, through small details, but so much is left unsaid—was helpful to me when I was trying to figure out how to write my first novel, which also deals with the trauma of war.”
Bridget Jones’s Diary 25th Anniversary edition
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Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
When Samuel Pepys began his diary in 1660, he recorded what time he woke up, what he ate for lunch, the actresses he dallied with, the horrors of the Plague and even his new watch. (Pepys was very fond of his new watch.) Everyone calls it a masterpiece. But when Bridget Jones keeps a diary and records her battles with weight, the plague of her singleness, the challenges at work, the irritating Mr. Darcy and never once mentions her watch, male critics dismiss it as “chick lit.” It’s too funny, too romantic, too entertaining to be “real” literature. Bollocks, we say. If a novel is meant to capture an era and bring to life a vivid character we know better than we know ourselves, then Helen Fielding’s novel ranks right up there.
Dune (Movie Tie-In)
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Dune by Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert’s Dune has many facets: it’s science-fiction, it’s fantasy, it’s a commentary on religion, it’s a dissection of colonialism and it’s an early example of cli-fi (that is, climate fiction). But it takes romance legend Beverly Jenkins to center the passionate and strong woman whose decision puts the entire story into motion. “Dune is one of my all time faves,” says Jenkins, author most recently of To Catch A Raven. “As a classic space opera, it appeals to the fantasy/sci-fi lover that I am. Dune is also the ultimate romance and that appeals to me as well. Lady Jessica was told by her Order to birth a girl child, but her love for her Duke overrode that directive. She gave Leto a son instead. Without that love, there’d be no Paul. And without Paul, there’d be no Dune.”
I Capture the Castle
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I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
This charming debut has beguiled everyone from Walt Disney to J.K. Rowling. Writer Armistead Maupin is no exception. “When I was a teenager in North Carolina, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle taught me to love the very idea of England, a land where a deeply eccentric family could cheerfully endure poverty in a dilapidated castle while their father faces writer’s block in a nearby tower,” says Maupin, author most recently of Logical Family. “Smith’s novel was in the form of a teenage girl’s diary, and I’ve never forgotten how its first line lured me into the story. (‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’) It makes sense that I would end up making a home in England and writing a novel about an eccentric American living in a crumbling Elizabethan manor house. It’s called Mona of the Manor and it will be published as soon as I climb down from my lockdown tower.”
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Dover Thrift Editions: Crime/Mystery)
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is everything, everywhere, all at once, it seems, with an endless stream of movies, TV shows, mangas, spin-offs and even a new stage play in the works. (The same is true in the multiverse, we assume.) But it begins with the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While Holmes first appeared in the novel A Study in Scarlet, most everyone agrees with bookseller Ed Justus that the stories are the heart of the matter. “In my opinion, the short stories are far better than the novels,” says Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii. “Any of the short stories of Sherlock Holmes by A.C. Doyle are truly amazing. Even though these stories were written a century ago, the prose and conversational style immediately draws in the reader, effortlessly accepting the characters as if they were completely real. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? I couldn’t get enough of this one.”
Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 1)
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
History is written by the victors. That may explain why Thomas Cromwell has been seen as such a villain for the past 500 years, despite his key role in the English Reformation. After all, when you’re beheaded by the King, you can hardly take part in writing history. So it took Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Cromwell to give his side of the story. She starts with Wolf Hall and continues with two further, only slightly less perfect books. We meet a man of modest origins who is always the smartest person in the room. Watching Cromwell move mountains so Henry VIII can defy a Pope and declare himself the Supreme Head Of The Church of England—all so he can get a divorce—is so thrilling you can barely breathe while reading it. It’s a pity Henry’s new wife Anne Boleyn wasn’t more grateful. One flaw of Cromwell’s? He knew he was always the smartest man in the room, but wasn’t always smart enough to keep everyone else from knowing it too.
The Sandman Book One
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The Sandman Book One by Neil Gaiman and Various Artists
Ok, so you’re kind of intrigued by comic books. A lot of people take them seriously and you want to see what all the fuss is about. You can—and should—check out one of the great Batman or Superman storylines because maybe you’ve seen the movies and know what they’re all about. It will be familiar territory. Or you can dive into the deep end. You can sample the pure, unadulterated, uncut stuff. You can read The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and a host of world class illustrators. In 75 issues from 1989 to 1996, Gaiman and his collaborators spun out the story of Morpheus and a desire to right the wrongs he committed earlier in life. It’s a mind-spinning combination of horror and fantasy and the superhero genres, all girded by a mordant sense of humor. People who never read comic books read The Sandman, especially college students and especially female college students. For an industry yearning for respectability and new fans, it was a dream come true.
The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt arrived with a thunderclap via the murder-on-campus success of The Secret History. But Chris Pavone, author most recently of Two Nights In Lisbon, speaks up for her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goldfinch. The novel, triggered by a terrorist act and the almost accidental filching of a painting, “is a sprawling masterpiece of suspense that also happens to be a book about nearly everything: family and loss and grief and despair and growing up and art and betrayal and many types of love,” says Pavone. Since Tartt takes a good decade between releases, it’s lucky that, as Pavone says, the novel is “very long (at 784 pages) but for me, not nearly long enough. It’s a book I could read forever.”
The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (Civil War Trilogy)
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The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Amidst the mountain of material about the Civil War, Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels is a peak. This Pulitzer Prize winner uses the Battle at Gettysburg to encompass the entire arc of the war. The Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee—accustomed to winning—goes head to head with the Union’s John Buford and makes fatal mistakes. Historians love the accuracy, as well as Shaara’s reappraisal of the Confederacy’s James Longstreet and more. Military buffs love how Pickett’s Charge and the battle on Little Round Top come alive. And readers simply become enthralled with its sweep and power. Heck, The Killer Angels even prodded Ken Burns into making his landmark documentary, The Civil War, and that’s about as impressive as it gets.
The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
That most Catholic of writers, Graham Greene, captures guilt and sin and the flickering possibility of redemption like few others. Published in 1951, The End Of The Affair completes his Catholic quartet, which also includes Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. Author Patti Callahan Henry calls it his masterpiece. “Always visiting his favorite themes—God, love and jealousy—Graham Greene was inspired to write this novel from his own affair with a woman named Catherine Walston,” says Callahan Henry, author most recently of Once Upon A Wardrobe. “There is nothing like it and it reads better every single time I pick it up (or listen to Colin Firth read it). It’s a love story, and yet it’s so much more.”
The Buddha in the Attic (Pen/Faulkner Award – Fiction)
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The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
With just three novels, writer Julie Otsuka has memorialized the brutal mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II with precision and passion. Writer Madeline Miller knows the challenges of bringing history to life and admires Otsuka all the more. “The Buddha in the Attic tells the stories of the ‘picture brides’—women who immigrated from Japan to America in the early 20th century in hopes of a better future,” says Miller, the author most recently of Circe. “The women speak in the first person plural, and part of the wonder of this book is its stunning choral voice—piercing, elegiac, beautiful, brutal, unflinching. The stories they tell of their lives are unforgettable and the novel is a literary and historical masterpiece. It is the book I read when I need to remember what fiction can do at its very best.”
His Dark Materials 3-Book Paperback Boxed Set: The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass
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His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Beginning with The Golden Compass, author Philip Pullman retold and reimagined Milton’s Paradise Lost in a trilogy of almost shocking ambition. The pearl-clutchers who feared it might be sneaking in Ideas—and Dangerous Ideas at that—were right. Fellow writers immediately paid attention. “No books are more important to the history of modern fantasy after The Lord of the Rings than His Dark Materials,” says Terry Brooks, author most recently of Daughter Of Darkness. “Pullman’s trilogy transformed the genre. Here were books in which angels rebelled against a dysfunctional deity to see it cast out of Heaven. Here was a reimagined, compelling story of how a boy and a girl reformed a world in which magic was a transformative power and love provided a means for changing everything…This is high fantasy at its very best.”
The Talented Mr. Ripley
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The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Horrible people can become disturbingly sympathetic once you spend time with them, whether it’s Norman Bates in Psycho or Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter, the serial killer with good intentions (or at least bad victims). The brilliant Highsmith knew this well, and perhaps her greatest creation, Tom Ripley, toyed with our affections throughout five novels. “The Talented Mr. Ripley is certainly one of the best if not the best thrillers of all time,” says Karin Slaughter, author most recently of Girl, Forgotten. “Tom Ripley is not just a classic antihero, he is a precursor to so many flawed men we’re meant to root for—from Don Draper to Tony Soprano. Highsmith crafts him as a perpetual underdog, a striver that the reader finds more relatable than the monied snobs he so desperately wants to be a part of.” It’s a delicious irony at the heart of so many crime novels: you’re not supposed to root for the criminal or vicariously enjoy someone knocking off those people who really, really “deserve it.” And yet….
The Good Lord Bird: A Novel
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The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Many artists have tackled the bloody, righteous act of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, an act meant to stir up a slave revolt in the South. It was the dress rehearsal for the Civil War, which began about a year and a half later, and usually inspires sober, serious works like Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter or Stephen Vincent Benét’s epic poem John Brown’s Body. But James McBride is the only one to see the violent attack called a dress rehearsal, think “aha!” and launch into a no-holds barred comic retelling of the tragedy. He creates Henry Shackleford, an enslaved man caught up in John Brown’s crusade and is soon bumping into other historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Oh, and John Brown thinks Henry is a girl and puts him in a dress, which the young man wears for most of the book. We did say “comic!” Compared favorably to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—that other rollicking, hilarious, pointed takedown of slavery—McBride’s novel won the National Book Award and what is apparently another badge of importance in today’s world. Yes, it was turned into a TV miniseries (and a very good one) starring Ethan Hawke.
The Awakening and Selected Stories (Penguin Classics)
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The Awakening by Kate Chopin
If revenge is a dish best served cold, author Kate Chopin should be well pleased. Her second and final novel was tut-tutted over by critics. Chopin dealt forthrightly with a woman’s sexual desires, intellectual needs, suicide, society’s constraints and the limited roles of wife and mother open to her gender. Toss in a caustic attitude towards religion and you had a book that was just as controversial as Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House and Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. Even those forced to admit The Awakening was brilliantly written tended to hope—like fellow writer Willa Cather—that Chopin would use her talents for “a better cause.” Chopin died all but forgotten. But seventy years later, people finally awakened to her immense achievement—a novel deeply influential on other writers, the Southern literary tradition and a key work in feminism. Today it’s widely read, widely studied and widely enjoyed.
The Collected Stories
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The Collected Stories: William Trevor by William Trevor
Short story writers are diamond cutters: meticulous and sharp, with only one chance to get it right. Few were as brilliant as the Irish writer William Trevor, whose work is invariably referred to as Chekhovian because what higher compliment can be paid to a short story writer? “My favorite book of all time is The Collected Stories by William Trevor,” says Elizabeth Strout, author most recently of Lucy By The Sea. “As a writer I found his influence huge ever since I first read his work years ago in The New Yorker. But he is not just a writer’s writer. He is so precise and so gentle and can flip over a sentence in a heartbeat. He writes about the lives of ordinary people, who are all—of course—extraordinary. One of my favorites is called ‘Mrs. Silly’ about a young boy sent to boarding school and his lovely mother who embarrasses herself on their visiting day. It’s a quiet, honest killer of a story.”
The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s debut is one of the most banned books in America and also one of the best. Set in 1941, it tells the story of Pecola, a young African-American woman who is told so often she’s ugly that she finally begins to believe it. Child molestation and racism are just two of the omnipresent dangers the book details. For decades it has been a popular pick for college reading lists. That means bookseller Lynette Yates is far from alone in her experience with it. “The Bluest Eye is the first book I ever read by Toni Morrison,” says Yates of Half Price Books headquartered in Dallas. “And I was hooked. I could not put it down!” Morrison has other masterpieces like Beloved and Song Of Solomon but you might as well start at the beginning. Then, you’ll want to read them all.
Doctor Zhivago (Vintage International)
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Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The journey of Boris Pasternak’s masterwork—about a physician and poet during the two world wars—is as remarkable as the story itself. Impossible for it to be released in the Soviet Union, his novel was smuggled out, published in part by the C.I.A.(!), turned into a massively popular film and helped win its author the Nobel Prize, which Pasternak was then forced to turn down. But let’s not forget the novel itself. Writer Mark Helprin, himself a proponent of the “epic tradition” school of writing Doctor Zhivago epitomizes, loves it above all others. “Doctor Zhivago combines astoundingly beautiful writing with epic sweep, deep emotion, historically riveting action and impossible-to-ignore spirituality,” says Helprin, author most recently of Paris In The Present Tense. “And the courage to write in defiance of a crushing dictatorship illuminates every serious word and phrase. Unlike many books awarded the Nobel Prize, it fully deserved it, and will live on (even though it was made into a movie).”
To Kill a Mockingbird
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A beloved children’s book, if a book about an accusation of rape underlined by racism can be said to be for children. Whether you read it as a child, decided to become a lawyer because of Atticus Finch, saw the movie or the new Broadway play, or were assigned it at school, To Kill a Mockingbird is inescapable. Our favorite part of its mythic status was the fact that Lee avoided any press and said almost nothing about it—or anything else. That was as cool as the little girl Scout refusing to wear frilly pink dresses if she didn’t want to.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Ok, don’t rush him. Writer Junot Díaz takes his time, but patience pays off—both for him and us. Díaz exploded onto the scene in 1996 with the short story collection Drown, immediately establishing the Dominican-American author as a major talent. Over the next 26 years? One more short story collection (This Is How You Lose Her), one picture book (Islandborn) and one novel. The picture book is sweet, the two short story collections are both so strong we couldn’t choose between them and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is just amazing. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao celebrates a chubby kid growing up in New Jersey who suffers under a curse that dogs his family for generations. Oscar is obsessed with comic books and fantasy/sci-fi, so Díaz amusingly peppers his story with everything from references to J.R.R. Tolkien to footnotes and touches of magic realism. Oh and mongooses. (Mongeese?) Now, wouldn’t it be wondrous if Díaz finally delivered a full-on sci-fi/fantasy novel of his own?
Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
When Abraham Lincoln was President, his son Willie died. According to newspaper reports, on the day the child was laid to rest, Lincoln returned repeatedly to the crypt and cradled the body of Willie in his arms. George Saunders took that image and turned it into his first novel. After twenty years of increasing acclaim and success penning erudite, clever short stories, Saunders was daunted by the idea of a novel, not to mention a novel set in the past, not to mention a novel depicting one of the most famous people in history raw with emotion. Well, it worked—ghosts and all. Writer Michael Cunningham is just one of many to stand back in awe. “Quite possibly the most remarkable, original, beautiful book I’ve read yet, in the 21st century,” says Cunningham, author most recently of A Wild Swan and Other Tales. “If it doesn’t become a classic, my faith in the ongoing history of literature will suffer as a result.”
And Then There Were None
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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the most popular mystery writer of all time. And this is her most popular novel. Indeed, by some accounts, it’s the best-selling mystery novel and one of the best selling books ever, with 100 million copies sold and counting. Happily, the ugly racial slur that besmirched both its title and a key clue for decades (up to 1986, in UK editions) has been thoroughly erased. Now, fans can enjoy the novel for what it is: a brilliantly constructed tale of suspense. The set-up is so ingenious that others (not to mention Christie herself) use it time and again in movies, plays and novels. A group of strangers is brought together in an isolated location (in this case an island) under false pretenses. They slowly realize this…and quickly realize the members of their party are being knocked off, one by one. Who among them is the killer? And what have they each done to deserve this fate? The mounting tension, the suspicion, the backstabbing—it’s all delicious fun and Christie delivers one of her neatest solutions to tie it up very nicely indeed.
The Sellout: A Novel
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The Sellout by Paul Beatty
If you want to understand how timid, mean-spirited and ugly some stand-ups are today—both in what they make fun of and how—just read The Sellout. This is how it’s done. In his Booker and National Book Award-winning novel, Paul Beatty starts at outrageous, then builds up steam and really gets going. A black man looking to reinstate slavery in an abandoned town called Dickens on the outskirts of LA? The last surviving member of The Little Rascals, a fellow called Hominy Jenkins? A Supreme Court showdown lacerating the likes of Clarence Thomas with glee? It’s all here and Beatty is always punching up—never down. He pricks pomposity, makes serious points with jaw-dropping hilarity and swiftly outpaces Jonathan Swift with one of the best satires in generations.
Birds of America: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore has written acclaimed novels, criticism, essays and a children’s book. But short stories are where Moore shines best, from her 1985 debut collection Self-Help to 2014’s Bark. Writer Sherman Alexie returns to one of her collections again and again. “Birds of America is hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure,” says Alexie, author most recently of the memoir You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me. “I’ve re-read this book at least twenty times and I think that’s always the best sign of greatness.”
Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Bored with life, infatuated with the idea of romance, always searching for the next thrill, Emma Bovary is a frustrating, fascinating, fully alive character in a novel so influential it’s hard to believe this was Flaubert’s debut. Emma flits from affair to affair, piling up bills and disappointments with abandon, never putting a foot right. Flaubert, however, never puts a foot wrong and Anthony Doerr can’t praise it enough. “Attacked upon its publication for being ‘obscene,’ Madame Bovary has remained relevant ever since,” says Doerr, author most recently of Cloud Cuckoo Land. “It’s a 160+ year-old novel that still feels contemporary in its techniques and its critiques of the patriarchy. Flaubert’s portrayal of Emma Bovary is simultaneously beautiful and brutal, and lives at the headwaters of realistic psychological fiction.”
Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel
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Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
In an earlier era, it was Peyton Place that revealed the scandalous goings-on in suburbia. Stories like that were dismissed by some as little better than soap operas. Never mind that they dealt with the frustrations of women trapped in a certain role, the unspoken divide of class and so much more. It’s a domestic drama, mere women’s fiction and thus not important. We’ve learned better. Celeste Ng’s second novel is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the hometown of Ward Cleaver of Leave It To Beaver, which is to say the suburbs of our dreams. And yet, this seemingly quiet domestic drama soon explodes with an act of arson, secret abortions, transracial adoptions, surrogate mothers, sex, love, jealousy, heartbreak and, yes, little fires everywhere. It’s complex, cathartic and no wonder Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington produced and starred in a miniseries adaptation.
The Princess Bride (text only) by W. Goldman
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman
William Goldman is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of movie classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men. He also wrote about two dozen books, including a nonfiction memoir about Hollywood that captures the entire industry in one sentence: “Nobody knows anything.” But nothing tops the pleasures of his fantasy novel The Princess Bride. It tells the story of Buttercup, a young woman who believes her true love died at the hands of the Dread Pirate Robert. She’s pressured to marry Prince Humperdinck, heir to the throne of Florin. Before the wedding takes place, Buttercup is kidnapped by a rather kindly trio of outlaws. Toss in a framing device that includes details from the author’s “real” life, silly footnotes and other nonsense about this book being an abridged version of an earlier book that really wasn’t as good as the author remembered and you’ve got a treat. Goldman’s novel was twice blessed. First, it was turned into an equally magical film in 1987 that beautifully captures the tone of the novel. Second, while Goldman was determined to write a sequel called Buttercup’s Baby, he never could recapture the magic and gave up. So readers will never be tempted to read a sequel that would inevitably fall short of the original. And there it sits: a perfect little gem, just waiting for you and your children to enjoy.
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics)
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Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. But that never stopped humans before, did it? Written on a bet about who among friends could tell the best ghost story, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a landmark work of horror and caution. If all you know is the (brilliant) 1931 film version starring Boris Karloff as the Monster, then you’re in for a shock. The novel is far more expansive and the Creature (as Shelley calls him) is far more articulate, deadly, purposeful and plaintive. Some call it the greatest horror story ever written and others the prototype for science fiction. But one thing is clear: it’s not Victor Frankenstein who is the modern Prometheus, but Shelley herself. In other words, she won the bet.
Ficciones
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Labyrinths (New Directions Paperbook)
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Ficciones/Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Prepare to enter the labyrinth of Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. Or, if you prefer, prepare to dive into the fiction of Labyrinths. The Argentine writer burst into worldwide prominence in 1962 with the publication of two short story collections translating his work into English. One was Ficciones, or in English Fictions. The other was Labyrinths. Borges is a beguiling Prospero, wielding his magic to enchant anyone brave enough to explore a world of saintly librarians, imaginary lands and fanciful reviews of the second editions of books that never existed in the first place. For a writer who relished wordplay, plots that circled back upon themselves and concepts that anticipated the multiverse, it must please Borges no end that these two collections overlap, with numerous stories appearing in both. Which one should people read first? In what order? This unintentional creation of confusion and uncertainty for readers new to him? Perfect.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, 1)
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Here are the facts. N.K. Jemisin is the first African American writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. She’s the first writer ever to win the Hugo Award in three consecutive years. And she’s the first writer ever to win a Hugo Award for all three books in a trilogy. That should make you sit up. We could also mention her MacArthur genius grant, how fans believed in Jemisin enough to help crowd-fund her move to writing full-time way back when and much more. But those are just the facts. Read the Broken Earth trilogy of science fantasy that begins with The Fifth Season and you’ll be plunged into a vivid world devastated by a climate crisis every few centuries. You’ll discover a middle-aged woman necessarily hiding her extraordinary powers to influence the entire planet. You’ll fear for a small girl also blessed or cursed with those powers, a girl whose parents can’t bring themselves to kill her as society demands. And you’ll follow a young woman who discovers the truth about how their world is actually kept safe. It’s classic fantasy but also thoroughly modern. Jemisin blends the three storylines together with a flourish worthy of Proust, but that’s just one of its many pleasures. A landmark.
Indigo
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Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
An early peak for romance legend Beverly Jenkins, Indigo features all her trademarks. The story is an unexpected one, focusing on a young woman named Hester Wyatt bravely risking her life in the Underground Railroad (in Michigan!). She finds herself drawn to an arrogant conductor named Galen Vachon, a man who is badly injured and needs hiding. Galen is handsome and wealthy; she doesn’t know the latter fact but can’t help noticing the former. She’s pretty and willful; he can’t help noticing both of these qualities. In other words, it’s a classic romance with all the pleasures that entails. But Jenkins weaves in history and background detail with ease, grounding the story in a real world that’s far more complicated and interesting than most genre books ever attempt. And that makes her stories all the more gripping. She’s successful in many genres, but historical romances are where Jenkins flourishes—from stories about high-class hotels for people of color to the challenges facing professional doctors long ago to the many black cowboys of the Old West. Her novels are told with verve and accuracy, complete with bibliographies at the end for those who want to explore the history further. Whoever imagined romance novels with a bibliography? Beverly Jenkins.
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
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Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Forget the whale, for a moment. Most people haven’t read Moby-Dick, so for them it’s about some crazy guy on a boat obsessed with tracking down a white whale that made a snack of his leg. And yeah, sure, that’s a big part of it. But Herman Melville’s novel is a wilder ride than this implies. It’s the 1851 equivalent of surfing the web, with Melville telling his story about Ishmael, the newest member of the whaling ship Pequod. He veers from a fascinating breakdown of ship life and its culturally diverse crew members to describe the migratory patterns of whales and then back to the ship and the surprisingly cozy sleeping arrangements for the men and off again for a useful guide on harvesting whale blubber to a fiery sermon of poetry and song and back to the story at hand and then onto some other tangent. It’s remarkable how often the novel isn’t recounting the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab, though that mad venture is always just below the surface. Melville’s novel is obsessive itself, seeming determined to tell you everything that crosses its mind. It’s as mad as Ahab and just as fearsome and magnetic and impossible to forget.
Blonde: A Novel
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Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Norma Jean Baker’s greatest performance was as the movie star Marilyn Monroe. In her last interview, she spoke about current issues of the day and pleaded with the writer, “Please don’t make me a joke.” No luck; it was too late. Or at least it seemed too late. Now, writer Joyce Carol Oates treats Norma Jean with the seriousness she deserves. This meaty, compulsively readable and epic novel tracks her entire life, from a tumultuous childhood with a mentally disturbed mother to life in an orphanage, followed by brutal early days in Hollywood with sleazy studio execs and then the reward of suffocating fame. Monroe is naturally savvy if also innocent, desperate to learn more and be more, but also aware her sex appeal is the best way to get there. Oates captures her mercurial but insightful approach to acting, her determination to break with the studio system and tackle the roles she knows she can and her desire for someone—anyone—who might treat her with the kindness and respect she’s never known. You know how it ends and yet the journey is captivating, unexpected, funny, painful and as great as Monroe—or rather, Norma Jean—could dare imagine. Oates has written literally dozens and dozens of novels and short story collections. This is her masterpiece.
The Underground Railroad: A Novel
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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
All eyes have been on writer Colson Whitehead since his oddball debut The Intuitionist. He satirized the publicity machine that feted him (John Henry Days), explored genres like horror (Zone One) and the bildungsroman (Sag Harbor) and even nodded towards forebears like E.B. White with his nonfiction work The Colossus of New York. Then, like Muhammad Ali predicting a knock-out, in 2016 Whitehead gave his next novel the totemic, throw-down-the-gauntlet, this-is-the-one title The Underground Railroad. And yes, it was the brilliant, captivating, mind-bending masterpiece everyone expected of him. In this case, the Underground Railroad is literally an underground railroad and the characters who escape by riding it enter into post-Civil War worlds where racism remains ever-changing, ever-new and ever-present. It’s upsetting, unexpected, propulsive and the most entertaining Important Book you’ve read in ages. With two more acclaimed novels since (The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle), Whitehead is clearly just getting started.
The Song of Achilles: A Novel
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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Writer Madeline Miller spent a decade bringing the passionate romance at the heart of Homer’s Iliad to vivid life. The love between Achilles and Patroclus upends the entire Trojan War and it’s there for all to read in the epic poem dating from roughly 2700 years ago. And, still, it came as a shock to some in 2011 when Miller brought these two lovers so fully and beautifully to life in her debut novel. Miller did it again by turning an enchantress of The Odyssey from a minor villain to a complex, fascinating heroine in her 2018 book Circe. Surely Mary Renault and Robert Graves look on approvingly—two similar writers of historical fiction who captured the imagination of contemporary readers.
The Last Good Kiss (C.W. Sughrue Book 1)
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The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
James Crumley was a “writer’s writer,” which means his books never sold that much, but boy were they good. Heck, when the legendary author Ray Bradbury wrote three mystery novels, he named the detective “Crumley” in honor of the man! “[The Last Good Kiss] is the best private eye novel I’ve ever read,” says author Dennis Lehane, author most recently of Since We Fell. “Best first sentence, most satisfying ending, most beautifully written from beginning to end.” In the novel, investigator C.W. Sughrue is lured away from his job at a topless bar to find a wayward writer but ends up hunting down a woman missing for more than a decade. Crumley died in 2008, but not before enjoying a late-career appreciation from many quarters. “One of the great pleasures of my life,” says Lehane, “was getting to meet Crumley and tell him that his masterpiece forever changed my perception of what a crime novel could be.”
The Joy Luck Club: A Novel
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The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Oh, the joy of finally seeing yourself in an acclaimed, best-selling novel! In her debut, Amy Tan told of Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. Friends in San Francisco gather together each week to play mahjong, eat and talk, but mostly talk. They complain about their daughters while their daughters complain about the mothers. Stories are told, of the hardships the women faced when risking it all to move from China to America and of the very different lives their daughters are having thanks to that gamble and why can’t those daughters respect them and do as they’re told and not marry this boy or go to this school but marry that boy and study for that degree at the school chosen for them? Unless you’re a Chinese-American, it’s hard to appreciate the thrill, the deep satisfaction of seeing your stories embraced and celebrated. Like the best art, it’s universal for being so very specific. And oh, the joy of having something other than Charlie Chan and The Good Earth represent all of Chinese culture to America. Now, strands of that culture can be found in “everything, everywhere, all at once.” But The Joy Luck Club will always be a beloved and important breakthrough.
Winesburg, Ohio (Dover Thrift Editions)
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Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Whatever the truth, the romantic tale of how Sherwood Anderson became a writer is too good to pass up. He was a very successful businessman, overseeing a company selling paint, buying up smaller paint companies and expanding into other ventures. Anderson was 36 years old, married and had three children. But on November 28, 1912, he went to work and then rebelliously decided to chuck it all and devote himself full-time to writing. Anderson feigned mental illness of some sort so no one would get angry at him, walked out the door and never came back. Or, more likely, he had his second nervous breakdown (following an earlier one in 1907) and that left him unfit, unable or unwilling to work in paint any more. After two not so good novels, he hit paydirt with Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of short stories that combine to tell the life of one man and the frustrated, lonely dreams of everyone around him in a small town. It does in fiction what Edgar Lee Masters did in poetry with 1915’s Spoon River Anthology, another book that puts the lie to small-town life always being idyllic and sweet.
The Blind Assassin: A Novel, Cover may vary
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The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
We might have made the obvious choice and picked Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a depressingly timely novel that didn’t predict a thing, since every cruelty in its male-dominated dystopia had already been done to women. But for sheer bravado, her Booker Prize winner The Blind Assassin is hard to beat, offering the sweep of Canadian history in the 20th century. The narrator is an old woman looking back on her life, mostly to the 1930s and 1940s. It captures the pulpy feel of that era’s paperbacks without sacrificing complexity. And for an author who rejects the label of science-fiction writer, it offers a novel-within-a-novel that’s pure sci-fi and throws in enough betrayals and revelations to fuel a Buck Rogers serial. Very satisfying.
Winter’s Tale
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Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
By 1983, writer Mark Helprin had published two collections of short stories diamond-like in their clarity, not to mention a wonderfully sprawling debut novel (Refiner’s Fire) of the sort one expects from a writer who values tradition and the great novels of the 19th century. So no one was quite prepared for Winter’s Tale. Out of the blue, Helprin delivered a Dickensian fantasy celebrating the New York City of our dreams. It tells the story of Peter Lake, a burglar who lives in the ceiling of Grand Central Station (when not sneaking into the mansions of the wealthy to relieve them of their possessions). A white horse that swoops down from the stars, a beautiful young woman tragically dying of consumption, gangs of burglars, marshmen who live on the fringes of society, a raging fire, truth and joy and beauty and light and all of it wrapped up in language of boldness and verve. Magic? Just a touch. Magical? From start to finish.
Winnie-the-Pooh (Puffin Modern Classics)
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The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh)
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Winnie the Pooh/The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
Yes, but have you read it as an adult? Have you read it lately? A.A. Milne captures children to perfection, the way they interrupt your storytelling, their pleasure at seeing themselves included in it and their desire to learn more without quite admitting they don’t understand everything just yet. Any adult who’s made up a story for a small child will purr with pleasure when reading the opening chapters of Winnie The Pooh. It has charm to spare, thanks to timeless tales about friends and pranks and accepting people for who they are, like the dour Eeyore or the over-excitable Tigger. Not accepting them despite their quirks, but because of them. And oh, The House At Pooh Corner. The sad encroachment of school and Growing Up and time away from play and the need to Learn Things. Long before the Toy Story trilogy tore your heart out, Milne did it here to perfection.
Station Eleven
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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Like most overnight successes, Emily St. John Mandel put in years of hard work to make it happen, switching from a career in dance to full-time writing. Three hard-boiled noirs led to her fourth novel, the sort of breakthrough that booksellers like Emily Bruce at Half Price Books in Dallas love to champion. “Mandel tells the story of a young actress in King Lear witnessing the lead have a heart attack on stage the same night a devastating flu pandemic begins and ultimately ends life across the world as we know it,” says Bruce. “Flashing forward to the survivors twenty years later, the actress is in a traveling symphony and encounters a violent prophet. Although a book about a pandemic is certainly an unsettling topic these days, the story of survival is moving, powerful and well worth the read.
David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ok, maybe you were forced to read Dickens in school and it didn’t take. Heck, if school forced you to eat chocolate ice cream every day you’d probably get sick of that too and vow “never again.” But as someone once said about London, anyone who is tired of Dickens is tired of life. His novels were first serialized in magazines so the cliffhanger endings of each chapter make them as binge-worthy as any TV show streaming online. You could start with the nigh-on-perfect Great Expectations or the righteous Hard Times or the novella you already know called A Christmas Carol. We suggest David Copperfield, the story of a young man making his way in the world. It’s bursting with the eccentric, colorful, immediately recognizable characters Dickens is known for. It boasts a clutch of passionate social issues Dickens illuminates like the brutal school system, child labor, prostitution and more. And because it’s based in part on his own challenging childhood, David Copperfield is as close to a memoir and the author’s own beating heart as anything else he wrote.
Another Brooklyn: A Novel
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Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
A genius (hey, the MacArthur people know what they’re talking about), writer Jacqueline Woodson is a talent whose work transcends labels like “young adult” or “kids” books. They’re for everyone. And you can start anywhere, from an exuberant picture book like The Year We Learned To Fly to young adult novels like Miracle’s Boys or her classic debut Last Summer With Maizon. You’ll find vivid characters, real life and the power of friendship. But you might as well start with her “adult” novel Another Brooklyn, a 2016 peak in which a woman coming to bury her father remembers the culture shock of moving from Tennessee to Brooklyn and adjusting to life in NYC. Woodson has been capturing young people and their fears and joys for more than 30 years. And she keeps getting better.
Riders of the Purple Sage (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
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Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
The Western of Westerns, Riders Of The Purple Sage from 1912 is the model for every Western that followed. It’s the story of a willful young Mormon woman in Utah who resists becoming the third wife of an Elder and then befriends some Gentiles. Some consider it anti-Mormon. But if the villain is a Mormon, so is our heroine! And her objection to polygamy and approval of comity with other faiths is exactly where the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints is officially at today. So not only is this one of the great Westerns, it was arguably ahead of its time spiritually too.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Writer Zora Neale Hurston is now rightly recognized for her pioneering scholarly work in documenting the folktales of African-Americans and the Caribbean peoples. She did serious ethnographic work, documented the life of one of the last people to have survived the Middle Passage and wrote about voodoo rituals in Haiti and Jamaica. All of this now receives a brighter spotlight, along with her plays, short stories, poetry and the like. We can thank writer Alice Walker, who renewed attention for Hurston and the masterpiece that is Their Eyes Were Watching God. If this novel was the only accomplishment of her life, she would still loom large. Just as in Jane Austen, the heroine of this story is abused for wanting a marriage based on love. Janie Crawford triumphs over her enslaved beginnings to become a woman of property who can choose the man she wants from many suitors. That doesn’t mean she’ll choose well, mind you. Published in 1937, its centerpiece is the devastating Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, an event that wipes the slate clean for Janie and lets her start her life over yet again. Gripping, moving and bold for this time—not to mention 1937—the only surprise is that it took 40 years for people to recognize how great this novel truly is.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love: A Novel (FSG Classics)
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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
What might have been? That’s the bittersweet question at the heart of this elegiac novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. The dying musician Cesar Castillo sits alone in a hotel room, listening to old records by his band the Mambo Kings and thinking back on his life. Exiled from Cuba after Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Batista, Cesar and his brother move to New York City. Fittingly for musicians, their timing is perfect. A mambo craze sweeps the country and they enjoy a burst of fame after appearing on the sitcom I Love Lucy. Of course, the craze ends, the Mambo Kings fade from the scene and Cesar now remembers the many highs and lows of his life both personal and professional. What might have been? With the life-changing success of his second novel, Oscar Hijuelos assured he would never have to ask himself that question.
Lud In The Mist
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Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
All but forgotten, British writer Hope Mirrlees is enjoying a resurgence. Her 600-line work Paris: A Poem is now considered a modernist classic and a major influence on T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, who originally published the piece with her husband. Mirrlees’s “friendship” with the famous classicist Jane Ellen Harrison is now seen in a new light. (Harrison was 37 years her senior but they lived together for 15 years until Harrison died. So perhaps “good pals” doesn’t quite cover it.) And her lone fantasy novel has passionate fans like writer Neil Gaiman. “My favourite book of all time is probably Lud-in-the-Mist,” says Gaiman, author most recently of Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry and Death: The Deluxe Edition. “It’s a story about a stolid land, and the fairy fruit that comes over the border, bringing dreams and poetry and madness; it’s a ghost story and a detective story and it’s also about existential angst and the pain of living in reality. I read it as a boy, and return to it every decade, finding new things in it—sometimes in the plot, sometimes in the way Mirrlees put words together.”
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories
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Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver was married twice and for a while considered himself a full-time drinker and merely a part-time writer. After being lauded as a major talent, he famously broke away from the influence of an editor that made his reputation and turned minimalism into the style du jour of the 1970s and 1980s. You can ignore the public profile, the stuff of magazine features and literary debates and just read his stories. You won’t find any major twists in the tales. No meta conceits to flatter your brain. No highbrow allusions. Just stories capturing life in such a straightforward manner that you catch your breath. “Cathedral.” “Boxes.” “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” And best of all, with this final collection done before Carver died of lung cancer, we get his own stamp of approval on 37 stories, some presented as they were first published (with his editor’s strong hand), some as Carver originally wrote them and some brand new. Brilliant.
The Round House: A Novel
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The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Sarah Hollenbeck of the Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago says simply that The Round House is “a transformative and mesmerizing novel by national treasure Louise Erdrich.” Indeed. One of our best writers, Erdrich is also one of our best chroniclers of crime, violence, poverty and its impact on individuals and communities. An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Erdrich finds rich material amidst life on the reservation in North Dakota. Fiction, poetry, children’s books, nonfiction—the Pulitzer-Prize winner has done it all. But the Justice Trilogy is a keystone of her career, encompassing Plague of Doves, LaRose and smack dab in the middle is 2012’s The Round House. It shows a 13-year-old boy frustrated that the police aren’t looking more seriously into a horrific attack on his mother. Disastrously, the kid takes matters into his own hands, with the help of friends and a stolen rifle. Justice is far, far away but a riveting story and art is right at hand.
Gone Girl
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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
This massive blockbuster reverberates in the mind as a novel about a scheming spouse…or perhaps a novel about how the media loves a scheming spouse…or perhaps how we secretly love it when the media piles on a scheming spouse. Let’s face it, Gone Girl is a roller coaster as the happy marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne falls apart in the white-hot glare of a missing wife case. Infidelity! Betrayal! Hidden diaries! Faked diaries! Clues! False clues! You can’t trust anyone or anything in this masterful tale filled with unreliable narrators. Unreliable except for Flynn, that is, who knows exactly what she’s doing.
Pale Fire
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Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov shocked the world with Lolita, while his work Speak, Memory is one of the great memoirs. But writer Scott Spencer isn’t mincing words about the book of Nabokov’s he admires the most. “You’re always on thin ice when you say a book is the greatest of all time—or even the greatest of the year in which it was first published,” says Spencer, author most recently of An Ocean Without A Shore. “But I feel terra firma beneath my feet when I say Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is the most astonishing work of fiction I have ever read. After a harrumphing, hilarious foreword, the novel presents us with a 999-line poem written by a poet named John Shade. Shade’s next door neighbor is a colleague at the local college named Charles Kinbote, a madman who believes himself to be Charles the Great, the exiled king of Zembla. The rest of the novel is Kimbote’s commentary/explication of Shade’s poem, in which Kimbote’s personality and preoccupations all but devour the poem itself. It is a narrative strategy of mind-bending weirdness and complexity, and the grateful reader can’t help but wonder how anyone—even the supremely gifted Nabokov—could create something so intricate, so dazzling, yet so filled with humanity. Pale Fire is a gorgeous, radiant work of high spirits and deep sorrow, an other-worldly novel with no predecessors and no descendants.”
A Visit from the Goon Squad
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A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Chrissie Hynde called time “the avenger.” Bob Dylan said “time is a jet plane—it moves too fast.” Jennifer Egan simply calls time “the goon squad,” the thug that beats you up no matter how you try to avoid it. Time ravages all the characters in her not-quite short story collection but not-quite novel that won the Pulitzer Prize. Set in and around the business of rock ‘n’ roll, Egan’s work jumps around in time, turns one passage into a PowerPoint presentation and does pretty much everything you’d expect from a cool contemporary book. It’s also everything you’d expect from a classic penned one hundred years ago: beautifully written, filled with great characters and hard to shake. Time will be kind to it.
Watership Down: A Novel
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Watership Down by Richard Adams
This novel is about rabbits and was inspired by stories that author Richard Adams told to his daughters on long road trips. So that explains why Watership Down is often slotted in the children’s section. But it might just as easily be put in the fantasy or fiction or nature or “books you didn’t think you’d care about but the second you start reading them you can’t stop” section. That’s a category, right? In this beguiling adventure, a group of rabbits listen to the prophet-like Fiver, who has a vision their warren is about to be destroyed. They break away from the only world they’ve ever known and head off into the unknown. The group struggles to overcome dangers like cars, dogs, snares, mutiny and much more, with only the vague idea of a destination — a hilltop where they might live in peace. These aren’t rabbits with pocket watches and they don’t live in some fantasy world. This is our world and the rabbits behave very much like rabbits do. And yet, they’re us too. Gripping, frightening, inspiring.
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The Namesake: A Novel
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The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Every well-written story is universal. And Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel after her acclaimed short story collection Interpreter of Maladies is yet another example. A Bengali couple from Calcutta India moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their son born in America is named Gogol, after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. It’s the familiar and fresh story of immigrants, of people making a new home and wondering how and if they should fit in, what to leave behind and what to cling to. What kind of a name is “Gogol,” wonders the son, who wants to legally change his name, rebelling against his parents by becoming so American they think they might be losing him. Nuanced and moving, Lahiri’s book shows that the immigrant story—that most American of stories—is always being told anew.
The Brothers Karamazov (Bicentennial Edition): A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue
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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Everyone from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein loved this novel—the final and greatest achievement of one of Russia’s greatest writers. You’ve heard about The Grand Inquisitor, even if you’ve never read the poem in the novel where he first appears. And pretty much anyone who makes a list of this sort includes it. Indeed, author W. Somerset Maugham includes it in his admirably brief list of the ten greatest novels of all time. We can’t bring ourselves to be as succinct as he, but at least we’ve included seven of the books he admired best. Just as Dostoevsky wrestles with the idea of God and free will, you simply have to wrestle with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Don’t worry; even if they best you, you’ll never forget the struggle to truly understand these Russian bears.
Parable of the Sower (Parable, 1)
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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The body of work created by Octavia E. Butler is rich. But 1993’s Parable of the Sower looms larger and larger, if only because it grapples with the climate crisis, inequality, corporate greed and the eternal hope that life will be better somewhere else. Lauren Oya Olamina is an African American teenager living in the deteriorating society of 2024. She escapes the violent collapse of her preacher father’s isolated community and travels north for work. Hiding her gender, fearing rape, risking an interracial romance, Lauren creates a new religion she calls Earthseed, where humanity’s only chance to get it right is to start again on another planet. Like the best parables, Butler’s book is first and foremost a story you’ll remember. But it also has much to teach.
Waiting (Vintage International)
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Waiting by Jin Ha
Just…wait. That’s all Dr. Lin Kong is asking his girlfriend, Nurse Manna Wu, to do. Wait. Lin wants to marry Manna but he’s already married to Shuyu, an old-fashioned village woman Lin never loved but dutifully wed. Now he needs to ask for a divorce. Every year he heads home to his village determined to do so…and every year he comes back to the city and asks Manna to wait just one more year. Jin Ha’s National Book Award-winning novel revealed life in Communist China in new detail for many readers, showing its constraints on personal freedom. More broadly, Waiting shows the divide between city and country, between tradition and modernism, between passion and responsibility, divides that are familiar the world over. Which explains its popularity the world over…except in China, where the book was denounced and has yet to be officially published.
Play It As It Lays (FSG Classics)
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Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Joan Didion is rightly acclaimed for her nonfiction work laying bare the soul of America. She also won a legion of new fans with the memoir The Year Of Magical Thinking, the story of Didion’s life in the year after the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. But boy did she know show biz. In her second novel, Didion presents one of its fringe players. Maria is in a psychiatric hospital in LA, thinking back on how she got there. Born in a small town, Maria dreams of being an actress, falls in with abusive men and only moves to Hollywood after she’s given acting up. That may be the sanest move of her life. Everything is a struggle for Maria, who fights to protect her ailing child, fights addiction, fights for a divorce and is now fighting to get better and get out of the hospital. Life soon imitated art: the novel came out to acclaim in 1970 and Didion along with her husband spent the next decade working in Hollywood, albeit with much more success than Maria.
Anna Karenina
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
If you’re not ambitious, start with Tolstoy’s devastating novella The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. If you’re overly ambitious, go for War And Peace, a novel as big and sprawling and all-encompassing as its title. But if you want to start at the top and prefer a little doomed romance with your Russian epics, try Anna Karenina. It features enough vivid characters and plotlines to power two soap operas. Like War and Peace, it’s not shy about boldly tackling everything from religion to Imperial Russia in all its glorious complications and so on. But it revolves around a juicy love affair between the married Anna and the cavalry officer Count Vronsky, who simply must be described as “dashing.” You’ll be caught up in a way you’re simply not by the equally marvelous but less focused musings of War And Peace. Just don’t read it on a station platform while waiting for a train.
Dandelion Wine: A Novel (Grand Master Editions)
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Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is famous for his dystopian novel about book-burning titled Fahrenheit 451. He’s acclaimed for his eerie tales of space colonization called The Martian Chronicles. But those who love him best gravitate to the nostalgic tales of childhood in Dandelion Wine. Tinged with magical realism, these evocations of small town life dipped in honey are irresistible because they capture a perfect past that never really existed…except for every boy and girl with a little imagination and a lot of heart. Bookseller Jim Reed of Jim Reed Books in Birmingham, Alabama, always has a few copies on hand to press on lucky browsers. “Christopher Isherwood and R.L. Stine and I, among others, believe this is the great American novel,” says Reed. “Dandelion Wine is a magical lightning bolt. When I first read this wonderful book in the 1950s, I was a teenager without compass, a quiet kid with no prospects. Dandelion Wine awakened me to the idea that I could be a dreamer, an actor, a writer…and that that was ok. Apparently I wasn’t the only kid on the planet who was amazed by life.”
Three Novels of New York: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal, as such—four of the first seven winners were women. Men slowly began to dominate the award, with women now making up only a third of all winners. Men also dominate in The Age Of Innocence. The protagonist Newland Archer is accustomed to getting whatever he wants: Newland is old money, upper class and proud of it. He should marry the innocent seeming May Welland but he’s drawn to the unsuitable yet more interesting Ellen Olenska. Newland pursues her, but his peers won’t have it and quietly disapprove. The bonds of society, the sharply defined lines between old money and new, between the “better” classes and the lower ones are all on display in Wharton’s dissection of a world she knew so well. Pregnancy as a plot twist and a weapon? You might say only a woman would have thought of that. But you’d be more correct to say only a great writer would have deployed it so well.
Midnight’s Children
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Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s second novel is so influential in India that critics refer to the “post-Rushdie” era. Among countless accolades, it scored the highest honor in the Commonwealth: the Booker Prize. Then on the Booker’s 25th anniversary, it was named the best book to win the Booker. And on its 40th anniversary, Midnight’s Children did it again, being chosen as the Booker of Bookers. Rushdie’s third novel The Satanic Verses is the one that unfortunately made him a household name around the world, as well as a fugitive from a fatwa. But Midnight’s Children remains a landmark in world literature, as signal an event in its way as the independence of India from the U.K. and the wrenching partition of that country into India and Pakistan. The babies born between midnight and 1 a.m. on that fateful day have special powers. Our hero Saleem is born very close to midnight, so he proves very powerful indeed. Saleem’s story is very much the story of modern India in all its tragedy, missed opportunity and promise. Few novels are as ambitious and even fewer succeed so splendidly.
Devil’s Cub
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Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer
J.R.R. Tolkien established the modern fantasy, a genre almost entirely indebted to him for its existence. Few can make a similar claim about pioneering a new category of fiction. But Georgette Heyer can. She wrote many thrillers, often one a year, and they deserve your attention. But she’s widely recognized as creating the modern historical romance and more specifically, the Regency romance. Jane Austen wrote Regency romances as a matter of course—for her, they were contemporary novels because that’s when she lived. One hundred years later, Heyer would bring a scholar’s passion for accuracy to the Regency romance. By the end of her life, Heyer owned a reference library exceeding 1000 titles about the era, along with any info she could find on the history of snuff boxes, the cost of candles in a particular year and so on. What’s truly exciting is that her novels like Devil’s Cub are so much fun. The characters are offbeat for the day (Marrying for love? What an idea!) and Heyer has a blast upending convention, even as she establishes that convention so well. Everyone in the romance field stands in her debt. Devil’s Cub is great but really you can’t go wrong with anything she wrote.
Where the Wild Things Are
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Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
A picture book classic can’t just appeal to kids—it also must appeal to adults because they’re the ones who read it. Author Matthew Paul Turner estimates he’s read Where The Wild Things Are hundreds of times to his own children and to classrooms of kids. “To me, Sendak’s 1963 offering is a perfect children’s book because it’s one of the most delightful books to read aloud, offering moments to read quietly, in almost a hush, and also lines to read loudly with growls and snorts,” says Turner, author most recently of I Am God’s Dream with illustrator Estrella Bascuñan. “With every turn of the page, Sendak adds mystery and nuance to Max’s adventure using the fewest words possible. One minute we’re observing Max in his bedroom yelling ‘I’ll eat you up!’ at his mother and a few pages later, we’ve joined Max on an island of monsters, romping and stomping with the young hero. Wild Things is real and it’s fantasy, it’s childlike and yet it leaves space between the words to imagine a deeper and more profound story. Its illustrations are simple and timeless and have inspired the imaginations of generations of readers. I love that I was able to introduce my kids to a story that I loved deeply when I was their age.”
Waiting to Exhale
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Waiting To Exhale by Terry McMillan
It’s hard to overstate the impact of Waiting To Exhale when it came out in 1992. It’s a thoroughly entertaining novel about female friendship, the pressures of career and how very disappointing men can sometimes (ok, often) be. Funny, sexy and smart, Terry McMillan’s book is a winner. While it has many precursors (many mothers, you might say), the success of it and her follow-up How Stella Got Her Groove Back proved a landmark. This was a book embraced by a wide audience. But it wasn’t written to reach a wide audience and didn’t worry about a wide (that is, white) audience. It was by and for people of color and especially black people and especially black women. So when it became a best-seller and reached both the women it celebrated and everyone else as well, the change was fundamental. One year later, the TV show Living Single debuted, so change was in the air, a change marked by so many movies and TV shows and books and music by the likes of Jill Scott. A change sparked by Waiting To Exhale.
The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
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The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
One of William Faulkner’s masterpieces, The Sound and the Fury, signified something, though critics were mostly dismissive when this story of a fading Southern family came out in 1929. Its stream of consciousness style, jumps in time and multiple narrators led off by the mentally challenged Benjy Compson was just too much for many. Respected critic Clifton Fadiman wasn’t alone when he recognized Faulkner’s artistry but for the life of him couldn’t understand why it was used to tell this confusing story. Within two years, the book would start to gain momentum commercially and in 20 years, Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Today, so many books and tv shows and movies like Pulp Fiction have used similar time-jumping structures to tell a story that The Sound And The Fury feels almost familiar. It’s still bold and disorienting, but at least readers can rest assured they’ll figure out what the heck is going on and that it’s all worth the ride.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [75th Anniversary Ed] (Perennial Classics)
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This autobiographical novel about a young girl who loves reading and dreams of something…more speaks to immigrants and adolescents everywhere. Writers like Kristy Woodson Harvey hold it especially dear. “I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the first time in the fourth grade,” says Harvey, author most recently of The Wedding Veil, “and have read it almost every year since. Every time, every page, I find something new to love, some different piece of wisdom to grasp onto, something truer and more real about humanity than I did before. The brilliance of Betty Smith was her ability to transform the ordinary moments of our lives into something bright and shining, to find that morsel of goodness that connects us across circumstance and time. And, of course, ‘The world was hers for the reading,’ is a quote that still, all these years later, can’t help but make my book-loving heart race.”
Donald Barthelme: Collected Stories (LOA #343) (Library of America, 343)
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Donald Barthelme: Collected Stories by Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme is America’s Beckett, which is to say America’s class clown or more exactly America’s court jester—the one who gets away with speaking the brutal truth because it’s cloaked in absurdist humor the unwary dismiss as surreal, fragmented nonsense. His short stories (and the infrequent novel) are invariably playful, hilarious and grim. In his work Barthelme drew inspiration from visual artists as much as he did fellow writers as diverse as Kafka and S.J. Perelman, always deferential if not reverential to Beckett. So, at times, his stories would be interrupted by a found piece of illustration from the 19th century, just to keep you on your toes. Monty Python probably paid attention. Collected Stories from the Library of America gathers together essentially every short story he ever published, which is appropriate since every short story of his is essential. To say he was held in high esteem by other writers is an understatement. “This book will take you from the early let’s say cubism to the later let’s say domesticity in the Barthelme progression,” says Padgett Powell, author most recently of Indigo. “A major book: what Hemingway was to the first, Barthelme was to the second half of 20th century American fiction.”
Get Shorty: A Novel
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Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Toss a dart at the books of Elmore Leonard and you’ll hit a classic. Thunk and you’ve picked his wonderfully unconventional Western Valdez Is Coming. Or thunk the period gangster story The Hot Kid. Or thunk and you’ve landed on Get Shorty, in which Leonard combines hilarious dialogue and vivid characters with genuine danger to skewer Hollywood along with the usual loan sharks and criminal lowlifes. God knows why Leonard would bite the hand that feeds him—Hollywood made one terrific movie after another based on his novels and the 1995 film Get Shorty with John Travolta was no exception.
The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)
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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
For people living with depression, for certain women, for certain artists, few books matter as much as The Bell Jar. The poet Sylvia Plath shows her (autobiographical) character Esther Greenwood fighting depression with a humor and clarity that astonishes even today. We know so much more about bipolar disorder, depression and the like now. But Plath knew it instinctively in 1963 and she captured what it is to live with depression, rather than damning or praising this treatment or that clinic or yet another off-target diagnosis. What a person really wants first—really needs first—is to be believed and listened to and understood. When you’re trapped under a bell jar, it’s hard to be heard. Not for Plath, who’s still speaking out some 60 years later.
Lake Wobegon Days
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Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown out there on the edge of the prairie….” For decades, those words promised a return to an idyllic innocence that never really existed and a gentle teasing of human foibles that always will. The radio show A Prairie Home Companion was a marvelous combination of good music, bad jokes, community and a generosity of spirit. The highlight back in the day was the monologue with news from Lake Wobegon, delivered extemporaneously by host Garrison Keillor. He reshaped some of the best monologues into the collection Lake Wobegon Days and it catapulted him and the show into even greater worldwide fame. Yes, it won a Grammy as an audiobook and yes, some fans prefer to hear him, rather than read him. But Keillor is a careful writer and knows the difference between what works on the air and what works on the page. So don’t discount the craft put into this gem of gentle humor. If you can’t help hearing Keillor’s voice while reading it, well that’s okay too.
The Nightingale: A Novel
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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Without warning, every once in a while, it seems like everyone you know—everyone—has read, is reading or is about to read the same book. In 2015, that book was The Nightingale, a World War II novel about two estranged sisters resisting the Nazi invasion of France. One secretly shelters Jews, including a neighbor’s child she hides in plain sight. The other sister joins the French Resistance and devises a plan to spirit away stranded Allied pilots to neutral territory. Like the most enduring thrillers, you’re sucked in not just by plot twists or the high drama of war but by the characters who become so real to you that their fate is akin to your own.
The Good Soldier (Vintage Classics)
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The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford’s novel came out in 1915. You have to remember that when reading this story of poisoned marriages, infidelity and madness. Its narrator is so slippery and its attitude so cynical that the effect is almost shocking. Two couples meet at a spa in Germany where a respective spouse can be treated for their ailing heart. One couple is British, with Captain Edward Ashburnham resting his heart after overuse: the man is chronically unfaithful to his wife Leonora. The other couple is American, with the wife Florence pretending to have a weak heart so she can keep her husband John from “bothering” her in bed while she maintains an affair on the side. This isn’t Noel Coward territory: suicide and mental breakdowns are on tap, not to mention intimations of abuse and even the possibility that we’re being sold a bill of goods by the narrator. Truly no one is good here except, of course, for Ford.
Normal People: A Novel
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Normal People by Sally Rooney
She’s the voice of a generation! She’s Ireland’s most popular export since U2! Or we could calm down and say that, three novels in, Sally Rooney is the real deal. Normal People became a hugely popular miniseries and turned Paul Mescal into a star, so thank you for that, Sally. But what a novel! It’s so engaging you almost don’t realize how ambitious it proves, tackling class and gender with insight and complexity. Connell is the star of his high school, almost embarrassed to be dating the shy Marianne. But she blossoms at university while Connell struggles to adapt to a wider world where he’s not automatically B.M.O.C. She’s rich, he’s working class and they are both smart enough to realize this tangled, confusing, ever-shifting relationship (friendship? love?) has to mean something. Doesn’t it?
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Some novels reveal their pleasures immediately. Others need careful attention, re-reading and perhaps a little life under the reader’s belt before they can be fully appreciated. Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece is different. Its pleasures are immediate and abundantly clear—the fantastical tale is hilarious, satirical, intellectually playful, clearly has a lot on its mind and is above all fun. Even a child knows this. Yet the more you read it and the more you think about it and what it says and means, the curiouser and curiouser it becomes. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, for one, often cites it as a profound influence. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is hilarious and satirical and all that, but far more than you realized. If it’s been a while since you went down the rabbit hole, all we can say is don’t hesitate to DRINK ME and EAT ME and indeed READ ME.
Olive Kitteridge
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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
In real life, we want nothing to do with ornery, cranky, difficult people. Who needs the bother? But in movies and TV shows and books we positively delight in them. It’s fun to spend time with the rude, downright obnoxious character who says what everyone is secretly thinking. Writer Elizabeth Strout hit pay dirt with the prickly personality of Olive Kitteridge. Embodied to perfection by Frances McDormand in an HBO miniseries, Olive observes everyone around her with a gimlet eye…and then tells them precisely what she sees. Her saving grace is that Olive is just as hard on herself. You finish the book and immediately start to miss her. Strout must have felt the same way—she wrote an equally acclaimed sequel called Olive, Again about a decade later.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
In the year 2000, author Michael Chabon discovered his superpower. Prior to that, he seemed a mild-mannered writer. Chabon’s acclaimed debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was seen as semi-autobiographical, like many first novels. He struggled with the follow-up and then dropped it completely to do that most writerly of things—write a novel about a writer trying to write a novel (a college professor, no less!). Wonder Boys was a huge success and spawned a good movie, but still. One worried. Then Chabon was bitten by a radioactive bug or discovered a hidden passage in his library or was told about his true origins on another planet or something! Because out of nowhere he delivered The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a fictionalized reimagining of two nice Jewish boys who create a superhero comic book, a la Superman. It’s a rich period story punctuated by vivid retellings of the comic book plot, World War II, a gay romance, assimilation and so on. Even more amazing, Chabon hasn’t looked back. Since this landmark, he’s written children’s books, a sci-fi mystery set in an alternate timeline, a novella capturing Sherlock Holmes in his old age, a serialized novel about swashbuckling Jews around the turn of the last millennium and even a comic book bringing to life the comic book hero of Kavalier & Clay! Genre is his superpower and Chabon won’t ever forget it.
An American Marriage (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel
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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Writer Tayari Jones lays claim to Atlanta as her literary stomping ground, thanks to a string of acclaimed novels and her role as editor of the mystery/thriller collection Atlanta Noir. Bookseller Sarah Hollenbeck touts An American Marriage, the story of a newly married couple whose lives are torn apart when the husband is wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. “It’s an intimate look deep into the hearts of people who are victims of our current mass incarceration crisis but must somehow face the future,” says Hollenbeck of Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago. “A profound and stirring book!” She’s not alone in loving it. Oprah made it a pick for her book club, President Barack Obama touted the title and it won the prestigious Women’s Prize For Fiction.
The Chosen
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The Chosen by Chaim Potok
A father expects his son to enter the family business, but the son has other plans. You’ve heard this one before. But when that tension between expectation and desire is set in the world of Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn during World War II, it becomes fresh and surprising. Reuven and Danny are friends, even though Reuven is part of the more worldly Modern Orthodox community while Danny is the son of a rabbi leading an ultra-orthodox Hasidic yeshiva. They’re all-American boys who bond over baseball. And both want to defy their parents. Reuven yearns to be a rabbi, but his father expects the boy to pursue higher education. Danny’s father assumes the boy will become a rabbi, but Danny wants to study psychology. Who gets to choose the life you lead? Your father? Yourself? And if the Jews are the Chosen, how could the Holocaust ever take place? A novel that grapples with faith and family, The Chosen will remain a perennial favorite as long as kids and parents clash.
A Song Of Ice And Fire 7 Books Set By George R. R. Martin
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A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
How can we celebrate a fantasy series that’s not even done yet? Easy. All fantasy writers stand on the shoulders of J.R.R. Tolkien, as Martin himself readily acknowledges. But few do it with such flair and passion as he. Martin’s novels are brutal, cynical, and thrilling in their scope. In them, the smallest and kindest among us don’t pop up to save the day. More likely, they’re trampled underfoot. Major characters who die won’t be brought back to life. They’re just dead. Betrayal and honor carry a heavy price and it’s not clear which is higher. Watching leaders battle for control of Westeros while ignoring a looming (ecological?) disaster isn’t “timely.” It’s timeless. Fighting for power while sidestepping the issues that really matter is par for the course with the ruling class. Someday we’ll be able to read A Song Of Ice and Fire from start to finish. Those frustrating gaps where characters aren’t heard from for a thousand pages won’t matter. The gaps between books being published won’t matter either. All that will matter is the song. So take your time, Mr. Martin.
Related: Watch This, Read That: What to Read Based on the Fall TV Shows You Love
Selected Stories of Alice Munro, 1968-1994 (Vintage International)
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Selected Stories by Alice Munro
This is the name of the greatest hits set from 1996, gathering the best stories from Alice Munro’s first eight volumes. It’s been published under various titles, but don’t worry. You can grab any collection, like Vintage Munro (which is a redundant title) or My Best Stories. Or you can buy her first book of stories Dance Of The Happy Shades or her most recent Dear Life. Really, just look for the name Alice Munro and read it. She’s the first Canadian and only the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize. You’ll soon understand why.
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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Roots by Alex Haley
If you or someone in your family has taken a swab test to trace your roots, you can thank writer Alex Haley. A passion for genealogy and a desire to see if the oral history he’d heard over the years was based on truth sent Haley on a quest. It took him all the way to Africa and what is now known as The Gambia. Then it led him to a typewriter, where Haley took the facts as he best knew them and crafted a novel. That book told the story of Kunta Kinte, a 17 year old man cruelly kidnapped from his home and sold into slavery…and then it told the story of the next seven generations of Kinte’s family, moving from tragedy to triumph. They started filming the miniseries even before the novel was published; both were massive, unprecedented successes. Genealogy and our understanding of American history have never been the same.
Anne of Green Gables (Children’s Signature Classics)
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Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
A plucky young orphan girl with spunk? Check! Ornery old people who turn out to be endearing? Check! Some “disasters” and setbacks that loom large for our heroine but prove surmountable? Check! A boy who is infuriating but proves to be rather handsome and kind once you get to know him? Check! Yes, this 1908 classic was not the first of its kind (hello, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and certainly inspired countless successors. But the red-haired Anne with an “e” is special. It inspired five sequels of increasing depth and sophistication, though writer Margaret Atwood insists this first novel is the best. And who are we to argue with Margaret Atwood? By the end of the series, Anne looks on as her children sleep, while the shadows of World War I loom large. You realize how much Anne and her world mean to you…and start to read them all over again.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon Graphic Library)
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Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware
When people who don’t love comics single out a comic (or graphic novel or what-have-you) worth reading, they often light on something that is the least comic book-y thing they can find. Hence the universal—and yet deserved—praise for Chris Ware’s atypical, beautiful comic Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. Outlets that rarely get comic books can “get” this mournful story of a middle-aged man who has a troubled relationship with his dad. The stories are quiet, piercing and broken up by flashbacks to Jimmy Corrigan’s grandfather as a boy, when he had a troubled relationship with his dad. First, you’ll be enraptured by the sheer pleasure of looking at this work of art. Then, you’ll sink into the story and its quiet moments and before you know it, you’re under his spell.
Speedboat: With an introduction by Hilton Als (W&N Essentials)
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Speedboat by Renata Adler
Renata Adler became infamous for reviewing a collection of movie criticism by Pauline Kael. Both were writers at the New Yorker but that didn’t stop Adler from decimating her colleague Kael’s work, tearing it down line by line, piece by piece. In her autobiographical-ish debut novel Speedboat, Adler did much the same for modern life in the 1970s. Moments flit by, fragmented scene follows fragmented scene and yet somehow it all coheres into the story of a journalist making her way through the world of New York City and politics and parties. “Reading it is like being in a snowstorm,” said one rave review in The New Yorker (not written by Kael, needless to say). Everyone from Elizabeth Hardwick to David Foster Wallace has championed it and Speedboat went from an out-of-print cult favorite to a modern classic.
The Grapes of Wrath: 75th Anniversary Edition
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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
This is an angry book. It’s a nice, safe classic now, enshrined on lists like this, turned into a great movie starring Henry Fonda, a great stage play and even an opera. But when it came out, The Grapes Of Wrath was a thunderbolt. It was banned all over the place and burned…even by librarians! People argued about it. Debates were held on the radio. John Steinbeck was called a socialist, a communist and he would have been called worse but there was nothing worse to be called than a communist. Yet it sold and sold and sold. The debate hasn’t stopped. It was banned in Ireland in the 1950s. It was banned in Turkey in the 1970s. Today, people still raise objections to it being required reading in high schools or even optional reading or even just sitting on the shelf in libraries where some impressionable child might find it. The story of the Joad family, fleeing the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression, desperate for jobs, hounded everywhere they go when all they want is a decent wage for a decent day’s work? That’s as timeless as it gets. Steinbeck might prefer a better future where the book was long forgotten or just a relic of ancient history. But he certainly wouldn’t be surprised that it’s still blazingly relevant. And he’d still be angry.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
No matter how unique, how unexpected, how new a novel seems, even its author can readily name the many novels that inspired it, paving the way for their “unprecedented” and original work. Still, the debut novel of Susanna Clarke certainly felt wonderfully fresh and new. Clarke might have mentioned Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees as one of many predecessors in tone and style. But we simply weren’t expecting a pitch-perfect evocation of the 19th-century novel a la Dickens and Austen, a comedy of manners and high drama which combines an alternate history, the Napoleonic Wars, the re-emergence of magic and most deliciously of all the knives-out ferocity that is academia into one bewitching tale. No one is more territorial than a scholar defending their minor backwater of knowledge and Clarke punctures such pomposity with footnotes to her novel that are howlingly funny in their pedanticism. This might have turned into a cult classic, one especially treasured by tenured professors. Instead, it became a rip-roaring bestseller to the delight of all.
A Death in the Family (Penguin Classics)
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A Death in the Family by James Agee
A brilliant film critic, James Agee also penned two classic screenplays: The African Queen (along with director John Huston and two others) and The Night Of The Hunter (with an uncredited Charles Laughton also playing a role). A good collaborator, Agee worked with photographer Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a ground-breaking combination of words and images documenting the lives of impoverished tenant farmers. But his posthumous novel A Death In The Family is the riveting, anguished pinnacle of Agee’s life. People can’t leave it alone. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize after an editor pulled it together from an unfinished manuscript. Others turned it into a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a film, a TV movie and an opera. Then a scholar took issue with the editing and oversaw a new edition of the novel closer to the form it was in when Agee died. In every form, the story of a little boy in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1915—the year his father dies in a car accident—is piercing, heartwarming, nostalgic and so very moving.
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy wrote easier books. The Road is his most popular work—a dystopian novel where the brutal struggle to survive is given purpose by showing a father determined to protect his young son. All The Pretty Horses is more lyrical and open-hearted, with a doomed romance at its core. Then there’s Blood Meridian, the anti-Western, a novel few praised when it first came out in 1985. In it, a semi-lawless band of men is sent off to scalp any violent Indians that cross their path along the U.S.-Mexican border. Soon they’re attacking peaceful Indians, sleepy Mexican villages, the Mexican army and pretty much anyone else unlucky enough to come in range. The violence is unremitting and you’ll decide it puts the lie to the romantic Westerns of your youth or you’ll decide this is how it really was back then so deal with it or you’ll decide violence is just the way of humanity, as one of the novel’s epigraphs suggests. Hard to shake, and maybe you shouldn’t try.
Tipping the Velvet: A Novel
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Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters
Don’t get the impression that Sarah Waters peaked with her marvelous debut Tipping The Velvet. You’ll find her crime novel Fingersmith on our list of the 110 Best Thriller, Crime, Suspense Novels Of All Time. But since she began with Tipping The Velvet, you should too. Waters was writing her PhD on historical fiction, figured she’d have a go at it herself and wrote this gripping novel. Forget everything you imagine you know about the Victorian era because it’s probably wrong. Here you’ll discover Nan, a young woman working in the unromantic business of oysters. Her world is upended by Kitty, a “masher,” a woman who dresses as a man onstage. Crime, betrayal, life on the stage, sex work of unimagined variety and more take place in the late 1800s against the backdrop of the suffragette movement, socialism and the constant fear of being arrested for whom they love. It’s a proper melodrama and in a novel this well-written and historically grounded, that’s a compliment.
Howards End (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
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Howards End by E.M. Forster
A Room With A View is Forster’s wittiest and most romantic novel. Maurice, and its doomed gay love, is his most personal. (It was only published after the author died in 1970.) A Passage To India, and its take on Empire, is his most popular. But Forster is at his most focused and refined with Howards End. He diagnoses the ills of English society while gently satirizing those who saw “the poor” as their own personal pet project. It’s all-encompassing, shrewd and generous of spirit, with the titular home proving both a symbol and a burden, until it’s finally placed into the right hands.
Related: 75 Quotes About Writing To Inspire Your Creativity
Underworld: A Novel
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Underworld by Don DeLillo
Like Babe Ruth pointing to where he’d hit a home run before a pitch is thrown, writer Don DeLillo’s career clearly pointed to this: a sprawling yet focused, all-encompassing masterpiece. And just like the Babe, he delivered. The 98-page opening section is devoted to The Shot Heard ‘Round The World, a home run by Bobby Thomson that won the New York Giants the pennant and sent them to the World Series. That ball is caught by a young black fan while J. Edgar Hoover watches from the stands, being informed during the game that the Soviets have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. It’s all there—America, the Cold War, race, class, sports, sexuality, politics, joy, despair—and it’s done so perfectly that this chunk of the book would later be titled Pafko At The Wall and sold separately as a novella. The rest of the novel charts the life of a man obsessed with finding out what happened to that home run ball and acquiring it for himself. Oh, and charting the 20th century as well. So far, it’s DeLillo’s best novel, but he still has innings left to play.
The God of Small Things: A Novel
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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The cruelty of caste. The dismissal of women. The pain of heartbreak. Family. Religion. All play a role in the meticulous, absorbing debut novel by Arundhati Roy that took the literary world by storm 25 years ago. Set in Kerala, India, and beginning in the 1960s, Roy’s story centers on women betrayed by love, bolstered by love and bent on love. To this day, so-called “Love Laws,” in both the cultural and legal sense, limit who can love who and how much in India, with gender, caste and faith all obstacles to be surmounted. What’s love got to do with it? Everything—and Roy demonstrates why in a novel as formally complex as it is generous of spirit.
Ubik
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Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Sci-fi author Philip K. Dick is compared to Franz Kafka and Thomas Pynchon as much as to other science fiction writers. But where to begin with his confounding body of work? The books that inspired the film Blade Runner or the TV series The Man in The High Castle? Well, a body of voters in France and the very American magazine Time both agree his masterpiece is, in fact, Ubik—a nightmare of the future where everything is monetized. Bookseller Lisa Morton agrees. “Ubik starts with a hero named Joe Chip who is unable to leave his automated apartment because he doesn’t have money to pay his door,” says Morton of Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, California. “From there, it takes off on a mind-bending story of time and evolution moving backwards, with all roads seeming to lead to death and dissolution. That mad genius Philip K. Dick was once shocked when told that French critics had chosen Ubik as one of the five best novels ever written. He thought surely the list must be the five best science fiction novels, but no—it was simply the five best novels in all of literature. After reading this funny, horrific, tragic and surprising book, you might agree with the French.”
The Golden Notebook: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
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The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Were you wowed by Cloud Atlas, the David Mitchell novel that toyed with structure so cleverly it turned his genre-hopping book into a literary Matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll? Did the way Ian McEwan ended Atonement—changing everything that came before—blow your mind? Well, open The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing’s masterpiece is often hailed for its clever-clever narrative, which goes back and forth between the four notebooks that document the life of writer Anna Wulf. Others emphasize its importance as a feminist classic. Lessing herself put the focus on the titanic issues the novel engaged with, from Stalinism to colonialism to the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement. The fact that she dazzled while doing so, thought Lessing, was not the point. She’s right, but dazzle it does.
A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel
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A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Artist Bob Marley looms large over popular music and the history of Jamaica. His greatest hits set, Legend, is one of the best-selling albums of all time. His influence is incalculable. And writer Marlon James captures both Marley—referred to only as The Singer—and decades of Jamaican history in his third novel. It leaps from an attempted assassination of Marley in 1976 to the ravages of crack in the U.S. and back to Jamaica in the 1990s. James is so masterful as he captures a remarkable range of characters and time periods that he became the first Jamaican writer to win the prestigious Booker Prize for best novel. After capturing such a broad sweep of history, the only way for James to top himself was to create an entire world. He is doing just that with a fantasy trilogy based on African myths and history. It began with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, continued with the just-out Moon Witch, Spider King and will be complete with White Wing, Dark Star.
Life After Life: A Novel
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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Oh for a chance to try again! Who hasn’t said, “If I knew then what I know now!” and meant it? It’s a tempting desire and that’s why movies like Groundhog Day are so powerful. Writer Kate Atkinson tackles this premise with relish in Life After Life. Our heroine Ursula (or should that be “heroines?”) is conceived…and then dies in the womb, strangled by an umbilical cord. Fade to black. She is conceived again, avoids the danger and is born…only to die another way. Fade to black! Again and again, Ursula is born and makes her way through life. She dies repeatedly during the Spanish Flu and tries again, dimly aware as her lives repeat that she’s done this before and learning just enough to improve her chances. Facing down a rapist, surviving the Blitz during World War II, choosing to fall in love and spending WWII in Berlin with her German husband, again and again Ursula lives out her lives with an ever-expanding sense of the possibilities we all have at our command. It’s playful, serious, mind-blowing and oh, for a chance to try again. At least, we can read it again.
The Adventures of Captain Underpants: Color Edition
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The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
When a parent is desperate to see their kids embrace reading, any book they will actually read, indeed demand to read as soon as the latest one comes out, is immediately one of the greatest books of all time. And that’s why the silly, punny, juvenile humor of the Captain Underpants series is here. Two boys turn their school principal into a superhero? Professor Poopypants? Bionic Boogie Boy? Relax! As long as they’re giggling and reading, it’s good. Bookseller Kathy Doyle Thomas of Half Price Books (headquartered in Dallas, Texas), knows that well. “My dyslexic son was obsessed with Captain Underpants and his crazy adventures,” says Doyle Thomas. “He was not a strong reader, but could easily read and comprehend the books and relate to the character. Most importantly, he felt good about himself!”
The Great Gatsby: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you want to become an indelible part of American culture, it’s always smart to write a short, easy-to-read novel that can be taught in high school English classes. For generations past, those novels included A Separate Peace by John Knowles, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They’re part of a shared memory for older generations, the way the Harry Potter books and Star Wars films are for people today. Each followed a different path to success. A Separate Peace began as a short story appearing in Cosmopolitan and was a solid success when published as a novel. To Kill A Mockingbird proved a runaway bestseller and scored the Pulitzer Prize. The Great Gatsby languished with modest sales in 1925; Fitzgerald died fifteen years later believing it was a flop. But when World War II came along, G.I.s were given a paperback copy and its popularity soared. Today, few books embody and question the American Dream quite like this novel about Nick Carraway caught up in the frenzied world of new money living it up in Long Island. Not only do some lives have a second act, so do some books. Especially the great ones.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Ravenclaw Edition; Black and Blue
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Sure, it’s just a modern updating of Tom Brown’s School Days with a dollop of fantasy. But the magic isn’t just in the spells and potions. It’s found in J.K. Rowling’s remarkable gift for naming (Dumbledore, Hagrid, Ravenclaw), plotting and humor. From the butterbeer on tap to Harry the Boy Who Lived (but did so in a cramped space underneath the stairs of his mean aunt and uncle), the invention never flags. Rowling’s expansive vision grew and grew along with the books in this seven-volume series. An entire generation simply had to read them. People lined up at midnight all over the world when a new one came out. The movies and games and plays and merchandise still stand in their shadow. And it all began with this debut, which is nigh on perfect and magical in every way that matters.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
What do you do as a critic when a major writer like Gabriel García Márquez delivers a novel so brilliant it can’t be denied? Normally, you just shout about it from the rooftops. But when that novel combines the fantastical with the ordinary, when it draws upon the magical in a way that is uncomfortably akin to the despised genre of fantasy, you’re in trouble, since fantasy can’t be taken seriously by literary critics. The answer is simple. You cast a spell and instead of calling it “fantasy,” you call it “magical realism” and everyone is happy. The novel can be praised, a new fancy phrase has been invented (and will be applied to almost any writer from Latin America, whether it fits or not) and a sprawling, sexy, bewildering tale that spans generations and is set in part in a fictional town called Macondo and includes people tied to trees for years on end and more incest than you would expect becomes one of the most acclaimed and best-selling books of all time. And realistically, that’s pretty magical.
White Teeth (Vintage International)
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White Teeth by Zadie Smith
It’s not fair, but we’re still happily waiting for writer Zadie Smith to fulfill the promise of her debut novel White Teeth. This sprawling story covers 25 years and the lives of everyone from a devout Jehovah’s Witness from Jamaica to a white Englishman dumped by his Italian wife to a Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh who is endlessly distracted from his faith by a fondness for beer, masturbation and his children’s music teacher. As Edward R. Murrow famously intoned during his war reporting: this…is London. Critics and readers agreed wholeheartedly as White Teeth won awards, hit the bestseller list and became a miniseries and a play. Smith hasn’t stopped: she overcame the sophomore slump with her excellent third novel On Beauty and continues steadily on with five novels in all, two short story collections, a play, teaching and the occasional foray into the role of public intellectual. That’s exactly how you fulfill the promise of a brilliant debut. You do the long, steady work of writing and publishing and then writing again. As Smith keeps this up, in another 30 years with another clutch of great books to her credit, we’ll gladly say her promise is fulfilled. Until then, we greedily demand more.
Les Miserables (Signet Classics)
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Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Some novels are so big, so important, so monumental, they can’t be ignored. Such is Les Misérables, just one of the great novels by Victor Hugo, an author so popular in France that when he died more than two million people—two million!—took part in the funeral procession. The story is familiar to you, the story of a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed a child and paid a terrible price. No, it’s not enough to see the musical or watch a film or TV adaptation. It’s time to read the book, all of it. When you’re done, you’ll want to make the world a better place.
All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel
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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Sometimes you just want a good story. Oh yes, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winner is beautifully written and grapples with all sorts of themes—how could any book set in part during World War II that’s worth its salt fail to do so? But let the scholars parse its greatness. You’ll simply be caught up in the tale of Marie-Laure, a little blind girl who grows up in Paris and then flees the war to reside in Saint-Malo. Her father builds his daughter a model city of their new town so she can learn her way around. Then he disappears. Marie-Laure’s story is interwoven with the story of a little German boy named Werner who is handy with electronics. If you expect their paths to cross during the war, well, you won’t be disappointed. But first, you’ll learn about the cursed diamond known as the Sea Of Flames, an old man still haunted by World War I, a maid who takes part in the Resistance and so much more. A treat.
A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, 1)
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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
What’s not to love? You’ve got a missing father and a trio of kids determined to find him, led by 13-year-old Meg Murry. You’ve got mysterious neighbors known as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. They task Meg, her super-smart little brother Charles and their friend Calvin to save her father…and the world! You’ve got the ability to travel through time and space, centaurs, strange new planets and creatures, new friends and dangerous enemies and a race against time as Earth is slowly engulfed by an evil known as The Black Thing. Kids and adults have loved this novel (and its sequels) ever since, celebrating a story where a girl is the hero of a sci-fi/fantasy and Love is more powerful than Hate.
The Savage Detectives: A Novel
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The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
If you’re Latin or simply read a lot of Latin American literature, you might roll your eyes at The Savage Detectives being on this list. There are other authors, other books from Latin America since Gabriel García Márquez, you would say. Yes, yes, but if the died-too-young Bolaño’s novel (or his equally acclaimed 2666) is always the book, the author people tout to show they’re aware of the vast body of fiction found in Latin America, well, that’s not so bad. The Savage Detectives is bohemian, rebellious and bold in structure. It covers decades of history and the romantic—if tiresome—travels of poets proudly dubbing themselves the Visceral Realists. Think On The Road, for starters. Plus, Bolaño name-checks so many other authors and works that any reader enamored of it will surely start tracking down some of those other books. Sure, many of them are imaginary, but it’s a start.
Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel
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Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
A novel can mean everything to a reader. But sometimes we forget that a novel can mean everything to its author as well. Writer Dorothy Allison put everything into her semi-autobiographical debut. It’s about a child repeatedly beaten and assaulted by a stepfather, while the mother tries and fails again and again to leave him behind. Allison poured in the details of her own childhood, the family she was estranged from for years, the poetry and short stories she was publishing, the sense of empowerment she felt from the feminist movement, her own awakening sexuality and more. The awards, the best-seller lists, the movie, the chance to keep writing and make a living as an author was all great, of course. But the mere fact of its existence, of being published in the first place and achieving what she set out to do, that surely meant everything to Allison. And readers responded.
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (Hornblower Saga (Paperback))
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The Horatio Hornblower Series by C.S. Forester
Everyone should read the Aubrey-Maturin nautical novels of Patrick O’Brian. But before you read them, you’re well advised to dive into the Horatio Hornblower books by C.S. Forester. O’Brian just assumes you know as much about the Napoleonic era and seafaring as he did. Forester takes the reader by the hand, letting them learn the difference between a mainsail and a halyard right alongside our hero. By the end, you’ll feel immersed in the era and ready to take command of your own ship. Bookseller Ed Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii, agrees. “Reading these as an adult, any of the Hornblower books are completely engaging,” says Justus. “Forester’s writing style flows seamlessly, making action and interpersonal character development equally as interesting. I could smell the salt air, feel the movement of the ship, and the adrenaline at the sight of an approaching vessel. Really timeless stuff burned into my memory.”
Charming Billy: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)
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Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
You’ll never catch Alice McDermott “writing.” Like her quiet, unassuming characters (people so “typical” that one extraordinary novel about an ordinary life is simply titled Someone), McDermott’s prose never calls attention to itself. Whether charting the course of young love (That Night); much of the 20th Century (The Ninth Hour); or simply the burial of a funny, loyal, complex and incurable drunk (Charming Billy); McDermott defty and invisibly brings to life a person, a community (Irish-American) and a world. She’s about due for another novel soon and we guarantee it will quietly, modestly capture your heart. Now that’s writing.
All Creatures Great and Small
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All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
This really is a novel, though fans of the books (and the TV shows based upon them) do insist on assuming they’re memoirs. What higher compliment could you pay an author than to insist it’s all true? In fact, James Alfred Wight aka James Herriot did base his stories on real-life experiences as a vet in Yorkshire. And he really did have two memorable brothers for partners—one of them terribly eccentric and the other a charming ladies’ man. (You can guess which one enjoyed the books more.) But the town of Darrowby where the stories are set is made up. Many of the characters are made up. And perhaps only the animals and their ailments are based on fact. But the stories are so vivid and funny and charming that it’s better than true. Funnily enough, it took an American publisher to take the books seriously, which sold very modestly at first in the UK. The American repackaged them with grown-up art (not some silly cartoonish images that dogged the UK version), renamed them and turned the books into bestsellers. To date, they’ve sold at least 60 million copies worldwide, turned some young people into veterinarians and made many, many folk glad they’re never called out for a calving on a cold winter’s night.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Tale Of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is the definitive tale of Camelot and probably the first novel written in English. But 400 years earlier(!) in Japan, a lady-in-waiting at the court of the Emperor beat him to it with The Tale Of Genji. (Yes, an even earlier novel might be Kādambari which was published 400 years before that, but our Sanskrit is weak so we can’t speak to it.) Not to worry. Like Don Quixote (the first novel written in Spanish) and Le Morte d’Arthur, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji isn’t just a historical curiosity or the answer to a trivia question. It’s an enthralling tale of the impossibly handsome Genji, the bastard son of the Emperor who is forever falling in and out of love when not dealing with court intrigue, domestic life and more affairs than any one man should have time for. Hey, if you’re driven to write the first novel, you must have a corker to tell and Murasaki sure did.
The Code of the Woosters
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The Code Of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brits have a gift for comic novels. Maybe primping and preening as it oversees an Empire On Which The Sun Never Set makes a nation ripe for mockery? Whatever the reason, the British love and appreciate humor, turning out witty authors by the lorry-load. For sheer silliness, none match P.G. Wodehouse. His tales of the unflappable valet Jeeves and the dim-witted but genial blueblood Wooster are especially silly. Give Wodehouse a stately home, an awkward engagement, a fulminating Lord or Earl or some such titled fool, interfering friends, a fancy dress party, incompetent or indifferent servants and by gosh he’s off to the races. (Probably Ascot.) The Code Of The Woosters is a prime example, with Wodehouse mocking British fascists and the local constabulary for good measure. Reading Wodehouse makes life worth living.
The Children of Men
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The Children Of Men by P.D. James
Baroness P.D. James is rightly remembered for her marvelously intelligent and thoughtful mysteries starring Adam Dalgleish, a police commander and poet. Any fan of mysteries should dive in. But the fourteen books she wrote about him have a cumulative power. If you’re only ready to read one book by her, we recommend the atypical dystopian novel The Children Of Men from 1991. Set in the near future, it takes place after a mass infertility event and begins with a killer opening line stating that the last person ever born has just died in a pub brawl. Things get much more complicated. James grapples with existential questions about the meaning of life and how people might react when the future becomes meaningless. But she does it with a sci-fi thriller about conspiracies and lies and the need to make some sense of the struggle to survive, rather than just doing it. And when you don’t have the knee-jerk excuse of doing it for the kids, for the next generation, well what do you have?
The Catcher in the Rye
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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The cool people claim to prefer J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey, but they’re just being phonies. Salinger’s classic novel about a rebellious teenager may be the obvious choice, but it’s also the right choice. Just ask any kid who’s read it for the first time. “There have been a couple fiction books which made a strong impact on my life,” says bookseller Ed Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii. “As a teen, it was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The writing style told through the eyes of the main character broke through all the established ‘rules’ of traditional storytelling we had been taught in school. It caused me to realize just how flexible fiction and writing could be.”
The Women of Brewster Place: A Novel in Seven Stories (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series)
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The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Has it been 40 years already? It seems like this marvelous book came out yesterday, with its stories that tell the lives of seven women dealing with the struggles and setbacks (and men) that dominate their existence in an inner city sanctuary known as Brewster Place. At the same time, it seems like this book has always been there, with its vivid characters popping in and out of each other’s lives, each one with a story to tell. It’s a modern Canterbury Tales, except no one is going anywhere—just staying in place is triumph enough.
[We Others: New and Selected Stories] (By: Steven Millhauser) [published: September, 2012]
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We Others: New & Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser
It’s tempting to recommend Steven Millhauser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Martin Dressler. That’s a marvelous skewering and celebration of the American Dream, told through the fantastical story of a turn of the century businessman who concocts department stores of such elaborate design they become wonderlands of impossible complexity, all described in riveting prose. Think Ray Bradbury crossed with Jorge Luis Borges. But his 2011 collection of new and selected stories is dazzling and perhaps easier for beginners than the rabbit hole that is Martin Dressler. Many of Millhauser’s stories slip into the fantastical, the way Little Nemo of comic strip fame tumbles out of bed into a bewildering dreamscape: you feel yourself slipping, almost imperceptibly, and then—boom!—you’re on the floor in a daze, waking up from a reverie that seemed so very, very real. In the stories of Millhauser, the mundane becomes magical and the magical becomes, not mundane, but possible, just possible, somewhere just around the corner perhaps or down the street, especially late at night if you go for a stroll and don’t quite pay attention to where you’re headed.
Flight Behavior: A Novel
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Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Writers are tackling the climate crisis in countless ways. Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson dives into violent, earth-shaking possibilities with The Ministry For The Future. Richard Powers puts trees at the heart of The Overstory. Author Barbara Kingsolver focuses on a poor woman in Appalachia about to start an affair when she stumbles upon an amazing, upsetting discovery. Bookseller Sharon Anderson Wright of Half Price Books in Dallas, Texas, loves Flight Behavior. “It’s about the migration of a million monarch butterflies diverted from their flight path,” says Anderson Wright, “as well as deforestation, global climate change, and the rebirth of a woman trapped in an unsatisfying life. I found the story of how they are able to adapt and find new ways to survive fascinating.”
A Boy’s Own Story: A Novel
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A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White
Many gay novels came before this one, like Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and William Maxwell’s The Folded Leaf. Long before them, Homer’s The Iliad was about how unwise it is to taunt a warrior like Achilles by killing his very good “friend” Patroclus. Nonetheless, in 1982 it was still bold and a little shocking to deliver an autobiographical novel like A Boy’s Own Story. White manages to be both romantic and dispassionate in describing his thinly veiled coming of age and coming out. It forms the first part of a trilogy, though White continues to mine his life to this day in novels and memoirs. His biography of Jean Genet may be White’s masterpiece, but for influence and beauty, few can match this one.
Mason & Dixon: A Novel
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Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
If we were going to play it safe, we’d choose Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying Of Lot 49 or Gravity’s Rainbow to be on this list. They’re the twin pillars on which his reputation rests. We could get wacky and choose the crime novel Inherent Vice (indeed, we did choose it for our list of the Best Thrillers of All Time). But the historical novel Mason & Dixon has an unrestrained joy about it we can’t resist. It’s 1786 and the Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke is a shaky man of the cloth but an excellent storyteller. He keeps a clutch of little kids enthralled with nightly tales about the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. If surveying doesn’t sound like the stuff of bedtime stories, be sure the Rev. will toss in fart jokes and unlikely escapades whenever attention flags. A yarn, and how Pynchon loves to unravel it.
The Overstory: A Novel
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The Overstory by Richard Powers
When trees are a central character in a novel, either you’re in or you’re out. For many readers of this Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of eco-fiction, they are in. Powers is no stranger to unexpected topics. His novels tackle genetics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, astrobiology and avant-garde music, among other topics. But it’s awe for the majesty of nature and trees in particular that powers The Overstory. Nine characters each discover an appreciation for trees so profound they come together to protect forests, not as a natural resource but as a good worth saving. Trees tolerate us. Trees outlive us. And trees might well outlive humanity, if we’re not careful. Powers speaks for the trees and if writing a book means cutting some down to print it, well, that’s just one more problem to be solved while we still can.
Related: For Your Fall TBR List, 30 New Books We’re Reading This Autumn Season
The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction)
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The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
We’re still catching up with the vision of writer Ursula K. Le Guin. At least we can pat ourselves on the back in recent years for realizing how much catching up we had to do. By the time of her death in 2018, Le Guin had been showered with accolades and affection and enough reappraisals to last ten lifetimes. Her Earthsea fantasies center a person of color as their hero. Her Orsinia novels are historical fiction about an imaginary country, giving Guy Gavriel Kay, among others, an entire career. Poetry, essays and so much more challenge and provoke. And her key series of the Hainish—novels and stories set on the planet of Hain—do all that and more. Then there’s The Left Hand Of Darkness from 1969. It tackles gender, androgyny and other issues few were even considering at the time and does it in a novel so compelling it was an immediate sensation. Darkness is the most mind-expanding First Contact novel of them all, thanks to ambisexual aliens who raise their children communally and are simply “beyond” gender. To call it feminist science fiction would immediately limit its scope. But it was and is and will always be feminist, science fiction and immediate.
My Name Is Red (Vintage International)
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My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Take Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose and add a dash of Jorge Luis Borges. Tell about the murder of an artist living during the Ottoman Empire. Immediately upend expectations by having the author interrupt the proceedings and make clear these are all just characters in a story. Then make it gripping, playful, fascinating and fun and you’ll start to appreciate the triumph that is My Name Is Red. Orhan Pamuk is the first Turkish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize and it’s easy to understand why. He’s not just brave in literary matters. The author faces down lawsuits and death threats for defending freedom of speech and condemning Turkey’s genocide of Armenians. In My Name Is Red, the artists are miniaturists, specialists in tiny, precise artworks. Not Pamuk—he works on a large canvas.
Harriet the Spy
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Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
For such a beloved kids book, Harriet the Spy has a lot of sharp elbows. It tells the story of a very observant child who pays attention to everyone around her and writes down what she thinks about them in her notebook. Then she loses the notebook. Then her friends find the notebook, read it and get very, very annoyed. Our heroine falls into a depression and becomes isolated from all her pals just for yearning to be a writer! But the moral is not that Harriet was wrong to write such thoughts; it was wrong of everyone else to read them. Duh! If you read someone else’s diary, you’re bound to be hurt. Generations of mystery lovers, novelists and even real-life C.I.A. agents credit Harriet the Spy as their gateway drug.
Fight Club: A Novel
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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
You don’t talk about fight club, but you do talk about Fight Club. Like many great books, it’s open to multiple interpretations. Is this story about a lonely man who bonds with other men via a “fight club” and is ultimately driven to reject cookie-cutter consumerism? Is it making fun of toxic masculinity? Is the movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton faithful to the novel? Or was the infamous, re-edited version imposed on it in China actually, weirdly more faithful to the book? Do you have to read the comic book sequels to “get it?” Rarely has a man wrestling with his own demons been dealt with so literally. Hallucinatory, incendiary and you’ll probably lose sleep over it simply because you’ll want to finish Fight Club in one go. Just…accept the insomnia, alright?
The Magic Mountain (Everyman’s Library)
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The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
War changes everything. Mann’s comic novel about people with tuberculosis seeking a cure at a spa in Davos, Switzerland was a work in progress when World War I butted in. Suddenly, Mann wasn’t in the mood to joke around, or at least not without purpose. He reimagined The Magic Mountain, kept writing and the book deepened and grew into a sly takedown of modern society, all of it shadowed by war. It’s daunting, hard to pin down, sad and funny, and if you’re not quite sure what to make of it, you can always follow Mann’s advice: read it twice. It’s so good, you won’t mind.
The Color Purple: A Novel
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker
It’s been a novel and then a movie and then a stage musical and then a radio play and soon a movie musical. But really it’s just a series of letters to God. For a book filled with so much pain and violence, Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winner is universally beloved. Just ask bookseller Lynette Yates of Half Price Books in Dallas. “The Color Purple grabs you from the first page and takes you on a rollercoaster ride covering so many issues and evoking so many emotions,” says Yates. “A real page-turner!” We believe it’s the forgiveness the novel embraces and embodies despite the pain and violence that keeps it so popular.
Infinite Jest
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Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The greatest tennis novel of all time! OK, that’s a modest claim, though there are other notable novels that encompass the sport of tennis. (Try Trophy Son by Douglas Brunt or one of Agatha Christie’s personal favorites of her mysteries, Towards Zero.) Mind you, this 1000+ page behemoth is much more than a tennis novel. It’s hilariously post-modern (even its footnotes have footnotes), sprawling (obviously), sad, controversial, erudite, show-offy (which is another word for “erudite”) and a mountain worth climbing.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel
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The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Teachers change lives. How often have we heard stories about the right teacher at the right time having a profound impact on a student? The novel How Green Was My Valley. The movie Dead Poets Society. The play The Corn Is Green. Then there’s Muriel Spark’s masterpiece The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. All the elements are in place: an inspiring teacher in 1930s Edinburgh, a group of girls singled out for promise and the reward of academic success. But what’s this? On the wall, the teacher puts up admiring images of the fascist Mussolini. And what’s that? Miss Brodie dallying with not one but two male teachers? And Miss Brodie manipulating one of the girls to perhaps dally herself with the more handsome but married of the two men? That’s a lesson in life Mr. Chips never considered. In devastating fashion, Sparks shows the danger of idolizing anyone and that the best thing a student should learn is to think for themself.
Atonement: A Novel
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Atonement by Ian McEwan
Oh, fatal misunderstanding! How much art would go differently if only people would speak clearly or explain themselves or just not jump to conclusions? Wuthering Heights. Bridget Jones’s Diary. Romeo & Juliet. Misunderstanding the situation can be the death of love, literally. So it is in Atonement, where a young girl fatally misunderstands a scene she witnesses and feels compelled to make an awful accusation, ruining the lives of those around her. Can she make it up to them, even if only in her imagination? Ian McEwan’s novels are filled with such misunderstandings. But perhaps none is so dramatic as the one in Atonement. It powers this story through the start of World War II, Dunkirk and then a final bittersweet revelation that should feel a cheat, but somehow doesn’t. Sometimes a sad ending is the right ending, no matter how much we long for things to turn out better.
Zorba the Greek
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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Are you going to sit there with your dusty books and read about life? Or are you going to live your life? Eat, drink, dance, make love, live! That’s the philosophy of Zorba the Greek, the character who brushes aside those silly books to wake up a young intellectual who experiences the world only through the words of others. Not after Zorba is done with him! That’s the action in this exuberant 1946 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, a huge bestseller made even more famous by the classic film version that gave star Anthony Quinn one of his best roles. It promises a zest for life. But, of course, you’re reading about this zest for life. You’re being inspired by a book that encourages a zest for life, which it insists can’t be found in books. Ironic? Hmm. Maybe reading books isn’t so bad after all.
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
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Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Writer Jesmyn Ward is the only woman to win the National Book Award twice. She’s also the only African American to win the National Book Award twice. Her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing has been compared to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo. All three of those writers are on this list too, though Faulkner is here with The Sound and the Fury. Everyone from the New York Times to the BBC to former President Barack Obama named it one of the best books of the year. The all-things-bookish website Literary Hub named this 2011 novel one of the best books of the decade. And now it’s on our list of one of the best books of all time. It tells the story of a road trip. Thirteen-year-old Jojo struggles with the demands of being a young man while caring for his little sister Kayla, wary of his mother Leonie and uncertain of the father who’s just been released from prison. If that isn’t enough, he must also help the ghost of Richie, a 12-year-old boy who can’t quite accept the fact that he’s died. It’s tough and true and—as you might expect—the prose sings.
True Grit: A Novel
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True Grit by Charles Portis
This stone-cold classic could stand in for all the great Westerns. They just aren’t usually narrated by a 14-year-old girl so distinctive in nature that you’ll never forget her. It’s so popular they made two films based on the novel, but neither can hold a candle to it. Writer Jasper Fforde insists it belongs on any list of great novels. “Mattie does not seek blood redress, she seeks justice—to see Chaney ‘hanged at Judge Parker’s convenience’ back home at Little Rock,” says Fforde, author most recently of The Constant Rabbit. “A revenge story, a manhunt, a thriller, a story of trust, love, bravery, duty and tenacity—True Grit has it all.”
The World According to Garp: A Novel
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The World According To Garp by John Irving
We stand in awe of John Irving’s fourth novel and breakthrough, The World According To Garp. In 1978, it seemed willfully odd and “out there.” An NFL quarterback who has a sex change and now goes by Roberta? A woman who wants a child but not a husband? A son who struggles to write fiction…and then watches as his strong-willed mother simply sits down, writes an autobiography she calls A Sexual Suspect, and immediately becomes a world-famous feminist icon? Radicals who cut out their tongues to protest brutal male violence? What is this madness? Well, it’s beautiful and scary and strange and above all human, somehow. In 1982, it was turned into a wonderful, perfectly edited film that captured the idiosyncratic appeal of John Irving’s worldview and proved Robin Williams was more than a funny man. Irving soon proved he was more than an offbeat eccentric with The Cider House Rules and A Prayer For Owen Meany, but his career proper began right here.
The Complete Stories (FSG Classics)
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The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
It’s never too late. Flannery O’Connor’s second short story collection came out just five months after she died. And she won the National Book Award for The Complete Stories eight years later. As a devout Catholic, O’Connor surely would have appreciated this posthumous success: for her, death was only the beginning. Her father died of lupus when O’Connor was just 15 years old. The same illness would plague her for the last twelve years of her life. It was also the period when she wrote some of the most famous short stories of her day, stories that ensured her fame. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead.” Critics saw them as bleak, gothic and grotesque. O’Connor saw them as honest and true by tackling race, faith and the daily struggle to get by in a violent, unfair world. Write about what you know? That she did.
Ministry for the Future
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The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s entire career led to his most recent, most remarkable novel. In book after book, Robinson tackles the challenge of the climate crisis and how humanity might survive it. The Three Californias trilogy shows its impact on that state. Red Mars kicks off the Mars trilogy, a look at the practical challenges of terraforming the Red Planet and how we are likely to bring our problems with us. The Science In The Capitol books show a ravaged D.C, New York 2140 a Venice-like Big Apple and on and on. Race may be the defining issue for America. But the climate crisis is the defining issue for the planet and Robinson tackles it admirably. With The Ministry For the Future, he swings for the fences. Robinson offers a near-future look at what is going to happen next and what might happen after that. It’s scary and shocking and so believable, it gets scarier still. But as bad as it gets, there’s hope. Oh it won’t be easy, Robinson says, but maybe just maybe we can get through this. He offers this ray of light in a novel so expansive and wide-ranging that only Moby-Dick comes to mind for sheer, all-encompassing vision. Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe it’s a how-to book. But it’s definitely great.
To The Lighthouse
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To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
You can’t go wrong with Virginia Woolf, one of the giants of literature. We figure movie buffs already know about her novel Orlando: A Biography thanks to the brilliant film version starring Tilda Swinton. And this list includes Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which was inspired by Mrs. Dalloway and should send readers scurrying to that masterpiece as well. So we’ll include To the Lighthouse. Woolf is a “modernist,” and her stream-of-consciousness style was strange and new to readers of the 1920s. But we’re used to it now, so the impressionistic chatter of Mrs. Dalloway and the gender fluidity of Orlando and the flitting from character to character in To the Lighthouse shouldn’t put you off. In this novel, the Ramsay family is vacationing on the Isle of Skye and plans to visit a lighthouse on a nearby island the next day. Or will they? Ten years later, they try and finally make that jaunt to the lighthouse actually happen. Amidst this simple action, the complex give and take of a married couple, the lines of tension in a family, the tangled friendships and neighbors that muddy it all up (not to mention life, war, the passage of time and so on) are captured in a rush of emotions and memories and brief moments. It’s all illuminated by Woolf the way—wait for it—the shining beam of a lighthouse pierces the fog and lights the way home. Someone in the novel insists women can’t be serious painters or writers. Woolf must have had a good laugh over that.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
A cat is missing. That’s the event kicking off writer Haruki Murakami’s mid-career masterpiece. When a writer dips into science fiction, crime novels and magical realism, not to mention nonfiction works about being a marathon runner and talking with survivors of a terrorist attack, you expect a missing cat to be just the beginning. And it is. The novel soon contains psychics, a missing wife, horror stories from World War II and much more. Murakami cranks up the story and then lets it fly, with reality always a teasingly subjective matter. His spin on 1984 titled IQ84 might be an easier way in for some. But whether you tackle his novels or short stories or nonfiction, this perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize will happily confound you.
Related: ‘Sweet Magnolias’ Books in Order: How To Read The Whole Series That Inspired The Hit Netflix Show
Bel Canto (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
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Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Singers discover new facets of their voice as they mature. Age or a new vocal coach or simply nerve open up all sorts of possibilities. Sopranos become mezzo-sopranos. Baritones evolve into tenors. The Bee Gees discover falsetto. You get the idea. Writers do the same thing. Author Ann Patchett pushed herself and found a new voice with her fourth novel Bel Canto. Inspired by a real-life terrorist act, she imagined the story of a Japanese business executive being wooed by a South American country. He’s the guest of honor at a party, an American opera singer is brought in for entertainment and it’s crashed by a terrorist group hoping to kidnap the head of the country. The result is a stand-off, with tense negotiations breaking up long dull periods of waiting, not to mention love. A translator falls for a terrorist. The businessman falls in love with the singer, though neither speaks the other’s language. And Patchett takes her writing to a whole new level of sophistication and control, winning critical acclaim and a wider audience than ever. Brava!
The Hours: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics Book 1)
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The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Moby-Dick. Jane Eyre. Great Expectations. Everything ever by Shakespeare. The list of classic works of art that inspire other classic works of art is so long and respectful that no one should blink an eye when an author says they’re writing a prequel or sequel or spin-off to a masterpiece. And yet, it took a serious amount of chutzpah for writer Michael Cunningham to not only write a novel inspired by the classic Mrs. Dalloway, but to include Virginia Woolf herself as one of the main characters. His nerve paid off. The Hours depicts one day in the life of three women separated by decades: Woolf herself, working on Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 while fighting off the black dog of depression; Mrs. Brown, planning a birthday party for her World War II veteran husband in 1949; and Clarissa, the former lover of a male poet dying of AIDS who is throwing a party with her female partner in 1999 to celebrate him. Cunningham captures Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style. He also brings to life three people of their time who deal with society’s oppressive attitudes towards their sexual orientation and status as women. And The Hours subtly makes one now commonplace but important point for women and LGBT people: it gets better.
Tales of the City: A Novel
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Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
If he wasn’t so darn entertaining, maybe people would realize how radical writer Armistead Maupin has been. His valentine to San Francisco began as a serialized novel featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. Wide-eyed newcomer Mary Ann Singleton visits the city and realizes this is the place for her! She finds a room to rent at 28 Barbary Lane, she finds a friend in Michael aka “Mouse” and she gains an inspiring mentor in her landlady Anna Madrigal. From a story about a wide-eyed girl, Maupin’s addictive drama quickly took readers to every corner of the city. Even a hip liberal newspaper in San Francisco was wary of the bathhouses and bisexuals and so much more in the serial. But everyone wanted to know what happened next, so what could they do? Nine novels, radio plays, a musical and four groundbreaking miniseries followed. Like Dickens or Balzac or Trollope, Maupin captured an entire fleeting era just as it happened. Start here but be warned: you can’t read just one.
Ragtime: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
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Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow changed the historical novel once and for all. Others came before, they always do. But Doctorow’s rigorous research mixed a playful combination of historical figures and imaginary characters in a manner that brought the past to light and commented on it at the same time. It’s as neat a stunt as any Harry Houdini ever pulled off. In the panoramic Ragtime, Doctorow starts with the lives of a wealthy family that sells fireworks, crosses their path with the musician Coalhouse Walker and then weaves in pretty much everything going on during the early 1900s, from agitator Emma Goldman to Robert Peary’s polar expeditions to tycoon J. P. Morgan and a depressed Houdini, to name just a few. It’s dazzling, fresh, alive, funny, tragic and the movie and musical it inspired have their fans, but can’t outshine the original.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: A Novel
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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler has written 24 novels and enough short stories to fill two collections. So it’s no surprise to find people arguing about which is her best. Tyler herself would say don’t read her first four novels, but that’s modesty for you. She could mention the National Book Award for The Accidental Tourist, turned into a delightful Oscar-winning film. Or the Pulitzer Prize won by Breathing Lessons, one of her most effervescent works. Or the Booker nomination for A Spool of Blue Thread. But diehards and Tyler point to Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant as the prototypical Tyler novel and a great place to start. It tells the story of three siblings, riven by the abandonment of their father yet entangled with old arguments, resentment, history and forgiveness, soon followed by new arguments. You know, siblings. Tyler said it comes closest to what she imagined at the start, which is to say it’s warm-hearted, clear-eyed, amusing and moving. Enjoy.
Cloud Atlas
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
It’s just one of those books, a work so original and fresh that everyone instantly agrees, “Oh yes, that’s a good one.” Mitchell’s third novel is daringly constructed. It begins with the journal of a man on board a ship in the 1800s, written in the style of the era. Just as you become thoroughly involved in the story, it stops mid-action. The next section is an epistolary novel set in 1930s Belgium and written by a bisexual musician to his lover. The first story was so absorbing that you’re thoroughly annoyed Mitchell jumped to something new. What is going on here? But soon enough this new story becomes equally absorbing and just as you become enthralled by this tale and forget the first story even existed, it too stops. The novel jumps forward to the 1970s, with yet another new story written in the style of a mystery. Again and again it happens. Every time Mitchell drops a tale and begins something new, you’re annoyed; the story was so good, why on earth won’t he finish it? And then he wins you over again. Then at the halfway point, the final reveal takes place and you see the entire, brilliant structure of the novel and what Mitchell has been up to all this time. You understand how ambitious and clever it is and almost sigh with pleasure. Cloud Atlas is a tour de force. The film version, which you probably didn’t see, couldn’t ever hope to recreate the pleasure of reading this book.
My Ántonia (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
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My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Sometimes it seems like all the best stories about America are stories about travel. Immigrants reach America in Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Jack Kerouac goes On the Road, Huck Finn journeys down the Mississippi and Ántonia heads out West with her Bohemian family. Willa Cather made her name for good with this finale to the Prairie Trilogy. It celebrates regular, plain-speaking people like the orphaned boy Jim and his friend Ántonia, both struggling to survive at their new homes in Nebraska. F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that his novel The Great Gatsby was a failure compared to hers, though eventually, they’d both do just fine in the eyes of critics and readers.
The Kite Runner
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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Some novels strike a chord. How else to explain why a story about a boy in Afghanistan would take the world by storm in 2003? Khaled Hosseini’s novel charts the country’s tragic history from the fall of the monarchy to the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban by focusing on fathers and sons. It’s since been adapted into a graphic novel, a movie and a Broadway play. None of them match the novel’s emotional impact, but when something is this popular, you can’t blame them for trying.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol I and II by M.T. Anderson
Some of the boldest, bravest works in recent decades are published for kids, perhaps to smuggle work into the culture without awakening the censors. Philip Pullman radically reimagines Paradise Lost with His Dark Materials. Charles M. Schulz showed little folks dealing with depression, unrequited love and the seeming futility of existence in the comic strip Peanuts. And in a young adult novel, M.T. Anderson reorients our understanding of the American Revolution, the central horror of slavery in U.S. history and how scientific studies are often influenced by the people funding them, all long before 1619. But The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is also gripping and enthralling as we watch an enslaved boy raised by men of science who at first are determined to give him every advantage. They want to prove the African race is not inferior to Europeans, with Octavian as a test case. Later, as circumstances dictate, they’re determined to stack the deck against Octavian so somehow this bright young man fluent in several languages and an excellent violinist to boot will somehow leave white Europeans safe in the belief of their superiority. Toss in the curveball of the American Revolution and you have a work of historical fiction that stands alongside the best of them, just like Octavian Nothing.
Angle of Repose
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Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
A historian and novelist, Wallace Stegner wrote a novel about a historian. That character writes a biography about his grandmother. To give it authenticity, Stegner drew heavily upon the letters of a real person, the notable writer Mary Hallock Foote. In a move that was controversial then and more so now, Stegner quotes extensively from the letters of Foote while only obliquely giving credit to her in his acknowledgments. And yet he wrote a novel where there never was a novel. Universally acclaimed and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize 50 years ago, Angle of Repose is a wonderfully layered combination of the brave journey of pioneers colored by the disappointments and regrets of the historian recounting them. Stegner, at least, surely had no regrets about his masterpiece.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
You can feast on just the titles of novels by exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The Festival of Insignificance. Life Is Elsewhere. And of course, his most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Playful, philosophical, political and personal, it shows Kundera at his most thoughtful and profound. The story of a womanizing surgeon is interrupted by sharp insights into life under a totalitarian regime. (In one passage, Kundera dissects a photograph of government officials watching a parade, detailing how those who fell out of favor had to be erased from the image, one by one.) Arguments about the nature of existence (Kundera is not a fan of Nietzsche) take place alongside the promise of the Prague Spring and its collapse with the invasion of Soviet troops and others in 1968. There is some lightness, too; a dog is a major character, for example. Kundera is an original.
Cold Mountain: 20th Anniversary Edition
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Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Homer’s The Odyssey looms so large it would be fair to say that almost everything that followed it has been influenced by the epic. Countless works of art are directly inspired by it, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and the comic film O Brother, Where Art Thou? starring George Clooney. Still, for debut novelist Charles Frazier to combine the story of his great-granduncle with the rough outline of The Odyssey and set it all during the Civil War was an act of bravery. Readers responded, for few modern novels have been this ambitious and yet taken so to heart by such a broad audience. Maybe it’s as simple as this: everyone can identify with the powerful desire to journey home.
Endless Love: A Novel
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Endless Love by Scott Spencer
When young people fall in love, they feel like an explorer discovering a new continent. Surely no one else has ever felt like this before? Surely no love has ever been this all-consuming, this beautiful, this perfect? It happens again in Endless Love. Two young people—kids, really—fall in love and imagine Romeo and Juliet have nothing on them. What’s remarkable is that writer Scott Spencer convinces us that the love of Jade and David really is that earth-shattering. Everyone around them agrees. Their parents, their friends, literally everyone acknowledges the love those two feel really is as special as they imagine. Then Jade’s father banishes David from this earthly paradise, David hatches a cockamamie plan to win back the family’s trust, it goes horribly wrong and love becomes obsession. A huge bestseller, Endless Love has been adapted into not one but two epically bad films, movies so awful you fear they’ve kept people away from the novel ever since. Don’t make that mistake.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (SeaWolf Press Illustrated Classic): First Edition Cover
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Some books are so well-intentioned they forget to be good. Think Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It’s as important a novel as there ever was, but you wouldn’t want to read that potboiler today. Mark Twain’s masterpiece is another thing altogether. His classic “boy’s own” book The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer is a delight of youthful innocence. A rascalish character in that novel takes center stage in this one. Twain lost the “The” for some reason and called it Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. But he gained immortality with a righteous condemnation of enslavement wrapped in a story so funny and gripping and raw that few can resist it. The central dilemma? Huck knows he will be literally damned to hell for helping the escaped black man Jim avoid being put back in chains. He does it anyway. And if Huck treats Jim a little poorly after that mighty choice, well, whoever expected an abandoned, beaten, dismissed kid to always behave sensibly? Huck is just a child and Twain never forgets that. It’s the adults he damns so well.
A Fine Balance
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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
One of the worst periods in Indian history inspired one of its best novels. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ignored the Constitution and essentially declared martial law, jailing opposition leaders and clamping down on the media. Her dictatorial reign lasted almost two years and featured all sorts of atrocities, like the forced sterilization of millions. It’s called The Emergency. Writer Rohinton Mistry tells the story of this period through the lives of four people: two tailors from a caste considered “untouchable,” a wealthy Parsi widow and a young man from the Kashmir Valley who resents being sent to college by his parents. Their paths cross and crisscross during this life-changing period, a time of upheaval akin to the Partition of India in 1947 or perhaps the American Civil War. All three of his novels are worth your time. Still, it’s been 20 years since he published Family Matters and we are politely impatient for a fourth.
The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories
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The Ice at the Bottom of the World by Mark Richard
“Read the story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World at your own risk,” says Chuck Palahniuk, author most recently of The Invention Of Sound. “Mark Richard’s short stories will leave you unhappy with almost all other fiction for the rest of your life. In stories like ‘Strays’ and ‘This is Us, Excellent,’ he gives us characters in miserable circumstances, but who refuse to suffer. Thus the reader is forced to shoulder the emotional and psychological burden. Richard’s incredible sentences will stick in your head, and his plots rise to such unlikely beauty that you’ll find tears running down your cheeks.”
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis
In this biting, cynical novel, a man dies of pneumonia. Now dead, he’s free to say what he likes, so Brás Cubas dedicates his book to the worm that first feasted on his dead body and then tells his life story. He was a brat as a spoiled rich kid, loved often and poorly, made a mess of everything he did, wasted most of his family’s fortune, tried and failed at politics and finally dreamt up some quack medicine that could cure all diseases…but not, apparently, cure himself of pneumonia. A Brazilian classic, it’s been translated many times and is sometimes called Epitaph Of A Small Winner, which is about as much as Cubas can claim. It’s fragmented, entertaining, very modern and when you discover it was written in 1881 (not 2021 or even 1961), your astonishment and admiration is complete.
Related: The 10 Best TV Crime Dramas That Were Adapted From Books
Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition
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Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
What’s cyberpunk? Just picture the future as depicted in the film Blade Runner and you’re halfway there. When corporations or computers take over the world, you end up with something like the comic book Judge Dredd or William Gibson’s Neuromancer or even John M. Ford’s proto-cyberpunk novel Web Of Angels. Or you can read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a novel with his usual heady mix of technology, philosophy, religion, anarcho-capitalism, linguistics and other ideas we can barely follow. It’s all wrapped around our protagonist Hiro. You know he’s the protagonist because this pizza delivery dude’s full name is Hiro Protagonist. He joins up with Y.T. (a female skateboarder known as Yours Truly) and they’re soon caught up in one of those massive conspiracies involving technology, shadowy opponents and the fate of the (miserable) world. Snow Crash came out just thirty years ago and it’s amazing how quickly the world has caught up. Stephenson helped popularize ideas like an avatar and the Metaverse, which he definitely should have copyrighted. Bad science fiction tries to predict the future. Good science fiction like this holds up a mirror to the present and wonders where we’re headed. Take a look.
A Thousand Acres: A Novel
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A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Some people are crazy about Jane Smiley’s academic skewering in the novel Moo. We’re partial to her trilogy of books (Some Luck, Early Warning and Golden Age) that told the story of a family over one hundred years, with one year per chapter. They were bestsellers and nicely reviewed but deserve more hoopla. But everyone admires, loves and reads her retelling of King Lear. Sometimes the consensus is right; with Smiley, this is where to start. The novel A Thousand Acres is resolute, smart and devastating. When a father decides to split control of the family farm among his three daughters, the youngest objects. Just as in Lear, she’s frozen out of the kingdom, the two older daughters turn on their father and then secrets Shakespeare never imagined come to light. You reap what you sow.
Invisible Man
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Writer Ralph Ellison sped right past the “protest” novel or the “problem” novel. He ignored the conventions of social conscience or the “right” way to win over white readers and said, “Hey, what if I just write a modernist masterpiece?” That he did, in a novel about a young black man in flight from racism. “I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either,” begins Ellison who does just that but in a far more poetic, lasting and effective manner than any protest novel ever would. Ellison’s influences were broad, ranging from Kafka to Faulkner, T.S. Eliot to Dostoevsky, yet all of them were used in service to a voice enriched by oral traditions and a vivid, urban spirit. Other characters refused to see the narrator, but the book itself was simply too good to ignore. Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953, making Ellison the first person of color to do so. It would be 30 years before another person of color—Alice Walker, for The Color Purple in 1983—won it again.
Empire Falls (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Empire Falls, Maine is a crumbling town on its last legs in Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Miles Roby is a lot like the town. He’s running the Empire Grill and reduced to serving the new boyfriend of his ex-wife each and every day. His stoner brother is the short-order cook, his owner is the richest woman in town, his daughter in high school is a budding artist and they all know everything there is to know about each other. HBO made an excellent miniseries from this. While doing so, the production turned a pizza parlor in a small town in upstate New York into the greasy spoon Miles worked at. A few years later, the pizza parlor shut down because of course the real town was crumbling, just like Empire Falls. If that sort of irony causes a rueful laugh, Russo is the writer for you. He’s sharp, sympathetic and sadly amused by the pain of it all. You could start with The Risk Pool or Nobody’s Fool or you could just start right here.
Edisto: A Novel
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Edisto by Padgett Powell
If you want to make a name for yourself among the literati, there are rules to follow. Start out strong with an acclaimed debut. Choose one style and stick to it—everyone will know what to expect from you and can easily skip a book or two of yours without feeling they’re missing something. (Did anyone worry if they missed a John Updike novel? They did not.) Oh and don’t be funny. No one will take you seriously if you’re funny. Well, Padgett Powell got the first part right. His debut novel Edisto is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old boy named Simons Manigault and yes it’s devilishly funny. But it’s also masterful enough in style to have Saul Bellow praise Powell and Southern literary éminence grise Walker Percy declare the book better than The Catcher in the Rye. Then Powell went and blew it. He started writing short stories, each one more outrageous than the next. They were wild, wooly, unmannered. The pitch-perfect Edisto Revisited was so good it deserves comparisons to The Godfather Part II, another sequel that deepened your appreciation of the original. But it was too late. Before you knew it, Powell was performing high wire acts, like a novel composed entirely of a conversation between two men sitting on a porch chewing the fat, more vaudeville than High Art. Another one called The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? contained nothing but a series of questions. (Did he pull it off? Do you have to ask?) Is this the old-fashioned, dependable writer the gatekeepers signed up for almost forty years ago? No, it is not. Does he care? No, he does not. Read Edisto but be prepared to dive into the deep end once you become a fan.
The Pillars of the Earth: A Novel (Kingsbridge Book 1)
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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Ken Follett broke onto the bestseller list with 1978’sEye of the Needle, a blockbuster so good we named it one of the best thrillers of all time. Six more thrillers followed, two of them nonfiction. Then Follett surprised everyone with the novel that will be his legacy: The Pillars of the Earth. It’s a historical novel about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Knightsbridge, England during the 12th century. The action takes place over 50 years and the house of worship is the culmination of generations of work. What could be less thrilling than the building of a church? Ask, rather, what could be more thrilling? Follett poured everything into this, spending years on research to get it right. His passion was infectious and his story so immersive readers got lost in it, finishing in a daze. The book has sold at least 26 million copies so far. Then Follett spent the next 30 years delivering three more books in the Knightsbridge series. Unlike some of the artisans in the novel, Follett has lived to see his masterwork be complete. Sure, the series has been turned into two different miniseries and even a video game. But it’s the first novel that remains the peak of his career, as impressive and awe-inspiring as the cathedral itself.
Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics Book 2)
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Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
No, not that Elizabeth Taylor. This Elizabeth Taylor is an English novelist who wrote polite dissections of middle and upper-class Brits, works so discreet and effortless that for a long time no one but other writers realized what a genius she was. Taylor’s short stories were a mainstay of the New Yorker magazine for about 20 years and she wrote twelve novels in all. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont was the last published in her lifetime and that’s fitting since it deals with the end of life. Mrs. Palfrey is comfortable enough financially to move into the Claremont hotel alongside other aged residents. But she’s embarrassed her grandson never calls and frets over a marriage proposal and it’s all so amusingly depicted you almost don’t notice how sad and piercing Taylor can be. It’s the sort of book that is never in fashion but always read with pleasure.
The Things They Carried
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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
In twenty-one short stories, writer and Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien tells the story of soldiers fighting in that war and probably the stories of soldiers fighting in every war that’s ever been and all the ones to come. We want our war stories told by veterans because then those stories are real, authentic and to be trusted. Except O’Brien toys with that expectation. He dedicates this book to the men of the imaginary Alpha Company. He calls his main character O’Brien and that character tells his daughter that no, he never killed anyone in the war. Then he immediately tells us about the man he did kill, only to tell us in another story that this was complete fiction. O’Brien (or maybe “O’Brien”) says he made up that incident because he wanted to help us understand the truth of what the Vietnam War was like. Moving, funny and haunting, The Things They Carried is as real as it gets, made-up stories and all.
Dracula: Deluxe Edition
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Dracula by Bram Stoker
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a work of startling originality. In contrast, Bram Stoker’s Dracula takes bits and pieces from every vampire story that came before, along with folklore, myth and legend, and seasons it with fears about newly independent women, immigrants and disease. Then he cribs from the hugely popular author Wilkie Collins and especially the page-turner The Woman in White. Finally, Stoker tosses in his own personal peccadilloes—or at least, only as much of them as this acquaintance of Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde dared—to create a potent brew of erotic, Gothic horror. The result was a sensation, a vampire novel so bold and shocking and successful that it became the vampire novel and every vampire story that followed would steal from him. Like the vampire women feasting on poor Jonathan Harker, countless artists have fed on Dracula to inspire their own books, movies, plays, TV shows, games, comics, plays and more. Nothing, not even a stake through the heart, can erase this monster. Dracula survives and thrives in our imagination and probably always will.
Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Physically frail but morally strong, Carson McCullers empathized with outsiders and dreamers. Her writing was labeled Southern Gothic, because she was from the South and depicted outré characters such as mutes, closeted gay men and black people. A young white woman writing about black people! Her success was immediate, with the 1940 debut The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter seen as anti-Fascist, pro-democracy, exotic (how could there be so many mute people in one small town, wondered some?) and ultimately, just human and touching and true. If a mute man seems the safest person for a string of people to share their dreams and fears with, is that really so strange? McCullers enjoyed further success with The Member Of The Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. But McCullers remained a lonely hunter in her personal life, dying alone at age 50 after a lifetime of severe illness and unrequited love for the numerous women she pursued.
True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel (Vintage International)
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True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Western may be the most American of genres. Yet long before it joined the United States, Hawaii boasted of cowboys with enough roping skills to put the Yankees to shame at their own rodeos. And Australia’s Outback would give the Badlands a run for its money in terms of punishing danger. Besides, surely every country can boast of criminals that capture the popular imagination? So here is Aussie Peter Carey with this vulgar, violent, rollicking Western about the outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, as told to Kelly’s fictional daughter. You know you shouldn’t be loving Kelly’s outrageous justification for his actions, but a good story overwhelms moral qualms any day. And borders! Kelly’s dad was an Irishman transported to Van Diemen’s Land aka Tasmania; the author is Australian, where most of the novel takes place; and it won the prestigious UK prize the Booker. But did that stop its US publisher from calling this a “Great American Novel”? Nope. Besides, they’re right.
The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel
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The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
Why do we love these lists? Because we can spot books we love, point out books that should be on the list, yet aren’t, and be reminded of books we know we should read but haven’t. Yet. And—if we’re adventurous—we read these lists to discover books we haven’t even heard of but will soon become favorites. So here’s writer Chinelo Okparanta to champion a writer from Nigeria, the country where Okparanta was born. “Akwaeke Emezi is one of the most exciting voices of our time, even earning themself a cover feature in Time Magazine as one of the magazine’s 2021 Next Generation Leaders,” says Okparanta, author most recently of Harry Sylvester Bird. “The Death of Vivek Oji, set in an international community of families composed of foreign-born women married to Nigerian men, is the heart-wrenching story of Vivek, a gentle soul who, as his current stint at life would have it, has embarked on a tortured journey into a new self. It is about the family we are born into and [the] ones we choose for ourselves. The verdict on each family is not a tidy one, for the novel is also about the ways in which both kinds of families render earnest support, and how, despite their best intentions, they also disappoint. Vivek dies, but there is hope—a promise of a return after death. As an avid believer in reincarnation, I enjoyed the novel’s timeless contention that a body, though destined to die, will live again.”
On the Road
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On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Is he a rebel dancing to his own beat or an unwitting toxic male fleeing from responsibility? Jack Kerouac may not have anticipated the many ways his characters would be seen over the years. But his classic novel of escape is rich enough to bear the re-examination. And no one can deny the rhythmic, tumbling, finger-snapping prose that hurtles the story along at breakneck speed. The legend of its birth is as totemic as the novel itself—in 1951, Kerouac pounded out the tale on one long roll of paper in a three-week fever dream of inspiration. Writers have been jealous and inspired by him ever since.
The Old Forest and Other Stories
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The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor
Peter Taylor is an old-fashioned Southern storyteller, unremarkable in every respect except for how truly good he is. He wrote three slim, marvelous novels, but it’s his short stories that astonish—they capture a world, a character, a moment with such care that every word matters and every insight hits with an intensity no novel could sustain. Late in life, Taylor had his moment. In 1985, The Old Forest and Other Stories received an unusual amount of attention for him, along with rave reviews. Chekhov was mentioned, and often. One year later, his novel A Summons to Memphis won the Pulitzer Prize. Now? Now he sits quietly in a corner, waiting to be rediscovered as surely he will. His heyday (if one can use such a vulgar term) was so long ago that none of Taylor’s work is even available as an e-book. He might be relieved to know it.
Related: 20 Enlightening Spiritual Books for When You’re Searching for Hope and Strength
The Rings of Saturn
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The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
W.G. Sebald is unique. He is like no one else and no one is his heir because how could they be? His “novel,” The Rings of Saturn, is typical of him—it’s sort of fiction, sort of a travel book, sort of history and sort of a memoir and more, all jumbled up together. In it, the narrator (presumably Sebald) takes a walking tour in Suffolk, England. He tells you what he’s seeing and the people he meets, along with an inexhaustible stream of scientific knowledge, history, literary allusions and so on. You assume he’s (sort of) telling the truth and if you look it up you’ll discover various facts are absolutely or fairly or somewhat accurate or perhaps you can’t discover anything about a certain fact at all, though this doesn’t prove it’s not true, does it? Before you know it everything is true and fantastical and connected and it’s all so moving, so real, so unlike anything you’ve ever read before that you’ll finish it and wonder what the heck it was and how he did it. You’ll want to urge people to read The Rings of Saturn while praying no one asks you to describe it…and then you’ll eagerly track down something, anything else by Sebald.
A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Who doesn’t want to live in a fancy hotel? From Eloise at the Plaza to Count Rostov at the Hotel Metropol, the idea of endless room service and a parade of interesting house guests you can easily ignore—if so inclined—seems like heaven. In the case of Count Rostov, the protagonist of A Gentleman in Moscow, it’s supposed to be more like hell, or purgatory at least. As a nobleman who returns to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, Rostov is tried and sentenced to house arrest at the Hotel Metropol. Clearly, the last vestiges of the aristocracy hadn’t quite been swept away, though at least the Count is ordered to leave his lavish suite and take a servant’s quarters. Decades pass, all of it in charming detail and with an inventiveness that never flags. It’s no wonder Towles went from an acclaimed, best-selling debut novelist with Rules Of Civility to an absolute phenomenon thanks to this word-of-mouth sensation. It’s so entertaining, some might feel suspicious of its greatness. But we’re not. Just be prepared to fork out the bucks for a bottle of Châeauneuf-du-Pape. It’s impossible to read this without longing for a taste of that wine.
The Far Pavilions
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The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
Born and raised in India, then sent to boarding school in Great Britain, writer M.M. Kaye was destined to write a novel about the British Empire. First, she spent decades writing and/or illustrating children’s books and penning a series of thrillers and stand-alone novels—none of them creating much of a stir. They weren’t nearly as dramatic as Kaye’s real life. She fell in love during World War II with a British Indian Army officer who was married and four years younger than her. Kaye had one child and was pregnant with a second before they actually got married. It was the war, she shrugged. Then, Kaye’s literary agent, Paul Scott, urged her to write about India. (He himself shot to fame with the Raj Quartet novels.) Over the next twenty years, Kaye wrote three books of historical fiction. The first was gutted by bad editing, the second did better, and in 1978, Kaye published her doorstopper of a masterpiece: The Far Pavilions. It received major acclaim as a new spin on Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, enjoyed huge sales and became HBO’s first miniseries. Kaye lived another 26 years but, except for a trilogy of memoirs, she never wrote again.
The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
This novel’s narrator starts talking and you just can’t stop listening. His story is the confession of a political prisoner in Vietnam and it’s a doozy. Our unnamed protagonist is filled with contradictions. He’s the mixed-race son of a Vietnamese mother and a French Catholic priest father. He’s a North Vietnamese double agent living in South Vietnam. He escapes to America and continues living a double life amidst the local Vietnamese community. Then, he’s an adviser on an American war film akin to Apocalypse Now. Finally, he returns to Vietnam to fight in a guerrilla campaign against the Communist government. He’s the ultimate sympathizer—seeing all sides at once and losing track of which side he’s on. Compared to everything and everyone from Ralph Ellison to Joseph Conrad to Philip Roth and Walt Whitman, Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is one of the most acclaimed debuts in ages. And its sequel, The Committed, continues the tale with similar success.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories by Truman Capote
Truman Capote practically invented the true crime genre with his nonfiction book In Cold Blood. He also wrote remarkable magazine features, turned gossip into high art and even perfected the character of “Truman Capote” in interviews throughout his life. Yet Capote’s favorite creation was Holly Golightly, the American “geisha” at the heart of his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She’s a free spirit who lives in New York City thanks to the generosity of older, wealthier men. Holly is not a prostitute but she does enjoy nice things, and how kind of men to give them to her. You can draw a straight line from Lorelei Lee of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to Sally Bowles of Goodbye To Berlin (and later Cabaret fame) to Miss Golightly. It’s substantially different from the film version starring Audrey Hepburn. (Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe.) But the spirit of the novel is onscreen. Here, the novella is paired with three marvelous short stories, including “House Of Flowers” (turned into a fine Broadway musical), “A Diamond Guitar” and “A Christmas Memory,” itself turned into movies, plays and more. Capote could be waspish, but here he’s on his best behavior.
Ulysses (The Gabler Edition)
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Ulysses by James Joyce
The timid among us might name the short story collection Dubliners as the masterpiece of James Joyce. But cartoonist and graphic novelist Chris Ware will have none of it. He plunks for the daunting, challenging, modernist classic Ulysses. “Though apparently the Great American Novel still has yet to be published, the Great Irish Novel already was, exactly a century ago,” says Ware, author most recently of Monograph. “James Joyce’s inverted plot of the Odyssey—a husband exiling himself from his house to allow his wife her ongoing adulterous tryst—is mashed up into, amongst other things, the inside-out consciousnesses of his main characters, all of human history, and the ebb and flow of one day of life in 1904 Dublin, all written with an ever-recombined Erector set of dreamlike English that somehow, incredibly, implants sense-memories directly in the reader’s mind. And that final, 1922-outraging chapter, which so directly articulates female desire, remains Joyce’s private gift to one-half of humanity, a topic which until that point had rarely been treated as a topic worthy of consideration.”
The Outsiders
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The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Many great novels about young people came before. (Think The Catcher in the Rye or Anne of Green Gables or Little Women or Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, to name a few.) Judy Blume was just on the horizon, with her debut novel about to come out in 1969. But in 1967, The Outsiders was a young adult novel written by a young adult and for a young adult audience and it was so successful that it changed everything. Hinton was 15 years old when she started it, 16 when she really knuckled down and got serious about it and 18 when it came out. The novel depicts gang violence, underage drinking, smoking, absentee parents, and an awareness of class divides between the Greasers and the Socs (the Socials). People are still afraid of teens actually reading it, so The Outsiders remains one of the most challenged and banned books in the country. Hinton wrote other novels, but this debut manages to “stay gold” almost 60 years later. Kids hungry to see their lives in the stories they read still latch onto it. And writers hungry to capture authenticity still study it.
Darkness at Noon (Vintage Classics)
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Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler’s nightmare of a novel was inspired by the 1938 purges in the Soviet Union. In it, a man is broken down after multiple interrogations and makes a false confession about betraying the state. You are trapped with this man, you understand everything he’s feeling, you accept his decision to end the torture by saying whatever they want him to say and you walk with him as he’s led away to his death, the other unseen inmates drumming on the walls of their cells in support, just as he did for others before him and they will do again when the next one falls. It’s a shivering, unshakeable work.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
In the biker movie The Wild One, they ask Marlon Brando, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” He shoots back, “Whaddaya got?” Maybe rebellion is always in the air, but the counterculture movement sparked by the Beats and leading to the hippies of the 1970s found one of its key texts in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s narrated by a half-Native American patient of a mental ward who lumps all oppression into what he calls The Combine. “Chief” Bromden details the battle for power between a not-so-crazy inmate named Randle McMurphy and the controlling Nurse Ratched. Kirk Douglas loved it so much that he bought the rights, turned it into a play and triumphed on Broadway. But he couldn’t get anyone to back a film version. It took his son Michael to make that dream happen, succeeding beyond anyone’s dreams with the Oscar-winning classic starring Jack Nicholson. Kesey went on to found the Merry Pranksters, inspire the Grateful Dead and write the novel Sometimes A Great Notion, his own favorite. But it’s the short, sharp shock of Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest that is still banned in some schools and still inspires people to fight back against the system, the Man, or as Bromden calls it, The Combine.
So Long, See You Tomorrow
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So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
William Maxwell was the fiction editor at The New Yorker for 40 years during its glory days of 1936 to 1975. That’s enough to make his name legendary among other writers. But he also wrote novels, short stories, letters and essays. In 1980, Maxwell published one final book, almost 20 years after his previous novel came out. That new work was, naturally, published first in The New Yorker in two parts. They weren’t being kind to a venerable figure. They were lucky to have it and the publication was a sensation. So Long, See You Tomorrow is one of those perfect books; it’s simple, direct and unforgettable. The story begins with a gunshot and features an old man like Maxwell, looking back with regret on a tragedy of violence that tore through the town of his childhood. That gunshot, that murder, also abruptly ends a friendship just when that person needed their friend the most. Maxwell lived another 20 years, but this was his last novel. He was a good enough editor to know it doesn’t get any better than this, so why try?
The Greatest Short Stories of Anton Chekhov: A Collection Of Fifty Stories
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The Greatest Short Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
We’re sure you’ve been paying attention. And so again and again, you’ve seen the highest praise we give a writer—especially a writer of short stories—is “Chekhovian.” Anton Chekhov is also one of the greatest dramatists of all time and for the same reason. No one captures real life quite like Chekhov. Grab any short story collection you can. Any translation: Constance Garnett, Peavear and Volokhonsky, Miles, Dunnigan, Popkin, you name it. Everyone takes a shot at translating Chekhov into English because Chekhov is the greatest. Find out why.
American Pastoral: American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International)
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American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The perennial bridesmaid of the Nobel Prize, Philip Roth reportedly spent the days when the annual announcement approached nervously in touch with his publisher. Have they called yet? They never called but you can’t blame the award-loving Roth for expecting it. Few writers turned out acclaimed work for 50 years like Roth. Choosing just one is absurd. How about one per decade? Goodbye, Columbus (1950s). Portnoy’s Complaint (1960s). The Ghost Writer (1970s). The Counterlife (1980s). Sabbath’s Theater (1990s). The Plot Against America (2000s). And overall, American Pastoral because it’s a sprawling epic covering underground movements like the Weathermen to political corruption like Watergate. Yet it remains human-scaled and moving thanks to the travails of Seymour Levov, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jew who realizes you never really know anyone, even your closest friends and family. Looks can be deceiving, which he should have known all along.
The Known World
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The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Some writers are shockingly prolific. Some take their time. Edward P. Jones takes his time. In his 72 years, Jones has published three books. Two are collections of short stories about African Americans working in Washington D.C. His only novel, so far, is The Known World, a work that makes the complicated horrors of slavery in the U.S. fresh again. How? By telling the story of both black and white people who enslaved others in antebellum Virginia. This historical fact—that some black people also owned other human beings prior to the Civil War—changes everything and nothing for readers ignorant of this truth. And it’s just a starting point for a rich narrative that contains stories within stories, along with the varied perspective of the owners and the owned, the rebellious and those who feel betrayed, women and men, poor whites and rich blacks and more. If Jones never publishes again, his name is assured. But we can hope.
A Man Called Ove: A Novel
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A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Who needs critics? Most of them will politely admit that Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s debut novel has a certain charm. And yes, they laughed quite a bit, it’s true. But charm and humor and gentle wisdom are not the stuff of great reviews. Those qualities will, however, strike a chord when readers discover a book and tell a friend “you have to read this” and press a copy into their hands. That’s how this little book about a cranky old man with a sad past became a runaway bestseller. It’s charming, you’ll laugh a lot and the gentle wisdom is well worth hearing again. You can read it now or you can read it after seeing the Tom Hanks film version coming out in December. But you will buy it, love it and then tell a friend they have to read it while pressing a copy into their hands.
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
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Devotions by Mary Oliver
This list of the best works of fiction wasn’t meant to include poetry, but some people just can’t help themselves. Writer Garrison Keillor writes poetry, edits anthologies of poetry and celebrates poetry with a daily podcast and newsletter. In short, Keillor, author most recently of Boom Town, is crazy about poetry. And one American poet of recent years is so alive in the minds of poetry lovers that it’s hard to remember she died in 2019: Mary Oliver. Keillor immediately asked to celebrate Mary Oliver’s collection titled Devotions. Keillor calls Oliver “the poet of long walks who is cheered up by the natural world and puts it all in elegant verse that sticks with you—‘No matter who you are or how lonely, the world calls to you over and over, harsh and exciting, announcing your place in the family of things.’”
The Thin Red Line: A Novel
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The Thin Red Line by James Jones
Everyone lauds From Here to Eternity, the blockbuster novel by war veteran James Jones that climaxes with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s a great book and became a great movie. But since Jones is best when dealing with war and The Thin Red Line is the novel that’s actually steeped in combat, we’ll choose this one. Plus, it became an even greater movie than From Here to Eternity when Terence Malick released his movie version of the novel in 1998. (An earlier version came out in 1964.) Fellow veterans frequently laud Jones for telling it like it is and that makes his novels all the more surprising to modern readers. Loneliness, fear and brutality are all on display, along with unexpected touches like same-sex dalliances among soldiers trapped in foxholes and fearing for their lives. You won’t find any drum-beating or patriotic flag-waving either. This isn’t a rousing, go-get-’em war story by any stretch, though it’s not damning either. It’s just…true.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
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How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
An immigrant story? Sure, if your immigrant story involves being in a family of means in the Dominican Republic but then fleeing to the US after your dad joins a plot to overthrow that country’s dictatorship and finds out he’s a better doctor than a revolutionary. Julia Alvarez’s debut novel enjoyed instant acclaim and has remained both popular and critically celebrated ever since. It opens up the world of the DR that too few know anything about, as well as shows New York City in a fresh light, as only newcomers can.
The Three Musketeers (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
After dozens of adaptations turning The Three Musketeers into movies, TV shows, comic books, video games, stage plays, radio dramas and the like, you might be forgiven if you forgot it began as a novel by Dumas. But you won’t forgive yourself if you don’t take the time to read it (or read it again, if you were the sort of kid who saw a big thick book about swashbucklers in France and dove right in). Like Charles Dickens, Dumas weaves a lot of topical issues into his grand adventures. This one is about a young man named d’Artagnan, who heads to Paris with the dream of joining the dashing Musketeers of the Guard and succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings. Grand fun. And if you’re wondering, when it comes to movies, we recommend the 1973 version starring Michael York, and when it comes to translations, we recommend the 2006 version by Richard Pevear—maybe if we all ask nicely, he’ll translate the sequels, starting with Twenty Years After and ending with The Man in the Iron Mask.
Last Days of Summer
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Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
The epistolary novel—a story told entirely through letters or, nowadays, perhaps texts or email and the like—is a very particular treat. They range from the heart-warming innocence of 84, Charing Cross Road to the cruel darts of Les Liaison Dangereuses. Author Julia Quinn is a fan of the format in general and especially of Steve Kluger’s story about a Jewish kid in New York City in the 1930s. The boy badgers the third baseman for the New York Giants into becoming his pen pal. “I love epistolary novels, and Last Days of Summer is pure perfection” says Quinn, author most recently of Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. “It is, at turns, side-splittingly funny and deeply sad, with characters who develop and grow with every letter, report card or Bar Mitzvah program.”
Brooklyn
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Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Irish writer Colm Tóibín has something for everyone. Travel books that dive into history and faith. Plays. Novels. Short stories. Essays. Journalism. Two hugely acclaimed and ambitious books bring to life two giants of literature: The Master illuminates Henry James and The Magician captures the complexity of Thomas Mann. Then there’s Brooklyn. His most popular work and the source for a lovely movie, Brooklyn tackles the Irish immigrant experience in prose so empathetic and fresh that you’d swear no one ever told the story before. Eilis Lacey can’t find work in 1950s Ireland, so she makes an impossible leap to New York City. A young and sensible woman, she then chances it all on a handsome Italian plumber because she loves him and he loves her. Tóibín lets us feel how risky and brave and scary that is and we love her—and him—for it.
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Any war novel worth its salt is an anti-war novel. How can you survive the hellish cruelty and uncertainty of war with dumb luck (the only thing that saves you, in the end) and not think, “Never again, no thank you!” That’s certainly true of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The author served in World War II and survived (including the firebombing of Dresden) and it’s all poured into the story of Billy Pilgrim. Billy’s a soldier and prisoner of war who makes it home alive but finds himself slipping through time, because isn’t time unmoored when war tears a hole in your life? Then there are aliens, humans on exhibition, philosophical musings, comedy and tragedy and it’s all a glorious mess and can you believe they tried to make a movie out of it? Vonnegut’s body of work is rich and strange and singular.
Middlemarch (Macmillan Collector’s Library)
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Middlemarch by George Eliot
We aren’t ranking the books on this list, but let us tell you a secret. If we did, Middlemarch would be at the top. Not because it is the greatest novel of all time. (No such thing exists.) But because it is inarguably one of the greatest novels of all time, for a thousand reasons. It’s the same reason Rolling Stone recently crowned Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On as the greatest album of all time and movie lists usually name Citizen Kane as the greatest film. Sure, your personal choice may be different, but you can’t say any of those choices are wrong. This masterpiece by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) is so solidly written, so engrossing, so heartbreaking and such an accomplishment it can’t be denied. It’s both a historical novel and a novel grappling with the issues of its day—like the role of women in a world where a genius like Evans had to choose a male pen name to avoid scandal and be taken seriously, for starters. Bookseller Nina Barrett of Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois adds her approval, praising it “for the Godlike omniscience and the incredible wisdom about human love and frailty that she packs into every page.”
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
This semi-autobiographical novel shoulders many burdens. It’s “the” book that represents the Native American experience for many, even though it’s just about one kid on the Spokane Indian Reservation. So what about all the other tribes? And what about the girls? And what about kids who don’t live with a disability like Arnold Spirit Jr. or aren’t really smart or don’t choose to go to a practically all-white public school off the rez, like he does? And maybe don’t even like comics, while Arnold wants to be a cartoonist? Like all great books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian becomes universal by being so specific about Arnold and his world of grinding poverty and friendship and family and moments of joy. Plus, it’s funny and moving and engagingly written. And who can’t identify with that?
Bridgerton: The Duke and I (Bridgertons Book 1)
The Duke and I: A Bridgerton Novel by Julia Quinn
The Bridgerton series devotes one book to each of the eight children in a family. You know it from the Netflix series, unless you’re a huge fan of Regency romances and read this when it made a stir in 2000. In The Duke And I, the story revolves around Daphne and Simon. She’s a Bridgerton and far too sensible and smart to appeal to the men of her time who prefer their women more mysterious and less outspoken. She doesn’t care, not really. Simon hates his father and vows never to marry or have children. But society can be so tiresome when matrons are pushing their eligible daughters at you. So they make a pact and pretend to be in love to get everyone off their backs. And of course, sparks fly and they fall for each other, though not without complications and confusion and a promise things will go no further. And then they go further. Sometimes a great novel is just great fun.
The Stranger
In this 1942 novel, a French settler in Algiers kills an Arab man and is sentenced to death. That brief description raises a host of complicated issues even before the Nobel Prize-winning author Camus raises the story above the “colonial novel” to a profound grappling with the meaning of existence. Along with Camus’s The Plague, it’s a rite of passage for thinkers and writers, including Tim O’Brien. “I’ve read it at least a half dozen times, probably more, both in English and in French,” says O’Brien, author most recently of Dad’s Maybe Book. “And I’m always moved, in a guilty and mysterious way, by how unmoved the book’s protagonist is in the midst of typically shattering circumstances. (Yet, by and large, don’t we all “recover” and somehow move on from lost loves and dead mothers and our own misdeeds.) The Stranger is among the four or five novels that, as a young man, made me dream about writing one of my own.”
High Fidelity
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High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The flipside to Bridget Jones’s Diary, this laddish novel by Nick Hornby proves a tantalizing peek inside the mind of a middle-aged man-child. Rob is a 35-year-old record store owner obsessed with music but facing a mid-life crisis when his more successful lawyer girlfriend leaves him. Rob spends most of his days making up Desert Island Lists about music and pop culture. When he comes up with a Top 5 Break-ups list from his romantic travails, Rob rethinks his earlier relationships and talks to the women about where he went wrong. Rob learns to grow up without having to give up his passion for rock n roll, thank God. High Fidelity is so very, very specific to this particular man in England and that’s what makes it universal. Making a movie version and setting it in the U.S. was an absurd idea. Then it made perfect sense, but only in retrospect and only when overseen and starring John Cusack.
Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah’s Book Club)
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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Write what you know? If everyone did that, we would never have novels like Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides read a memoir by an intersex person, but felt it stopped short of revealing the emotions and reality of this rare experience. What was it like to be one of the people who have less common sex characteristics and simply don’t fit onto a male/female binary? To make it real to himself, Eugenides drew upon specific details from his own life and that of his Greek-American family to tell a sprawling, multigenerational tale of incest, love, confusion, bankruptcy and the journey of Cal/Calliope. Cal transforms from a child raised as female to a teen diagnosed as intersex and pushed towards gender reassignment surgery to make them conform to male characteristics and finally to an adult who embraces their intersex identity. The Pulitzer Prize and Oprah’s endorsement turned this into a perennial bestseller.
The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter)
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The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Yes, of course, the movie. But the novel! It’s the second of four books centering on the magnetic, chilling serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The first, Red Dragon, became an exceptionally good film called Manhunter. This one became a movie for the ages, the first horror-tinged movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. But the writing! Everyone from children’s author Roald Dahl to meta-magician David Foster Wallace have praised it to high heaven. Just don’t expect to sleep until you finish it. And then don’t expect to sleep easily.
Why Did I Ever: A Novel
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Why Did I Ever? by Mary Robison
Anyone who ran away from home to try and track down Jack Kerouac in Florida is a person worth knowing. Other writers, like Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket fame, have known and appreciated Mary Robison’s work for years. The fractured, fraying story of a Hollywood script doctor whose life is not following a three-act story arc, Why Did I Ever? may be her masterpiece. “It’s a manic, comic novel told in 536 little sections, some scarcely longer than a few words, from the point of view of a woman who is similarly scattered, troubled and jokey,” says Handler, author most recently of Poison For Breakfast. “If you’ve ever heard the lyrics (as the heroine does) as ‘It’s a grand old flag, dunt dunt high-flying flag. Dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duhhh,’ this book is for you.”
Disgrace: A Novel
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Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
What can you learn about post-apartheid South Africa from a novel about a disgraced college professor who loses his job over repeated inappropriate behavior and far worse when it comes to a student he pressures into having sex? Nothing and everything. The Nobel Prize-winning Coetzee takes a white man of some standing in South Africa who sees his place in the world slipping away, both personally and in the country at large. Coetzee really puts him through the wringer and then somehow allows you to feel for him and hope for him, just when all hope seems lost. It’s a work of empathy and grace set in a country that lacked those qualities for so many for so long. And bestowing it on a character who really doesn’t “deserve” it proves again how everyone deserves it, always.
Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” Those words at the end of Treasure Island echo in the mind of anyone who reads it long after they’ve closed the book. Has anyone spoiled the fun of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gem by discerning some commentary on colonialism or revealed Long John Silver as an example of unfettered capitalism? Let’s hope not. Because no book is more fun than Treasure Island. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a bore. R.M. Ballantyne’s now thankfully forgotten The Coral Island is a scold. But 140 years on, Treasure Island is a tale to fire the imagination. Pirates! Mutiny! Treasure maps! Gold! A brave lad caught up in it all and he lives to tell the tale! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, indeed.
In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Modern Library Classics)
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Of course you’re intimidated. It’s multiple volumes long and contains more than 4000 pages! And if you want to keep track of who is cheating on whom and who said what at which party, you really have to read it all at once. But the Harry Potter books run to seven volumes and so will George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire. Not only are people not daunted by them, they’re angrily demanding Martin hop to it and write more. Here’s the thing—Proust’s masterwork is gossipy, scandalous, sexy, funny and deeply moving. If you’ve ever enjoyed the company of someone who tells stories about their friends (“Oh, and did you hear what happened to Y.K. last week at the cafe?”) you will enjoy Proust. Reach the end of the final volume and you’ll be rewarded with an emotion unlike anything else in literature. Yes, it’s Mount Everest: formidable, challenging and dangerous. And people line up to climb Everest every single day. You can do it.
Goodnight Moon
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Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; Pictures by Clement Hurd
Books don’t have to be read again and again to be loved. But it sure helps. Like a favorite poem or song, a classic picture book distills a story to the essential words, casting a spell through a precise combination of text and pictures. It lulls a child to sleep and enchants the person reading it. Your parents read it to you. You read it to your child. And your child will read it to their child—or maybe already is!—and down and down through the ages. And if that doesn’t move you, nothing will. So let Margaret Wise Brown have the last, quiet word: “Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.”
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Feeling dystopian? Read these 10 books similar to ‘1984’ by George Orwell.
Remember high school English class reading assignments? Sometimes those dense classics were even enough to make the booklovers in the classroom groan.
But every now and then, an assigned reading would come along and truly stick with us. For many, “1984” by George Orwell is one of those books.
This dystopian sci-fi novel is about a roaming troupe of actors traversing the Great Lakes region, performing Shakespeare and music for the scattered communities that remain 15 years after a pandemic decimated most of the world’s population. But the Traveling Symphony runs into trouble when they arrive at St. Deborah by the Water and encounter a dangerous and violent prophet who threatens their existence. “Station Eleven” parallels the “before” and “after” of a pandemic-ridden society, weaving threads of fate, hope and disaster amid the apocalypse.
This dystopian novel takes place on an island wrestling with the increasing disappearance of everyday objects and animals. Birds, hats, ribbons, roses and other items are going missing, and only some have the power to remember what’s been lost. The Memory Police, a draconian, fear-inspiring squad, ensure these items remain forever forgotten. This story follows a young novelist devising a plan to hide her editor from the clutches of the Memory Police.
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Other people can be baffling. Even in our closest relationships, loved ones frequently behave in ways that can seem inexplicable. Why can’t your friend recognize her self-destructive foibles? Why do you find your co-worker so grating? Partners insist on misinterpreting each other; voters are convinced that their political opponents are irredeemably wrong—and in these disputes, the other side’s point of view feels not just incorrect but also completely alien. In short, why are other people like this?
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Those craving an immersive exploration of the human psyche should look no further than this towering classic novel. Although most readers wouldn’t describe Eliot’s study of a provincial 19th-century English town as a work of psychology, it dissects the interlocking lives of the residents with an astute eye toward what drives them. The characters in its sprawling cast—among them the ardent, generous Dorothea Brooke and the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate—make ill-advised marriages, run up against obstacles to their ambitions, allow their reputations to be besmirched, and fall into debts that they struggle to repay. Much of the novel’s drama comes from the mutual incomprehension that arises between individuals (particularly married couples), and Eliot tracks with riveting detail the feelings and thoughts on both sides of a disagreement. Even the briefest flash of emotion on a face or the intonation of a phrase can set off a chain of misunderstandings, and the reader is privy to each character’s shortcomings as they form unrealistic expectations and read their own preoccupations into their interlocutors’ words. Total understanding of others is impossible, the novel suggests. And yet, thanks to Eliot’s keen sensitivity, reading Middlemarch might just enlarge your capacity to imagine other people’s state of mind.
[Read: Why it’s nice to know you]
Vintage
Darkness Visible, by William Styron
At 60, Styron was stricken with an episode of severe depression, one that incapacitated him and brought him to the brink of suicide. In this slim book, he attempts to put words to his experience of a disease that is “so mysteriously painful and elusive,” he writes, “as to verge close to being beyond description.” We gain an intimate sense of the illness from its beginnings, when Styron found that alcohol—a substance he had been “abusing for forty years”—suddenly triggered nausea and revulsion. His abstention kicked off a malaise that culminated in a determination to kill himself in his Connecticut farmhouse, ending only with his subsequent hospitalization and recovery. Sections about depression’s causes and treatment are woven in elegantly among meditations on suicide, an act that, Styron argues, should have “no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.” The depths of depression are nearly incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced it, yet Styron’s rich, precise language allows his readers to grasp his suffering—and gives us a glimpse into the workings of his particular mind.
Little Brown Spark
Connected, by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler
To truly understand people, don’t focus on individuals or groups, the social scientists Christakis and Fowler write. What matter are the connections between people: the branching paths that extend from you and your family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors to, say, Kevin Bacon. The book sketches out the surprising ways that these social networks sway our behavior, moods, and health, and its conclusions can be mind-bending. If your best friend’s sister gains weight, for example, you’re more likely to gain weight too, they write. Who we know significantly affects whether we smoke, die by suicide, or vote, thanks to our human tendency to copy one another. Happiness and sadness also spread among groups, so that the mood of a person you don’t know can sway your own emotions—even though we often imagine that our internal states are under our personal control. “No man or woman is an island,” the authors write. Their book makes a convincing case that our tangled relationships determine nearly everything about how our life plays out—and reminds us that we can’t be meaningfully understood in isolation.
[Read: The complex psychology of why people like things]
Graywolf
Milkman, by Anna Burns
Milkman takes place in what appears to be 1970s Northern Ireland during the Troubles—hijackings, car bombs, and “renouncers-of-the-state” form its tumultuous backdrop—and it paints a chillingly sharp portrait of a community consumed by paranoia and violence. When its unnamed narrator appears in public with a menacing figure known only as Milkman, rumors begin to spread that she’s his mistress. Never mind the fact that the attentions of Milkman, a high-ranking paramilitary member who seems to follow her everywhere and utters oblique threats, are entirely unwanted. Where she lives, the narrator tells us, “you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn’t want to.” To protect herself from the gossip and from Milkman himself, the narrator is forced to become a “carefully constructed nothingness.” She adopts a blank expression and confides in no one—an emotional state that mirrors the hollowed-out hopelessness and self-deception of her neighbors. Burns’s dense, discursive style captures the narrator’s psyche intimately: We feel with her as she wrestles with the fear, suspicion, and longing she hides from the world, and as she observes the corrosion of an entire city under duress.
Anchor
The Personality Brokers, by Merve Emre
We often speak of “personality types” and take for granted that individuals’ inherent qualities can be categorized, predicted, and analyzed. In this intriguing book, Emre traces the development of this idea by recounting the history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the world’s most popular personality test. Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a mother-daughter duo, spent much of the 20th century developing their system’s dichotomies: introversion and extroversion, feeling and thinking, intuition and sensing, judging and perceiving. Their story is a strange, sprawling narrative marked by religious fervor and a fixation on the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and set against the historical rise of postwar white-collar work. Emre’s account is shot through with necessary skepticism—the Myers-Briggs system isn’t substantiated by scientific research, and its creators were “desperate amateurs” relying mostly on quixotic faith, she writes. At the same time, she articulates why the framework holds such enduring appeal: It provides its adherents with language to parse the murky world of their own and others’ personalities, and many use it to arrive at a self-knowledge that can be genuinely liberating. The quest to know ourselves, this book makes clear, is an ongoing one.
[Read: I gave myself three months to change my personality]
Penguin Books
Reclaiming Conversation, by Sherry Turkle
“Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do,” the sociologist Turkle writes at the beginning of her incisive 2015 book. Our reliance on digital tools that replace such interactions erodes our ability to engage in deep, open-ended discussions, she argues. Reclaiming Conversation is full of dismaying examples of this diminishment, drawn from countless interviews with teenagers and young adults, teachers, corporate executives, and families. Parents can’t tear their eyes away from their phone at family dinners; students have trouble focusing and shy away from substantive dialogue in classrooms; professionals have meetings that barely function as meetings, because every participant is also checking their email. We’ve replaced talking with texting, emailing, and posting on social media, Turkle points out, in order to sidestep the boredom, embarrassment, and vulnerability that come with real conversation. And yet, those kinds of discomfort beget intimacy—the foundation of understanding other people, and thus of empathy. Turning to those around us, she concludes, is still the best way to comprehend one another. If you want to know why people behave the way they do, the shortest path to the answer is simply to ask them.
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The Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)
Poetry in the 21st century is both ubiquitous and oddly peripheral. Verses are displayed on subway walls, recited on momentous occasions, and served up in giant fonts on social media, but rarely do they merit a book review or a position on end-of-year reading lists. Yet the medium evolves even when it isn’t the center of attention, and over the past 25 years, its authors have pursued astonishing new forms and reinvented old ones. The Atlantic has prized and published poetry since its founding in 1857. And so, a quarter of the way into this new century of cataclysmic change, we thought it was an apt time to consider how poets fit into the broader conversation—to document an emerging canon of the most significant verse of the century so far.
No list can be comprehensive or infallible, but we did not approach this one lightly. After considering various criteria, we landed on work that felt consequential. We were looking for poetry that had struck its readers, for whatever reasons, as unforgettable, enduring, and influential: maybe because it came as an unexpected gift from a friend or loved one, or in the form of a classroom discovery; maybe because it reframed the world in such a way that culture or society felt foundationally shaken. Maybe it was just because, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, it takes the top of your head off.
↓ Jump to the list here
To establish a consensus, we consulted with more than 450 people—poets and fiction writers, but also publishers, editors, and informed readers from a variety of fields—asking them to name 10 books apiece. Together, they cast nearly 1,000 votes and recommended more than 400 collections of verse. Finally, we limited the list to Americans: Asking 25 books to represent 25 years of artistic progress within the many traditions that feed into American poetry was difficult enough.
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“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy
“Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace
“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
“The Stand” by Stephen King
“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
“A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth
“The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“1Q84” by Haruki Murakami
“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas
“A Dance to the Music of Time” by Anthony Powell
“The Recognitions” by William Gaddis
“The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu
“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
“The Luminaries” by Eleanor Catton
“2666” by Roberto Bolañ
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The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Beloved by Toni Morrison
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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The Awakening by Kate Chopin
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
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Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
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The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
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My Antonia by Willa Cather
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
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All 8 Thomas Pynchon Books, Ranked
All 8 Thomas Pynchon Books, Ranked© Provided by Collider
If you’re more of a movie person than a literature person, you might only be familiar with Thomas Pynchon thanks to Inherent Vice, which is, to date, the only novel of his that’s been adapted into either a movie or TV series. Pynchon’s one of those writers whose work proves hard to translate, as his style is chaotic, unique, and sometimes pretty much indecipherable. Inherent Vice, the 2014 film, was sometimes criticized for being too hard to follow, but it’s pretty much as comprehensible as Pynchon gets.
Beyond the strangeness of his work, the other thing that stands out about Thomas Pynchon is how mysterious he is. There are only a few official photos of the man (despite him being on this planet for, as of 2024, 87 years), and just as few recordings of his voice (some of them found on The Simpsons, thanks to him having a couple of odd cameos on the show). The mystique of him as an author goes hand in hand with the bizarreness of his novels, with there being a total of eight published between 1963 and 2013. Some are long, some are punchy, some are funny, some are disturbing, and some are (somehow) all of the above. With some difficulty, they’re all ranked below, starting with his solitary misfire and ending with some of the most important literary works of the past 50 years.
‘Bleeding Edge’
First published: September 17, 2013
Many Thomas Pynchon novels take place at a certain point in America’s past, with Bleeding Edge – his most recent work – taking place the closest to the present day. It’s a difficult thing to adjust to, initially, hearing Pynchon reference figures and pop culture from the (admittedly very early) 21st century, with Bleeding Edge taking place in New York City during 2001. An event you’d expect to play a role in the narrative indeed does, but it’s not the real focus.
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Instead, Bleeding Edge is kind of definable as a techno-thriller, with a narrative that’s influenced by the dot-com boom and its aftermath, with Maxine – a single mother and detective of sorts – getting caught up in a complex plot that involves fraud, corruption, conspiracies, and hacking. It’s a confusing and mind-bending odyssey like other Pynchon novels, but the confusion is less enjoyable here. Parts seem well-researched, but Pynchon tackling things inherent to the online world so head-on also has occasional “How do you do, fellow kids” energy. There is an initial thrill to seeing a Pynchon story take place post-2000, but it wears out its welcome long before the conclusion.
‘Vineland’
First published January 1, 1990
Bleeding Edge took place about a dozen years earlier than when it was published, but the gap between Vineland’s time period and year of publication was even closer. Vineland takes place in 1984, but much of it revolves around people who were young and living their best lives during the latter half of the 1960s. Things have dried up in numerous ways for the central characters here, and the novel is at its best when it follows their attempts at redemption and/or reconciliation.
It’s hard to describe beyond that. People drift in and out of the narrative and there is a lack of focus… probably deliberate, to some extent, but it’s not wholly satisfying. Pynchon’s biggest novels are arguably more head-spinning than the likes of Bleeding Edge and Vineland, but the grandiosity of such works also serves to make them more admirable and impressive. Vineland is on the cusp of scratching the same itch as Pynchon’s better novels, but it’s just lacking a little something. It’s still more satisfying than Bleeding Edge, which might be the only bad Thomas Pynchon book, but he’s got half a dozen other novels that are better still.
‘The Crying of Lot 49’
First published: April 27, 1966
The Crying of Lot 49 is easily the most approachable novel written by Thomas Pynchon, and part of that comes about because it’s easily his shortest. It’s only about 150 pages long, with his second-shortest, Inherent Vice, being more than twice that long (depending on the edition, admittedly). It’s still mind-bending and perhaps meandering, but it can only spiral off in so many directions, owing to its length.
The plot’s comparable to that of Bleeding Edge, with a female protagonist, Oedipa Maas, uncovering a conspiracy and subsequently getting lost, alongside the viewer. But her particular journey – which starts with her being made executor of an ex-lover’s estate – is more direct, funnier, and ultimately more thrilling. If anything, The Crying of Lot 49 might’ve benefited from being a little longer, because it does end somewhat abruptly. It’s probably the only Thomas Pynchon novel you could say that about, for better or worse.
‘V.’
First published: March 18, 1963
If you were to give someone a quick rundown of Thomas Pynchon’s biography, and then give them all his books to read without telling them which year each was published, it’s very unlikely that this hypothetical person (who, in this scenario, has a lot of time on their hands) would guess V. was the first one published of the lot. It’s hugely complex, sprawling, and thematically ambitious for a debut novel, and it’s remarkable that Pynchon was only 26 the year it was published.
- has a lot going on structurally, and is perhaps more interesting to analyze on that front than it is to enjoy narratively. Like some other Pynchon novels, it’s about an ultimately fruitless search for something, in this case being the – or a – titular “V.” You can come away understanding just a fraction of what’s happening and still find it rewarding in its own strange way, though. It’s also notable for potentially influencing partsof The Master, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Speaking of Phoenix and Anderson…
‘Inherent Vice’
First published: August 4, 2009
As far as movies go, Inherent Vice is something of a challenging watch, but Inherent Vice, the novel, is a pretty easy read by Thomas Pynchon standards. Part of that comes from how funny it is on a pretty consistent basis, and because there’s a clear central character. Said character is a private detective named Doc Sportello, and he’s completely out of his depths – and usually under the influence of something – after he’s roped into a complex series of events by an ex-girlfriend.
The confusion is kind of the point, and it’s often played for laughs in a way that’s a bit reminiscent of The Big Lebowski, for a cinematic comparison. As for the film version of Inherent Vice, it captures a similar vibe and chaotic energy to the source material, all the while not proving able to fully translate it to the screen; even at his most approachable, Pynchon’s still enigmatic. It hasn’t deterred Paul Thomas Anderson from potentially adapting another Pynchon novel, though, as his mysterious next film – still untitled, as of 2024 – might be an adaptation of Vineland.
‘Mason & Dixon’
First published: April 30, 1997
It might be a cop-out to say that the most epic three novels by Thomas Pynchon are his three best, but they are undeniably impressive and his most distinctive works. No one else can sustain such madness for such a long time, with his three longest (and, again, best) novels all spanning more than 750 pages each. Stylistically, Mason & Dixon is the boldest of the three, as it’s written in a way that mirrors literature from the time it was set… and it’s set the furthest back of any Pynchon novel, with most of the action taking place during the 1760s.
Historical accuracy is not the name of the game here, but Mason & Dixon is also a story within a story, so the embellishment of certain events and people is more than justified. Even if it wasn’t, the breaks from reality are generally fun, and it’s more interesting than reading a dry biographical story about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as they establish the Mason–Dixon line. Highlights include one character being pursued by a mechanical duck, and a chapter where someone transforms into not a werewolf, but a were-beaver. You can’t make this stuff up, or maybe you can, if you’re Thomas Pynchon.
‘Against the Day’
First published: November 21, 2006
As Thomas Pynchon’s longest novel by far, it’s fitting that Against the Day also covers the longest amount of time narratively. It begins in 1893, with the Chicago World’s Fair, and moves along steadily until it concludes a little after the end of World War I. It also goes to the most different locations of any Pynchon novel, and might contain the largest number of characters, to the point where it’s not just impossible to single out a protagonist, but it’s even difficult to establish a “main cast,” so to speak.
There are a handful of families important to the plot, and also a group known as The Chums of Chance, who fly around – and in and out of the main storyline – seemingly at random. The Chums of Chance also have a team dog they can all communicate with. Some parts of Against the Day are entirely silly, much of it’s incomprehensible, and parts are strikingly emotional. It will probably never get a movie adaptation. If you have the time to read something about 1100 pages long, or listen to an audiobook that’s 50+ hours in duration, it’s worth it. It’s frustrating, weird, and wonderful in all the best ways.
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’
First published: March 14, 1973
Though Gravity’s Rainbow is the most well-known – and probably the best – novel Pynchon ever wrote, it’s not an ideal starting point for newcomers to the author’s body of work. Again, the brevity of The Crying of Lot 49, plus its relative closeness to the start of his writing career, makes that a better starting point. Inherent Vice, maybe, too. Gravity’s Rainbow is one of his longest and is certainly his most bizarre and grotesque, with it being beautifully written and also obscene/disgusting all at once.
It’s about World War II and its aftermath, largely focused on technology, atrocities, outlandish sexual escapades, and paranoia. Gravity’s Rainbow captures the madness of war better than most other works of fiction, meaning that all the shocking moments within do ultimately work in service of what the novel’s going for. It’s an exploration of so many different things all at once, with very little by way of a discernible plot, or even “plots.” that way for over 50 years, But the experience of reading it is unmatched and wholly unique. It’s been and such a statement will likely still be true in another 500.Note: I am a big Pynchon fan read all of these except Bleeding Edge My favorite is Inherit Vice
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The 14 best fantasy book series of all time
Let’s make one thing very clear. I’m going to list the 14 best fantasy series of all time. There are some operative words in this statement that it will be worth underlining before I dive in.
Fantasy: I will be interpreting this genre as I see fit, but the key distinction here is that I’ve chosen to leave sci-fi for another piece. So all you Vorkosigan stans and Asimov junkies, I see you. Yours is coming soon.
Series: This means that I will only focus on chronicles that span more than one volume. While there are some absolutely whip-smart, flooring fantasy standalone novels out there, I won’t be highlighting them here.
Best: The word that’s always the bane of interrogating any kind of popular art form. There are so many ways to get at “best” that it has nearly lost its meaning. All I want it to mean in this context is that fans of fantasy will be entranced by the following entries. And though some have their blemishes, as we’ll get into, the following series have helped define fiction as we know it. Full stop.
Organization
I’ve chosen to break the following list of 14 fantasy series into two categories: unfinished and finished. The Song of Ice and Fire and Kingkiller Chronicle series are two of the most impactful reading experiences I’ve had in my entire life. And yet there’s no guarantee that they will ever be finished. So if you don’t want to start a series that doesn’t yet have an ending, you can skip to the “Finished” section of this article.
Within each category, I’ve ranked the series based on my level of enjoyment with each one. However, I’ve chosen not to format them in the numbered, list-like style that would accompany a more formal ranking. That way, you can’t get mad at me when your favorite series ends up toward the bottom of the list.
Still, to be on here at all means a series is nearly the stuff of legend, if not already so. They’re worthwhile reads, regardless of how you feel about their authors (cough, cough J.K. Rowling).
I’ve gabbed enough. It’s about time I let these books do the talking. Without further ado, here are the 14 best fantasy book series of all time, starting with those series that are still UNFINISHED.
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin | Game of Thrones books | A Song of Ice and Fire | Image: George R.R. Martin — Not A Blog© Image: George R.R. Martin — Not A Blog
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic fantasy series set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, where noble families vie for power and control. It’s also the namesake of this very website. “Winter is Coming” is the mantra of House Stark, a dire warning of trouble to come.
The story is told through the perspectives of multiple characters, many of them with vasly different perspectives on life, which lends the series a lot of depth. Through this lens, Martin explores themes of power, betrayal, honor, and the brutal realities of war.
Meanwhile, his world-building is rich and complex, drawing heavily on real-world history, particularly that of medieval Europe. Known for its unpredictable and morally ambiguous characters, A Song of Ice and Fire has been acclaimed for its intricate plot, deep character development, and gritty realism.
The series began with A Game of Thrones (1996). Martin has yet to complete the saga, with five of the planned seven books now published. Now you know what all the articles complaining about The Winds of Winter delays are about.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle #1). | Image: DAW.© Image: DAW.
The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
The Kingkiller Chronicle is a high fantasy series that follows the life of Kvothe, a legendary figure who becomes the subject of a story he narrates over the course of the trilogy. The narrative is framed as a memoir recounting Kvothe’s rise from an orphaned child to a renowned musician, wizard, and adventurer. The series is known for its lyrical prose, deep character development, and exploration of the nature of storytelling itself.
In the first book, The Name of the Wind (2007), Kvothe tells the story of his childhood in a traveling troupe, his time at the University where he learns magic, and the mysteries surrounding his family’s history with mythical beings called the Chandrian. The second book, The Wise Man’s Fear (2011), continues Kvothe’s journey as he faces trials both magical and personal, including his pursuit of knowledge, his complex relationships, and his struggle with his own identity.
Kingkiller weaves together themes of love, loss, ambition, and the cost of fame. Rothfuss’s world-building is intricate, with a unique magic system and rich lore. The series’ third and final core book, The Doors of Stone, has yet to be published, and it’s been nearly 14 years since The Wise Man’s Fear hit store shelves, leaving fans to wonder if the series will ever be completed. That said, it’s far more likely to receive an ending than A Song of Ice and Fire, which has more than one book left to go.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1). | Image: Tor Books.© Image: Tor Books.
The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Though this series finds itself at the bottom of the “Unfinished” category, it’s up against some of the most meaningful fantasy fiction to have ever been written. Also, given author Brandon Sanderson’s reputation as a mind-bogglingly prolific author, Stormlight is the only series in this section that is nearly guaranteed to receive an ending from its original author, in spite of the fact that Sanderson intends for the series to be told in two sets of five books. Sanderson’s reliability – and, of course, his reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of all time – should earn him and Stormlight some points, especially if you’re an endings person.
This is an epic high fantasy series set in the world of Roshar, a land plagued by destructive, magical storms and home to diverse cultures and mystical powers. The series is centered on multiple main characters, each of whom plays a crucial role in the unfolding events. The primary protagonists include Kaladin Stormblessed, a former slave turned soldier who struggles with depression and leadership; Shallan Davar, a noblewoman with a hidden past and the ability to create illusions through a magical power called “Lightweaving”; and Dalinar Kholin, a high-ranking military commander who begins experiencing strange visions that suggest he is destined to unite the fractured nations of Roshar. At the heart of the story is the ancient and powerful conflict between the Knights Radiant — an order of magic-wielding warriors — and the Voidbringers, mysterious entities bent on destruction. As characters uncover forgotten history and the true nature of their world, they must navigate political intrigue, ancient prophecies, and the looming threat of an apocalyptic war.
The series’ first book, The Way of Kings (2010), introduces readers to the world and its characters. It’s where you should start if you’re looking for a way into Sanderson’s epic. For all the Mistborn stans out there concerned about Stormlight making this list over it, I have the following rationale: The unique magic system that Sanderson creates and brings to life in Stormlight is second to none. Stormlight’s character development is deeper. The characters feel more visceral. Stormlight’s mythology gives the series a deeper and more interconnected sense of purpose than Mistborn. If you still disagree, I celebrate you. Most all of Sanderson’s stuff is a treat.
Now let’s move onto the great FINISHED fantasy book series!
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. | Image: William Morrow.© Image: William Morrow.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The big kahuna. The fantasy series to rule all fantasy series (sorry George R.R.). The Lord of the Rings is the cornerstone of modern fantasy literature, set in the richly detailed world of Middle-earth. The epic trilogy follows the journey of Frodo Baggins, a humble hobbit who is entrusted with the task of destroying the One Ring, a powerful and malevolent artifact created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate all of Middle-earth.
The story begins with The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), continues with The Two Towers (also 1954) and concludes with The Return of the King (1955), released back to back to back. If only some of the other fantasy titans working together could put out books with such regularly, although to be fair, Tolkien finished the whole thing before his publisher split it into three books for release.
Tolkien weaves themes of friendship, bravery, sacrifice, and the corrupting influence of power throughout his narrative. The Lord of the Rings influences pretty much everything in the genre to this day. If you haven’t read the books, you’ve likely seen the films. There’s no need to say more.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. | Image: Clarion Books.© Image: Clarion Books.
Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea Cycle is a renowned series of fantasy novels set in the archipelago of Earthsea, a world where magic is a natural and central force. The series follows the life of Ged, a powerful wizard who initially appears in A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the series’ first book. In subsequent novels — The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea (2001) — Le Guin explores themes of identity, mortality, and the complexities of good and evil while further expanding on the history, cultures, and magic of Earthsea.
Throughout her career in sci-fi and fantasy, Le Guin became known for weaving themes of diversity and environmentalism into her writing. Those themes are on full display here. The Earthsea Cycle has become a seminal work in the fantasy genre, distinguished by its intellectual depth, lyrical prose, and profound moral insights. It’s also unusual among fantasy epics in that it doesn’t focus on war, which was intentional on Le Guin’s part.
The Broken Earth trilogy deluxe edition by N.K. Jemisin. | Image courtesy of Orbit.© Image courtesy of Orbit.
Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is a groundbreaking series set in a world plagued by constant geological instability. It’s a future Earth where people known as “orogenes” have the ability to control seismic energy, but are feared and oppressed for their destructive powers.
The trilogy begins with The Fifth Season (2015), where Jemisin weaves together multiple timelines. We follow Essun, a woman whose family is wiped out by a catastrophic event, as well as two young orogenes, Damaya and Syenite.
Broken Earth is notable for its innovative narrative structure (including second-person narration) and exploration of themes such as trauma, power, survival, and social injustice. The trilogy challenges traditional notions of heroism, offering a lens through which readers can examine the consequences of systemic oppression, environmental degradation, and the cyclical nature of violence. It’s the best completed fantasy series the world has seen in recent years. Go read it right now if you haven’t. It’s the kind of story that will help you escape from the real world while teaching you invaluable things about it.
People taking photos in front of the Tribute to Akira… | Fotoholica Press/GettyImages© Fotoholica Press/GettyImages
Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama
While some folks might be surprised to see Dragon Ball on a list of epic fantasy series, it belongs in this rarified air. In spite of the fact that its format and cultural heritage diverges from the rest of the titles on the list, it’s one of the most well-loved fantasy stories of all time. That can’t go unnoticed.
Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga and anime series that follows the adventures of Son Goku, a powerful martial artist with a mysterious past, as he embarks on a quest to find the seven magical Dragon Balls, which can grant any wish when gathered together. The story all began with Dragon Ball (1984) and has captured countless hearts and minds since then, becoming one of the best-selling manga series of all time.
In Dragon Ball Z (the second part of the series, starting in 1989), Goku’s battles intensify, as he defends Earth from alien invaders like the ruthless Frieza, fights intergalactic threats like the androids, and engages in fierce martial arts tournaments. The series at large is known for its distinctive art style, humor, and iconic action scenes.
Dragon Ball remains one of the most successful and beloved franchises in the world to this day, continuing to inspire new generations of fans. Arika Toriyama was involved in its further development right up until his death in March of 2024.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. | Image: Harper Voyager.© Image: Harper Voyager.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The Poppy War is a grimdark military fantasy series set in a world inspired by 20th-century Chinese history, particularly the Second Sino-Japanese War and the opium trade. The story follows Rin, a poor, orphaned girl from the south of the fictional empire of Nikan, who dreams of escaping her abusive, impoverished life. The trilogy blends elements of dark fantasy, military strategy, and historical fiction.
Kuang’s world-building is deeply influenced by Chinese culture and history, from the political intrigue to the social hierarchies and mythologies that shape her characters’ lives. Her writing is both brutal and poetic, tackling difficult issues such as the trauma of war, colonialism, and the consequences of seeking vengeance. If there’s one word I would use to describe The Poppy War series, it’s “unrelenting.” It’s the sort of book series you stay up thinking about long after you’ve closed the cover.
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time #1). | Image: Tor Books.© Image: Tor Books.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson sickos rejoice! The Wheel of Time is an epic high fantasy series originally created by Robert Jordan and later completed by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death in 2007. The series spans 14 books, starting with The Eye of the World (1990) and concluding with A Memory of Light (2013), and is set in a place where time is cyclical, the past, present, and future are intertwined, and the forces of Light and Shadow are in constant conflict.
At the heart of the story is Rand al’Thor, a young man from the small village of Emond’s Field who is revealed to be the prophesied Dragon Reborn, the savior destined to battle the Dark One and prevent the world’s ultimate destruction…or maybe cause it. The Wheel of Time has everything you would expect from a classic fantasy series, but it is most well-known for its exceedingly vast scope. It’s had a profound impact on the fantasy genre, influencing many subsequent writers and inspiring a global fan base.
Amazon is currently adapting The Wheel of Time as a TV series. The third season is due out in 2025.
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
The Harry Potter series is a beloved seven-book saga that chronicles the life of Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is famous for surviving an attack by the dark Lord Voldemort when he was a baby. But you know all this already if you’re here. Hogwarts and all that jazz. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone kicked off the party in 1997, and you know how J.K. can be when she gets on a roll. By the time the book series concluded with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007, she’d ridden the series to record-breaking success.
Harry Potter has become a central part of modern pop culture, inspiring readers of all ages. That said, the entire franchise is marred by Rowling’s staunch anti-trans stances that have fractured her fanbase. This is a particular shame because the escape offered by Harry Potter and his wonderful wizarding world has helped countless LGBTQ+ folks find joy and community in a real-life society full of hateful muggles.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. | Image: HarperCollins Narnia.© Image: HarperCollins Narnia.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Narnia will always be so gosh-darn Narnia, but that’s what people love about it, I suppose. It’s a classic series of seven fantasy novels that transport readers to the magical land of Narnia, a world populated by talking animals, mythical creatures, and ruled by the great lion Aslan. The series begins with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), in which four British siblings — Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy — discover a wardrobe that leads to a land cursed by the White Witch, where it is always winter but never Christmas. Six other books follow, ending with 1956’s The Last Battle. C.S. Lewis also wrote a prequel book, The Magician’s Nephew, which came out in 1955.
Each subsequent book can be read independently, but the series as a whole is united by its overarching narrative of redemption and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Very original, I know.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. | Image: S&S/Saga Press.© Image: S&S/Saga Press.
The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu
The Dandelion Dynasty is an epic fantasy series that blends elements of Chinese history, political intrigue, and high fantasy. The series, beginning with The Grace of Kings (2015), takes place in the archipelago of Dara, a fictional empire inspired by ancient China. The story is set in a world where technology, magic, and war intersect. It follows the rise and fall of empires, focusing on the complex relationships between rulers, warriors, and the people they govern.
The series is notable not only for its rich storytelling but also for Liu’s thoughtful examination of social and cultural dynamics, as well as his unique approach to fantasy. As a Chinese-American author, Liu draws upon his heritage to create a world that is both familiar and distinct from Western fantasy traditions, offering a fresh perspective on themes of power, identity, and revolution.
The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #1). | Image: Scribner.© Image: Scribner.
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Dark Tower is a genre-blending series that spans seven books, combining elements of fantasy, horror, westerns, science fiction, and psychological drama. Oh, and King does the Kingiest thing ever in this series by – for some reason – reintroducing characters from The Stand (1978) along an alternate timeline.
At the heart of the story is Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, a lone and determined hero on a quest to reach the enigmatic Dark Tower, a mystical structure that is said to hold the key to the fate of all worlds. The series opens with the aptly titled novel The Gunslinger (1982). The story goes on to weave through a complex multiverse, where different realities intersect and characters grapple with themes of destiny, free will, and the cyclical nature of time.
If you like King or have ever wanted to understand what “liking King” means, try this. It’s about as weird and King-y as it gets.
Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip. | Image: Ace.© Image: Ace.
Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip
The Riddle-Master trilogy is a high fantasy series that blends mystery, mythology, and lyrical prose. The trilogy consists of The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979). The story is set in a world of ancient magic, riddles, and long-forgotten truths, where the characters are bound by destiny and the search for knowledge.
The central protagonist is Morgon, the Prince of Hed, who is drawn into a quest that is as much about unraveling the mysteries of his own identity as it is about saving the world. The trilogy is often hailed as a classic of the genre, especially for its emphasis on language and the power of storytelling. McKillip’s ability to take her tone from dream-like one moment to completely earthy and grounded the next stands out even among the modern stories that have drawn inspiration from her original tale.
Finale
And there you have it. Fourteen of the most meaningful and thrilling series in literature. Sitting down with a cup of coffee and any of these titles will never fail to be one of life’s great pleasures. The words and worlds you find therein, in fact, might just stay with you, shining their light in all the darkest places, and showing you the way.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.
This article was originally published on winteriscoming.com as The 14 best fantasy book series of all time.
13 Modern Classics in the Making: Recent Novels Destined for Timeless Status
`Goals: 100 Books, 2,000 poems etc total 3,000 to 4,000 books/poems/stories listed numerically and chronologically by month
Read Classics finish reading books. You Must read series
One Thriller Per Month
One history/politics book per month
Read A Lot More Poetry
Read At Least One Book A Year in Spanish.
Read At Least One Book A Year in Korean
While in the States, get books from Little River Turnpike library and from the Medford library using the following criteria
One classic book
One poetry book
One Sci-fi book
One history/politics book
One current event book
One thriller
Buy the 2024 best SciFi read in the fall
Buy the 2024 Best Poetry read in the fall
Re-do Mod Po following Mod Po plus poems
Start a different poetry course on Coursea
Start and complete All poetry poetry courses
Alternate between reading Kindle classics, poetry and other books
I will try to finish reading classic books. I have a collection from Kindle of 50 books to read before you die, in three volumes – 15O books in total. See the list below. I have read many of them already which I have noted by bolding. As I read them, I will add them to the chronological listing below, and also have the Harvard classic. I had a hard copy set, but donated it, I have to read it on Kindle. I will also continue to read lots of poetry from the Mod Po class, will do the slo-mo courses then re-do it in September, focusing on reading the additional poems I did not last time in Mod Po Plus.
I will alternate between reading Kindle and other books poetry and thrillers etc while in US will read a lot of books from the library but still read things on my Kindle classic list goal is to finish the classic list by next year !
Numerical Listing
Note: after reading each book, write a review for Bach’s Reading List and for Goodreads copy to my blog entry and cc Suback, Medium, Wattpad, Fan Story, and Writing.com.
Then save under Review when posting on the blog post, Zamzar audio clip into the blog piece, and do Spotify and Substack podcasts, later Threads and YouTube vblog starting in the fall
Before reading ask Co-pilot the following questions
Please provide a synopsis, list of characters, author bio, quotes, and list of books by the author, plus literary reputation. please do not format to make it easier to cut and paste
The List
Fiction
- Cather, Willa: My Ántonia From 50 Books Volume One
- Chopin, Kate: The Awakening From 50 Books Volume One
- Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room. From 50 Books Volume One
- Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie in progress From 50 Books Volume One
- Janet Evanovich Plum Lucky Camp H library In Progress
- Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, the Job – Camp H Library
- Sharon Bolton, the Pact, Canal street library TBC
- Lisa Gardner One Step Too Far Canal Street Library TBC
- Stephannie Merritt, the Storm TBC
- Bobby Palmer Isaac and the Egg in progress
- Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones TBC
- Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Gorky, Maxim: The Mother TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady TBC From 50 Books Volume One
- JM Baarre Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- BM Bower – Cabin Fever TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- – Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- -Robert William Chambers The King in Yellow TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Wilkie Collins The Woman in White TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Richard Connell The Most Dangerous Game TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition. TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Margaret Deland The Iron Woman TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Andrew Lang The Arabian Nights TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Michael Proust- Swann’s Way TBC TBC From 50 Books Volume Two
- Emerson American Civilization (1862)
Once I finish the above, I will finish the Harvard Classic list.
Next Up Bacon TBC
Thomas Browne TBC
Poetry
Poetry
Bianca Boonstra
- Writer’s Cramp
Anne Frank
- Anne Frank’s Tree
- Anne Frank’s Tree
Entou
- Thunder and Lightning
- Almost Dead
Lawrencealot
- Throw Away Jay’s Way
Linda Varsell Smith
- Pathway
Robert Brewer Writers Digest
- Robert Lee Brewer – Give Me a Reason Zejel
- An Old Hymn Still Singing Zejel
Elegy
- David Romano’s “When Tomorrow Starts With Me”
- H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues”
- John Milton’s “Lycidas”
- Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods”
- Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”
- Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain”
Haiku
- Gypsy Blue Rose – Cows Wander at Night
- Zebras Zeal Gallop
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
- Edward Lee Masters – The Hill
- Fiddler Jones
- Petite The Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Miniver Cheevy
- Flood’s Party
James Weldon Johnson
- James Weldon Johnson
- The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar
- The Poet
- Life
- Life’s Tragedy
Robert Frost – Mod Po Selection
- The Death of the Hired Man
- Mending Wall
- Birches
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Tree in My Window
- Directive
Amy Lowell
- Patterns
Gertrude Stein – Mod Po Selections
- Susie Asado
- From Tender Buttons – A Box
- From Tender Buttons – A Plate
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
- I Sit and Sew
Carl Sandburg
- Grass
- Cahoots
Wallace Stevens – Mod Po Selections
- Peter Quince at the Clavier
- Disillusionment of 10:00
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
- The Emperor of Ice Cream
- A Mere Being
Angelina Weld Grimke
- Angelina Weld Grimke
- Fragment
William Carlos Williams – Mod Po Selections
- Tact
- Dance Ruse
- The Yachts
- From Apostle that Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 to 92
Sara Teasdale
- Moonlight
- There Will Come Soft Rains
Ezra Pound
- The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance
- The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
- In a Station of the Metro
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
- From Cantos: 56 Libretto – Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) – Mod Po Selections
- Sea Rose
- Helen
- From The Walls Do Not Fall – An Incident Here and There
- From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose and A Beggar – Why Did You Come?
- Take Me Anywhere
- Venus
Robinson Jeffers
- Gala in April
- Shine, Perishing Republic
- Clouds at Evening
- Credo
Marianne Moore
- Fish
- Poetry
T.S. Eliot
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- The Wasteland
Claude McKay
- If We Must Die
- The Harlem Dancer
Archibald MacLeish
- Ars Poetica
Edna St. Vincent Millay
- First Fig
- Recuerdo
- E. Cummings
- In Just-
- Buffalo Bill
- The Cambridge Ladies Who Lived in Furnished Souls
- Next to, Of Course, God, America
- Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond
- Rpophessagr
Jean Toomer
- Reapers
- November Cotton Flower
- Portrait in Georgia
Louise Bogan
- Medusa
- New Moon
Melvin B. Tolson
- Dark Symphony
- From Harlem Gallery: Psi – Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table
Hart Crane
- From The Bridge
- Poem: To Brooklyn Bridge
- From The Bridge – Section XI: Powhatan’s Daughter – The River
Robert Francis
- Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
- The Negro Speaks of Rivers
- I, Too, Sing America
- Dream Boogie
- Harlem
Countee Cullen
- Incident
- To John Keats, Poet, At Spring Time
- Yet Do I Marvel
- From The Dark Tower
Stanley Kunitz
- Father and Son
- The Portrait
- Touch Me
- H. Auden
- Musée des Beaux Arts
- Epitaph on a Tyrant
Theodore Roethke
- My Papa’s Waltz
- The Waking
- In a Dark Time
Charles Olson
- From The Maximus Poems: One – Maximus of Gloucester, To You
- The Distances
Elizabeth Bishop
- The Fish
- Sestina
- First Death in Nova Scotia
- Visit to St. Elizabeths
- One Art
Robert Hayden
- Middle Passage
- Those Winter Sundays
- Frederick Douglass
Muriel Rukeyser
- Effort at Speech Between Two People
- Then I Saw What the Calling Was
- The Poem as Mask
Delmore Schwartz
- The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
John Berryman
- From The Dream Songs
- Feeling Your Compact and Delicious Body
- Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So
- There Shut Down Once
- This World is Gradually Becoming a Place
- Henry’s Understanding
Randall Jarrell
- 90 North
- The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
- The Woman at the Washington Zoo
- Next Day
Weldon Kees
- To My Daughter
Dudley Randall
- A Different Image
William Stafford
- Traveling through the Dark
- At the Bomb Testing Site
Ruth Stone
- Scars
Margaret Walker
- For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks – Mod Po Selection
- The Mother
- A Song in the Front Yard
- The Bean Eaters
- The Lovers of the Poor
- We Real Cool
- The Blackstone Rangers
Robert Lowell
- To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage
- Skunk Hour
- For the Union Dead
Robert Duncan
- Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
- My Mother Would Be a Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Populist Manifesto
William Meredith
- Parents
Howard Nemerov
- Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
Hayden Carruth
- The Hyacinth Gardens in Brooklyn
- August 1945
Richard Wilbur
- Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
- Cottage Street
- The Writer
James Dickey
- The Sheep Child
Allen Ginsberg
- Howl
Richard Hugo
- Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg
- The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field
- The Poem Unwritten
- Cademon
- Swan in Falling Snow
- Who Is Simpson?
- American Poetry
Carolyn Kizer
- A Muse of Water
Kenneth Koch
- Fresh Air
Maxine Kumin
- Morning Swim
Gerald Stern
- Behaving Like a Jew
- The Dancing
- Another Insane Devotion
- R. Ammons
- The City Limits
- Corsons Inlet
Robert Bly
- Snowfall in the Afternoon
- Driving into Town to Mail a Letter
- Walking from Sleep
Robert Creeley
- The Flower
- I Know a Man
- The Language
- The Rain
- Bresson’s Movies
John Merrill
- Victor Dog
- Steps
Frank O’Hara – New York School
- Lana Turner Has Collapsed
- The Day Lady Died
John Ashbery – New York School
- Some Trees
- Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
- What Is Poetry?
Galway Kinnell
- The Bear
- After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
- Saint Francis and the Sow
- S. Merwin
- Air
- For the Anniversary of My Death
- Yesterday
- Chord
James Wright
- A Blessing
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
- Lying in a Hammock at
Wes Merwin
- Air
- For the Anniversary of My Death
- Yesterday
- Chord
- A Blessing
- Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, OH
- Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, MN
- In Response to the Rumor That Otis Warehouse in Wheeling, WV Has Been Condemned
- My Son, My Executioner
- Digging
- Rowing
- Orion Planetarium
- A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning
- From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules of Break Like a Thermometer
Gregory Corsa
- Gregory Corso
- Marriage
Gary Snyder
- Gary Snyder
- Hay for the Horses
- Riprap
- Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Derek Walcott
- A Far Cry from Africa
- Sea Grapes
- Find the Schooner Flight Part 11 After the Storm. There’s a Fresh Light That Follows
- The Light of the World
- From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing of Quiet, Achilles, Afrolabe’s Son
Miller Williams
- Let Me Tell You
Etheridge Knight
- Idea of Ancestry
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones
- Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
- Agony As Now
- SOS
- Black Art
Ted Berrigan
- Wrong Rain
- A Final Sonnet
Audre Lorde
- Power
Sonia Sanchez
- Poetry at 30
Mark Strand
- The Prediction
- The Night, The Porch
Russell Edson
- A Stone Is Nobody’s
Mary Oliver
- Singapore
- The Summer Day
Charles Wright
- Reunion
- Dead Color
- California Dreaming
Lucille Clifton
- Homage to My Hips
- At Least at Last We Killed the Roaches
- The Death of Fry, Alfred Clifton
June Jordan
- Home About My Rights
Frederick Seidel
- 1968
- K. Williams
- Find My Window
- Blades
Tony Hoagland
- The Mechanic
Michael S. Harper
- Dear John, Dear Coltrane
- Last Affair. Bessie’s Blues Song
- Grandfather
- Nightmare Begins Responsibility
Charles Simic
- Stone
- Fork
- Classic Ballroom Dances
Paula Gunn Allen
- Grandmother
Frank Bidart
- Ellen West
Carl Dennis
- Spring Letter
- Two or Three Wishes
Stephen Dunn
- Allegory of the Cave
- Tucson
Robert Pinsky
- History of My Heart
- The Questions
- Samurai Song
James Welch
- Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat
Billy Collins
- Introduction to Poetry
- The Dead
Toi Derricotte
- The Weakness
Stephen Dobyns
- How to Like It?
- Lullaby
Robert Hass
- Song
- That Photographer?
- Return of Robinson Jeffers
Lyn Hejinian
- From My Life: Trim with Colored Ribbons
- H. Fairchild
- The Machinist Teaching His Daughter to Play the Piano
Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)
- But He Was Cool or Even Stopped for Green Lights
- Upon To Compliment Other Poems
William Matthews
- In Memory of the Utah Stars
- The Accompanist
Sharon Olds
- The Language of the Brag
- The Lifting
Henry Taylor
- Barbed Wire
Tess Gallagher
- Black, Silver
- Under Stars
Michael Palmer
- I Do Not
James Tate
- The Lost Pilot
Norman Dubie
- Elizabeth’s War with the Christmas Bear
- The Funeral
Carol Muske Dukes
- August, Los Angeles Lullaby
Kay Ryan
- Turtle
- Bestiary
Larry Levis
- Childhood Ideogram
- Winter Stars
Adrian C. Louis
- Looking for Judas
- How Much Lux?
- The People of the Other Village
Marilyn Nelson
- The Ballad of Aunt Geneva
- Star Fix
Ai
- Cuba 1963
- The Kid
- Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
- Thanks
- To Do Street
- Facing It
- Nude Interrogation
Nathaniel Mackey
- Song of the Andoumboulou
Gregory Orr
- Gathering the Bones Together
- Two Lines from the Brother Grimm
- Origin of the Marble Forest
Robert Hill Long
- Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
- Away
Heather McHugh
- Language Lesson 1976
- What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
- In Cold Storm Light
Olga Broumas
- Calypso
Victor Hernández Cruz
- Latin & Soul
Jane Miller
- Miami Heart
David St. John
- Iris
- D. Wright
- Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
- Girlfriend Poem #3
- Crescent
Carolyn Forché
- Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
- San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
- What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
- She Had Some Horses
- My House Is the Red Earth
Garrett Hongo
- The Legend
Andrew Hudgins
- Begotten
- We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
- Imaging Their Own Hymns
- Song
Paul Muldoon
- Meeting the British
- Errata
- The Throwback
Judith Ortiz Cofer
- Quinceanera
Rita Dove
- Parsley
- Daystar
- After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
- Our Calling
Barbara Hamby
- Thinking of Galileo
- Hatred
Mark Jarman
- Unholy Sonnet
Naomi Shihab Nye
- The Traveling Onion
- Arabic
- Wedding Cake
Alberto Ríos
- Nani
- England Finally Like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
- Nocturne Blue Waves
- The Unfinished
Gary Soto
- Field Poem
- Oranges
- Black Hair
Susan Stewart
- Yellow Star and Ice
- The Forest
Mark Doty
- Brilliance
- Esta Noche
- Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
- Black Nikes
Franz Wright
- Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
- To My Brother
- Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros
- My Wicked, Wicked Ways
- Little Clowns, My Heart
Cornelius Eady
- Jack Johnson Does the Eagle Rock
- Crows in a Strong Wind
- I’m a Fool to Love You
Louise Erdrich
- Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
David Mason
- Spooning
Marilyn Chin
- How I Got That Name
- Compose Near the Bay Bridge
- The Survivor
Cathy Song
- The Youngest Daughter
Annie Finch
- Another Reluctance
- Insert
Li-Young Lee
- The Gift
- Eating Together
Carl Phillips
- Our Lady
- As from a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
- Bag of Mice
- Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
- The Venus Hottentot
Reetika Vazirani
- From White Elephants
- A Million Balconies
- Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
- What the Orphan Inherits
- The Powwow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethewey
- Hot Combs
- Amateur Fighter
- Flounder
- E. Stallings
- The Tantrum
Joana Klink
- Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
- Postfeminism
- Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
- Quivira City Limits
- Everywhere is Out of Town
- Whatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
- At Pegasus
- Lady Sings the Blues
Terrance Hayes
- At Pegasus
- Lady Sings the Blues
Pablo Neruda
- Viente Poemas De Amor Poems of Love 1924
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Cuerpo De Mujer (Body of a Woman)
- Ah Vastness of Pines
- Leaning Into the Afternoon
- Every Day You Play
- Thinking, Tingling Shadows
- Tonight I Write
- Pablo Neruda, “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”
Gypsy Blue Rose
- Gypsy Blue Rose Light of the Bright Moon
- Gypsy Blue Rose Love Birds
- Gypsy Blue Rose I see you dance across life’s stage
- Gypsy Blue Rose Adrift Cherita
Jejeu
- Gypsey Blue Rose Over Green Hills a limpid brook flows
- Pillow Woman
- Steady Breathing warms my Neck
- Brian Compton Might I Interject AHD
Judi Van Godner
Sioux
- Mask
| 429. Angel’s Dilemma
430. Where Frogs Are
431. Garland Seox
Quin Jejeu Chinese Form
432. Ishikawa Jozan Mount Fuji
433. Cheng Hao Autumn Moon
434. Gyspy Rose BLue
Waka
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist
435.
Free Verse
436. Sierra Scribbler BLISS
437. Crookston 2 Daffodil
438. Noland Reflections
Bragi
439. Judi Van Gorder Persimmon
440. Linda Versa Smith The snowplow heaves snow banks so high
Lune
441. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Lune
Rondel
442. Lady And Louis Two Silver Rings Rondel
443. Mountainwriter49 Forever In My Heart Rondel
Abhanga
444. Judi Can Gorder Incomplete Abhanga
445. Judi Can Gorder Magic Moment abhanga
446. Rachael the Library is Wwhere Abhanga
447. Astrologically Speaking Aghanga
448. Tukaram, Words Are The Only Jewels I possess Ahanga
Writing Com reviews
449. Dean Koontz Dragon Tears
450. Harlan Ellison“A Boy And His Dog.”
451. Fritz Leiber“Spacetime For Springers,”
452. Matt Griffin “Schrodinger’s Cat”
453. Larry Niven, Rescue Party,
454. Azimuth R. Daneel Olivaw
455. Roger Zelazny For A Breath I Tarry
456. Genesis
457. Goethe’s Faust
458. E. Housman A Shropshire Lad
459. Keith Laumer“Combat Unit”
460. Eregon Proofreading Hell
461. Christine B Demonstration of Proof
462. Allen Charles A Love Beyond Pain
463. Professor Moriatty’s True Confession
464. Bobby Lou Steveson Vanwolf
465. Beholden Seven
466. WD Wilcox Valkyrie
467. Kare Enga Pasta Alfredo Please
468. Gervic A Hawk’s Gift
469. Sumojo Vexatious Valentine
470. Cubby on the Road Again, Clinging Hearts
471. Peris Throckmortorf Hearts and Darts
472. Fye a Simple Blue Note Book
Manardina
473. Lawrencealot – Do All Deceive (Form: Manardina)
Free Verse
474. Kafka The Metamorpousis
475. John Gardner Grendel Old English Beowulf
476. John Gardner, The Art Of Fiction
477. Walt Whitman“Song of Myself.”
478. William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”
479. William Carlos Williams’“This Is Just to Say”
480. Gwendoly Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
481. TS Elliot the Waste Land
482. Sylvia Plath Daddy
483. Wallace Stevens Disissluionment of Ten O Clock
484. Allen Ginsberg America
485. David Ryan Do Not Resuscitate
Etheree
486. Judi Van Gorder Etheree
487. Andrea Dietrich Your Wild Awakening
488. Andrea Dietrich Anonymous Solitude
489. Andrea Dietrich The Lair
490. Marie Summer Red Poppy
491. Marie Summer Blurred Vision (Double Reversed Etheree)
492. Marie Summer Ashen Despair (Double Reversed Etheree)
Zen Haiku
493. ]
494. Gypsy Blue Rose at night zen haiku
495. Gypsy Blue Rose at the Bay zen Haiku
Japanese Love Poems
496. Gypsy Blue Rose When I am Gone Japanese Love Poem
knitelvers
497. Judi Van Gorder How Many Times Knitelvers
498. Larencealot Riskless Investment (Knittelvers)
499. EE Cummings 24 Xaipe One Day a Nigger Caught in his Hand
500. EE Cummings 48 Xiaipe A kite is the Most Dangerous Machine
TH Palmer
501. TH Palmer Try Again
Clerihew
502. E Clerihew Bentley Sir Humphrey Davy
503. Dan, I Am Taylor Swift
504. Alan Mc Alpine Douglas The Road Runner
505. James Dean Chase Diana Dalton
506. James Dean Chase Corporal Klinger
507. Judi Van Gorder The King Of Pop
508. Judi Van Gorder Ms. Amber Heard
509. Frank Gibbard Royal
510. Jay O Toole Clerihew Bob Denver
511. James And Marie Summers Garfield The Cat
512. Linda Varsell Smith Supreme Wordster
513. Linda Varsell Smith Electrifying Inventor
Tanka
514. Princess Nukada I wait for you
515. Takuboku I Shut My Eyes
516. Judi Van Gordner Chill of Soundless Night
517. Dendrobia A cool wind blows in
518. Can Sonmez Subtle hints of spring
519. Cheri L. Ahner Peaceful solitude
520. Ono no Komachi (825-900) Tanka –
521. Ono No Komachi See how the blossoms
522. Tada Chimako
523. A Spray of Water: Tanka
524. June Jordan On Time Tanka
525. Ono No Komachi The Ink Dark Moon Tanaka
526. Mrs. KT Early Spring Rains Thrum
Other famous poems
527. John Donne, “The Sun Rising”
528. Emily Dickinson, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
529. Richard Brautigan Gee You’r So Beautiful That is starting to rain
530. Chief Seattle Man Does not weave this web of life he is merely a strand of it What he does to the web, he does to himself
531. Anita Shreve A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house.
532. Anita Shreve A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell. I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house.
533. Benjamin Franklin You may delay, but time will not
534. Bill Keane Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present
535. Geoffrey Chaucer Time and tide wait for no man.
536. Horrace Mann Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
537. Nora Robert’s Three Fates The past is but a thread in the tapestry of our future
Mad Cow Pastoral Poem
538. Lawrencealot (December 18, 2014) Waiting for Us
539. John Keats’s Odes to a Nightingale
540. Joyce Kilmer Trees
541. Anonymous They Learn What We Live
542. Edward Lear’s the Owl and the Pussy Cat
TS Elliot
543. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock “
Allen Ginsberg
544. Allen Ginsberg Howl
Lune
545. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
546. Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
Pantoum
547. John Ashberry Hotel Lautréamont
548. Natalie Diaz My Brother At 3 A.M
549. Denrobia Osprey
550. Natalie E Illum Curious George Can’t Swim: A Pantoum
551. Blass Falconer A Ride in the Rain
552. Judi Van Gorder the Wanderer’s Return
553. Judi Van Gorder Seamrog
554. Judi Van Gorder Hello Goodbye
555. Maria Hummel Station
556. Kiandra Jimenez Halcyon Kitchen
557. Donald Justice Pantoum of the Great Depression
558. Chip Liningston Punta Del Este Pantoum
559. Hailey Leithauser O, She Says
560. Randal Mann Politics
561. Randal Mann Pantoum
562. Sally Ann Roberts It All Started with a Packet of Seeds
563. Clinton Scollard In The Sultan’s Garden
564. David Scheider Pins and Needles
565. Evie Shockley Pantoum Landing, 1975
566. Linda Vsrsell Smith Our Changing Cosmic Fabric
567. Linda Varsell Smith Grandchildren are Rainbow-light
568. Linda Varsell Smith an Eccentric Grandma
569. Linda Varsell Smith Mole Hole Mode
570. Linda Varsell Smith When Saturn Returned
571. Linda Varsell Smith In Gardens of Earthly Delights
572. Linda Varsell Smith Pantoum: Western version of a Malaysian
573. E Stallings Another Lullaby For Insomniacs
574. Marie Summers Celestial Dreams
575. Marie Summers Seasonal Whispers
576. Sasha Steensen Pantoum
577. Chellie Wood Dance In The Rain
578. Robert Lukeman Life – A Marriane Poem
579. Gypsy Rose Blue Billowing Clouds Chain Haiku’
580. Yamanoue no Okura When I eat Mellons Choka
581. anonymous They Learn What We Live
Acrostic
582. Gabriella 2 Masqueraders
583. .Dportwood Rejoice in Life
584. .Dportwood Boots and Spur
Funny Poems
585. Anne Scott Missing
586. Shel Silverstein Messy Room
587. My One-Eyed Love” by Andrew Jefferson
588. Larry Huggins Doggy Heaven
589. Cynthia C. Naspinksi Our Imperfect Dog”
590. Shelby Greer “The Life of a Cupcake”
591. Joanna Fuchs Yes! No!”
592. Cecilia L. Goodbody “Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Car”
593. Robert Lewis Stevenson My Shadow”
594. “I Atte a Chili Pepper” by Barbara Vance
595. Snap, Crackle, Pop” by Catherine Pulsifer
596. Ogden Nash “The People Upstairs”
597. Spike Milligan “Granny”
598. Julie Hebert ” Dessert Last”
599. Richard Leavesley “Belly Button Magic”
600. Anonymous “Have You Ever Seen”
601. Laura Elizabeth Richards “Ele telephony”
602. Anonymous “Do You Carrot All For Me?”
603. Darren Sardelli “My Doggy Ate My Essay”
604. Jack Prelutsky “Be Glad Your Nose is On Your Face”
605. Gelett Burgess “My Feet”
606. Inna Renko “Home Alone”
607. Nandita Shailesh Shanbhag Not Smart Enough For a Smart Phone”
LImericks
608. Edwar Lear Sit variorum megrim evacuation
609. Unknown There was a young lady of Niger
610. Judi Van Gorder The parrot was messy and loud.
611. Judi Van Gorder An Irishman came to my city
612. Judi Van Gorder In the flick of an eye she went down.
613. Judi Van Gorder There once was a poet called Tinker
614. Limericks I cannot compose,
615. There was a young woman named Bright,
616. There was an odd fellow named Gus,
617. There once was a fly on the wall
618. There once was a man from Tibet,
619. There was a young woman named Bright,
620. I need a front door for my hall,
621. There once was a boy named Dan,
622. A newspaperman named Fling,
623. I know an old owl named Boo,
624. I once fell in love with a blonde,
625. I’d rather have Fingers than Toes,
626. There was a Young Lady whose chin
627. Hickory Dickory Dock,
628. There was a faith healer of Deal
629. My dog is really quite hip,
630. A painter, who lived in Great Britain,
631. There is a young schoolboy named Mason,
632. There was a young schoolboy of Rye,
633. An elderly man called Keith
634. There was an old man of Peru,
635. The Incredible Wizard of Oz,
636. Once I visited France,
637. It goes quickly, you know,
638. Is it me or the nature of money,
639. There once was a farmer from Leeds
640. A fellow jumped off a high wall,
641. A man and his lady-love, Min,
642. There was a young lady of Cork,
643. There once was a Martian called Zed
644. There once was a girl named Sam
645. Said the man with a wink of his eye
646. A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
647. There was once a great man in Japan
648. There was a young man so benighted
649. There was an old man from Sudan,
650. A maiden at college, Miss Breeze,
651. A canner, exceedingly canny,
652. A mouse in her room woke Miss Dowd
653. There was a young woman named Kite,
654. A flea and a fly in a flue,
655. A major, with wonderful force,
656. A nifty young flapper named Jane
657. “There’s a train at 4:04,” said Miss Jenny.
658. A canny young fisher named Fisher
659. Here’s to the chigger,
660. A cheerful old bear at the Zoo
661. The bottle of perfume that Willie sent
662. I bought a new Hoover today,
663. A crossword compiler named Moss
664. I’m papering walls in the loo
665. There once was an old man of Esser,
666. To compose a sonata today,
667. There was a young lady named Perkins,
668. There was an old man of Nantucket
669. There was a young lady of Kent,
670. There was a young lady named Hannah
671. There was a dear lady of Eden,
672. A certain young fellow named Bee-Bee
673. Remember when nearly sixteen
674. There was an old person of Fratto
675. There was a young man from Dealing
676. As 007 walked by
677. A tutor who tooted the flute
678. No woodsman would cut a wood, would he
679. There once was a man from the sticks
680. A poet whose friends called him Steve
681. If you catch a chinchilla in Chile
682. There once was a man named Mauvette
683. There once was a beautiful nurse
684. There was a young girl from Flynn
685. There once was a man from Gorem
686. Dylan Thomas
687. The Hand that Signed the Paper
688.
689. W. H. Auden
690.
691. 2
866666
692. 8Political Poetry
Lune
Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
David Schneider Adrift WC Poets Place
Herman Melville Art
693. Occhtfochlach
(author unknown) The Ochtfochlach
Fochlach It (Ochtfochlach)
© Lawrencealot – December 4, 2013
Pen Allen of allpoetry Sixteen Thirty-four Door — Double Ochtfochlach
|
Note due to copy and paste errors the formating and numbering is SNAFU screwed up beyond repair will try to repair it latter will start numbering from this section onward
Political Poetry
| 1. Dylan Thomas, ‘The Hand That Signed the Paper
2. W. H. Auden, ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’
| 3. Audre Lorde, ‘Power
4. Maxine Kumin, ‘Woodchucks’
Monotetra
11. Linda Newman Paper Dreams
12. Michael Walker An Angel Spoke To Me Today
13. Allan J Wight A Poet On The Launching Pad
Aloulette
14. Jan Turner Spring Eternal
15. The Senses of Spring Jan Turner
16. SP Quill Magazine Spring 2006, Vol. #10
17. Andrea Ditrich A Summer Alouette
18. Judi Can Gorder Month of August
19. Linda Varsell Smith Future Possibilities
20. Linda Varsell Smith Fourth Dimensional Blueprint
-Anne Sexton Love Song
Robert Brewer
Robert Brewer Miss Shadorma
Robert Brewer Terminal Triolet
Robert Brewser “Terminal Triolet,”
Robert Brewer “Forget sleeping”
Robert Brewer “Semantically Speaking,”
Robert Brewer Full Throated
Robert Brewster No Chance
Robert Lee Brewer “Waiting for April Showers,”
Robert Brewer Give Me a Reason
Bianca Boonstra Thunder and Lightening Entou
Bianca Boonstra Almost Dead Entou
Zejel Spanish Verse
Linda Varsell Smith Pathway
Judi Van Gardner
An Old Hymn Still Singing Zejel
Lune
1. Robert Brewster Trees Never Wander Kelly Lune
2. Robert Brewster An Envelope Labeled Collum Lune
Jay’s Way
Lawrencealot Throw-a-way (Form: Jay’s Way)
Sonnet
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Bianca Boonstra Writer’s Com
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Lawrencealot
Throw a Way Jay’s Way
Shakesphere
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Robert Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer Exchanging Words
PSH
Sheilye Anne Debo Whispering Junkyard Mountain
| Quotes to Ponder
| If we go down the rabbit hole of our unconsciousness and try to unravel the knotty points of our life story we may encounter a bunch of hidden niceties or emotional stowaways. Forgotten details in the windmill of our mind may daintily reveal, where things might have gone wrong. (I wonder what went wrong.)~~Erik PevernagieI love the rabbit hole. I spend a lot of time looking at images, Google mapping, etc. I also love to read court transcripts, FBI files, stuff like that. You go through vast, boring stretches, but the voices are always so fascinating and slowly a story begins to emerge. It’s very much like playing detective.~~Zachary Lazar
Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn’t shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery.~~Kate Morton
Dr. Seuss provided “ingenious and uniquely witty solutions to the standing problem of the juvenile fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole.~~Clifton Fadiman
Rabbit holes are my specialty. I live and breathe in them.~~Kara McDowell, One Way or Another |
|
|
Charles Baudelaire I must be dead.”
Annymous Worms Crawl In
Edgar Allen Poe Annabel Lee
Kai Carlson Wei Nomad Palindrome
Writer’s Digest
Lee Ellis Big Old Clap Clap,
Nicki Fitz-Gerald Long Walk Home,
Darin Rogers Abstract with Twirling Sparklers,
Martin Klein Unwavering,
Yinka Shonibare Resolution Kid,
Writng com
Capuchine Safety Dance
Solang Bring Be Careful Out There
Solang Bring Bermudagrass
Donald Justice“There is a gold light in certain old paintings,”
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Fall
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Hope
Shelly Kaye singular oddquains Cards
Shelly Kaye Mirror OddquainMirror Oddquain Breeze
Shelly Kaye Butterfly Oddquain
Shelly Kaye Crown Oddquain
Other
Famous Prose Poetry Examples (I Told You I Wasn’t Making This Up!)
There are plenty of prose poetry examples out there, but here’s a few to get you started:
“Be Drunk” by Charles Baudelaire—The ultimate call to live passionately Read it here.
“The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché—A searing piece of political witness that reads like a nightmare you can’t shake. Read it here (18+)
“A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass—Rejection and desire with stark, unexpected imagery. Read it here.
“The Prose Poem” by Campbell McGrath—A winding journey with perfectly poetic language (I admit the title is a little less than poetic). Read it here.
The Ziggurat
Judi Van Gorder Appetite A Ziggurat
Jonathan Caswell Inspired
Paul Szlose Anti-Abstraction
Paul Szlose Depressive
Paul Szlose Funereal
Paul Szlose Recital
Paul Szlose Thaumaturgy
Robert Lee Brewer “Supernatural,”
Wallace Stevens “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”
Solang Bing Writing com
Rain and Drought”
“Never Explained”
“Not Funny”
“Wins-Day!”
“Over and Down”
“Death Cafe ”
“Serious, Lengthy, Russian”
“TGIF”
“The Big Game”
Capuchine Swizzle Stick
Elegy
David Romano’s “When Tomorrow Starts With Me”
W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,”
John Milton’s “Lycidas”
Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods”
Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”
Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain”
Triquint
Bianca Simple Chinquapin
Fan Story Haiku
Gypsy Blue Rose Cows Wander At Night
Gypsy Blue Rose zebra’s zeal gallops
Writer’s Digest
Robert Lee Brewer “If I had Not,” |
|
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Lawrencealot
Throw a Way Jay’s Way
Shakesphere
William Shakesphere Sonnet 18
Robert Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer Exchanging Words
Fan Story Review
Judi Van Gorder
- Morning Newscast
Maskr
Linda Varsell Smith
Angel’s Dilemma
JHE All Poetry
Where Frogs Are
Selma Martin
Garland Seox
Fan Story review
Other
Dean Koontz Dragon Tears
Harlan Ellison“A Boy And His Dog.”
Fritz Leiber“Spacetime For Springers,”
Matt Griffin “Schrodinger’s Cat” .
Larry Niven, Rescue Party,”
Azimoth R. Daneel Olivaw
Roger Zelazny For A Breath I Tarry
Genesis
Goethe’s Faust
- Housman A Shropshire Lad.
Keith Laumer“Combat Unit”
Kafka “The Metamorphosis”
John Gardner’grendel I
Old English Beowulf
— John Gardner, The Art Of Fiction
Fan Story Review
Anonymous Wildfire Naani
Anonymous – A Tick A Tock
Anonymous – To Shelter Feathered Songs
Anonymous Even the Odds contest Carl Sanberg
Anonymous Nonesense
Anonymous Female Strength in Nature
Anonymous Loon
Anonymous – Owl on the Hunt
Anonymous the Wild Side
Patrick Bernady Her Rage
Jamison Brown Before the Wind Calls
lJbutterfly Prayer for Debbie Pick Marquette
Debbie D’Arcy Anne Frank
Debie D’arcy James Baldwin
Debbie D’Arcy – Jimmy Carter
Harry Craft I Was a Spy
Harry Craft What Happened to the Word Groovy
Harry Craft What Does Freedom Mean to You?
Harry Craft – Peace
John Crawford Rudyard Kipling
Donald Saacca Forever friends
Donaldandvicki – Tender Trap
Rick Gardner the Sun, the Desert, the One
Douglas Goff – Perspective
Dolly Poems Granite Island
Elias Noor The Whispher of Time
Finback Never
Finback When Shadows Creep
Gypsey Rose Blue Gardens of Delight
Cecilia a Heikary Bobcat
Cecila Heiskary – Brown Bear
Cecilia A Hiskary Horses
Ceclia A Heiskary The Magic
Cecilia A Heiskary – Night Life
Cecila Heiskary – Snow
Christy 710 – Happy New Year from Aus
Marylyn Hamilton Darkness Descends
Marylyn Hamilton He Waits
Marylyn Hamilton Winging It
Tom Hormoz A Griever’s Prayer
Tom Horonzy Rumpelstilskin Unleashed
Kaput howling at Moon Haiku
Mrs. Kt Silent Dancers
KT Shades of Blue –
Mrs KTEnding Pain’s Servitude
5 fish JM Jenca
Debbie Pick Marquette Believe in Miracles
Debi Pick Marquette My Cornea Disease
Debbie Pick Marquette – Keeping Gypsy in Prayers
Debbie Pick Marquette – My Lifetime
Debbie Pick Marquette Romance on the Beach
Me and Erin G – Long Gone Away
Lana Marie Hairy Nipple
Paul McFarland January
JUMBO 1 Shame
Pam (respa) Black History Month
Tea for Two Eclectic Wordsmiths
Ean Black I Write
Richard Frohm Dreams
KiwiSteveh Sudden Tears
Lana Marie The Dash Between
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 1
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 2
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 3
Pamusart – The Kirby Part 4
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 5
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 6
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 7
Pamusart – The Kirby Case Part 8
Pamusart Rembering the Past
Pamusart Old Man at the River
Pamusart The Great Apes
Pamusart cooing doves
Pamusart Exploding Star
Pamusart Purple Flowers Wake
Pamusart the Search
Pamusart On Finding Peace
Pamusart Jean Marie Lane
Pamusart the cavesweet
Pamusart Independence
Pamusart the Broken Man
Lea Tonin – Famitree Flames
Lea Tonin1 – Humiston
Lea Toni1 – Mansion
Lea Toni1 – The Meet
Alexandra Trovato A Monster Schemes Under Your Bed
Alexandra Trovato A Timely Trump Limerick
Willie P Smith – Sleigh Ride
Willie P Smith – Walk with Me
Teafor2 – Last Night of the Year
Jessica Wheller – Waking Daisy
Jessica Wheller – January Wind
Nicki Nance Emotional Support
Cecilia A Heiskary Daffodils
Cecila A Heiskary Jaguaurs
Cecila A Heiskary Insane
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Anonymous Ode to My Scrunchies
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heikkary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jagaurs
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist Waka
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heikkary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jagaurs
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gyspy Rose blue Geologist Waka
Rick Gardner Innocent of Guilty
Harry Craft A Kangaroo from Baraboo
Nancyjam Love in the winter
Debbie Pick Marquette Finding the Bright Side
Debbie Pick Marquette March
Pamusart The Sword
Pamusart The Planet Earth
Barry Penfold Slow Dance with You
YM Roger Always For Now
Arabellesom Mom Truest Love Ever Known
Debbie D’Arcy Lord Bryon
Nicki B Robin Williams
Harry Craft the Cell Phone
Estory in this Autumn Time
Mrs Anna Howard Difficult Decisions
Debbie Pick Marquette Thelma and Louise
Pamusart Your Golden Aura
Rachell Allen Public Face/Private Face
Anonymous Today
Rachael Allen Exceptional Teacher
Debbie D’Arcy Voldymyr Zelensky
Kentucky Sweet Pea My Dogma
Pamusart The Kidnapping
Pamusart the Kidnapping Chapter Two
Pam Respa Rennoved Violinst
Rachael Allen Proud to Be His Daugther
Rick Gardner Wishes to Have
Cecilia A Heiskary Sumatran Orangutan
Cecilia A Heiskary Guiana Red-Face Monkey
Dolly’s Poems the Witching Hour
Kapot Swimming in Pain
Debbie Pick Marquette Men are from Mars, Women from Venus
Miss Merrie This Love
Nancyjam the Meadow
Gypsy Blue Rose Billowing Clouds
Pamusart the Kidnapping Chapter 3
Pamusart Colorful world
Pamusart the World Around Lavenders
Annoymous Maladorous
Tea for Two It Was the Shoes
Tea for Two Wordsmith with Big Faces
Iraven Prayers for Eva
Sally Law Blood Moon and Blood Rain
Jaquelyn Poop Living the Dream, No Thank You
Debi Pick Marquette My Bedroom Window
Debi Pick Marquette Happy St Patrick’s Birthday
Debi Pick Marquette My Bedroom Window
Debi Pick Marquette Happy St Patrick’s Birthday
Rven Prayers for Eva
Jennifer Secret Rendezvous
Sally Law’s Blood Moon and Blood Rain
Jaquelyn Poop Living the Dream, No Thank You
Sanku A New Day
Aiona I Am Photine
Annyomous Too Many Boyfriends For This Is Serious
Annyomous Cary Hope
Annyomous Cicada Watch
Annyomous Ned the Postman
Brad Bennett I Saw A Man Walking Crying
Carasdreams Betrayal
Cullen Bob I Just Want To Leave Things Be
Chris Davies Irish
Iza Dealeanu The Wandering Queen
Dolly’s Poems Graveyard Shift
Cecilia A Heiskary Fun Time
Rick Gardner April Is Today And The Next Day
Brenda Strauser Early Signs Of Spring
Alexandra Trovato Real Love
Fan Story Review
Annoymous Golden Years
Annoymous AI Future
Annoymous Tiny Puppy
Annyomous A Tick a Tock
Annyomous TO Shelter feathered Songs
Debbie D’Arcy Jimmy Carter
Harry Craft Peace
KT Shades of Blue
Cecilia A Heiskary Beat of My Drum
Debbie Pick Marquette Instead of 2025 Resolutions
Debbie Pick Marquette Patch and Ruby, Catching Things
Lea Tonin1 Infanterei
Lea Tonin1 Miristone
Pam Respa Stylish Statues
D’Arcy Rest
Cecilia Heiskary Daffodils
Cecilia A Heiskary Jaguars
Cecilia A Heiskary Insane
Gypsey Rose blue Geologist Waka
Jamison Brown Before the Wind Calls
J Butterfly Prayer for Debbie Pick Marquette
Debbie D’Arcy Anne Frank
Rick Gardner, the Sun, the Desert, the One
Cecilia, a Heikary Bobcat
JUMBO 1 Shame
Debi Pick, Marquette, My Cornea Disease
Pam (respa) Black History Month
Nancyjam Love in the w
Pamusart The Sword
Barry Penfold Slow Dance with You
Tea for Two Eclectic Wordsmiths
Mark Bibbins “At the End of the Endless Decade,
Annoymous dogsessive
Crystie Cookie 999
Trust Jessie James Doty
Debbie Pick Marque
Tim Margetts Four Paws, No Pause
Bianca Boonstra 2002 Septet
Anonymous Owl On the Hunt
Christy 710 Happy New Years from Aus
DonaldandVicki Tender Trap
Douglas Goff Perspective
Me and Erin G Long Gone Away
Cecilia A Heiskary Night Life
Lea Tonin1 Humiston
Lea Toni1 Mansione
Lea Toni1 The Meet
Willie P Smith Sleight Ride
Willie P Smith Walk With Me
Teafor2 Last Night of the Year
Jessica Wheller Waking Daisy
Binaca Boonstra Writer’s Cramp Anne Frank’s Tree
Annyomous TO Shelter feathered Songs
Debbie D’Arcy Jimmy Carter
Cecila Heiskary Brown Bear
Cecila Heiskary Snow
Harry Craft Peace
KT Shades of Blue
Debbie Pick Marquette Keeping Gypsy in Prayers
Debbie Pick Marquette My Lifetime
Lea Tonin Famitree Flames
Jessica Wheller Janaury Wind
Anonymous They Learn What We Live
Pamusart Rembering the Past
Pamusart Old Man at the River
Lana Marie Hairy Nipple
Paul McFarland January
End Poetry
Begin Harvard Classics
Harvard Classics
The volumes are:
Bolded read
(1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn
(2) Plato, Epictetus,
Marcus, Aurelius Meditations
(3) Bacon,
Milton’s Prose,
Thomas Browne
(4) Complete Poems in English: Milton
(5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson (
6) Poems and Songs: Burns (7)
Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ
(8) Nine Greek Dramas (9)
Letters and Treatises of Cicero
Pliny
(10) Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith
(11) Origin of Species: Darwin
(12) Plutarch’s Lives (13)
Aeneid Virgil (14)
Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes
(15) Pilgrim’s Progress. Donne
Herbert. Bunyan, Walton
(16) The Thousand and One Night
(17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm,
Andersen
Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales
(18) Modern English Drama
(19) Faust,
Egmont Etc.
Doctor Faustus,
Goethe,
Marlowe
(20) The Divine Comedy: Dante
(21) I Promessi
Sposi,
Manzoni
(22) The Odyssey: Homer
(23) Two Years Before Mast. Dana
(24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke
(25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill,
- Carlyle
(26) Continental Drama
(27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
(28) Essays. English and American
(29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin (
30) Faraday,
Helmholtz,
Kelvin,
Newcomb,
Geikie
(31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini
(32) Literary and Philosophical Essays:
Montaigne,
Sainte Beuve,
Renan,
Lessing,
Schiller,
Kant,
Mazzini
(33) Voyages and Travels
(34) Descartes,
Voltaire,
Rousseau,
Hobbes
(35) Chronicle and Romance:
Froissart,
Malory,
Holinshed (36)
Machiavelli, the Prince
More,
Luther
(37) Locke,
Berkeley,
Hume
(38) Harvey,
Jenner,
Lister,
Pasteur
(39) Famous Prefaces
(40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray
(41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald
(42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
(43) American Historical Documents
Federalist Papers
Constitution
Bill of Rights
Declaration of Indepedence
(44) Sacred Writings 1
(45) Sacred Writings 2
The Bible
The Quaran
The Analect of Confucius
Mencius
Buddist Writing
Bhaga Vita
Lao Tzo The Tao
(46) Elizabethan Drama 1
(47) Elizabethan Drama 2
(48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal
(49) Epic and Saga (
50) Introduction, Readers Guide,
50 Books to Read Before You Die
Vol 1 starts with Volume One
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane: Emma
Balzac, Honoré de: Father Goriot
Barbusse, Henri: The Inferno
Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Cleland, John: Fanny Hill
Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Joseph: Nostromo
Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage
Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education
Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier
Forster, E. M.: A Room With a View
Forster, E. M.: Howard End
Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls
Gorky, Maxim: The Mother
Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mines
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
Homer: The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow
James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady
Volume 2
– Little Women [Louisa May Alcott]
– Sense and Sensibility [Jane Austen]
– Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) [J.M. Barrie]
– Cabin Fever [ B. M. Bower]
– The Secret Garden [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– A Little Princess [Frances Hodgson Burnett]
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll]
– The King in Yellow [Robert William Chambers]
– The Man Who Knew Too Much [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Woman in White [Wilkie Collins]
– The Most Dangerous Game [Richard Connell]
– Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition [Charles Darwin]
– The Iron Woman [Margaret Deland]
– David Copperfield [Charles Dickens]
– Oliver Twist [Charles Dickens]
– A Tale of Two Cities [Charles Dickens]
– The Double [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– A Room with a View [E. M. Forster]
– Dream Psychology [Sigmund Freud]
– Tess of the d’Urbervilles [Thomas Hardy]
– Siddhartha [Hermann Hesse]
– Dubliners [James Joyce]
– The Fall of the House of Usher [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Arabian Nights [Andrew Lang]
– The Sea Wolf [Jack London]
– The Call of Cthulhu [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– Anne of Green Gables [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– Beyond Good and Evil [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Murders in the Rue Morgue [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Black Cat [Edgar Allan Poe]
– The Raven [Edgar Allan Poe]
– Swann’s Way [Marcel Proust]
– Romeo and Juliet [William Shakespeare]
– Treasure Island [Robert Louis Stevenson]
– The Elements of Style [William Strunk Jr.
Vol 3 finished keeping for the historical record
This book contains the following works arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names.
Starting with volume 3 then will go back and do volumes one, two, and the Harvard classics. The goal is to finish all of these by the end of next year. I almost finished Volume One. Will do some of the WC reading books as well.
– What’s Bred in the Bone [Grant Allen]
– The Golden Ass [Lucius Apuleius]
– Meditations [Marcus Aurelius]
– Northanger Abbey [Jane Austen]
– Lady Susan [Jane Austen]
– The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [Lyman Frank Baum]
– The Art of Public Speaking [Dale Breckenridge Carnegie]
– The Blazing World [Margaret Cavendish]
– The Wisdom of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Heretics [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Donnington Affair [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– The Innocence of Father Brown [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]
– Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [John Cleland]
– The Moonstone [Wilkie Collins]
– Lord Jim [Joseph Conrad]
– The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe]
– The Pickwick Papers [Charles Dickens]
– A Christmas Carol [Charles Dickens]
– Notes From The Underground [Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Gambler par Fyodor [Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky]
– The Lost World [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Hound of the Baskervilles [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Sign of the Four [Arthur Conan Doyle]
– The Man in the Iron Mask [Alexandre Dumas]
– The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas]
– This Side of Paradise [Francis Scott Fitzgerald]
– Curious, If True: Strange Tales [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell]
– King Solomon’s Mines [Henry Rider Haggard]
– The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Victor Hugo]
– Kim [Rudyard Kipling]
– Captain Courageous [Rudyard Kipling]
– The Jungle Book [Rudyard Kipling]
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover [David Herbert Lawrence]
– The Son of the Wolf [Jack London]
– The Einstein Theory of Relativity [Hendrik Antoon Lorentz]
– The Dunwich Horror [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– At the Mountains of Madness [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
– The Prince [Niccolò Machiavelli]
– The Story Girl [Lucy Maud Montgomery]
– The Antichrist [Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche]
– The Republic [Plato]
– The Last Man [Mary Shelley]
– Life On The Mississippi [Mark Twain]
– The Kama Sutra [Vatsyayana]
– In the Year 2889 [Jules Verne]
– Around the World in Eighty Days [Jules Verne]
– Four Just Men [Edgar Wallace]
– Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [Lewis Wallace]
– Jacob’s Room [Virginia Woolf]
Sci-Fi short stories
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a massive anthology of science fiction stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It covers the history and evolution of the genre from the early 20th century to the end of the millennium, featuring works from over 30 countries and many languages. The book contains 105 stories, ranging from classics by H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to lesser-known gems by W.E.B. Du Bois, David R. Bunch, and Liu Cixin. The book also includes comments from the editors and the authors, offering insights into their creative process and vision. The book is divided into 11 sections, each with a thematic focus and chronological order.
Here is the table of contents for the book1:
Goal read one to five per week alternating with Kindle classics and reading poetry collections finish by end of the year
Introduction: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Lens of Time: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing
H.G. Wells: “The Star” (1897)
Lu Xun: “The New Overworld” (1902)
Sultana’s Dream: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
Albert Robida: “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1908)
Miguel de Unamuno: “Mechanopolis” (1913)
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Comet” (1920)
Claude Farrère: “The Fate of the Poseidonia” (1923)
Edmond Hamilton: “The Star Stealers” (1929)
David H. Keller: “The Lost Language” (1934)
Stanislaw Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Jorge Luis Borges: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)
Cixin Liu: “The Poetry Cloud” (1997)
Invasions
Edgar Rice Burroughs: “A Princess of Mars” (1912) excerpt
Leslie F. Stone: “The Conquest of Gola” (1931)
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “A Martian Odyssey” (1934)
John W. Campbell Jr.: “Who Goes There?” (1938)
Ray Bradbury: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)
Katherine MacLean: “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951)
William Tenn: “The Liberation of Earth” (1953)
J.G. Ballard: “The Voices of Time” (1960)
Dino Buzzati: “Catastrophe” (1966)
James Tiptree Jr.: “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Joanna Russ: “When It Changed” (1972)
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “The Spontaneous Reflex” (1973) excerpt
Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild” (1984)
James Patrick Kelly: “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995)
Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)
Ray Bradbury: “The Foghorn” (1951)
Jerome Bixby: “It’s a Good Life” (1953)
Julio Cortázar: “Axolotl” (1956)
J.G. Ballard: “The Drowned Giant” (1964)
R.A. Lafferty: “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966)
Terry Carr: “The Dance of the Changer and the Three” (1968)
Harlan Ellison®: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967)
Lisa Tuttle & George R.R. Martin: “The Storms of Windhaven” (1975)
John Varley: “Air Raid” (1977)
William Gibson: “New Rose Hotel” (1984)
Ted Chiang: “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Experiments
Alfred Jarry: “Elements of Pataphysics” (1911)
Karel Čapek: “R.U.R.” (1920) excerpt
Stanisław Lem: “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” (1955)
William S. Burroughs: “Excerpt from Naked Lunch” (1959)
J.G. Ballard: “Chronopolis” (1960)
Philip K. Dick: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952)
Boris Vian: “Froth on the Daydream” (1947) excerpt
Joanna Russ: “Useful Phrases for the Tourist” (1970)
George Alec Effinger: “Two Sadnesses” (1973)
John Sladek: “Solar Shoe Salesman” (1974)
Dafydd ab Hugh: “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1986)
Generation Ships
Don Wilcox: “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940)
Judith Merril: “Daughters of Earth” (1952)
Brian W. Aldiss: “Non-Stop” (1958) excerpt
Robert Silverberg: “Sundance” (1969)
Pamela Zoline: “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967)
Gene Wolfe: “A Cabin on the Coast” (1984)
Bruce Sterling: “Swarm” (1982)
Geoff Ryman: “The Unconquered Country” (1984)
New Worlds
Cordwainer Smith: “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” (1961)
Samuel R. Delany: “Aye, and Gomorrah …” (1967)
Ursula K. Le Guin: “Vaster Than Empires and Slower” (1971)
James Tiptree Jr.: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1976)
Frederik Pohl: “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” (1972)
Angélica Gorodischer: “Of Navigators and Traitors” (1973) excerpt
John Crowley: “Snow” (1985)
Iain M. Banks: “A Gift from the Culture” (1987)
Greg Egan: “Learning to Be Me” (1990)
Future War
Jack London: “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The Coming Race” (1871) excerpt
George Griffith: “The War of the Viruses” (1895)
Philip Francis Nowlan: “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” (1928)
E.E. “Doc” Smith: “The Skylark of Space” (1928) excerpt
Olaf Stapledon: “Star Maker” (1937) excerpt
Robert A. Heinlein: “Solution Unsatisfactory” (1941)
C.M. Kornbluth: “Two Dooms” (1958)
Joe Haldeman: “Hero” (1972)
Harry Harrison: “The Streets of Ashkelon” (1962)
David R. Bunch: “Moderan” (1967)
Harlan Ellison®: “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)
James S.A. Corey: “Rates of Change” (2011)
Virtual Reality
Stanisław Lem: “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” (1965)
Philip K. Dick: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)
John Brunner: “The Vitanuls” (1967)
Roger Zelazny: “For a Breath I Tarry” (1966)
Robert Silverberg: “Passengers” (1968)
Rudy Rucker: “Software” (1982) excerpt
William Gibson: “Burning Chrome” (1982)
Pat Cadigan: “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
Neal Stephenson: “Snow Crash” (1992) excerpt
Humanity 2.0
Olaf Stapledon: “Odd John” (1935) excerpt
C.L. Moore: “No Woman Born” (1944)
Cordwainer Smith: “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950)
Algis Budrys: “Who?” (1955)
James Blish: “Surface Tension” (1952)
Gregory Benford: “Blood Music” (1983)
Bruce Sterling: “Mozart in Mirrorshades” (1985)
Vernor Vinge: “True Names” (1981)
Ted Chiang: “Understand” (1991)
Alien Minds
Arthur C. Clarke: “The Sentinel” (1951)
Isaac Asimov: “The Last Question” (1956)
Clifford D. Simak: “Desertion” (1944)
James H. Schmitz: “Grandpa” (1955)
Frank Herbert: “Try to Remember!” (1961)
Philip José Farmer: “Sail On! Sail On!” (1952)
Stanisław Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic” (1972) excerpt
Karen Joy Fowler & Pat Murphy: “Rachel in Love” (1987)
Ian McDonald: “The Tear” (2008)
After the End
- Walter M. Miller Jr.
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
BOLD read
Edward Lee Masters.
The Hil
Fiddler. Jones,
Petite the Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood’s Party.
James Weldon Johnson
The Creation
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The Poet
Life
Life’s Trajedy
Robert Frost.
The Death Of The Hired Man.
Mending Wall.
Birches
Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.
Tree In My Window.
Directive.
Amy Lowell
Patterns.
Getrude Stein
Susie Asado.
From Tender Buttons A Box.
From Tender Buttons, A Plate.
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
I sit and sew .
Carl Sandburg.
Grass.
Cahoots.
Wallace Stevens.
Peter Quince at the Clavier.
Disillusionment of 10:00.
13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird.
Emperor Of Ice Cream.
A Mere Being.
Angelina Weld Grimke
Fragment.
William Carlos Williams.
Tact.
Dance Ruse
The Yachts.
From Apostlethat Greeny Flower Book 1, Lines 1 To 92.
Sarah Teasdale.
Moonlight.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
Erza Pound
The Jewel Stairs Grievance.
The River Merchants Wife Letter.
In A Station At The Metro.
Hugh Selwyn Mulberry.
From Conto. 56 Libretto Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle, HD.
Sea Rose.
The Helen.
From The Walls Do Not Fall An Incident Here And There.
From Hermeneutic Definition Red Rose And A Beggar. Why Did You Come?
Take Me Anywhere.
Venicc. Venus.
Robinson, Jeffers.
Gala in April.
Shine, Perishing Republic.
Cloudss at Evening.
Credo
Mararane Moore
Fish.
Poetry.
Poetry.
TS, Elliott.
Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The Wasteland.
Claude McKay.
If We Must Die.
Harlem Dancer.
Archibald MacLeash,
Arts Poetica
Edna, Saint Vincent Millay.
First Fig
Recuerdo
E E Cummings.
In Just.
Buffalo Bill
The Cambridge Ladies Have Lived In Furnished Souls.
Next To, Of Course, God, America.
Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled Gladly Beyond.
Rpophessagr
Gene Toomor.
Reapers.
November Cotton Flowers.
Portrait in Georgia.
Louise Bogan
Medusa.
New moon.
Melvin B Tolson
Dark Symphony.
From Harlem Gallery PSI Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table.
Hart Crane
From the Bridge
Poem to Brooklyn Bridge
From 11 Powhatan’s Daughter the River.
Robert Francis.
Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
Nego speaks of rivers.
I, Too.
Dreams Boogie.
Harlem
Countee Cullan
Incident
To John Keats Poet at Springtime
Yes I Do Marvel
From the Dark Tower
Stanley Kutitz
Father and Son
The Protrait
Touch Me
WH Auden
Mussee Des Beaux Arts
Epitah on a Tryant
Theordore Roethke
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
In a Dark Time
Charles Olson.
From The Maximum Poems One Maximum Of Gloucester To You.
The Distances.
Elizabeth Bishop.
The Fish
Sestina
First Death In Nova Scotia.
Visit To Saint Elizabeths.
One Art.
Robert Hayden.
Morning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday.
Those Winter Sundays.
Frederick Douglass.
Middle Passage.
Muriel Rukeyser?
Effort At Speech Between Two People. ‘
Then I Saw What The Calling Was.
The Poem as Mask
Delmore Swartz.
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.
John Barryman.
From Dream Songs.
Feeling Your Compact And Delicious Body. ‘
Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So.
There Shut Down Once. ‘
This World Is Gradually Becoming A Place.
Henry’sUnderstanding
Randall, Jarell.
90 North.
The Death Of The Bell Turret Gunner.
The Woman At The Washington Zoo.
Next Day.
Weldon Kees.
To My Daughter?
Dudley Randall
A Different Image
William Stafford.
Traveling Through The Dark.
At The Bomb Testing Site.
Ruth Stone.
Scars.
Margaret Walker.
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Mother.
A Song In The Front Yard. ‘
The Bean Eaters
The Lovers Of The Poor.
We Real Cool. ‘
The Blackstone Rangers.
Robert Lowell.
To Speak Of Woe That Is In Marriage.
Skunk Hour .
For The Union Dead.
Robert Duncan.
Often I’m Permitted To Return To A Medow.
My Mother Would Be A Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto.
William Meredith.
Parents. Howard Nemeroff.
Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry.
Hayden Caruth.
The Hyacinth Gardens In Brooklyn.
August 1945.
Richard Wilber
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Cottage Street
The Writer
James Dickey
The Sheep Child
Alan Duncan.
Love song I And Thou
Anthony Act.
More light, More light.
Richard Hugo.
The Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.
The Freaks at Spring General Rd. Field.
Dennis Levertov.
The Unwritten Poem
Cademon.
Swan in Falling snow.
Who is Simpson?
American Poetry.
Carolyn Kaiser.
A Muse of water.
Kenneth Koch.
Fresh air.
Permanently.
Maxine Coleman.
Morning Swim.
How Is It?
Gerald Stern.
Behaving Like A Jew.
The Dancing.
Another Insane Devotion.
AR Ammons.
The City Limits.
Corson Inlet.
Robert Blye.
Snowfall In The Afternoon.
Driving Into Town Late To Mail A Letter.
Walking From Sleep.
Robert Creeley.
The Flower.
I Know A Man.
The Language.
The Rain.
Bresson’s Movies.
James Merrill.
Victor Dog.
Frank O’Hara New York School.
Steps.
Poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.
The Day Lady Died.
John Ashberry. New York School
Some Trees.
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror.
What Is Poetry?
Galway, Kennel.
The Bear.`
After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps.
Saint Francis And The Soul.
Ws Merwin.
Air.
For The Anniversary Of My Death.
Yesterday.
Chord .
James Wright.
A Blessing.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Oh.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Mn.
In Response To The Rumor That Otis Warehouse In Wheeling, Wv Has Been Condemned.
Donald Hall.
My Son, My Executioner.
Digging.
Philip Levine.
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives.
They Feed They Lion.
You Can Have It.
The Simple Truth.
Anne Sexton.
Her Kind
Adoption.
Waiting To Die.
In Celebration Of My Uterus.
Rowing
Adrienne Rich.
Orion
Planetarium.
A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning.
From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules Of Break Like A Thermometer.
Gregory Corso.
Marriage
Gary Snyder.
Hay, For The Horses.
Riprap.
Mid August As Sourdough Mountain Lookout.
Dereck Walcott.
A Far Cry From Africa.
Sea Grapes.
Find The Schooner Flight Part 11 After The Storm. There’s A Fresh Light That Follows.
The Light Of The World.
From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing Of Quiet,Achiles, Afrolabe’s Son.
Miller Williams.
Let Me tell you.
Etheridge Knight
Idea Of Ancestry.
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones.
Preface To A 20 Volume Suicide Note.
Agony As Now.
SOS.
Black Art.
Ted Berrigon .
Wrong Rain.
A Final Sonnet
Andre Lorde.
Power.
Sonia Sanchez.
Poetry at 30.
Mark Strand.
The Prediction.
The Night, The Porch.
Russell Edson.
A Stone Is Nobody’s.
Mary Oliver.
Singapore.
The Summer’s Day.
Charles Wright.
Reunion.
Dead Color.
California Dreaming.
Lucile Clifton.
Homage To My Hips.
At Least At Last We Killed The Roaches.
The Death Of Fry, Alfred Clifton.
To My Last.
June, Jordan.
Home About My Rights.
Frederick Seidel.
1968.
CK Williams.
Find My Window.
Blades
Tynan Wilkowski.’
The Mechanic.
Michael S Harper.
Dear John. Dear Coltrane.
Last Affair. Bessies Blues Song.
Grandfather.
Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
Charles Simik .
Stone.
Fork.
Classic Ballroom Dances.
Paula Gunn Allen.
Grandmother.
Frank Bidart.
Ellen West.
Carl Dennis.
Spring Letter.
Two Or Three Wishes.
Stephen Dunn.
Allegory Of The Cave.
Tucson.
Robert Pensky.
History Of My Heart.
The Questions.
Samurai Song.
James Welch.
Christmas Comes To Moccasin Flat.
Billy Collins.
Introduction To Poetry.
The Dead.
Toi Derricote .
Allen Ginsberg.
The Weakness.
Stephen Dobyns.
How To Like It?
Lullaby.
Robert Hass.
Song.
That Photographer?
Return Of Robinson Jeffers.
Lyn Hejinian
From My Life trim With Colored Ribbons.
BH Fairchild.
The Machinist Teaching His Daughter To Play The Piano.
Haik R Madhubuti Don L Lee.
But He Was Cool Or Even Stopped For Green Lights.
Upon To Compliment Other Poems.
William Matthews.
In Memory Of The Utah Stars.
The Accompanist
. Sharon Olds
The Language Of The Brag.
The Lifting.
Henry Taylor.
Barbed Wire.
Tess Gallagher.
Black, Silver.
Under Stars.
Michael Palmer.
I Do Not.
James Tate.
The Lost Pilot.
Norman Dubie.
Elizabeth War With The Christmas Bear.
The Funeral.
Carol Muske Dukes,.
August, Los Angeles Lullaby.
Kay Ryan.
Turtle
Bestiary
Larry Levis.
Childhood Ideogram
Winter Stars
Adrian C Lousis
Looking For Judas
How much lux?
The People of the Other Village.
Marilyn Nelson.
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.
Star Fix.
Run Stilleman
Albany
AI
Cuba 1963
The Kid
Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
Thanks
To Do Street
Facing It
Nude Interogation
Nathaniel Mc Kay
Song of the Aduumboulou
Gregory Orr
Gathering the Bones Together
Two Lines From the Brother Grimm
Origin of the Marble Forrest
Robert Hill Whiteman
Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
Away
Heather Mc Hugh
Language Lesson 1976
What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
In Cold Storm Light
Olga Boumas
Calypso
Victor Hernadez Soul
Latin and Soul
Jane Miller
Miami Heart
David St. James
Iris
CD Wright
Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
Girl Friend Poe # 3
Crescent
Carolyn Forche
Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
She Had Some Horses
My House is Red Earth
Garret Honjo
The Legend
Andrew Hugins
Beggoten
We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Peggen Kelly
Imaging Their Own Hyms
Song
Paul Muldoon
Meeting the British
Errata
The Throwback
Judith Orez Coffer
Quinceanera
Rita Dove
Parsley
Day Star
After Reading Mikey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
Our Calling
Barbara Hamby
Thinking of Galileo
Hatred
Mark Jarman
Unholy Sonnet
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Traveling Onion
Arabic
Wedding Cake
Alberto Rios
Nani
England Finally like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
Nocturne Blue Waves
The Unfinished
Gary Sotto
Field Poem
Oranges
Black Hair
Susan Stewart
Yellow Star and Ice
The Forrest
Mark Dotty
Brillance
Esta Noche
Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
Black Nikes
Franz Wright
Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
To My Brother
Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Little Clowns, My Heart.
Cornelius, Eady.
Jack Johnson Does The Eagle Rock.
Crows In A Strong Wind.
I’m A Fool To Love You.
Louise Eldritch
. Indian Boarding School. The Runaways.
David Mason.
Spooning.
Marilyn Chin.
How I Got That Name?
Compose Near The Bay Bridge
The Survivor
Cathy Song .
The Youngest Daughter.
Ann Finch.
Another Reluctance.
Insert
Lee Young Lee.
The Gift
Eating Together.
Carl Phillips
Our Lady
As From a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
Bag of Mice
Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
The Viena Hott not
Reetika Vazirani
From White Elephants
A million Balconies
Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
What the Orphan Inherits
The Pow Wow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethewey
Hot Combs
Amateur Fighter
Flounder
A E Stallings
The Tantrum
Joana Klink
Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
Post feminism
Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
Quivira City Limits
Everywhere is Out of Town
Whatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
At Pegasus
Lady Sings the Blues
Sci-Fi short stories
The Big Book of Science Fiction is a massive anthology of science fiction stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It covers the history and evolution of the genre from the early 20th century to the end of the millennium, featuring works from over 30 countries and many languages. The book contains 105 stories, ranging from classics by H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to lesser-known gems by W.E.B. Du Bois, David R. Bunch, and Liu Cixin. The book also includes comments from the editors and the authors, offering insights into their creative process and vision. The book is divided into 11 sections, each with a thematic focus and a chronological order.
Here is the table of contents for the book1:
Introduction: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Lens of Time: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing
H.G. Wells: “The Star” (1897)
Lu Xun: “The New Overworld” (1902)
Sultana’s Dream: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)
Albert Robida: “The Triumph of Mechanics” (1908)
Miguel de Unamuno: “Mechanopolis” (1913)
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The Comet” (1920)
Claude Farrère: “The Fate of the Poseidonia” (1923)
Edmond Hamilton: “The Star Stealers” (1929)
David H. Keller: “The Lost Language” (1934)
Stanislaw Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Jorge Luis Borges: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940)
Cixin Liu: “The Poetry Cloud” (1997)
Invasions
Edgar Rice Burroughs: “A Princess of Mars” (1912) excerpt
Leslie F. Stone: “The Conquest of Gola” (1931)
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “A Martian Odyssey” (1934)
John W. Campbell Jr.: “Who Goes There?” (1938)
Ray Bradbury: “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” (1949)
Katherine MacLean: “Pictures Don’t Lie” (1951)
William Tenn: “The Liberation of Earth” (1953)
J.G. Ballard: “The Voices of Time” (1960)
Dino Buzzati: “Catastrophe” (1966)
James Tiptree Jr.: “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Joanna Russ: “When It Changed” (1972)
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “The Spontaneous Reflex” (1973) excerpt
Octavia Butler: “Bloodchild” (1984)
James Patrick Kelly: “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995)
Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)
Ray Bradbury: “The Foghorn” (1951)
Jerome Bixby: “It’s a Good Life” (1953)
Julio Cortázar: “Axolotl” (1956)
J.G. Ballard: “The Drowned Giant” (1964)
R.A. Lafferty: “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” (1966)
Terry Carr: “The Dance of the Changer and the Three” (1968)
Harlan Ellison®: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967)
Lisa Tuttle & George R.R. Martin: “The Storms of Windhaven” (1975)
John Varley: “Air Raid” (1977)
William Gibson: “New Rose Hotel” (1984)
Ted Chiang: “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Experiments
Alfred Jarry: “Elements of Pataphysics” (1911)
Karel Čapek: “R.U.R.” (1920) excerpt
Stanisław Lem: “How Erg the Self-Inducting Slew a Paleface” (1955)
William S. Burroughs: “Excerpt from Naked Lunch” (1959)
J.G. Ballard: “Chronopolis” (1960)
Philip K. Dick: “Beyond Lies the Wub” (1952)
Boris Vian: “Froth on the Daydream” (1947) excerpt
Joanna Russ: “Useful Phrases for the Tourist” (1970)
George Alec Effinger: “Two Sadnesses” (1973)
John Sladek: “Solar Shoe Salesman” (1974)
Dafydd ab Hugh: “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1986)
Generation Ships
Don Wilcox: “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940)
Judith Merril: “Daughters of Earth” (1952)
Brian W. Aldiss: “Non-Stop” (1958) excerpt
Robert Silverberg: “Sundance” (1969)
Pamela Zoline: “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967)
Gene Wolfe: “A Cabin on the Coast” (1984)
Bruce Sterling: “Swarm” (1982)
Geoff Ryman: “The Unconquered Country” (1984)
New Worlds
Cordwainer Smith: “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” (1961)
Samuel R. Delany: “Aye, and Gomorrah …” (1967)
Ursula K. Le Guin: “Vaster Than Empires and Slower” (1971)
James Tiptree Jr.: “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (1976)
Frederik Pohl: “The Gold at the Starbow’s End” (1972)
Angélica Gorodischer: “Of Navigators and Traitors” (1973) excerpt
John Crowley: “Snow” (1985)
Iain M. Banks: “A Gift from the Culture” (1987)
Greg Egan: “Learning to Be Me” (1990)
Future War
Jack London: “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1910)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The Coming Race” (1871) excerpt
George Griffith: “The War of the Viruses” (1895)
Philip Francis Nowlan: “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” (1928)
E.E. “Doc” Smith: “The Skylark of Space” (1928) excerpt
Olaf Stapledon: “Star Maker” (1937) excerpt
Robert A. Heinlein: “Solution Unsatisfactory” (1941)
C.M. Kornbluth: “Two Dooms” (1958)
Joe Haldeman: “Hero” (1972)
Harry Harrison: “The Streets of Ashkelon” (1962)
David R. Bunch: “Moderan” (1967)
Harlan Ellison®: “A Boy and His Dog” (1969)
James S.A. Corey: “Rates of Change” (2011)
Virtual Reality
Stanisław Lem: “The Seventh Sally or How Trurl’s Own Perfection Led to No Good” (1965)
Philip K. Dick: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)
John Brunner: “The Vitanuls” (1967)
Roger Zelazny: “For a Breath I Tarry” (1966)
Robert Silverberg: “Passengers” (1968)
Rudy Rucker: “Software” (1982) excerpt
William Gibson: “Burning Chrome” (1982)
Pat Cadigan: “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986)
Neal Stephenson: “Snow Crash” (1992) excerpt
Humanity 2.0
Olaf Stapledon: “Odd John” (1935) excerpt
C.L. Moore: “No Woman Born” (1944)
Cordwainer Smith: “Scanners Live in Vain” (1950)
Algis Budrys: “Who?” (1955)
James Blish: “Surface Tension” (1952)
Gregory Benford: “Blood Music” (1983)
Bruce Sterling: “Mozart in Mirrorshades” (1985)
Vernor Vinge: “True Names” (1981)
Ted Chiang: “Understand” (1991)
Alien Minds
Arthur C. Clarke: “The Sentinel” (1951)
Isaac Asimov: “The Last Question” (1956)
Clifford D. Simak: “Desertion” (1944)
James H. Schmitz: “Grandpa” (1955)
Frank Herbert: “Try to Remember!” (1961)
Philip José Farmer: “Sail On! Sail On!” (1952)
Stanisław Lem: “Solaris” (1961) excerpt
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic” (1972) excerpt
Karen Joy Fowler & Pat Murphy: “Rachel in Love” (1987)
Ian McDonald: “The Tear” (2008)
After the End
Walter M. Miller Jr.: “The Darfsteller” (1955) J.G. Ballard: “The Terminal Beach” (1964) John Wyndham: ”
Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry
BOLD read
Edward Lee Masters.
The Hil
Fiddler. Jones,
Petite the Poet
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy
Mr. Flood’s Party.
James Weldon Johnson
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Paul Laurence Dunbar.
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Robert Frost.
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Birches
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Tree In My Window.
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From Tender Buttons A Box.
From Tender Buttons, A Plate.
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Angelina Weld Grimke
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Moonlight.
There Will Come Soft Rains.
Erza Pound
The Jewel Stairs Grievance.
The River Merchants Wife Letter.
In A Station At The Metro.
Hugh Selwyn Mulberry.
From Conto. 56 Libretto Yet Ere This Season Died A Cold
Hilda Doolittle, HD.
Sea Rose.
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First Fig
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E E Cummings.
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Buffalo Bill
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Next To, Of Course, God, America.
Somewhere I’ve Never Travelled Gladly Beyond.
Rpophessagr
Gene Toomor.
Reapers.
November Cotton Flowers.
Portrait in Georgia.
Louise Bogan
Medusa.
New moon.
Melvin B Tolson
Dark Symphony.
From Harlem Gallery PSI Black Boys, Let Me Get Up From The White Man’s Table.
Hart Crane
From the Bridge
Poem to Brooklyn Bridge
From 11 Powhatan’s Daughter the River.
Robert Francis.
Silent Poem
Langston Hughes
Nego speaks of rivers.
I, Too.
Dreams Boogie.
Harlem
Countee Cullan
Incident
To John Keats Poet at Spring Time
Yes I Do Marvel
From the Dark Tower
Stanley Kutitz
Father and Son
The Protrait
Touch Me
WH Auden
Mussee Des Beaux Arts
Epitah on a Tryant
Theordore Roethke
My Papa’s Waltz
The Waking
In a Dark Time
Charles Olson.
From The Maximum Poems One Maximum Of Gloucester To You.
The Distances.
Elizabeth Bishop.
The Fish
Sestina
First Death In Nova Scotia.
Visit To Saint Elizabeths.
One Art.
Robert Hayden.
Morning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday.
Those Winter Sundays.
Frederick Douglass.
Middle Passage.
Muriel Rukeyser?
Effort At Speech Between Two People. ‘
Then I Saw What The Calling Was.
The Poem as Mask
Delmore Swartz.
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me.
John Barryman.
From The Dream Songs.
Feeling Your Compact And Delicious Body. ‘
Life, Friends, Is Boring. We Must Not Say So.
There Shut Down Once. ‘
This World Is Gradually Becoming A Place.
Henry’sUnderstanding
Randall, Jarell.
90 North.
The Death Of The Bell Turret Gunner.
The Woman At The Washington Zoo.
Next Day.
Weldon Kees.
To My Daughter?
Dudley Randall
A Different Image
William Stafford.
Traveling Through The Dark.
At The Bomb Testing Site.
Ruth Stone.
Scars.
Margaret Walker.
For My People
Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Mother.
A Song In The Front Yard. ‘
The Bean Eaters
The Lovers Of The Poor.
We Real Cool. ‘
The Blackstone Rangers.
Robert Lowell.
To Speak Of Woe That Is In Marriage.
Skunk Hour .
For The Union Dead.
Robert Duncan.
Often I’m Permitted To Return To A Medow.
My Mother Would Be A Falconress
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto.
William Meredith.
Parents. Howard Nemeroff.
Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry.
Hayden Caruth.
The Hyacinth Gardens In Brooklyn.
August 1945.
Richard Wilber
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
Cottage Street
The Writer
James Dickey
The Sheep Child
Alan Duncan.
Love song I And Thou
Anthony Act.
More light, More light.
Richard Hugo.
The Degrees of Gray in Phillipsburg.
The Freaks at Spring General Rd. Field.
Dennis Levertov.
The Poem Unwritten
Cademon.
Swan in Falling snow.
Who is Simpson?
American Poetry.
Carolyn Kaiser.
A Muse of water.
Kenneth Koch.
Fresh air.
Permanently.
Maxine Coleman.
Morning Swim.
How It Is?
Gerald Stern.
Behaving Like A Jew.
The Dancing.
Another Insane Devotion.
AR Ammons.
The City Limits.
Corson Inlet.
Robert Blye.
Snowfall In The Afternoon.
Driving Into Town Late To Mail A Letter.
Walking From Sleep.
Robert Creeley.
The Flower.
I Know A Man.
The Language.
The Rain.
Bresson’s Movies.
James Merrill.
Victor Dog.
Frank O’Hara New York School.
Steps.
Poem Lana Turner Has Collapsed.
The Day Lady Died.
John Ashberry. New York School
Some Trees.
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror.
What Is Poetry?
Galway, Kennel.
The Bear.`
After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps.
Saint Francis And The Soul.
Ws Merwin.
Air.
For The Anniversary Of My Death.
Yesterday.
Chord .
James Wright.
A Blessing.
Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Oh.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Mn.
In Response To The Rumor That Otis Warehouse In Wheeling, Wv Has Been Condemned.
Donald Hall.
My Son, My Executioner.
Digging.
Philip Levine.
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives.
They Feed They Lion.
You Can Have It.
The Simple Truth.
Anne Sexton.
Her Kind
Adoption.
Waiting To Die.
In Celebration Of My Uterus.
Rowing
Adrienne Rich.
Orion
Planetarium.
A Valedictorian Forbidding Mourning.
From 21 Love Poems 13 The Rules Of Break Like A Thermometer.
Gregory Corso.
Marriage
Gary Snyder.
Hay, For The Horses.
Riprap.
Mid August As Sourdough Mountain Lookout.
Dereck Walcott.
A Far Cry From Africa.
Sea Grapes.
Find The Schooner Flight Part 11 After The Storm. There’s A Fresh Light That Follows.
The Light Of The World.
From Omeros Book. 7. 44 I Sing Of Quiet,Achiles, Afrolabe’s Son.
Miller Williams.
Let Me tell you.
Etheridge Knight
Idea Of Ancestry.
Amira Baraka, Leroy Jones.
Preface To A 20 Volume Suicide Note.
Agony As Now.
SOS.
Black Art.
Ted Berrigon .
Wrong Rain.
A Final Sonnet
Andre Lorde.
Power.
Sonia Sanchez.
Poetry at 30.
Mark Strand.
The Prediction.
The Night, The Porch.
Russell Edson.
A Stone Is Nobody’s.
Mary Oliver.
Singapore.
The Summer’s Day.
Charles Wright.
Reunion.
Dead Color.
California Dreaming.
Lucile Clifton.
Homage To My Hips.
At Least At Last We Killed The Roaches.
The Death Of Fry, Alfred Clifton.
To My Last.
June, Jordan.
Home About My Rights.
Frederick Seidel.
1968.
CK Williams.
Find My Window.
Blades
Tynan Wilkowski.’
The Mechanic.
Michael S Harper.
Dear John. Dear Coltrane.
Last Affair. Bessies Blues Song.
Grandfather.
Nightmare Begins Responsibility.
Charles Simik .
Stone.
Fork.
Classic Ballroom Dances.
Paula Gunn Allen.
Grandmother.
Frank Bidart.
Ellen West.
Carl Dennis.
Spring Letter.
Two Or Three Wishes.
Stephen Dunn.
Allegory Of The Cave.
Tucson.
Robert Pensky.
History Of My Heart.
The Questions.
Samurai Song.
James Welch.
Christmas Comes To Moccasin Flat.
Billy Collins.
Introduction To Poetry.
The Dead.
Toi Derricote .
Allen Ginsberg.
The Weakness.
Stephen Dobyns.
How To Like It?
Lullaby.
Robert Hass.
Song.
That Photographer?
Return Of Robinson Jeffers.
Lyn Hejinian
From My Life trim With Colored Ribbons.
BH Fairchild.
The Machinist Teaching His Daughter To Play The Piano.
Haki R Madhubuti Don L Lee.
But He Was Cool Or Even Stopped For Green Lights.
Upon To Compliment Other Poems.
William Matthews.
In Memory Of The Utah Stars.
The Accompanist
. Sharon Olds
The Language Of The Brag.
The Lifting.
Henry Taylor.
Barbed Wire.
Tess Gallagher.
Black, Silver.
Under Stars.
Michael Palmer.
I Do Not.
James Tate.
The Lost Pilot.
Norman Dubie.
Elizabeth War With The Christmas Bear.
The Funeral.
Carol Muske Dukes,.
August, Los Angeles Lullaby.
Kay Ryan.
Turtle
Bestiary
Larry Levis.
Childhood Ideogram
Winter Stars
Adrian C Lousis
Looking For Judas
How much lux?
The People of the Other Village.
Marilyn Nelson.
The Ballad of Aunt Geneva.
Star Fix.
Run Stilleman
Albany
AI
Cuba 1963
The Kid
Finished
Yusef Komunyakaa
Thanks
To Do Street
Facing It
Nude Interogation
Nathaniel Mc Kay
Song of the Aduumboulou
Gregory Orr
Gathering the Bones Together
Two Lines From the Brother Grimm
Origin of the Marble Forrest
Robert Hill Whiteman
Reaching Yellow River
Albert Goldbarth
Away
Heather Mc Hugh
Language Lesson 1976
What He Thought
Leslie Marmon Silko
In Cold Storm Light
Olga Boumas
Calypso
Victor Hernadez Soul
Latin and Soul
Jane Miller
Miami Heart
David St. James
Iris
CD Wright
Why Ralph Refuses to Dance
Girl Friend Poe # 3
Crescent
Carolyn Forche
Taking Off My Clothes
Jorie Graham
San Sepolcro
Marie Howe
What the Living Do
Joy Harjo
She Had Some Horses
My House is the Red Earth
Garret Honjo
The Legend
Andrew Hugins
Beggoten
We Were Simply Talking
Brigit Peggen Kelly
Imaging Their Own Hyms
Song
Paul Muldoon
Meeting the British
Errata
The Throwback
Judith Orez Coffer
Quinceanera
Rita Dove
Parsely
Day Star
After Reading Mikey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed
Alice Fulton
Our Calling
Brbar Hamby
Thinking of Galieo
Hatred
Mark Jarman
Unholly Sonnet
Naomi Shibab Nye
The Traveling Onion
Arabic
Wedding Cake
Alberto Rios
Nani
Enland Finally like My Mother Always Said We Would
Laurie Sheck
Nocturne Blue Waves
The Unfinished
Gary Sotto
Field Poem
Oranges
Black Hair
Susan Stewart
Yellow Star and Ice
The Forrest
Mark Dotty
Brillance
Esta Noche
Bill’s Story
Harryette Mullen
Black Nikes
Franz Wright
Alcohol
Lorna Dee Cervantes
To My Brother
Love of My Flesh, Living Death
Sandra Cisneros.
My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
Little Clowns, My Heart.
Cornelius, Eady.
Jack Johnson Does The Eagle Rock.
Crows In A Strong Wind.
I’m A Fool To Love You.
Louise Eldritch
. Indian Boarding School. The Runaways.
David Mason.
Spooning.
Marilyn Chin.
How I Got That Name?
Compose Near The Bay Bridge
The Survivor
Cathysong .
The Youngest Daughter.
Ann Finch.
Another Reluctance.
Insert
Lee Young Lee.
The Gift
Eating Together.
Carl Philiphs
Our Lady
As From a Quiver of Arrows
Nick Flynn
Bag of Mice
Cartoon Physics
Elizabeth Alexander
The Viena Hottenot
Reetivka Vazisrani
From White Elephants
A million Balconies
Train Windows
Sherman Alexie
What the Orphan Inherits
The Pow Wow at the End of the World
Natasha Trethevey
Hot Combs
Amateur Fighter
Flounder
A E Stallings
The Tantrum
Joana Klink
Spare
Brenda Shaughnessy
Postfeminism
Your One Good Dress
Kevin Young
Quivra City Limits
Everywhere is Out of Town
Whaatever You Want
Terrance Hayes
At Pegasus
Lady Sings the Blues
Monthly Themes enter one review per month
January
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Read
#1: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#2: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
#4: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
#5: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#6: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
#7: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
#8: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
#9: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
10: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#11: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#12: The Stranger by Albert Camus
#13: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
#14: Animal Farm by George Orwell
#15: Watership Down by Richard Adams
#16: Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#17: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#18: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#19: 1984 by George Orwell
#20: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
#24: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
#26: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Not read
#3: Night by Elie Wiesel
#21: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#22: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#23: Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges#25: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
16 Famous Books Everyone Pretends They’ve Read (But Haven’t)
Read
Moby-Dickby Herman Melville
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1984 by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
F Scott Fitsgerald the Great Gatsby
F Scott Fitsgerald This Side of Paradise
Yet to Read
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
F Scott Fitsgerald Tender is the Night
F Scott Fitsgerald The Last Tycoon
25 Classic Books You Have to Read in 2025
Read
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
1984 by George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Odyssey by Homer
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
CS Lewis Prince Caspian
CS Lewis the Voyage of the Dawn Begal
CS Lewis the Horse and His Boy
CS Lewis the the Magican’s Newphew
CS Lewis the Silver Chair
CS Lewis The Final Battle
Willa Cather My Antonio
Alice Walker The Color Purple
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The classic books everyone should read at least once before they die
Read
#35. The Old Man and the Sea
– Author: Ernest Hemingway
- The Canterbury Tales
– Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
#33. Othello
– Author: William Shakespeare
#32. Flowers for Algernon
– Author: Daniel Keyes
#30. A Tale of Two Cities
– Author: Charles Dickens
#30. A Tale of Two Cities
– Author: Charles Dickens
#31. Beowulf
– Author: Unknown
#29. Wuthering Heights
– Author: Emily Brontë
#28. The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings, #0)
– Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
#27. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
– Author: William Shakespeare
#26. The Grapes of Wrath
– Author: John Steinbeck
#25. Great Expectations
– Author: Charles Dickens
#24. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
– Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#23. Julius Caesar
– Author: William Shakespeare
#22. The Outsiders
– Author: S.E. Hinton
#21. Brave New World
– Author: Aldous Huxley
#19. The Crucible
– Author: Arthur Miller
#17. Jane Eyre
– Author: Charlotte Brontë
#16. Fahrenheit 451
– Author: Ray Bradbury
#15. Pride and Prejudice
– Author: Jane Austen
#14. The Odyssey
– Author: Homer
#12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
– Author: Mark Twain
#11. 1984
– Author: George Orwell
#10. The Scarlet Letter
– Author: Nathaniel Hawthorn
#9. Hamlet
– Author: William Shakespeare
#8. The Catcher in the Rye
– Author: J.D. Salinger
#7. Of Mice and Men
– Author: John Steinbeck
#6. Macbeth
– Author: William Shakespeare
#5. Animal Farm
– Author: George Orwel
#4. Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
#2. Romeo and Juliet
– Author: William Shakespeare
#1. To Kill a Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
100 thriller novels everyone should read at least once
2024’s top 100 books: How many did you read? – jakecaller@gmail.com – Gmail
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1955: ‘Marjorie Morningstar’ by Herman Wouk©Goodreads
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0
3. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein (1974)
The imagination and artistry of Shel Silverstein are on full display in this classic collection of short stories and poems. Where the Sidewalk Ends is truly one of the best poetry books of all time because of its staying power for children and adults alike. Whimsical and masterful, the stories of this American poet, author, singer, and folk artist have something for everyone.
4. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (1966)
Sex and drugs have a common allure, but they also have a common endgame: a downward spiral. In Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann offers in lurid detail the stories of three young women who want nothing more than to reach the pinnacle of life. But just as they see it in their grasp, they lose it all in a coil of sex, lust, romance, and abandonment. This page-turner is one of those classic beach reads you won’t be able to put down, and it paved the way for similar scintillating vacation books.
5. The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
The master of suspense must be included in any list of books you should read in a lifetime. That’s why you’ll find Stephen King’s The Shining here. Brought to life in cinematic perfection by Jack Nicholson, Jack Torrance is a middle-aged man looking for a fresh start. He thinks he’s found it when he lands a job as the off-season caretaker at an idyllic old hotel, the Overlook. But as snow piles higher outside, the secluded location begins to feel more confining and sinister, less freeing and more provoking. Horror fans, take note: This is one of the scariest and best Stephen King books of all time.
6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943) on my 50 Books to read List
7. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
70 The Handmaids Tale By Margaret Atwood Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
8. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
9. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
11. All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974)
12. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)
13. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
14. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)
15. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (2007)
16. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) plus rest of the series
17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
20 Daring Greatly How The Courage To Be Vulnerable Transforms The Way We Live, Love, Parent, And Lead By Brené Brow© Provided by Reader’s Digest
18. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown (2012)
19. 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
20. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (1996)
21. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988)
22. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
23. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000)
24. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997) plus rest of the Series
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by J.K. Rowling
25. Selected Stories, 1968–1994 by Alice Munro (1996)
65 The Fault In Our Stars By John Green Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
26. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (2012)
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865)
28. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
29. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
30. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)
31. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
32. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2000)
35. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009)
36. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)
37. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)
38. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
39. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
40. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
41. Love Medicine by Louise Eldrich (1984)
42. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)
43. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
44. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
45. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
46. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (2003)
47. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
48. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
49. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (1937)
50. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)
51. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
52. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
53. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)
54. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
55. The Age of Innocence by Edith Warton (1920)
56. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
57. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
58. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)
59. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
60. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
61. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride (1995)
62. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989)
63. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
64. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson (2003)
65. The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
66. The Night Watchmen by Louise Erdrich (2020)
67. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1995)
68. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
69. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
70. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
71. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr (1995)
72. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (1953)
73. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (2006)
74. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Olive Sacks (1985)
75. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (2006)
76. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (1974)
77. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (1979)
78. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953)
84 The Road By Cormac Mccarthy Via Amazon© Provided by Reader’s Digest
79. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
80. The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
81. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
82. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
83. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990)
84. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1994)
85. The World According to Garp by John Irving (1978) plus rest of his works
86. Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1603) plus rest of his plays
87. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
88. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
89. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
90. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
91. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
92. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)
93. Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
94. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
95. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1950) plus rest of the series
96. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)97. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
98. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
99. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
100. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Shakespear – plays and sonnets
The Call of the Wild
Water for Elephants
The Princess Bride
The Kite Runner
The Pillars of the Earth
Illusions
Watership Down
Nice Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Tuesdays with Morrie
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Ender’s Game
The Valley of Horses
It
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Screwtape Letters
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Clan of the Cave Bear
American Gods
The Stand
– “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” – Jean-Dominique Bauby
– “Hamlet” – William Shakespeare
– “Goodnight Opus” – Berkeley Breathed
– “The Devil in the White City” – Erik Larson
– “The Thief Lord” – Cornelia Funke
– “Indigo” – Alice Hoffman
– “Mythology” – Edith Hamilton
– “The Outsiders” – S.E. Hinton
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie on 50 books list
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde (if it’s a play, it’s probably not on the list, which is mostly novels)
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry
Dune, by Frank Herbert
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (again)
Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery on 50 book list
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (the list is, I believe, strictly fiction)
New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven by Larry Niven
The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton by Larry Niven
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Doorways in the Sand by Robert Zelazny
Creatures of Light and Darkness by Rober Zelazny
Portrait of a Killer: Jack The Ripper – Case Cl… by Patricia Cornwell
The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short S… by Arthur C. Clarke
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
Carried Away: A Selection of Stories by Alice Munro
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Ficciones is the piece that’s on the list, if you want to add it.
Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
The Immaculate Conception by Gaetan Soucy
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Double Helix by J. Watson
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White H… by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Broken Government: How the Republi…by John W. Dean
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase… by James L. Swanson
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Pianist: The Extraordinary True… by Wladyslaw Szpilman
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier
Leviathan by Paul Auster
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D’Aulaire
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein
The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe (Poe is on the list three times, but not for this one.)
The Bible
The Quoran
Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
Shogun, by James Clavell
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
White Oleander, by Janet Fitch
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson
Love Story, by Erich Segal
Love You Forever, by Robert N. Munsch
John Adams, by David McCullough
Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
The Aeneid, by Virgil
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
The World of Pooh, by A.A. Milne
Katherine, by Anya Seton
The Stand, by Stephen King (Mr. King is on, but only for The Shining.)
Daughter of the Forrest, by Juliet Marillier
World Without End, by Ken Follett
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Freakonomics, by Stephen D. Levitt
World War Z, by Max Brooks
The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
Roots, by Alex Haley
House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III
The Canterbury Tales, by Barbara Cohen
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper FfordeThe Ruins, by Scott B. Smith
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom
The Mammoth Hunters, by Jean Auel
Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
100 Love Sonnets, by Pablo Neruda
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Shadow Kiss, by Richelle Mead
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
The Shack, by William Young
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Urusula K. Le Guin
The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
Le Morte d’Arthur, by Thomas Malory
Fail Safe, by Eugene Burdick
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
Ripley’s Game, by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley is on, but this one isn’t.)
Watchers, by Dean Koontz
Paradise Lost, by John Milton and other works by Milton
The Twentieth Wife, by Indu Sundaresan
Angels in America, by Tony Kushner
The Giver, by Lois Lowry
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
1776, by David McCullough
The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu
Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (Foundation is on, but the other two are not.)
Into the Wild, by Erin Hunter
The Republic, by Plato
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer
If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried is on; this isn’t.)
Blood Promise, by Richelle Mead
Final Exit, by Derek Humphry
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho
Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett
Frostbite, by Richelle Mead
The Zahir, by Paulo Coelho
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas (Monte Cristo, Reine Margot, and Three Musketeers are in; this isn’t.)
Burned, by P.C. Cast
Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare (There is no Shakespeare on this list.)
Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead
The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami
The Painted Veil, by Somerset Maugham
The History of the Pelopponnesian War, by Thucydides
Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card
Le Grand Meaulnes, by Henri Alain-Fournier
Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer
Dark Rivers of the Heart, by Dean Koontz
The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav
Starman Jones, by Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land is on.)
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne
The Last Olympian, by Rick Riordan
Maurice, by E.M. Forster
The Tale of Gilgamesh, by Anonymous
The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak
A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah
Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett
Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder
When Nietzsche Wept, by Irvin D. Yalom
Child of the Prophecy, by Juliet Marillier
Marley & Me, by John Grogan
The Color of Water, by James McBride
On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffennegger
The Onion Field, by Joseph Wambaugh
Insomnia, by Stephen King
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
Amazing Grace, by Kathleen Norris
Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard
The Three Questions, by Jon J. Muth
The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan
The Demigod Files, by Rick Riordan
The Study Series Bundle, by Maria V. Snyder
The Tea Rose, by Jennifer Donnelly
Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
Free Speech for Me, by Nat Hentoff
Moloka’i, by Alan Brennert
From a Buick 8, by Stephen King
The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
The Robe, by Lloyd C. Douglas
Nobody’s Fool, by Richard Russo
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
The March, by E.L. Doctorow
A Lesson Before Dying, by Earnest Gaines
The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
The Histories, by Herodotus
Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike (Oddly enough, the other three are on the list)
Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
The Essential Rumi, by Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
Duma Key, by Stephen King
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
Ahab’s Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund
Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, by Tony Kushner (plays aren’t generally on this list)
American Nightmare, by Jerrold M. Packard
The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
Because of Winn-Dixie, by Kate DiCamillo
The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, by Barbara Kingsolver
Richard III, by William Shakespeare (Shakespeare is not on this list)
The Plains of Passage, by Jean M. Auel
QB VII, by Leon Uris
The Shelters of Stone, by Jean M. Auel
Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor
Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
Neither Here Nor There, by Bill Bryson
The Lightening Thief, by Rick Riordan
Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
The Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan
The Titan’s Curse, by Rick Riordan
The Battle of the Labyrinth, by Rick Riordan
The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams
Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein
Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy, by Charles Nordhoff
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
The Voyage of the Star Wolf
and
The War Against the Chtorr 1: A Matter For Men
by David Gerrold
The Holy Man
by Susan Trott
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Tiger Eyes
by Judy Blume
Song of the Sound
by ADAM ARMSTRONG
The Competitive Advantage of Nations
by Michael E. Porter
Atlantis Found
by Clive Cussler
Hellboy Volume 1: Seed of Destruction
by Mike Mignola
The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy: Second Edi…
by Vicki Iovine
NO: Why Kids–of All Ages–Need to Hear It and …
by David Walsh
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of …
by Robert A. Caro
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary C…
by Jim Collins
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of Presid…
by Vincent Bugliosi
Magic Study
and
Fire Study
and
Assassin Study
and
Storm Glass
and
Ice Study
by Maria V. Snyder
Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Id…
by Gary Paulsen
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
by Douglas Coupland
Angels In America
by Joseph Kushner
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
by Alberto Manguel
A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry
by Mark Hertsgaard
List of Book Recommendations
The 13 Best College-Set Novels of All Time
15 Captivating Books That Will Draw You In From the Very First Line
10 Literary Classics You Must Revisit As an Adult
15 Fantasy Books as Good as Lord of the Rings – The Quick Report
20 Ways Reading Will Change in 2025
20 Influential Places That Inspire Writers
11 Destinations To Visit For Fans Of Every Book Genre
Must-Read Historical Fiction That Will Take You Back in Time – authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com – Gmail
8 Dystopian Books Like Severance on Apple TV – authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com – Gmail
25 Literary Museums Literature Lovers Will Want to Visit
The 5 Stephen King Books You Should Read First
The Shinning
Skeleton Key
The Running Man
11/23/63
It
10 Long Books That Will Keep You Entertained for Hours (or Days!): Our Title Recommendations
26 Must-Read Novels Every Book Worm Should Read At Least Once
The 26 Most Famous Historical Fiction Books Worth Reading
Three Classical Reads That Are Anything But Boring
Six Books to Read by the Fire
33 Magnificent Libraries To Visit In America, Beyond
Forbidden Pages: 15 Banned Books in 19th Century America
Additional recommendations:
“The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine
Leaves from the Diary of an Old Lawyer” by Joseph M. Field
Description: A collection of essays and stories providing a critical look at various social issues, including slavery, legal corruption, and societal norms.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its critical stance on slavery and its portrayal of the legal system’s corruption. Its progressive views and social critique were deemed too radical and threatening by conservative groups.
“The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta” by John Rollin Ridge
Description: Often considered the first novel by a Native American author, this book tells the semi-fictionalized story of Joaquín Murieta, a Mexican outlaw in California.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its violent content and its sympathetic portrayal of a bandit who resisted oppression, which authorities feared might incite rebellion among marginalized communitie
The Blithedale Romance” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Description: A novel based on Hawthorne’s experiences at the utopian Brook Farm community, it critiques idealistic social experiments and explores themes of feminism and individualism.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its criticism of transcendentalism and for challenging traditional gender roles, particularly through its portrayal of strong-willed female characters
.“Wieland” by Charles Brockden Brown
Description: A Gothic novel exploring themes of religious fanaticism, psychological horror, and supernatural elements, featuring a protagonist who is driven to murder by perceived divine commands.
Reason for Ban: Considered dangerous for its portrayal of religious extremism and insanity, which some saw as an attack on religious authority and moral values.
“Herland” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Description: Though published later in 1915, early feminist works like Gilman’s were influenced by 19th-century thought. “Herland” is a utopian novel about an all-female society that thrives without men.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its radical feminist themes and its challenge to traditional gender roles, particularly its depiction of a successful, self-sufficient society without male dominance.
“Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter” by William Wells Brown
Description: The first novel by an African American author, it tells the tragic story of Clotel, a mixed-race daughter of Thomas Jefferson, and exposes the horrors of slavery.
Reason for Ban: Banned in slaveholding states for its abolitionist message and its direct implication of a U.S. president in the institution of slavery, which was seen as inflammatory.
“The Woman in the Nineteenth Century” by Margaret Fuller
Description: A foundational feminist text arguing for women’s intellectual and social equality, advocating for their right to education, employment, and political participation.
Reason for Ban: Banned for its advocacy of women’s rights, which was considered radical and threatening to the patriarchal structure of 19th-century American society.
20 Best science fiction novels for every sci-fi fan
Read
2) Dune by Frank Herbert
Focusing on the planet Arrakis, where the spice is extracted, Frank Herbert’s captivating picture of a feudal distant future transformed by the mind-altering capabilities of a drug called spice is a classic that yet feels revolutionary today. The book was so successful that it was adapted into three films and resurrected on television. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya were among the well-known actors who starred in the subsequent films.
4) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Earth is almost uninhabitable due to the effects of pollution and war. The wealthy have departed the planet, leaving the less fortunate, like Rick Deckard, to fend for themselves. During a particularly difficult assignment, Rick, who earns his livelihood by destroying rogue androids, is forced to consider his work and perhaps his identity. Perhaps the most comprehensible of Dick’s many writings, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an incredible book.
9) The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann Vandermeer
Since it includes works by many of the top science fiction authors we are talking about on our list, this anthology deserves to be on our “Best Of” lists, even though they don’t often. Wells, Clarke, Butler, Vonnegut, Asimov, Liu, Doctorow, Le Guin, and the list goes on and on! An excellent beginning for readers of science fiction.
1) The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
The Blazing World, an early female utopian and proto-science fiction book, is about a lady from Earth who enters another planet through a portal in the North Pole and ascends to the position of empress of a fantasy society composed of half-human, half-animal creatures. Cavendish imagines submarines, boats with motors, and an endless cosmos in this 1666 work, which embodies the theoretical science of the Enlightenment.
George Orwell 1984
George Orwell Animal Farm
Bradbery Farenhiet 451
Huxley Brave New World
To Read
1) Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
Twenty separate people would have different opinions about C.J. Cherryh’s finest novel since her body of work is so vast. However, a Hugo Award and a Locus finalist make it difficult to refute. Thus, in our opinion, Downbelow Station is the best place to start. As humanity spreads out among the stars, Downbelow Station, set in Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Universe, is the tale of corporate space exploration gone wrong.
3) Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Bellona is no longer the same city; the majority of its residents have left, leaving only the destitute, deranged, and criminals. And a young man, the Kid, who was a poet. This complex and nuanced story navigates racial, gender, and sexual concerns in a near-future, devastated setting in a way that is impossible to overlook.
5) Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
The author of Upgrade, Recursion, and the Wayward Pines trilogy presents a “mind-blowing” (Entertainment Weekly) speculative thriller about a regular man who awakens in a world that is oddly different from the one he believed he knew. The narrative of Dark Matter is about decisions, unexplored avenues, and the lengths we will go to in order to live the lives we envision.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is a stand-alone tale that reads less like a contemporary fantasy and more like a traditional gothic fiction. Set in nineteenth-century Mexico, this rich historical drama reworking of The Island of Doctor Moreau comes from the acclaimed author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Nigh
8) The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
Even though the majority of the Sadiri survivors are men, they still have to figure out how to keep their people going after their homeworld is destroyed. Under the direction of a lady from the planet’s Central Government, they set out to preserve their disappearing species by traveling around the colony world of Cygnus Beta, where they come across a diverse range of people and civilizations.
10) Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor presented us with Binti, a young Himba girl who has the opportunity of a lifetime: to enroll in the esteemed Oomza University in her novella that won both Hugo and Nebula awards. Notwithstanding her family’s reservations, Binti is a strong contender to go on this intergalactic voyage because of her aptitude for astrolabes and her gift for mathematics. But everything changes when the Medusae, which resemble jellyfish, invade Binti’s spaceship, and she is the only one left alive. With only five days to get to her objective, Binti is now left to fight for herself aboard a ship full of the creatures who killed her crew
2) A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
Nuclear war razed the Earth, plunging its survivors into a new dark age in which science is reviled and books are destroyed on sight. A small order of Catholic monks dedicated to a legendary miracle worker holds back the wave of ignorance as best that it can as barbarism swells at its gates. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a bittersweet tale that might make you worry about our future as a species.
16) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Tokyo is the setting, and the year is 1984. After heeding the mysterious advice of a cab driver, a young lady called Aomame starts to observe perplexing contradictions in her surroundings. In addition to being a dystopia to match George Orwell’s, 1Q84 is a love tale, mystery, fantasy, and self-discovery book.
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25 Classic Books to Read Before They’re Banned
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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-Mary-Shelley/dp/0486282112
Published in full in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a literary classic. The gothic tale explores the dark and brooding aspects of humanity.
The story’s two main characters—Victor Frankenstein and the creature he creates—interact in such a way that intrigues readers. It’s a story about tragedies and the implications of those tragedies.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne©Provided by ALot.com
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen©Provided by ALot.com
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Little-Women-Louisa-May-Alcott/dp/1503280292
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Odyssey by Homer©Provided by ALot.com
Reading Homer’s The Odyssey is a challenging task, but a task that’s worthwhile. This is because it was written sometime in the 8th century BCE. The epic poem was found engraved into a clay slab and has since been translated into modern English.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Wuthering-Heights-Wordsworth-Classics-Bronte/dp/1853260010
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte©Provided by ALot.com
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060850523
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Great-Expectations-Charles-Dickens/dp/1503275183
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis©Provided by ALot.com
My Antonia by Willa Cather©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/My-Ántonia-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486282406
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486278077
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is an enduringly popular novel that is both Gothic and philosophical. Although it was Wilde’s first and only published work, it’s created quite the impression.
To Read
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Dalloway-Virginia-Woolf/dp/0156628708
It’s likely you’ve heard of Virginia Woolf. She’s an English writer and one of the most prominent female authors in literary history. Her novel Mrs. Dalloway is unique because it was one of the first stories written using stream of consciousness.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Mockingbird-Harper-Lee/dp/0446310786
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Jar-Sylvia-Plath/dp/0061148512
There’s something to be said about novels like The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath’s female-driven narrative has lasting power. Many find this novel to be sad, but it’s so much more than that. It’s also incisive and witty.
Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, suffers from severe depression. Her coming-of-age story is filled with expectations and preconceived notions of what should be and what shouldn’t be. It’s impossible not to relate to the unsureness that Esther feels.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote©Provided by ALot.com
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is about the quadruple murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and it is one of the best selling true-crime novels ever published.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt©Provided by ALot.com
Frank McCourt’s childhood memoir is filled with heartbreak, self-doubt, and hardship. As McCourt grows up, he is overlooked at school and church because he’s from a lower class family, despite the fact that he is a smart child and desperate to learn.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Classic-Collection/dp/1480560103
Although Margaret Atwood didn’t release her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale until 1985, it’s a compelling classic. And it’s recently been adapted into a popular Hulu series.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Color-Purple-Alice-Walker/dp/0156028352
In 1982, Alice Walker published a novel that went on to become a contemporary classic and a cultural phenomena. That novel is The Color Purple. It became the first work by an African American woman to win the Pulitzer and National Book awards.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Menagerie-Tennessee-Williams/dp/0811214044
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Bluest-Eye-Vintage-International/dp/0307278441
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler©Provided by ALot.com
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce©(Image via Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Portrait-Artist-Young-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486280500
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10 Fantasy Book Series That Are Considered Masterpieces
Few fantasy book series are considered masterpieces; fantasy is a broad genre, spanning generations across various media formats. There are many subgenres within fantasy, such as urban fantasy, high fantasy, historical fantasy, and more. The sky is the limit within this genre, containing fantasy books where the protagonist is the villain, books that blend fantasy with other genres, or fantasy books about revenge. Of course, with such a vast genre, there are some negative aspects, including fantasy movies that have aged badly and fantasy TV shows that have wasted their potential.
However, there are many amazing aspects to fantasy as well, including iconic book series that are true masterpieces. There are several reasons why certain fantasy book series are considered to be superior, including creative fantasy books that defy all the tropes, fantasy books that illustrate critical themes in groundbreaking ways, and fantasy books with villains just as compelling as the heroes. Regardless of the reason, there are at least 10 fantasy book series that are considered masterpieces in the genre; that revolutionized this genre in some form.
The Chronicles Of Narnia By C.S. Lewis
A Children’s Fantasy Series
This image shows the cover of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the second chronological book in The Chronicles of Narnia.© Provided by ScreenRant
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is a children’s fantasy series comprising seven installments. It revolves around human children discovering the magical world of Narnia, initially in Professor Digory Kirke’s wardrobe. As the series goes on, the narrative introduces new protagonists, including the Pevensies’ cousin, Eustace Scrubb, and his classmate, Jill Pole. Time passes differently in this magical world, so each Chronicles of Narnia book illustrates a different conflict within this realm.
A composite image of Greta Gerwig in front of a white background with the Pevensie children from The Chronicles of Narnia pointing a sword at something offscreen© Provided by ScreenRant
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The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most beloved children’s classic book series. Two of the books are on TIME‘s 100 Best Fantasy Books list, demonstrating the timelessness of this story. Furthermore, The Chronicles of Narnia has largely influenced other works of fiction, including His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, and The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The Chronicles of Narnia continues to stand against the test of time, utilizing children’s fantasy to convey religious themes.
The Lord Of The Rings By J. R. R. Tolkien
An Epic High Fantasy Adventure Trilogy
The Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of The Rings.© Provided by ScreenRant
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien revolutionized modern fantasy and is largely credited as the reason for the genre’s popularity. This epic high fantasy trilogy is set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, depicting the fight against the Dark Lord Sauron, who uses The Lord of the Rings‘ One Ring to rule over the realm. The trilogy follows several characters, including the Hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin), the humans (Aragorn and Boromir), the elves (Legolas), the dwarves (Gimli), and Gandalf, the wizard.
The Lord of the Rings is a staple in fantasy literature. It is one of the bestselling book series of all time, with over 150 million copies sold. Tolkien’s works have transformed into a franchise that includes several The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie adaptations, a critically acclaimed TV show, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, games based on the books, and theatrical productions. The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece for many reasons, largely including the themes of love and friendship, oppression, and tyranny.
The Time Quintet By Madeleine L’Engle
A Young Adult Sci-Fi Fantasy Series
A Wrinkle In Time By Madeleine L’Engle (Time Quintet Book 1)
Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet is a book series that perfectly blends sci-fi and fantasy, revolving around Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O’Keefe as they save their universe from various dark forces. L’Engle also wrote several spinoff books, including The Arm of the Starfish, Dragons in the Waters, and A House Like a Lotus. The Time Quintet’s first installment won the Newbery Medal, one of the highest and most prestigious achievements in children’s literature and a rare accomplishment for fantasy.
Although Disney’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time was unsuccessful, it does not tarnish the Time Quintet’s status as a masterpiece fantasy book series. L’Engle explores various themes, such as friendship, good and evil, religion, and grief. A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962, a time when fantasy began to grow, and young adult fantasy was largely unheard of. However, the Time Quintet defied the odds and remains a classic staple of young adult fantasy.
The Earthsea Cycle By Ursula K. Le Guin
A Young Adult High Fantasy Series
Collage of Earthsea book covers© Provided by ScreenRant
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle is a young adult high fantasy book series comprising six installments and an anthology of short stories. The series is set in the fictional universe Earthsea, a large ocean containing several islands. This universe thrives on an intricate magic system that illustrates how the people of Earthsea largely depend on magic. The series has won several accolades, including a Newbery Honor, the National Book Award for Children’s Books, two Locus Awards, and the Nebula Award for Best Novel.
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| A Song of Ice and Fire By George R.R. Martin |
| Book |
Publication Date |
Corresponding Game of Thrones Season |
| A Game of Thrones |
August 6, 1996 |
Season 1 |
| A Clash of Kings |
November 16, 1998 |
Season 2 |
| A Storm of Swords |
August 8, 2000 |
Season 3, Season 4 |
| A Feast for Crows |
October 17, 2005 |
Season 5 |
| A Dance with Dragons |
July 12, 2011 |
Season 5 |
| The Winds of Winter |
TBC |
N/A (Seasons 6 & 7 original material) |
| A Dream of Spring |
TBC |
” “ |
Although the series is notorious for its next installment being a fantasy book many have waited years for, it does not lessen its significant impact on the fantasy genre. Before A Song of Ice and Fire, very few fantasy book series featured strong female main characters. However, Martin’s novels revolutionized that aspect with the introduction of Daenerys Targaryen, one of the most popular fictional characters to date.
Covers of George R.R. Martin’s Dreamsongs and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms© Provided by ScreenRant
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The books also subvert the chosen one trope by making a female character (Daenerys) “the chosen one” (The Prince That Was Promised), also a rare occasion in fantasy before this series. The Prince That Was Promised exists in Game of Thrones, but the show does not particularly focus on the importance of this role or the prophecy the way the books do. Although the books do not officially confirm the identity of the Prince That Was Promised, several significant signs point to Daenerys holding this title.
The Broken Earth By N. K. Jemisin
A Sci-Fi Fantasy Trilogy
The Fifth Season By N.K. Jemisin
The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin is a sci-fi fantasy book series that focuses on one continent, the Stillness, that endures a cataclysmic climate change event that occurs every few hundred years. The first installment, The Fifth Season, follows this universe as it is about to enter a devastating Fifth Season event. The Broken Earth features a society that is constructed on the oppression of orogenes, people who can manipulate earth elements. This trilogy also explores critical themes such as oppression, climate change, motherhood, identity, and family.
Jemisin is the first person to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in a row and for all installments in a trilogy. The Broken Earth was also groundbreaking for the fantasy genre, illustrating how books can perfectly blend fantasy and sci-fi. This trilogy features some of the best world-building in fantasy books, detailing specific aspects that most stories do not consider. The Fifth Season was published in 2015, at a time when fantasy had already covered so much ground. Nevertheless, The Broken Earth reformed how multiple genres blend together.
Six Of Crows By Leigh Bardugo
A High Fantasy Young Adult Duology Part Of The Grishaverse
Six of Crows Cover featuring a grey background, black wings, and the cover© Provided by ScreenRant
The Six of Crows duology is not the first series within the Grishaverse, but it is the best one. This duology revolves around six vastly different characters who come together for an epic heist. Their commonality is their circumstances: Society works against all six protagonists in some way, so if they perished during the heist, no one would come looking for them. The Six of Crows duology is also one of Leigh Bardugo’s best books, illustrating her talent for complex characters, riveting dynamics, and critical themes.
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Six of Crows is also featured on TIME‘s 100 Best Fantasy Books list, illustrating its impact on the genre. The duology has received other accolades, including The Independent‘s 10 Best Fantasy Novels and The Wall Street Journal‘s Best Young Adult Books. Six of Crows will stand the test of time as one of the best young adult fantasy book series because of Bardugo’s stellar craft and the truly brilliant characters.
The Poppy War By R.F. Kuang
A High Fantasy Trilogy Based On The Second Sino-Japanese War & The Opium Wars
The covers of The Poppy War trilogy© Provided by ScreenRant
The Poppy War is a high fantasy trilogy by R. F. Kuang immersed in Chinese mythology and loosely based on historical events. The narrative follows Rin, a war orphan who moves to Sinegard to attend the most prestigious military academy in the Nikan Empire against all odds. However, dark forces unfold during Rin’s time in Sinegard, leading Rin to the third Poppy War in Nikan. The Poppy War is a groundbreaking fantasy series, exploring Chinese politics and the fraught, oppressive dynamics between the British Empire and China.
The covers of The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty and The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang with a fiery red background
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The Poppy War has numerous accolades, including nominations for the Nebula Awards and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Each installment in this trilogy makes its mark on the fantasy genre and pushes the boundaries of fantasy with its unique world-building and intricate politics. The Dragon Republic ties the entire narrative together with parallels to Britain, China, Japan, and Taiwan. Finally, The Burning God features an epic conclusion that depicts an alternate reality involving the Chinese Communist Revolution failing, having both positive and negative results.
The Scholomance Trilogy By Naomi Novik
A Dark Academia Young Adult Fantasy Trilogy
The Scholomance Trilogy By Naomi Novik
The Scholomance Trilogy is a dark academia fantasy series by Naomi Novik, revolving around Galadriel Higgins at the Scholomance in a universe where non-magical people cannot see magic, and wizards live in enclaves to fend off maleficaria. The Scholomance Trilogy is an excellent example of dark fantasy books and the unlimited potential they bring. The story surpasses other fantasy books about magical schools, moving into a darker realm, and deconstructing presumptions with this subgenre that is not always particularly dark.
The Scholomance Trilogy is notably different from Novik’s other works, such as Uprooted and Spinning Silver. However, this series, a departure from Novik’s fairy tale retellings, is a breath of fresh air that illustrates the exciting parts of dark academia, especially when mixed with fantasy. The Scholomance Trilogy stands out among magic school narratives because of its unique magic system combined with the grim aspects of the series.
Source: TIME, BBC, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal
5 Books You (Should Have) Read In High School That Are Worth Re-Reading As An Adult!
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- Brave New WorldBy Aldous Huxley
If you love Dystopian novels, this is the book for you, as it is definitely a blueprint for modern favorites like The Hunger Games and Divergent. The writing style definitely comes across as literary, which may be a positive or a negative depending on your tastes. The story is unique and still feels like a relevant critique of our society today.
- Of Mice and Menby John Steinbeck
This book is short and a very easy read, so it’s perfect if you don’t want to get into anything too long or complex while still reading a classic. It is so tragic throughout and ends with a shocking and sad twist. If you’ve never read this before and don’t know how it ends, you need to pick this book up right now, as reading it for the first time is truly a gut-wrenching experience! Even if you know what’s coming, the story is still both sad and sentimental, while also providing a tenderhearted take on the meaning of friendship.
- Lord of The Fliesby William Golding
This novel is a fever dream – one that may have ruined you when you were in middle school. There is so much imagery and hidden meaning behind every description that it’s worth looking back on years later. If you love crazy and weird commentary on human nature, this is the novel for you. If anything, it will make you glad you’re not 13 anymore!
- Fahrenheit 451by Ray Bradbury
If you’re an avid fan of reading, this one might especially hit home for you because, if you don’t know, or don’t remember, it’s all about a futuristic society where they burn every book. Because it is a little dense, it will definitely be easier to understand on the second read. Like Brave New World, this is also a great option for fans of dystopian worlds.
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- The Outsidersby S.E. Hinton
If you’re anything like me, this book made you cry when you first read it. Sometimes called “the original YA novel”, The Outsiders is both simple and beautiful, as well as extremely nostalgic for those who read it in middle school or high school. If you remember having a crush on the actors in the movie, or if you have an emotional reaction to the phrase “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” you need to re-read this book ASAP!
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10 Modern Books Likely To Become Classics One Day
- Modern classics are determined by quality, subject matter, and relevance, along with reader engagement and interest.
- Modern literature uplifts voices overlooked by mainstream while exploring complex themes and compelling prose.
- Novels from the 21st century may not yet be classics, but some, like “Between the World and Me,” could earn that status.
It takes a lot for a contemporary book to be considered a modern classic, including the quality, subject matter, and relevancy of the text. These elements come together to create a novel that will join the ranks of the literary canon one day. One of the most exciting parts of modern literature is the elevation of voices previously overlooked by popular literature, leading to beautiful and compelling prose by people from all walks of life entering the mainstream. When considering what books will earn the title of classic, reader engagement, and interest must be taken into account alongside merit.
As an entrance into the larger literary exploration of World War II, The Book Thief stands out as the perfect place to start.
The Book Thief sees Liesel adapt to a new home with adoptive parents, help them conceal a Jewish man from the Nazis, and learn the power of the written word as she becomes literate and seeks to save books from being destroyed. The story is narrated by Death, but even in this supposed objectivity, Death cannot help but be moved to certain actions by the human spirit and the bravery of Liesel and her family. As an entrance into the larger literary exploration of World War II, The Book Thief stands out as the perfect place to start.
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The Hunger Games (2008)
Written by Suzanne Collins
Katniss hides up a tree in The Huger Games© Provided by ScreenRant
Expertly crafting not only an intricate but also a logical world with rules that make sense to the reader, The Hunger Games taught a generation of readers to expect more from the stories they engage with.
While novels written for adults are more typically discussed as hallmarks of the literary canon, that doesn’t mean that young adult or even children’s books are any less important. What young audiences read as they come of age has a direct impact on their views and social and cultural development. The Hunger Games was written when YA dystopian narratives were extremely popular, but Suzanne Collins wrote a story unlike anything else available. At once accessible and brutally honest in the violence and cruelty of the story’s world, The Hunger Games doesn’t pull punches in expressing its lessons and themes.
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Expertly crafting not only an intricate but also a logical world with rules that make sense to the reader, The Hunger Games taught a generation of readers to expect more from the stories they engage with. Every Hunger Games book has its pros and cons, but the first installment of the series is well-remembered as capturing the hearts and minds of everyone who reads it. Collins has released several prequels since the series’ popularity exploded thanks to the films. However, nothing will ever come close to the magic of The Hunger Games and Katniss’ first trip into the arena.
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Between The World And Me (2015)
Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The cover of Between The World And Me© Provided by ScreenRant
It can be difficult for memories, autobiography, and even autofiction to become a classic, as there’s an argument to be made for how universal and enduring personal stories can be. This is not an issue in Between the World and Me, which seamlessly connects the intimate experiences of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ life with the long and complex history of racial prejudice and injustice across the world. Coates is in conversation with his son throughout the work as he grapples with how to communicate the lessons and context that cannot be separated from how Black men and women are treated.
Race as a concept and a political agenda are some of the biggest themes in Between the World and Me, and Coates’s writing and style have drawn comparisons to James Baldwin, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. If Between the World and Me is any indication, Coates will go down in history as a pivotal voice in the literary canon, and Between the World and Me will be taught and celebrated for years to come. As a stunning and vulnerable non-fiction, the book should be read by audiences both inside the U.S. and out.
James (2024)
Written by Percival Everett
The cover of James© Provided by ScreenRant
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book that’s long been taught as one of the great works of American literature but has always been read with the caveat of racial prejudice of the time. Percival Everett’s James challenges the perspectives of the original book and Jim’s archetype. Jim, Huck’s travel companion who escapes enslavement, is not the man that Mark Twain wrote him to be. James is far more than a retelling of an American classic. It represents Jim as a vivid and fully formed character and expands upon his adventures with Huck with greater depth and complexity.
The connection between Jim and Huck is painted with newfound nuance in James, as there isn’t a moment when Jim isn’t aware of his position as a Black man next to a young white boy. Even as they become close and Huck begins to see Jim as a man, there’s no question that Jim can bring his guard down. Language and the written word play an enormous role in James, and Everett plays with this to great effect through his writing. The novel is not only necessary and compelling but highlights Everett as a once-in-a-generation writer.
All The Light We Cannot See (2014)
Written by Anthony Doerr
Mark Ruffalo as Daniel LeBlanc in All the Light We Cannot See episode 4© Provided by ScreenRant
There’s no shortage of amazing books about World War II from many perspectives, but All The Light We Cannot See looked at this well-known part of history in a new way. Doerr’s work is defined by his non-linear style of storytelling as well as his extremely lyrical prose that imbues light and beauty into the darkest moments of the narrative. As much as the novel is about the horrors of WWII on the millions it affected, it also highlights Doerr’s interest in technology and how communication has been altered so deeply due to technological innovation.
Relying on intricate descriptions of the senses and how humans interact with their world, All The Light We Cannot See is an immersive experience.
All The Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has skyrocketed Doerr and his other works to fame and popularity. The recent miniseries based on the novel was a solid effort, but it failed to capture the nuance and emotional realism of the book. It stands out not only in terms of critical reception but also in far-reaching popularity with readers. Transcending genre, the book appeals to readers of all kinds. Relying on intricate descriptions of the senses and how humans interact with their world, All The Light We Cannot See is an immersive experience.
My Brilliant Friend (2011)
Written by Elena Ferrante
The cover of My Brilliant Friend© Provided by ScreenRant
My Brilliant Friend is the first in the Neopolitan Novels series by Elena Ferrante, which chronicles a stunning portrait of true friendship between women in Italy throughout the latter half of the 20th century. It’s told from the perspective of Elena, or Lenù, about growing up with her mercurial and beautiful friend Lila. Elena considers Lila to be the smartest and most advanced person she knows, but Lila is forced to quit school and work for her father until marriage. Conversely, Elena is allowed to get a formal education but always feels equally inferior and drawn to Lila.
Much of My Brilliant Friend focuses on the limited opportunities afforded to the lower economic class in Italy, particularly for women. Ferrante frequently discusses what she refers to as the pleb, or plebian, class, which Elena comes to understand herself and the people of her community to be part of. Elena’s understanding of the world’s divisions and the invented separation between people shifts her relationship with Lila. Additionally, few books have so accurately captured the jealous, loving, and disappointing nature of a friendship between young women who mean more to each other than they can describe.
The Road (2006)
Written by Cormac McCarthy
Viggo Mortensen as Man and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Boy in a scene from The Road.© Provided by ScreenRant
Outside of the brutal world of man versus man that the characters inhabit, there is an accessible and affecting tale of the bond between a father and son and the lengths a parent will go to protect their child.
The Road is one of the most instrumental works of post-apocalyptic fiction from the modern era, as it successfully capitalizes on the fears and hopes of a generation growing up facing an increasingly violent and environmentally volatile world. Cormac McCarthy is well-known for his biting works that tackle the legacy of American mythology with works like Blood Meridian and No Country For Old Men. The Road lent itself to a film adaptation because McCarthy paints a vividly visual portrait in his prose alongside characters that become more real to the reader than themselves by the end of the story.
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McCarthy won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Road, and few other honors are so universally acknowledged as the highest recognition an author and novel can receive. Post-apocalyptic books like Fallout and other popular dystopian TV shows and movies have never been more popular, and the influence that prose like The Road has on these onscreen works is obvious. Outside of the brutal world of man versus man that the characters inhabit, there is an accessible and affecting tale of the bond between a father and son and the lengths a parent will go to protect their child.
The Round House (2012)
Written by Louise Erdrich
The cover of The Round House© Provided by ScreenRant
Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich has spent her career bringing to life her experience growing up as an Objibwe woman and discussing the far-reaching impact of the United States’ treatment of Indigenous communities. The Round House was Erdrich’s fourteenth novel, but her work never falters or flags, as there’s always a new story and brilliant characters to engage with. Erdrich is known for writing about subjects intersectionally, looking at feminism specifically through the lens of being an Ojibwe woman. This makes it interesting that the protagonist of The Round House is a young man named Joe.
Joe’s mother is assaulted, and he takes it upon himself to investigate the perpetrator because he understands, even at a young age, that he cannot rely on the criminal justice system to work as it should for an Indigenous woman. The Round House is open about the disproportionate number of attacks upon Indigenous women and how the law consistently fails to help, as well as the cycles of masculinity that lead to male violence. Winning the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction, The Round House has not diminished in its relevance or urgency since its publication.
Never Let Me Go (2005)
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kathy, Ruth and Tommy in a diner in Never let me go© Provided by ScreenRant
Also known for his 1989 novel, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro penned his equally compelling, Never Let Me Go, in 2005. Adapted into a film starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, and Kiera Knightley in 2010, the story follows an alternate history where human cloning has become common practice, but these clones are raised to be living organ donors for other humans, with no rights of their own. It’s a tragic science fiction twist that adds an unending layer of melancholy to a narrative of human connection and struggle.
When drawing comparisons between the clones and the oppressed lower social classes of the UK, the novel’s setting, the metaphor becomes obvious.
The three main characters are confined by their circumstances, but it doesn’t stop them from experiencing the full scale of human emotion that every person goes through. Never Let Me Go engages with the question of what it means to be human. When drawing comparisons between the clones and the oppressed lower social classes of the UK, the novel’s setting, the metaphor becomes obvious. There’s no question that Never Let Me Go will end in tragedy, but that doesn’t make the beauty of the prose and the true love between the characters any less impactful.
Classic novels stuck in development© Provided by ScreenRant
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Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
Written by Bernardine Evaristo
The cover of Girl, Woman, Other© Provided by ScreenRant
Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other may have won the 2019 Booker Prize, but this accolade only further cemented what readers of the novel already knew: it was a book that changed the lives of those who read it. Told from multiple interweaving perspectives across decades in the United Kingdom, the novel swiftly provides context and characterization for each new person and subject it introduces. This is a clear example of the skill of the prose, as the reader never gets lost or bogged down by the changing settings and characters.
Everyone in the book feels like a separate and fully realized individual while being part of the larger whole. Girl, Woman, Other primarily grapples with and celebrates the joy and pain of being a Black woman, or non-man, in the modern era. While there are plenty of moments of struggle, the novel still lifts up its characters, providing an amazing representation of what human connection and strong relationships do for a person and a community. Regardless of the reader’s identity or where they live, there is something universal and poignant to be found in the novel’s pages.
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Parade’s Handy Guide to Its “Best Books of All Time” Lists
Here are the lists we’ve done so far!
222 Best Books of All Time That Deserve a Spot on Your Bookshelf, With Picks from Bestselling Authors and Indie Booksellers
George R.R. Martin and Anne Tyler are just two of the acclaimed authors who shared their personal picks with us.
May 17, 2024
Why 222 books? We think a list of The 100 Best Books sounds too definitive, too final. Hopefully, offering 222 titles feels like a treasure trove worth diving into and arguing over and enjoying. You’ll find all types of works of fiction—picture books and romances and fantasies and westerns and young adult novels and good ole fiction and mysteries and classics and recent works we believe will be classics in years to come. (Nonfiction will be its own list someday soon.) But they’re still just some of the best books of all time—if we made this list a thousand titles long, we’d still be missing so many.
To help us narrow this down to the absolute best books, we reached out to thirty-three acclaimed and best-selling authors. Everyone from Anne Tyler to George R.R. Martin to Karin Slaughter took the time to share their passionate recommendations. Then we called some of our favorite bookstores and asked for their suggestions. So you’ll find personal picks on the list by dozens of writers and staff members from indie booksellers all over the country. We even scoured sites like Goodreads to see what you love the most. Our guiding principle was to include as many types of books as possible, because a great picture book is just as worthy as Proust. And both deserve to be on our list.
We can name 100 great mysteries (in fact we have). We can name 100 great crime novels. (Yep, we’ve done that too.) So a list of the best books of all time from every genre is just a starting point. Tell us which ones you love. Tell us what’s missing. Tell us what shouldn’t be on here. And tell us what list you’d like to see next. (The 100 Best Sports Books? The 100 Best Memoirs/Biographies? The 100 Best Picture Books?) We’ll keep reading if you will.
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222 Best Books of All Time
The Remains of the Day
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The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Writer Anne Tyler said yes when asked to contribute to Parade’s list of some of the best books of all time. Yes, with one condition: the only book she wanted to talk about was The Remains of the Day. It’s that sort of book. The story of an English butler so devoted to service he misses his chance at love, it was hailed as an instant classic on publication in 1989. Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel isn’t path-breaking or stylistically shocking; it’s just very, very good and everyone knew it, right away. Tyler, author most recently of French Braid, cherishes the remarkable scene at its climax. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the heart-stopping moment near the end,” says Tyler, “when the central character all at once understands that his entire life has been wrong.”
Harold and the Purple Crayon (Purple Crayon Books)
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Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
You know how parents can spend a lot of money on a gift for kids, only to watch them play with the box it came in more than the toy itself? That embrace of imagination is at the heart of this picture book. Harold decides to go for a walk late at night. Armed with only a purple crayon, he embarks on all sorts of adventures before winding up right back where he started. Bookseller Nina Barrett of Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois loves handselling this one. It’s a classic, Barrett says, “for showing how, with just a few simple lines, a small child can follow his imagination anywhere it leads, and create his own destiny”
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Pride and Prejudice
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Austen went from an anonymous author (because nice women didn’t write) to being labeled a purveyor of mere romance novels (which are women’s stuff and so don’t really matter) to grudgingly called “beloved” (one way of admitting how wildly popular she is, without actually respecting her) to a full recognition that Austen’s novels are insightful, rich and intellectually complex. And what the heck is wrong with being entertaining, anyway? It took too long for Austen to gain her due. Still, we’ve always had the novels, at least four of which are practically perfect. Tomorrow we’ll pick Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion as our favorite. But today we’re choosing Pride and Prejudice with the willful and smart Elizabeth Bennett, the infuriating Mr. Darcy, that cad George Wickam and so many other memorable characters. Marriage is serious business—indeed, the most serious act a woman of a certain class makes in life—and Austen is as keen an observer of manners and mores as one could hope for.
The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume
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The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
A work of imagination so profound and unique, it stands alone…unless you count the modern fantasy genre that sprang up in its wake. Heck, even the idea of the trilogy that dominates sci-fi and fantasy is a cliche simply because this one, long novel was broken up into three parts by its publisher. Even the biggest names will take a moment to honor Tolkien. “It will surprise no one to learn that my favorite fantasy novel is The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien,” says writer George R.R. Martin, author most recently ofFull House: Wild Cards 30, which he edited, and The Rise Of The Dragon, with Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson. “Fantasy is the oldest branch of literature, with roots that go back as far as Gilgamesh and Homer, but Professor Tolkien redefined the genre, and every fantasist since has been writing in his shadow. He is as important to fantasy as Shakespeare is to the theatre… and like Shakespeare, his work will endure for centuries, being read, reread, and treasured.”
Gilead (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel
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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson wowed everyone in 1980 with her debut novel, Housekeeping, the story of an eccentric aunt who burdened (or freed?) her nieces with an unconventional approach to life. It became a marvelous film in 1987 starring Christine Lahti. Twenty-four years later, Robinson finally published her follow-up. Gilead was worth the wait. It’s a novel of faith and family, bringing to life John Ames, a minister dying of heart disease who wants to leave behind a document for the young son who will never really know him. Robinson tackles the Underground Railroad, John Brown, the unfair caricaturing of Calvinists as dour scolds and above all life in a small town for a man of faith. Ames wrestles with his conscience but Robinson never seems to struggle at all. Her novel is illuminated from within, like stained glass lit up by the sun.
Arrow of God
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Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
One work often becomes the gateway to an entire world of literature for outsiders. Latin America? Start with One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Spain? Don Quixote. Africa? For decades, African literature was represented by one book: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Happily, countless novels have come in its wake, not least Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And Adichie is here to champion not just the many authors who walked through the door Achebe opened, but his entire African Trilogy. It begins with Things Fall Apart, continues with No Longer At Ease and climaxes with Arrow of God, the story of a tragic clash between the chief priest of a small village and the Christian missionary John Goodcountry. “You know about the big historical events for which words like ‘colonization’ and ‘imperialism’ are used,” says Adichie, author most recently of Notes On Grief. “And then you read a novel like Arrow of God and you are struck by the beautiful, fragile, complicated humanity of the people whose lives were forever changed by history.”
Lonesome Dove: A Novel
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Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
If you’re going to name one book the “Great American Novel,” surely it should be in that most American of genres, the Western. Mind you, even people who never fantasize about heading to Deadwood fall under the spell of Larry McMurtry’s epic oater. Just ask bookseller Deb Leonard. “The romantic notion of cowboys permeates American culture,” says Leonard of Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Those stoic, laconic heroes risking life and limb to drive their cattle across deserts and raging rivers, battling blizzards, sandstorms, rattlesnakes, coyotes (pronounced ki-oats), and no-good rustlers loom large in our psyche. It is hard to believe those cattle-driving days lasted less than twenty years. This gorgeous novel chronicles one of those adventures: a couple of retired Texas Rangers on a drive from Mexico to Montana. Cattle-drives not your cup of tea? Then how about a soaring story full of vivid landscapes and absolutely unforgettable characters. It is a book that will make you laugh so hard that it hurts on one page, just to break your heart into pieces on the next. If you only read one Western in your life, make it this one.”
The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Sometimes you just want the bejesus scared out of you and if that’s your wish, bookseller Lisa Morton recommends The Haunting Of Hill House. “Not only was this modern classic the first major novel to deal with a paranormal investigation, it also contains what may be the most disturbing opening in all of literature,” says Morton of The Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, California. “The entire paragraph is sublime, but the last five words—”whatever walked there, walked alone”—is the perfect evocative, chilling introduction to the story. Breathing walls, rattling door knobs, a damaged and fragile heroine…. Jackson may have produced equally fine novels (especially We Have Always Lived in the Castle) and one of literature’s great short stories (“The Lottery“), but she was never better or more frightening than here.”
Maggie the Mechanic: The Love & Rockets Library – Locas Book 1
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Heartbreak Soup (Love & Rockets)
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Love and Rockets: Maggie the Mechanic and Love and Rockets: Heartbreak Soup by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
For 40(!) years, Los Bros Hernandez have produced “alternative” comics that helped revolutionize the industry. Along the way, they’ve created two sprawling worlds peopled with vivid characters, crazy storylines and the quotidian challenges of everyday life. Gilbert is best known for the Palomar stories, set in a mythical Latin American country suffused with magic realism (natch) and featuring Heraclio and Carmen, a happy couple at the heart of early storylines. Jaime is best known for the Locas stories set in LA and centered by oft-time lovers Maggie and Hopey. It’s the serialized novel to end all novels, it’s Dickensian, it’s Borgesian and certainly Trollope would be proud. Start with these two collections from the early 1980s. Binge-watching has nothing on the binge-reading you’ll soon be doing.
Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
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Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Lee’s book is so wonderfully complex it boggles the mind. Lee covers 80 years of history from 1910 to 1989. And if you think the usual immigrant experience is complicated, imagine you’re a Korean moving to Japan, only to discover with a shock that your people are despised there and forced to live in a ghetto-ized area. Then the Japanese invade and occupy Korea. Conflicted much? Lee captures the inner turmoil these events create in her characters, along with everything from kimchi to pachinko parlors. A rich, rich novel that we believe will be considered a classic years from now. So why wait? (The TV series is good too.)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Judy Blume changed everything for young adult fiction, though Blume would be the first to highlight those who paved the way for her. But if Blume were just an Important Figure, she wouldn’t be so beloved. Kids still read her fiction, still get caught up in the drama and still find themselves in it. First among equals in her admirable body of work? It has to be Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. A girl on the cusp of puberty is worried when all her friends get their period before her. Will it ever come? Buying bras, worrying about breast size, spreading rumors about girls who seem a little faster when it comes to boys? This might be an episode of HBO’s Euphoria, though with less drugs and no actual sex. Margaret spends the book exploring different faiths, but kids quickly learned they could always have faith in a book with Judy Blume’s name on it. A classic.
Another Country
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Another Country by James Baldwin
One of our richest thinkers, James Baldwin shared the wealth with his autobiographical debut Go Tell It On The Mountain, the righteous essay collection The Fire Next Time, numerous short stories, his powerful work as a public intellectual and the groundbreaking Giovanni’s Room. Author Arundhati Roy is drawn, most of all, to his complex, troubling novel Another Country. It’s the story of jazz drummer Rufus Scott and his abusive relationship with Leona in 1950s Greenwich Village. “Rage. Poetry. Beauty,” says Roy, author most recently of Azadi. “A book in which writing meets music. In which literature shows the world its place in the universe—with precise coordinates.”
My Brilliant Friend (HBO Tie-in Edition): Book 1: Childhood and Adolescence
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My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
An Italian novel about female friendship amidst the backdrop of domestic violence shouldn’t be the stuff of bestsellers. When My Brilliant Friend turns out to be the first of four novels that tell one long story, when the whole thing is handled by the boutique label Europa Editions (rather than a big house with tons of marketing muscle) and when the author refuses to do most press and remains anonymous? Well, you’d be lucky to reach cult status. Instead, Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels became an absolute sensation, even getting adapted into a fine HBO series. Why? How did it happen? Just read it. Sometimes, great writing is enough.
The Stand (Movie Tie-in Edition)
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The Stand by Stephen King
As we said when choosing just one Stephen King novel for our list of the best thrillers of all time, pick one of his books and readers will invariably say, “But what about…?” We know, we know. We said it ourselves. What about The Dark Tower series? What about his marvelous collection of four novellas Different Seasons? What about Misery or Mr. Mercedes or 11/22/63 or It, for pete’s sake? What about It? Sure, but if we chose any of those books, we bet a lot more people would say loudly and clearly, what about The Stand? It’s the book that is the most Stephen King of Stephen King books. It’s big and sprawling and he’s come back to it and added in more because it needed more and we wanted more and it’s about a pandemic and god knows we can’t pretend that’s some fantastical conceit any more, can we? The Stand has it all. While the hardcore fans see his entire body of work centering on The Dark Tower, we say maybe, sure, you could be right. But start with The Stand.
Americanah: A novel
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Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
It seems like Americanah is Adichie’s masterpiece, but that’s probably because we haven’t read her next novel yet. Her debut, Purple Hibiscus, was a revelation. Then came her second novel, Half Of A Yellow Sun (another peak!). In 2013 she delivered Americanah, a remarkable, decades-spanning story of a young woman in Nigeria who falls in love but chooses to flee a military dictatorship and come to America. She is changed and also changes the U.S. in her way, by blogging on race and identity. Like so many people forced by circumstance to uproot, our heroine returns home when she can. Are the changes she has undergone going to mark her forever as not-Nigerian, as an “Americanah?” Must she change again? Or must Nigeria? And who decides? Praised by Beyoncé, who even sampled a speech by Adichie in a song, but that’s just the most glamorous of many accolades Adichie has received. So far.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Don’t panic! The Douglas Adams radio play turned franchise is an eco-friendly renewable resource, spinning off plays, movies, TV shows, comic books, computer games and a “trilogy” of novels that total six in all. If you enjoy the madcap new movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, then you’re ready for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the first book in the series. It begins with Earth being demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, soon sees our hero tortured by aliens (they read him their poetry) and includes all sorts of nonsense mixed up with concepts from philosophy, science, religion et al in the silly/smart way perfected by Monty Python. Gloriously bonkers and sneakily serious—think Candide, but with more spaceships. Bonus points if you also listen to the marvelous Stephen Fry reading it for the audiobook version.
Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Which Brontë sister is your favorite? This question can spark a knock-down drag out fight. Some of us, like perhaps Kate Bush, choose Emily Brontë and her only novel, the romantic classic Wuthering Heights. Others pick Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, preferring the brooding Mr. Rochester to the passionate Heathcliff or maybe the self-made Jane to the doomed Catherine. And someone, somewhere must be arguing for poor Anne and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as the best of the bunch, though they’re quite alone in that. We’ll take the wild abandon and disastrous mistakes of Wuthering Heights. Just consider this a placeholder for all the Brontës and what might have been if they hadn’t each died so very young.
A Perfect Spy: A Novel
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A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré
We put Le Carré’s novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on our list of the best mysteries of all time because it’s riveting to watch George Smiley ferret out a mole in Britain’s MI5 by sitting and thinking. It’s a true mystery, even though Le Carré is usually classified differently. Then we put his novel A Perfect Spy on our list of the greatest thrillers ever written. Either one could be on this list of the best books of all time. We chose A Perfect Spy in part because we could just as easily file it under “memoir.” Le Carré drew deeply upon the relationship he had (or lacked) with his own father. Dad was a con man that hobnobbed with violent London gangsters the Kray brothers, made and lost fortunes and charmed everyone within a mile of his magnetism. Jeffery Deaver, author most recently of Hunting Time, concurs. “No one writes about espionage like this author,” says Deaver. “But I’ve picked it because it is also one of the most engrossing—and harrowing—portraits of a father-son relationship I’ve ever read. It’s not for the faint of heart, and that warning is not because of car chases and shootouts.”
Madeline
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Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
Picture books are evocative for adults and few offer as Proustian a trigger as the opening lines of Madeline: “In an old house in Paris/that was covered in vines/lived twelve little girls/in two straight lines.” Picture books are powerful, especially when read again and again and again, as Kathy Doyle Thomas, of Half Price Books in Dallas, can attest. “My daughter loved the Madeline books and I loved my daughter sitting on my lap and us reading the books together,” says Thomas. “Madeline was smart, cute, French and adventurous, a fun role model for my daughter. I have two sons, so my daughter loved the idea of a little girl surrounded by other little girls instead of her BROTHERS!”
Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
One sign of a classic is the way it speaks in a fresh way to each new generation. Don Quixote’s tale of a woebegone knight errant and his blunt-spoken sidekick Sancho has been labeled comic, tragic, a defense of eternal values and a repudiation of the very idea of eternal values. Or it’s been seen as lacking only a song (and thus turned into the musical The Man Of La Mancha) or a little dance (and thus turned into a ballet by George Balanchine, among others). It certainly speaks to George Saunders, author most recently of A Swim In A Pond In the Rain. “What I love about Don Quixote is its energetic portraiture of someone who is, like all of us, sometimes very right and sometimes very wrong, but always sees himself as the former,” says Saunders. “The book is a vast canvas, gloriously full of ‘on the other hand’ thinking—no stolid, lazy truth is allowed to exist for long in its universe. So, to read it is to be reminded that our tendency to always know where we stand on things is a weakness—a very human weakness, the human weakness, really, part of what makes us both dangerous and dear.”
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition
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The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway
Not every great writer is influential. Not every influential writer is great. Hemingway is both. And he should be read by everyone. “I’d somehow managed to avoid reading Hemingway until my early thirties, when I was first beginning to write,” says Julie Otsuka, author most recently of The Swimmers. “I’d always thought he was ‘not for me’—I’m not white, I’m not a man, I’ve never stalked a lion, I haven’t been to war. And yet, as soon as I began to read him, I could not stop. It was the cadence of his sentences that first drew me in, the clarity and beauty of his language. Also, the humor and quiet melancholy. And his ‘iceberg theory’—in many of his stories, the war is only hinted at, obliquely, through small details, but so much is left unsaid—was helpful to me when I was trying to figure out how to write my first novel, which also deals with the trauma of war.”
Bridget Jones’s Diary 25th Anniversary edition
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Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
When Samuel Pepys began his diary in 1660, he recorded what time he woke up, what he ate for lunch, the actresses he dallied with, the horrors of the Plague and even his new watch. (Pepys was very fond of his new watch.) Everyone calls it a masterpiece. But when Bridget Jones keeps a diary and records her battles with weight, the plague of her singleness, the challenges at work, the irritating Mr. Darcy and never once mentions her watch, male critics dismiss it as “chick lit.” It’s too funny, too romantic, too entertaining to be “real” literature. Bollocks, we say. If a novel is meant to capture an era and bring to life a vivid character we know better than we know ourselves, then Helen Fielding’s novel ranks right up there.
Dune (Movie Tie-In)
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Dune by Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert’s Dune has many facets: it’s science-fiction, it’s fantasy, it’s a commentary on religion, it’s a dissection of colonialism and it’s an early example of cli-fi (that is, climate fiction). But it takes romance legend Beverly Jenkins to center the passionate and strong woman whose decision puts the entire story into motion. “Dune is one of my all time faves,” says Jenkins, author most recently of To Catch A Raven. “As a classic space opera, it appeals to the fantasy/sci-fi lover that I am. Dune is also the ultimate romance and that appeals to me as well. Lady Jessica was told by her Order to birth a girl child, but her love for her Duke overrode that directive. She gave Leto a son instead. Without that love, there’d be no Paul. And without Paul, there’d be no Dune.”
I Capture the Castle
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I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
This charming debut has beguiled everyone from Walt Disney to J.K. Rowling. Writer Armistead Maupin is no exception. “When I was a teenager in North Carolina, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle taught me to love the very idea of England, a land where a deeply eccentric family could cheerfully endure poverty in a dilapidated castle while their father faces writer’s block in a nearby tower,” says Maupin, author most recently of Logical Family. “Smith’s novel was in the form of a teenage girl’s diary, and I’ve never forgotten how its first line lured me into the story. (‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’) It makes sense that I would end up making a home in England and writing a novel about an eccentric American living in a crumbling Elizabethan manor house. It’s called Mona of the Manor and it will be published as soon as I climb down from my lockdown tower.”
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Dover Thrift Editions: Crime/Mystery)
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is everything, everywhere, all at once, it seems, with an endless stream of movies, TV shows, mangas, spin-offs and even a new stage play in the works. (The same is true in the multiverse, we assume.) But it begins with the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While Holmes first appeared in the novel A Study in Scarlet, most everyone agrees with bookseller Ed Justus that the stories are the heart of the matter. “In my opinion, the short stories are far better than the novels,” says Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii. “Any of the short stories of Sherlock Holmes by A.C. Doyle are truly amazing. Even though these stories were written a century ago, the prose and conversational style immediately draws in the reader, effortlessly accepting the characters as if they were completely real. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? I couldn’t get enough of this one.”
Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 1)
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
History is written by the victors. That may explain why Thomas Cromwell has been seen as such a villain for the past 500 years, despite his key role in the English Reformation. After all, when you’re beheaded by the King, you can hardly take part in writing history. So it took Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Cromwell to give his side of the story. She starts with Wolf Hall and continues with two further, only slightly less perfect books. We meet a man of modest origins who is always the smartest person in the room. Watching Cromwell move mountains so Henry VIII can defy a Pope and declare himself the Supreme Head Of The Church of England—all so he can get a divorce—is so thrilling you can barely breathe while reading it. It’s a pity Henry’s new wife Anne Boleyn wasn’t more grateful. One flaw of Cromwell’s? He knew he was always the smartest man in the room, but wasn’t always smart enough to keep everyone else from knowing it too.
The Sandman Book One
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The Sandman Book One by Neil Gaiman and Various Artists
Ok, so you’re kind of intrigued by comic books. A lot of people take them seriously and you want to see what all the fuss is about. You can—and should—check out one of the great Batman or Superman storylines because maybe you’ve seen the movies and know what they’re all about. It will be familiar territory. Or you can dive into the deep end. You can sample the pure, unadulterated, uncut stuff. You can read The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and a host of world class illustrators. In 75 issues from 1989 to 1996, Gaiman and his collaborators spun out the story of Morpheus and a desire to right the wrongs he committed earlier in life. It’s a mind-spinning combination of horror and fantasy and the superhero genres, all girded by a mordant sense of humor. People who never read comic books read The Sandman, especially college students and especially female college students. For an industry yearning for respectability and new fans, it was a dream come true.
The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt arrived with a thunderclap via the murder-on-campus success of The Secret History. But Chris Pavone, author most recently of Two Nights In Lisbon, speaks up for her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goldfinch. The novel, triggered by a terrorist act and the almost accidental filching of a painting, “is a sprawling masterpiece of suspense that also happens to be a book about nearly everything: family and loss and grief and despair and growing up and art and betrayal and many types of love,” says Pavone. Since Tartt takes a good decade between releases, it’s lucky that, as Pavone says, the novel is “very long (at 784 pages) but for me, not nearly long enough. It’s a book I could read forever.”
The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War (Civil War Trilogy)
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The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Amidst the mountain of material about the Civil War, Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels is a peak. This Pulitzer Prize winner uses the Battle at Gettysburg to encompass the entire arc of the war. The Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee—accustomed to winning—goes head to head with the Union’s John Buford and makes fatal mistakes. Historians love the accuracy, as well as Shaara’s reappraisal of the Confederacy’s James Longstreet and more. Military buffs love how Pickett’s Charge and the battle on Little Round Top come alive. And readers simply become enthralled with its sweep and power. Heck, The Killer Angels even prodded Ken Burns into making his landmark documentary, The Civil War, and that’s about as impressive as it gets.
The End of the Affair (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
That most Catholic of writers, Graham Greene, captures guilt and sin and the flickering possibility of redemption like few others. Published in 1951, The End Of The Affair completes his Catholic quartet, which also includes Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. Author Patti Callahan Henry calls it his masterpiece. “Always visiting his favorite themes—God, love and jealousy—Graham Greene was inspired to write this novel from his own affair with a woman named Catherine Walston,” says Callahan Henry, author most recently of Once Upon A Wardrobe. “There is nothing like it and it reads better every single time I pick it up (or listen to Colin Firth read it). It’s a love story, and yet it’s so much more.”
The Buddha in the Attic (Pen/Faulkner Award – Fiction)
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The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
With just three novels, writer Julie Otsuka has memorialized the brutal mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II with precision and passion. Writer Madeline Miller knows the challenges of bringing history to life and admires Otsuka all the more. “The Buddha in the Attic tells the stories of the ‘picture brides’—women who immigrated from Japan to America in the early 20th century in hopes of a better future,” says Miller, the author most recently of Circe. “The women speak in the first person plural, and part of the wonder of this book is its stunning choral voice—piercing, elegiac, beautiful, brutal, unflinching. The stories they tell of their lives are unforgettable and the novel is a literary and historical masterpiece. It is the book I read when I need to remember what fiction can do at its very best.”
His Dark Materials 3-Book Paperback Boxed Set: The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass
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His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Beginning with The Golden Compass, author Philip Pullman retold and reimagined Milton’s Paradise Lost in a trilogy of almost shocking ambition. The pearl-clutchers who feared it might be sneaking in Ideas—and Dangerous Ideas at that—were right. Fellow writers immediately paid attention. “No books are more important to the history of modern fantasy after The Lord of the Rings than His Dark Materials,” says Terry Brooks, author most recently of Daughter Of Darkness. “Pullman’s trilogy transformed the genre. Here were books in which angels rebelled against a dysfunctional deity to see it cast out of Heaven. Here was a reimagined, compelling story of how a boy and a girl reformed a world in which magic was a transformative power and love provided a means for changing everything…This is high fantasy at its very best.”
The Talented Mr. Ripley
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The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Horrible people can become disturbingly sympathetic once you spend time with them, whether it’s Norman Bates in Psycho or Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter, the serial killer with good intentions (or at least bad victims). The brilliant Highsmith knew this well, and perhaps her greatest creation, Tom Ripley, toyed with our affections throughout five novels. “The Talented Mr. Ripley is certainly one of the best if not the best thrillers of all time,” says Karin Slaughter, author most recently of Girl, Forgotten. “Tom Ripley is not just a classic antihero, he is a precursor to so many flawed men we’re meant to root for—from Don Draper to Tony Soprano. Highsmith crafts him as a perpetual underdog, a striver that the reader finds more relatable than the monied snobs he so desperately wants to be a part of.” It’s a delicious irony at the heart of so many crime novels: you’re not supposed to root for the criminal or vicariously enjoy someone knocking off those people who really, really “deserve it.” And yet….
The Good Lord Bird: A Novel
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The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Many artists have tackled the bloody, righteous act of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, an act meant to stir up a slave revolt in the South. It was the dress rehearsal for the Civil War, which began about a year and a half later, and usually inspires sober, serious works like Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter or Stephen Vincent Benét’s epic poem John Brown’s Body. But James McBride is the only one to see the violent attack called a dress rehearsal, think “aha!” and launch into a no-holds barred comic retelling of the tragedy. He creates Henry Shackleford, an enslaved man caught up in John Brown’s crusade and is soon bumping into other historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Oh, and John Brown thinks Henry is a girl and puts him in a dress, which the young man wears for most of the book. We did say “comic!” Compared favorably to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—that other rollicking, hilarious, pointed takedown of slavery—McBride’s novel won the National Book Award and what is apparently another badge of importance in today’s world. Yes, it was turned into a TV miniseries (and a very good one) starring Ethan Hawke.
The Awakening and Selected Stories (Penguin Classics)
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The Awakening by Kate Chopin
If revenge is a dish best served cold, author Kate Chopin should be well pleased. Her second and final novel was tut-tutted over by critics. Chopin dealt forthrightly with a woman’s sexual desires, intellectual needs, suicide, society’s constraints and the limited roles of wife and mother open to her gender. Toss in a caustic attitude towards religion and you had a book that was just as controversial as Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House and Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. Even those forced to admit The Awakening was brilliantly written tended to hope—like fellow writer Willa Cather—that Chopin would use her talents for “a better cause.” Chopin died all but forgotten. But seventy years later, people finally awakened to her immense achievement—a novel deeply influential on other writers, the Southern literary tradition and a key work in feminism. Today it’s widely read, widely studied and widely enjoyed.
The Collected Stories
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The Collected Stories: William Trevor by William Trevor
Short story writers are diamond cutters: meticulous and sharp, with only one chance to get it right. Few were as brilliant as the Irish writer William Trevor, whose work is invariably referred to as Chekhovian because what higher compliment can be paid to a short story writer? “My favorite book of all time is The Collected Stories by William Trevor,” says Elizabeth Strout, author most recently of Lucy By The Sea. “As a writer I found his influence huge ever since I first read his work years ago in The New Yorker. But he is not just a writer’s writer. He is so precise and so gentle and can flip over a sentence in a heartbeat. He writes about the lives of ordinary people, who are all—of course—extraordinary. One of my favorites is called ‘Mrs. Silly’ about a young boy sent to boarding school and his lovely mother who embarrasses herself on their visiting day. It’s a quiet, honest killer of a story.”
The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s debut is one of the most banned books in America and also one of the best. Set in 1941, it tells the story of Pecola, a young African-American woman who is told so often she’s ugly that she finally begins to believe it. Child molestation and racism are just two of the omnipresent dangers the book details. For decades it has been a popular pick for college reading lists. That means bookseller Lynette Yates is far from alone in her experience with it. “The Bluest Eye is the first book I ever read by Toni Morrison,” says Yates of Half Price Books headquartered in Dallas. “And I was hooked. I could not put it down!” Morrison has other masterpieces like Beloved and Song Of Solomon but you might as well start at the beginning. Then, you’ll want to read them all.
Doctor Zhivago (Vintage International)
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Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The journey of Boris Pasternak’s masterwork—about a physician and poet during the two world wars—is as remarkable as the story itself. Impossible for it to be released in the Soviet Union, his novel was smuggled out, published in part by the C.I.A.(!), turned into a massively popular film and helped win its author the Nobel Prize, which Pasternak was then forced to turn down. But let’s not forget the novel itself. Writer Mark Helprin, himself a proponent of the “epic tradition” school of writing Doctor Zhivago epitomizes, loves it above all others. “Doctor Zhivago combines astoundingly beautiful writing with epic sweep, deep emotion, historically riveting action and impossible-to-ignore spirituality,” says Helprin, author most recently of Paris In The Present Tense. “And the courage to write in defiance of a crushing dictatorship illuminates every serious word and phrase. Unlike many books awarded the Nobel Prize, it fully deserved it, and will live on (even though it was made into a movie).”
To Kill a Mockingbird
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A beloved children’s book, if a book about an accusation of rape underlined by racism can be said to be for children. Whether you read it as a child, decided to become a lawyer because of Atticus Finch, saw the movie or the new Broadway play, or were assigned it at school, To Kill a Mockingbird is inescapable. Our favorite part of its mythic status was the fact that Lee avoided any press and said almost nothing about it—or anything else. That was as cool as the little girl Scout refusing to wear frilly pink dresses if she didn’t want to.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Ok, don’t rush him. Writer Junot Díaz takes his time, but patience pays off—both for him and us. Díaz exploded onto the scene in 1996 with the short story collection Drown, immediately establishing the Dominican-American author as a major talent. Over the next 26 years? One more short story collection (This Is How You Lose Her), one picture book (Islandborn) and one novel. The picture book is sweet, the two short story collections are both so strong we couldn’t choose between them and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is just amazing. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao celebrates a chubby kid growing up in New Jersey who suffers under a curse that dogs his family for generations. Oscar is obsessed with comic books and fantasy/sci-fi, so Díaz amusingly peppers his story with everything from references to J.R.R. Tolkien to footnotes and touches of magic realism. Oh and mongooses. (Mongeese?) Now, wouldn’t it be wondrous if Díaz finally delivered a full-on sci-fi/fantasy novel of his own?
Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
When Abraham Lincoln was President, his son Willie died. According to newspaper reports, on the day the child was laid to rest, Lincoln returned repeatedly to the crypt and cradled the body of Willie in his arms. George Saunders took that image and turned it into his first novel. After twenty years of increasing acclaim and success penning erudite, clever short stories, Saunders was daunted by the idea of a novel, not to mention a novel set in the past, not to mention a novel depicting one of the most famous people in history raw with emotion. Well, it worked—ghosts and all. Writer Michael Cunningham is just one of many to stand back in awe. “Quite possibly the most remarkable, original, beautiful book I’ve read yet, in the 21st century,” says Cunningham, author most recently of A Wild Swan and Other Tales. “If it doesn’t become a classic, my faith in the ongoing history of literature will suffer as a result.”
And Then There Were None
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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the most popular mystery writer of all time. And this is her most popular novel. Indeed, by some accounts, it’s the best-selling mystery novel and one of the best selling books ever, with 100 million copies sold and counting. Happily, the ugly racial slur that besmirched both its title and a key clue for decades (up to 1986, in UK editions) has been thoroughly erased. Now, fans can enjoy the novel for what it is: a brilliantly constructed tale of suspense. The set-up is so ingenious that others (not to mention Christie herself) use it time and again in movies, plays and novels. A group of strangers is brought together in an isolated location (in this case an island) under false pretenses. They slowly realize this…and quickly realize the members of their party are being knocked off, one by one. Who among them is the killer? And what have they each done to deserve this fate? The mounting tension, the suspicion, the backstabbing—it’s all delicious fun and Christie delivers one of her neatest solutions to tie it up very nicely indeed.
The Sellout: A Novel
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The Sellout by Paul Beatty
If you want to understand how timid, mean-spirited and ugly some stand-ups are today—both in what they make fun of and how—just read The Sellout. This is how it’s done. In his Booker and National Book Award-winning novel, Paul Beatty starts at outrageous, then builds up steam and really gets going. A black man looking to reinstate slavery in an abandoned town called Dickens on the outskirts of LA? The last surviving member of The Little Rascals, a fellow called Hominy Jenkins? A Supreme Court showdown lacerating the likes of Clarence Thomas with glee? It’s all here and Beatty is always punching up—never down. He pricks pomposity, makes serious points with jaw-dropping hilarity and swiftly outpaces Jonathan Swift with one of the best satires in generations.
Birds of America: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore has written acclaimed novels, criticism, essays and a children’s book. But short stories are where Moore shines best, from her 1985 debut collection Self-Help to 2014’s Bark. Writer Sherman Alexie returns to one of her collections again and again. “Birds of America is hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure,” says Alexie, author most recently of the memoir You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me. “I’ve re-read this book at least twenty times and I think that’s always the best sign of greatness.”
Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Bored with life, infatuated with the idea of romance, always searching for the next thrill, Emma Bovary is a frustrating, fascinating, fully alive character in a novel so influential it’s hard to believe this was Flaubert’s debut. Emma flits from affair to affair, piling up bills and disappointments with abandon, never putting a foot right. Flaubert, however, never puts a foot wrong and Anthony Doerr can’t praise it enough. “Attacked upon its publication for being ‘obscene,’ Madame Bovary has remained relevant ever since,” says Doerr, author most recently of Cloud Cuckoo Land. “It’s a 160+ year-old novel that still feels contemporary in its techniques and its critiques of the patriarchy. Flaubert’s portrayal of Emma Bovary is simultaneously beautiful and brutal, and lives at the headwaters of realistic psychological fiction.”
Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel
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Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
In an earlier era, it was Peyton Place that revealed the scandalous goings-on in suburbia. Stories like that were dismissed by some as little better than soap operas. Never mind that they dealt with the frustrations of women trapped in a certain role, the unspoken divide of class and so much more. It’s a domestic drama, mere women’s fiction and thus not important. We’ve learned better. Celeste Ng’s second novel is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the hometown of Ward Cleaver of Leave It To Beaver, which is to say the suburbs of our dreams. And yet, this seemingly quiet domestic drama soon explodes with an act of arson, secret abortions, transracial adoptions, surrogate mothers, sex, love, jealousy, heartbreak and, yes, little fires everywhere. It’s complex, cathartic and no wonder Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington produced and starred in a miniseries adaptation.
The Princess Bride (text only) by W. Goldman
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman
William Goldman is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of movie classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men. He also wrote about two dozen books, including a nonfiction memoir about Hollywood that captures the entire industry in one sentence: “Nobody knows anything.” But nothing tops the pleasures of his fantasy novel The Princess Bride. It tells the story of Buttercup, a young woman who believes her true love died at the hands of the Dread Pirate Robert. She’s pressured to marry Prince Humperdinck, heir to the throne of Florin. Before the wedding takes place, Buttercup is kidnapped by a rather kindly trio of outlaws. Toss in a framing device that includes details from the author’s “real” life, silly footnotes and other nonsense about this book being an abridged version of an earlier book that really wasn’t as good as the author remembered and you’ve got a treat. Goldman’s novel was twice blessed. First, it was turned into an equally magical film in 1987 that beautifully captures the tone of the novel. Second, while Goldman was determined to write a sequel called Buttercup’s Baby, he never could recapture the magic and gave up. So readers will never be tempted to read a sequel that would inevitably fall short of the original. And there it sits: a perfect little gem, just waiting for you and your children to enjoy.
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Penguin Classics)
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Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. But that never stopped humans before, did it? Written on a bet about who among friends could tell the best ghost story, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a landmark work of horror and caution. If all you know is the (brilliant) 1931 film version starring Boris Karloff as the Monster, then you’re in for a shock. The novel is far more expansive and the Creature (as Shelley calls him) is far more articulate, deadly, purposeful and plaintive. Some call it the greatest horror story ever written and others the prototype for science fiction. But one thing is clear: it’s not Victor Frankenstein who is the modern Prometheus, but Shelley herself. In other words, she won the bet.
Ficciones
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Labyrinths (New Directions Paperbook)
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Ficciones/Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Prepare to enter the labyrinth of Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. Or, if you prefer, prepare to dive into the fiction of Labyrinths. The Argentine writer burst into worldwide prominence in 1962 with the publication of two short story collections translating his work into English. One was Ficciones, or in English Fictions. The other was Labyrinths. Borges is a beguiling Prospero, wielding his magic to enchant anyone brave enough to explore a world of saintly librarians, imaginary lands and fanciful reviews of the second editions of books that never existed in the first place. For a writer who relished wordplay, plots that circled back upon themselves and concepts that anticipated the multiverse, it must please Borges no end that these two collections overlap, with numerous stories appearing in both. Which one should people read first? In what order? This unintentional creation of confusion and uncertainty for readers new to him? Perfect.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, 1)
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
Here are the facts. N.K. Jemisin is the first African American writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy novel. She’s the first writer ever to win the Hugo Award in three consecutive years. And she’s the first writer ever to win a Hugo Award for all three books in a trilogy. That should make you sit up. We could also mention her MacArthur genius grant, how fans believed in Jemisin enough to help crowd-fund her move to writing full-time way back when and much more. But those are just the facts. Read the Broken Earth trilogy of science fantasy that begins with The Fifth Season and you’ll be plunged into a vivid world devastated by a climate crisis every few centuries. You’ll discover a middle-aged woman necessarily hiding her extraordinary powers to influence the entire planet. You’ll fear for a small girl also blessed or cursed with those powers, a girl whose parents can’t bring themselves to kill her as society demands. And you’ll follow a young woman who discovers the truth about how their world is actually kept safe. It’s classic fantasy but also thoroughly modern. Jemisin blends the three storylines together with a flourish worthy of Proust, but that’s just one of its many pleasures. A landmark.
Indigo
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Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
An early peak for romance legend Beverly Jenkins, Indigo features all her trademarks. The story is an unexpected one, focusing on a young woman named Hester Wyatt bravely risking her life in the Underground Railroad (in Michigan!). She finds herself drawn to an arrogant conductor named Galen Vachon, a man who is badly injured and needs hiding. Galen is handsome and wealthy; she doesn’t know the latter fact but can’t help noticing the former. She’s pretty and willful; he can’t help noticing both of these qualities. In other words, it’s a classic romance with all the pleasures that entails. But Jenkins weaves in history and background detail with ease, grounding the story in a real world that’s far more complicated and interesting than most genre books ever attempt. And that makes her stories all the more gripping. She’s successful in many genres, but historical romances are where Jenkins flourishes—from stories about high-class hotels for people of color to the challenges facing professional doctors long ago to the many black cowboys of the Old West. Her novels are told with verve and accuracy, complete with bibliographies at the end for those who want to explore the history further. Whoever imagined romance novels with a bibliography? Beverly Jenkins.
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
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Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Forget the whale, for a moment. Most people haven’t read Moby-Dick, so for them it’s about some crazy guy on a boat obsessed with tracking down a white whale that made a snack of his leg. And yeah, sure, that’s a big part of it. But Herman Melville’s novel is a wilder ride than this implies. It’s the 1851 equivalent of surfing the web, with Melville telling his story about Ishmael, the newest member of the whaling ship Pequod. He veers from a fascinating breakdown of ship life and its culturally diverse crew members to describe the migratory patterns of whales and then back to the ship and the surprisingly cozy sleeping arrangements for the men and off again for a useful guide on harvesting whale blubber to a fiery sermon of poetry and song and back to the story at hand and then onto some other tangent. It’s remarkable how often the novel isn’t recounting the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab, though that mad venture is always just below the surface. Melville’s novel is obsessive itself, seeming determined to tell you everything that crosses its mind. It’s as mad as Ahab and just as fearsome and magnetic and impossible to forget.
Blonde: A Novel
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Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Norma Jean Baker’s greatest performance was as the movie star Marilyn Monroe. In her last interview, she spoke about current issues of the day and pleaded with the writer, “Please don’t make me a joke.” No luck; it was too late. Or at least it seemed too late. Now, writer Joyce Carol Oates treats Norma Jean with the seriousness she deserves. This meaty, compulsively readable and epic novel tracks her entire life, from a tumultuous childhood with a mentally disturbed mother to life in an orphanage, followed by brutal early days in Hollywood with sleazy studio execs and then the reward of suffocating fame. Monroe is naturally savvy if also innocent, desperate to learn more and be more, but also aware her sex appeal is the best way to get there. Oates captures her mercurial but insightful approach to acting, her determination to break with the studio system and tackle the roles she knows she can and her desire for someone—anyone—who might treat her with the kindness and respect she’s never known. You know how it ends and yet the journey is captivating, unexpected, funny, painful and as great as Monroe—or rather, Norma Jean—could dare imagine. Oates has written literally dozens and dozens of novels and short story collections. This is her masterpiece.
The Underground Railroad: A Novel
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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
All eyes have been on writer Colson Whitehead since his oddball debut The Intuitionist. He satirized the publicity machine that feted him (John Henry Days), explored genres like horror (Zone One) and the bildungsroman (Sag Harbor) and even nodded towards forebears like E.B. White with his nonfiction work The Colossus of New York. Then, like Muhammad Ali predicting a knock-out, in 2016 Whitehead gave his next novel the totemic, throw-down-the-gauntlet, this-is-the-one title The Underground Railroad. And yes, it was the brilliant, captivating, mind-bending masterpiece everyone expected of him. In this case, the Underground Railroad is literally an underground railroad and the characters who escape by riding it enter into post-Civil War worlds where racism remains ever-changing, ever-new and ever-present. It’s upsetting, unexpected, propulsive and the most entertaining Important Book you’ve read in ages. With two more acclaimed novels since (The Nickel Boys and Harlem Shuffle), Whitehead is clearly just getting started.
The Song of Achilles: A Novel
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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Writer Madeline Miller spent a decade bringing the passionate romance at the heart of Homer’s Iliad to vivid life. The love between Achilles and Patroclus upends the entire Trojan War and it’s there for all to read in the epic poem dating from roughly 2700 years ago. And, still, it came as a shock to some in 2011 when Miller brought these two lovers so fully and beautifully to life in her debut novel. Miller did it again by turning an enchantress of The Odyssey from a minor villain to a complex, fascinating heroine in her 2018 book Circe. Surely Mary Renault and Robert Graves look on approvingly—two similar writers of historical fiction who captured the imagination of contemporary readers.
The Last Good Kiss (C.W. Sughrue Book 1)
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The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
James Crumley was a “writer’s writer,” which means his books never sold that much, but boy were they good. Heck, when the legendary author Ray Bradbury wrote three mystery novels, he named the detective “Crumley” in honor of the man! “[The Last Good Kiss] is the best private eye novel I’ve ever read,” says author Dennis Lehane, author most recently of Since We Fell. “Best first sentence, most satisfying ending, most beautifully written from beginning to end.” In the novel, investigator C.W. Sughrue is lured away from his job at a topless bar to find a wayward writer but ends up hunting down a woman missing for more than a decade. Crumley died in 2008, but not before enjoying a late-career appreciation from many quarters. “One of the great pleasures of my life,” says Lehane, “was getting to meet Crumley and tell him that his masterpiece forever changed my perception of what a crime novel could be.”
The Joy Luck Club: A Novel
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The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Oh, the joy of finally seeing yourself in an acclaimed, best-selling novel! In her debut, Amy Tan told of Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. Friends in San Francisco gather together each week to play mahjong, eat and talk, but mostly talk. They complain about their daughters while their daughters complain about the mothers. Stories are told, of the hardships the women faced when risking it all to move from China to America and of the very different lives their daughters are having thanks to that gamble and why can’t those daughters respect them and do as they’re told and not marry this boy or go to this school but marry that boy and study for that degree at the school chosen for them? Unless you’re a Chinese-American, it’s hard to appreciate the thrill, the deep satisfaction of seeing your stories embraced and celebrated. Like the best art, it’s universal for being so very specific. And oh, the joy of having something other than Charlie Chan and The Good Earth represent all of Chinese culture to America. Now, strands of that culture can be found in “everything, everywhere, all at once.” But The Joy Luck Club will always be a beloved and important breakthrough.
Winesburg, Ohio (Dover Thrift Editions)
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Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Whatever the truth, the romantic tale of how Sherwood Anderson became a writer is too good to pass up. He was a very successful businessman, overseeing a company selling paint, buying up smaller paint companies and expanding into other ventures. Anderson was 36 years old, married and had three children. But on November 28, 1912, he went to work and then rebelliously decided to chuck it all and devote himself full-time to writing. Anderson feigned mental illness of some sort so no one would get angry at him, walked out the door and never came back. Or, more likely, he had his second nervous breakdown (following an earlier one in 1907) and that left him unfit, unable or unwilling to work in paint any more. After two not so good novels, he hit paydirt with Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of short stories that combine to tell the life of one man and the frustrated, lonely dreams of everyone around him in a small town. It does in fiction what Edgar Lee Masters did in poetry with 1915’s Spoon River Anthology, another book that puts the lie to small-town life always being idyllic and sweet.
The Blind Assassin: A Novel, Cover may vary
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The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
We might have made the obvious choice and picked Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a depressingly timely novel that didn’t predict a thing, since every cruelty in its male-dominated dystopia had already been done to women. But for sheer bravado, her Booker Prize winner The Blind Assassin is hard to beat, offering the sweep of Canadian history in the 20th century. The narrator is an old woman looking back on her life, mostly to the 1930s and 1940s. It captures the pulpy feel of that era’s paperbacks without sacrificing complexity. And for an author who rejects the label of science-fiction writer, it offers a novel-within-a-novel that’s pure sci-fi and throws in enough betrayals and revelations to fuel a Buck Rogers serial. Very satisfying.
Winter’s Tale
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Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
By 1983, writer Mark Helprin had published two collections of short stories diamond-like in their clarity, not to mention a wonderfully sprawling debut novel (Refiner’s Fire) of the sort one expects from a writer who values tradition and the great novels of the 19th century. So no one was quite prepared for Winter’s Tale. Out of the blue, Helprin delivered a Dickensian fantasy celebrating the New York City of our dreams. It tells the story of Peter Lake, a burglar who lives in the ceiling of Grand Central Station (when not sneaking into the mansions of the wealthy to relieve them of their possessions). A white horse that swoops down from the stars, a beautiful young woman tragically dying of consumption, gangs of burglars, marshmen who live on the fringes of society, a raging fire, truth and joy and beauty and light and all of it wrapped up in language of boldness and verve. Magic? Just a touch. Magical? From start to finish.
Winnie-the-Pooh (Puffin Modern Classics)
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The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh)
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Winnie the Pooh/The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
Yes, but have you read it as an adult? Have you read it lately? A.A. Milne captures children to perfection, the way they interrupt your storytelling, their pleasure at seeing themselves included in it and their desire to learn more without quite admitting they don’t understand everything just yet. Any adult who’s made up a story for a small child will purr with pleasure when reading the opening chapters of Winnie The Pooh. It has charm to spare, thanks to timeless tales about friends and pranks and accepting people for who they are, like the dour Eeyore or the over-excitable Tigger. Not accepting them despite their quirks, but because of them. And oh, The House At Pooh Corner. The sad encroachment of school and Growing Up and time away from play and the need to Learn Things. Long before the Toy Story trilogy tore your heart out, Milne did it here to perfection.
Station Eleven
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Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Like most overnight successes, Emily St. John Mandel put in years of hard work to make it happen, switching from a career in dance to full-time writing. Three hard-boiled noirs led to her fourth novel, the sort of breakthrough that booksellers like Emily Bruce at Half Price Books in Dallas love to champion. “Mandel tells the story of a young actress in King Lear witnessing the lead have a heart attack on stage the same night a devastating flu pandemic begins and ultimately ends life across the world as we know it,” says Bruce. “Flashing forward to the survivors twenty years later, the actress is in a traveling symphony and encounters a violent prophet. Although a book about a pandemic is certainly an unsettling topic these days, the story of survival is moving, powerful and well worth the read.
David Copperfield (Penguin Classics)
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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ok, maybe you were forced to read Dickens in school and it didn’t take. Heck, if school forced you to eat chocolate ice cream every day you’d probably get sick of that too and vow “never again.” But as someone once said about London, anyone who is tired of Dickens is tired of life. His novels were first serialized in magazines so the cliffhanger endings of each chapter make them as binge-worthy as any TV show streaming online. You could start with the nigh-on-perfect Great Expectations or the righteous Hard Times or the novella you already know called A Christmas Carol. We suggest David Copperfield, the story of a young man making his way in the world. It’s bursting with the eccentric, colorful, immediately recognizable characters Dickens is known for. It boasts a clutch of passionate social issues Dickens illuminates like the brutal school system, child labor, prostitution and more. And because it’s based in part on his own challenging childhood, David Copperfield is as close to a memoir and the author’s own beating heart as anything else he wrote.
Another Brooklyn: A Novel
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Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
A genius (hey, the MacArthur people know what they’re talking about), writer Jacqueline Woodson is a talent whose work transcends labels like “young adult” or “kids” books. They’re for everyone. And you can start anywhere, from an exuberant picture book like The Year We Learned To Fly to young adult novels like Miracle’s Boys or her classic debut Last Summer With Maizon. You’ll find vivid characters, real life and the power of friendship. But you might as well start with her “adult” novel Another Brooklyn, a 2016 peak in which a woman coming to bury her father remembers the culture shock of moving from Tennessee to Brooklyn and adjusting to life in NYC. Woodson has been capturing young people and their fears and joys for more than 30 years. And she keeps getting better.
Riders of the Purple Sage (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
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Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
The Western of Westerns, Riders Of The Purple Sage from 1912 is the model for every Western that followed. It’s the story of a willful young Mormon woman in Utah who resists becoming the third wife of an Elder and then befriends some Gentiles. Some consider it anti-Mormon. But if the villain is a Mormon, so is our heroine! And her objection to polygamy and approval of comity with other faiths is exactly where the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints is officially at today. So not only is this one of the great Westerns, it was arguably ahead of its time spiritually too.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Writer Zora Neale Hurston is now rightly recognized for her pioneering scholarly work in documenting the folktales of African-Americans and the Caribbean peoples. She did serious ethnographic work, documented the life of one of the last people to have survived the Middle Passage and wrote about voodoo rituals in Haiti and Jamaica. All of this now receives a brighter spotlight, along with her plays, short stories, poetry and the like. We can thank writer Alice Walker, who renewed attention for Hurston and the masterpiece that is Their Eyes Were Watching God. If this novel was the only accomplishment of her life, she would still loom large. Just as in Jane Austen, the heroine of this story is abused for wanting a marriage based on love. Janie Crawford triumphs over her enslaved beginnings to become a woman of property who can choose the man she wants from many suitors. That doesn’t mean she’ll choose well, mind you. Published in 1937, its centerpiece is the devastating Okeechobee hurricane of 1928, an event that wipes the slate clean for Janie and lets her start her life over yet again. Gripping, moving and bold for this time—not to mention 1937—the only surprise is that it took 40 years for people to recognize how great this novel truly is.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love: A Novel (FSG Classics)
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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
What might have been? That’s the bittersweet question at the heart of this elegiac novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. The dying musician Cesar Castillo sits alone in a hotel room, listening to old records by his band the Mambo Kings and thinking back on his life. Exiled from Cuba after Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Batista, Cesar and his brother move to New York City. Fittingly for musicians, their timing is perfect. A mambo craze sweeps the country and they enjoy a burst of fame after appearing on the sitcom I Love Lucy. Of course, the craze ends, the Mambo Kings fade from the scene and Cesar now remembers the many highs and lows of his life both personal and professional. What might have been? With the life-changing success of his second novel, Oscar Hijuelos assured he would never have to ask himself that question.
Lud In The Mist
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Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
All but forgotten, British writer Hope Mirrlees is enjoying a resurgence. Her 600-line work Paris: A Poem is now considered a modernist classic and a major influence on T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, who originally published the piece with her husband. Mirrlees’s “friendship” with the famous classicist Jane Ellen Harrison is now seen in a new light. (Harrison was 37 years her senior but they lived together for 15 years until Harrison died. So perhaps “good pals” doesn’t quite cover it.) And her lone fantasy novel has passionate fans like writer Neil Gaiman. “My favourite book of all time is probably Lud-in-the-Mist,” says Gaiman, author most recently of Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry and Death: The Deluxe Edition. “It’s a story about a stolid land, and the fairy fruit that comes over the border, bringing dreams and poetry and madness; it’s a ghost story and a detective story and it’s also about existential angst and the pain of living in reality. I read it as a boy, and return to it every decade, finding new things in it—sometimes in the plot, sometimes in the way Mirrlees put words together.”
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories
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Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver was married twice and for a while considered himself a full-time drinker and merely a part-time writer. After being lauded as a major talent, he famously broke away from the influence of an editor that made his reputation and turned minimalism into the style du jour of the 1970s and 1980s. You can ignore the public profile, the stuff of magazine features and literary debates and just read his stories. You won’t find any major twists in the tales. No meta conceits to flatter your brain. No highbrow allusions. Just stories capturing life in such a straightforward manner that you catch your breath. “Cathedral.” “Boxes.” “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” And best of all, with this final collection done before Carver died of lung cancer, we get his own stamp of approval on 37 stories, some presented as they were first published (with his editor’s strong hand), some as Carver originally wrote them and some brand new. Brilliant.
The Round House: A Novel
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The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Sarah Hollenbeck of the Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago says simply that The Round House is “a transformative and mesmerizing novel by national treasure Louise Erdrich.” Indeed. One of our best writers, Erdrich is also one of our best chroniclers of crime, violence, poverty and its impact on individuals and communities. An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Erdrich finds rich material amidst life on the reservation in North Dakota. Fiction, poetry, children’s books, nonfiction—the Pulitzer-Prize winner has done it all. But the Justice Trilogy is a keystone of her career, encompassing Plague of Doves, LaRose and smack dab in the middle is 2012’s The Round House. It shows a 13-year-old boy frustrated that the police aren’t looking more seriously into a horrific attack on his mother. Disastrously, the kid takes matters into his own hands, with the help of friends and a stolen rifle. Justice is far, far away but a riveting story and art is right at hand.
Gone Girl
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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
This massive blockbuster reverberates in the mind as a novel about a scheming spouse…or perhaps a novel about how the media loves a scheming spouse…or perhaps how we secretly love it when the media piles on a scheming spouse. Let’s face it, Gone Girl is a roller coaster as the happy marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne falls apart in the white-hot glare of a missing wife case. Infidelity! Betrayal! Hidden diaries! Faked diaries! Clues! False clues! You can’t trust anyone or anything in this masterful tale filled with unreliable narrators. Unreliable except for Flynn, that is, who knows exactly what she’s doing.
Pale Fire
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Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov shocked the world with Lolita, while his work Speak, Memory is one of the great memoirs. But writer Scott Spencer isn’t mincing words about the book of Nabokov’s he admires the most. “You’re always on thin ice when you say a book is the greatest of all time—or even the greatest of the year in which it was first published,” says Spencer, author most recently of An Ocean Without A Shore. “But I feel terra firma beneath my feet when I say Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is the most astonishing work of fiction I have ever read. After a harrumphing, hilarious foreword, the novel presents us with a 999-line poem written by a poet named John Shade. Shade’s next door neighbor is a colleague at the local college named Charles Kinbote, a madman who believes himself to be Charles the Great, the exiled king of Zembla. The rest of the novel is Kimbote’s commentary/explication of Shade’s poem, in which Kimbote’s personality and preoccupations all but devour the poem itself. It is a narrative strategy of mind-bending weirdness and complexity, and the grateful reader can’t help but wonder how anyone—even the supremely gifted Nabokov—could create something so intricate, so dazzling, yet so filled with humanity. Pale Fire is a gorgeous, radiant work of high spirits and deep sorrow, an other-worldly novel with no predecessors and no descendants.”
A Visit from the Goon Squad
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A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Chrissie Hynde called time “the avenger.” Bob Dylan said “time is a jet plane—it moves too fast.” Jennifer Egan simply calls time “the goon squad,” the thug that beats you up no matter how you try to avoid it. Time ravages all the characters in her not-quite short story collection but not-quite novel that won the Pulitzer Prize. Set in and around the business of rock ‘n’ roll, Egan’s work jumps around in time, turns one passage into a PowerPoint presentation and does pretty much everything you’d expect from a cool contemporary book. It’s also everything you’d expect from a classic penned one hundred years ago: beautifully written, filled with great characters and hard to shake. Time will be kind to it.
Watership Down: A Novel
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Watership Down by Richard Adams
This novel is about rabbits and was inspired by stories that author Richard Adams told to his daughters on long road trips. So that explains why Watership Down is often slotted in the children’s section. But it might just as easily be put in the fantasy or fiction or nature or “books you didn’t think you’d care about but the second you start reading them you can’t stop” section. That’s a category, right? In this beguiling adventure, a group of rabbits listen to the prophet-like Fiver, who has a vision their warren is about to be destroyed. They break away from the only world they’ve ever known and head off into the unknown. The group struggles to overcome dangers like cars, dogs, snares, mutiny and much more, with only the vague idea of a destination — a hilltop where they might live in peace. These aren’t rabbits with pocket watches and they don’t live in some fantasy world. This is our world and the rabbits behave very much like rabbits do. And yet, they’re us too. Gripping, frightening, inspiring.
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The Namesake: A Novel
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The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Every well-written story is universal. And Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel after her acclaimed short story collection Interpreter of Maladies is yet another example. A Bengali couple from Calcutta India moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their son born in America is named Gogol, after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. It’s the familiar and fresh story of immigrants, of people making a new home and wondering how and if they should fit in, what to leave behind and what to cling to. What kind of a name is “Gogol,” wonders the son, who wants to legally change his name, rebelling against his parents by becoming so American they think they might be losing him. Nuanced and moving, Lahiri’s book shows that the immigrant story—that most American of stories—is always being told anew.
The Brothers Karamazov (Bicentennial Edition): A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue
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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Everyone from Sigmund Freud to Albert Einstein loved this novel—the final and greatest achievement of one of Russia’s greatest writers. You’ve heard about The Grand Inquisitor, even if you’ve never read the poem in the novel where he first appears. And pretty much anyone who makes a list of this sort includes it. Indeed, author W. Somerset Maugham includes it in his admirably brief list of the ten greatest novels of all time. We can’t bring ourselves to be as succinct as he, but at least we’ve included seven of the books he admired best. Just as Dostoevsky wrestles with the idea of God and free will, you simply have to wrestle with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Don’t worry; even if they best you, you’ll never forget the struggle to truly understand these Russian bears.
Parable of the Sower (Parable, 1)
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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
The body of work created by Octavia E. Butler is rich. But 1993’s Parable of the Sower looms larger and larger, if only because it grapples with the climate crisis, inequality, corporate greed and the eternal hope that life will be better somewhere else. Lauren Oya Olamina is an African American teenager living in the deteriorating society of 2024. She escapes the violent collapse of her preacher father’s isolated community and travels north for work. Hiding her gender, fearing rape, risking an interracial romance, Lauren creates a new religion she calls Earthseed, where humanity’s only chance to get it right is to start again on another planet. Like the best parables, Butler’s book is first and foremost a story you’ll remember. But it also has much to teach.
Waiting (Vintage International)
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Waiting by Jin Ha
Just…wait. That’s all Dr. Lin Kong is asking his girlfriend, Nurse Manna Wu, to do. Wait. Lin wants to marry Manna but he’s already married to Shuyu, an old-fashioned village woman Lin never loved but dutifully wed. Now he needs to ask for a divorce. Every year he heads home to his village determined to do so…and every year he comes back to the city and asks Manna to wait just one more year. Jin Ha’s National Book Award-winning novel revealed life in Communist China in new detail for many readers, showing its constraints on personal freedom. More broadly, Waiting shows the divide between city and country, between tradition and modernism, between passion and responsibility, divides that are familiar the world over. Which explains its popularity the world over…except in China, where the book was denounced and has yet to be officially published.
Play It As It Lays (FSG Classics)
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Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Joan Didion is rightly acclaimed for her nonfiction work laying bare the soul of America. She also won a legion of new fans with the memoir The Year Of Magical Thinking, the story of Didion’s life in the year after the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne. But boy did she know show biz. In her second novel, Didion presents one of its fringe players. Maria is in a psychiatric hospital in LA, thinking back on how she got there. Born in a small town, Maria dreams of being an actress, falls in with abusive men and only moves to Hollywood after she’s given acting up. That may be the sanest move of her life. Everything is a struggle for Maria, who fights to protect her ailing child, fights addiction, fights for a divorce and is now fighting to get better and get out of the hospital. Life soon imitated art: the novel came out to acclaim in 1970 and Didion along with her husband spent the next decade working in Hollywood, albeit with much more success than Maria.
Anna Karenina
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
If you’re not ambitious, start with Tolstoy’s devastating novella The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. If you’re overly ambitious, go for War And Peace, a novel as big and sprawling and all-encompassing as its title. But if you want to start at the top and prefer a little doomed romance with your Russian epics, try Anna Karenina. It features enough vivid characters and plotlines to power two soap operas. Like War and Peace, it’s not shy about boldly tackling everything from religion to Imperial Russia in all its glorious complications and so on. But it revolves around a juicy love affair between the married Anna and the cavalry officer Count Vronsky, who simply must be described as “dashing.” You’ll be caught up in a way you’re simply not by the equally marvelous but less focused musings of War And Peace. Just don’t read it on a station platform while waiting for a train.
Dandelion Wine: A Novel (Grand Master Editions)
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Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is famous for his dystopian novel about book-burning titled Fahrenheit 451. He’s acclaimed for his eerie tales of space colonization called The Martian Chronicles. But those who love him best gravitate to the nostalgic tales of childhood in Dandelion Wine. Tinged with magical realism, these evocations of small town life dipped in honey are irresistible because they capture a perfect past that never really existed…except for every boy and girl with a little imagination and a lot of heart. Bookseller Jim Reed of Jim Reed Books in Birmingham, Alabama, always has a few copies on hand to press on lucky browsers. “Christopher Isherwood and R.L. Stine and I, among others, believe this is the great American novel,” says Reed. “Dandelion Wine is a magical lightning bolt. When I first read this wonderful book in the 1950s, I was a teenager without compass, a quiet kid with no prospects. Dandelion Wine awakened me to the idea that I could be a dreamer, an actor, a writer…and that that was ok. Apparently I wasn’t the only kid on the planet who was amazed by life.”
Three Novels of New York: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. At the time, that wasn’t a big deal, as such—four of the first seven winners were women. Men slowly began to dominate the award, with women now making up only a third of all winners. Men also dominate in The Age Of Innocence. The protagonist Newland Archer is accustomed to getting whatever he wants: Newland is old money, upper class and proud of it. He should marry the innocent seeming May Welland but he’s drawn to the unsuitable yet more interesting Ellen Olenska. Newland pursues her, but his peers won’t have it and quietly disapprove. The bonds of society, the sharply defined lines between old money and new, between the “better” classes and the lower ones are all on display in Wharton’s dissection of a world she knew so well. Pregnancy as a plot twist and a weapon? You might say only a woman would have thought of that. But you’d be more correct to say only a great writer would have deployed it so well.
Midnight’s Children
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Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie’s second novel is so influential in India that critics refer to the “post-Rushdie” era. Among countless accolades, it scored the highest honor in the Commonwealth: the Booker Prize. Then on the Booker’s 25th anniversary, it was named the best book to win the Booker. And on its 40th anniversary, Midnight’s Children did it again, being chosen as the Booker of Bookers. Rushdie’s third novel The Satanic Verses is the one that unfortunately made him a household name around the world, as well as a fugitive from a fatwa. But Midnight’s Children remains a landmark in world literature, as signal an event in its way as the independence of India from the U.K. and the wrenching partition of that country into India and Pakistan. The babies born between midnight and 1 a.m. on that fateful day have special powers. Our hero Saleem is born very close to midnight, so he proves very powerful indeed. Saleem’s story is very much the story of modern India in all its tragedy, missed opportunity and promise. Few novels are as ambitious and even fewer succeed so splendidly.
Devil’s Cub
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Devil’s Cub by Georgette Heyer
J.R.R. Tolkien established the modern fantasy, a genre almost entirely indebted to him for its existence. Few can make a similar claim about pioneering a new category of fiction. But Georgette Heyer can. She wrote many thrillers, often one a year, and they deserve your attention. But she’s widely recognized as creating the modern historical romance and more specifically, the Regency romance. Jane Austen wrote Regency romances as a matter of course—for her, they were contemporary novels because that’s when she lived. One hundred years later, Heyer would bring a scholar’s passion for accuracy to the Regency romance. By the end of her life, Heyer owned a reference library exceeding 1000 titles about the era, along with any info she could find on the history of snuff boxes, the cost of candles in a particular year and so on. What’s truly exciting is that her novels like Devil’s Cub are so much fun. The characters are offbeat for the day (Marrying for love? What an idea!) and Heyer has a blast upending convention, even as she establishes that convention so well. Everyone in the romance field stands in her debt. Devil’s Cub is great but really you can’t go wrong with anything she wrote.
Where the Wild Things Are
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Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
A picture book classic can’t just appeal to kids—it also must appeal to adults because they’re the ones who read it. Author Matthew Paul Turner estimates he’s read Where The Wild Things Are hundreds of times to his own children and to classrooms of kids. “To me, Sendak’s 1963 offering is a perfect children’s book because it’s one of the most delightful books to read aloud, offering moments to read quietly, in almost a hush, and also lines to read loudly with growls and snorts,” says Turner, author most recently of I Am God’s Dream with illustrator Estrella Bascuñan. “With every turn of the page, Sendak adds mystery and nuance to Max’s adventure using the fewest words possible. One minute we’re observing Max in his bedroom yelling ‘I’ll eat you up!’ at his mother and a few pages later, we’ve joined Max on an island of monsters, romping and stomping with the young hero. Wild Things is real and it’s fantasy, it’s childlike and yet it leaves space between the words to imagine a deeper and more profound story. Its illustrations are simple and timeless and have inspired the imaginations of generations of readers. I love that I was able to introduce my kids to a story that I loved deeply when I was their age.”
Waiting to Exhale
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Waiting To Exhale by Terry McMillan
It’s hard to overstate the impact of Waiting To Exhale when it came out in 1992. It’s a thoroughly entertaining novel about female friendship, the pressures of career and how very disappointing men can sometimes (ok, often) be. Funny, sexy and smart, Terry McMillan’s book is a winner. While it has many precursors (many mothers, you might say), the success of it and her follow-up How Stella Got Her Groove Back proved a landmark. This was a book embraced by a wide audience. But it wasn’t written to reach a wide audience and didn’t worry about a wide (that is, white) audience. It was by and for people of color and especially black people and especially black women. So when it became a best-seller and reached both the women it celebrated and everyone else as well, the change was fundamental. One year later, the TV show Living Single debuted, so change was in the air, a change marked by so many movies and TV shows and books and music by the likes of Jill Scott. A change sparked by Waiting To Exhale.
The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
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The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
One of William Faulkner’s masterpieces, The Sound and the Fury, signified something, though critics were mostly dismissive when this story of a fading Southern family came out in 1929. Its stream of consciousness style, jumps in time and multiple narrators led off by the mentally challenged Benjy Compson was just too much for many. Respected critic Clifton Fadiman wasn’t alone when he recognized Faulkner’s artistry but for the life of him couldn’t understand why it was used to tell this confusing story. Within two years, the book would start to gain momentum commercially and in 20 years, Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Today, so many books and tv shows and movies like Pulp Fiction have used similar time-jumping structures to tell a story that The Sound And The Fury feels almost familiar. It’s still bold and disorienting, but at least readers can rest assured they’ll figure out what the heck is going on and that it’s all worth the ride.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [75th Anniversary Ed] (Perennial Classics)
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This autobiographical novel about a young girl who loves reading and dreams of something…more speaks to immigrants and adolescents everywhere. Writers like Kristy Woodson Harvey hold it especially dear. “I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the first time in the fourth grade,” says Harvey, author most recently of The Wedding Veil, “and have read it almost every year since. Every time, every page, I find something new to love, some different piece of wisdom to grasp onto, something truer and more real about humanity than I did before. The brilliance of Betty Smith was her ability to transform the ordinary moments of our lives into something bright and shining, to find that morsel of goodness that connects us across circumstance and time. And, of course, ‘The world was hers for the reading,’ is a quote that still, all these years later, can’t help but make my book-loving heart race.”
Donald Barthelme: Collected Stories (LOA #343) (Library of America, 343)
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Donald Barthelme: Collected Stories by Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme is America’s Beckett, which is to say America’s class clown or more exactly America’s court jester—the one who gets away with speaking the brutal truth because it’s cloaked in absurdist humor the unwary dismiss as surreal, fragmented nonsense. His short stories (and the infrequent novel) are invariably playful, hilarious and grim. In his work Barthelme drew inspiration from visual artists as much as he did fellow writers as diverse as Kafka and S.J. Perelman, always deferential if not reverential to Beckett. So, at times, his stories would be interrupted by a found piece of illustration from the 19th century, just to keep you on your toes. Monty Python probably paid attention. Collected Stories from the Library of America gathers together essentially every short story he ever published, which is appropriate since every short story of his is essential. To say he was held in high esteem by other writers is an understatement. “This book will take you from the early let’s say cubism to the later let’s say domesticity in the Barthelme progression,” says Padgett Powell, author most recently of Indigo. “A major book: what Hemingway was to the first, Barthelme was to the second half of 20th century American fiction.”
Get Shorty: A Novel
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Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Toss a dart at the books of Elmore Leonard and you’ll hit a classic. Thunk and you’ve picked his wonderfully unconventional Western Valdez Is Coming. Or thunk the period gangster story The Hot Kid. Or thunk and you’ve landed on Get Shorty, in which Leonard combines hilarious dialogue and vivid characters with genuine danger to skewer Hollywood along with the usual loan sharks and criminal lowlifes. God knows why Leonard would bite the hand that feeds him—Hollywood made one terrific movie after another based on his novels and the 1995 film Get Shorty with John Travolta was no exception.
The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)
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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
For people living with depression, for certain women, for certain artists, few books matter as much as The Bell Jar. The poet Sylvia Plath shows her (autobiographical) character Esther Greenwood fighting depression with a humor and clarity that astonishes even today. We know so much more about bipolar disorder, depression and the like now. But Plath knew it instinctively in 1963 and she captured what it is to live with depression, rather than damning or praising this treatment or that clinic or yet another off-target diagnosis. What a person really wants first—really needs first—is to be believed and listened to and understood. When you’re trapped under a bell jar, it’s hard to be heard. Not for Plath, who’s still speaking out some 60 years later.
Lake Wobegon Days
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Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
“It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown out there on the edge of the prairie….” For decades, those words promised a return to an idyllic innocence that never really existed and a gentle teasing of human foibles that always will. The radio show A Prairie Home Companion was a marvelous combination of good music, bad jokes, community and a generosity of spirit. The highlight back in the day was the monologue with news from Lake Wobegon, delivered extemporaneously by host Garrison Keillor. He reshaped some of the best monologues into the collection Lake Wobegon Days and it catapulted him and the show into even greater worldwide fame. Yes, it won a Grammy as an audiobook and yes, some fans prefer to hear him, rather than read him. But Keillor is a careful writer and knows the difference between what works on the air and what works on the page. So don’t discount the craft put into this gem of gentle humor. If you can’t help hearing Keillor’s voice while reading it, well that’s okay too.
The Nightingale: A Novel
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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Without warning, every once in a while, it seems like everyone you know—everyone—has read, is reading or is about to read the same book. In 2015, that book was The Nightingale, a World War II novel about two estranged sisters resisting the Nazi invasion of France. One secretly shelters Jews, including a neighbor’s child she hides in plain sight. The other sister joins the French Resistance and devises a plan to spirit away stranded Allied pilots to neutral territory. Like the most enduring thrillers, you’re sucked in not just by plot twists or the high drama of war but by the characters who become so real to you that their fate is akin to your own.
The Good Soldier (Vintage Classics)
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The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford’s novel came out in 1915. You have to remember that when reading this story of poisoned marriages, infidelity and madness. Its narrator is so slippery and its attitude so cynical that the effect is almost shocking. Two couples meet at a spa in Germany where a respective spouse can be treated for their ailing heart. One couple is British, with Captain Edward Ashburnham resting his heart after overuse: the man is chronically unfaithful to his wife Leonora. The other couple is American, with the wife Florence pretending to have a weak heart so she can keep her husband John from “bothering” her in bed while she maintains an affair on the side. This isn’t Noel Coward territory: suicide and mental breakdowns are on tap, not to mention intimations of abuse and even the possibility that we’re being sold a bill of goods by the narrator. Truly no one is good here except, of course, for Ford.
Normal People: A Novel
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Normal People by Sally Rooney
She’s the voice of a generation! She’s Ireland’s most popular export since U2! Or we could calm down and say that, three novels in, Sally Rooney is the real deal. Normal People became a hugely popular miniseries and turned Paul Mescal into a star, so thank you for that, Sally. But what a novel! It’s so engaging you almost don’t realize how ambitious it proves, tackling class and gender with insight and complexity. Connell is the star of his high school, almost embarrassed to be dating the shy Marianne. But she blossoms at university while Connell struggles to adapt to a wider world where he’s not automatically B.M.O.C. She’s rich, he’s working class and they are both smart enough to realize this tangled, confusing, ever-shifting relationship (friendship? love?) has to mean something. Doesn’t it?
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Some novels reveal their pleasures immediately. Others need careful attention, re-reading and perhaps a little life under the reader’s belt before they can be fully appreciated. Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece is different. Its pleasures are immediate and abundantly clear—the fantastical tale is hilarious, satirical, intellectually playful, clearly has a lot on its mind and is above all fun. Even a child knows this. Yet the more you read it and the more you think about it and what it says and means, the curiouser and curiouser it becomes. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates, for one, often cites it as a profound influence. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is hilarious and satirical and all that, but far more than you realized. If it’s been a while since you went down the rabbit hole, all we can say is don’t hesitate to DRINK ME and EAT ME and indeed READ ME.
Olive Kitteridge
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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
In real life, we want nothing to do with ornery, cranky, difficult people. Who needs the bother? But in movies and TV shows and books we positively delight in them. It’s fun to spend time with the rude, downright obnoxious character who says what everyone is secretly thinking. Writer Elizabeth Strout hit pay dirt with the prickly personality of Olive Kitteridge. Embodied to perfection by Frances McDormand in an HBO miniseries, Olive observes everyone around her with a gimlet eye…and then tells them precisely what she sees. Her saving grace is that Olive is just as hard on herself. You finish the book and immediately start to miss her. Strout must have felt the same way—she wrote an equally acclaimed sequel called Olive, Again about a decade later.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
In the year 2000, author Michael Chabon discovered his superpower. Prior to that, he seemed a mild-mannered writer. Chabon’s acclaimed debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was seen as semi-autobiographical, like many first novels. He struggled with the follow-up and then dropped it completely to do that most writerly of things—write a novel about a writer trying to write a novel (a college professor, no less!). Wonder Boys was a huge success and spawned a good movie, but still. One worried. Then Chabon was bitten by a radioactive bug or discovered a hidden passage in his library or was told about his true origins on another planet or something! Because out of nowhere he delivered The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a fictionalized reimagining of two nice Jewish boys who create a superhero comic book, a la Superman. It’s a rich period story punctuated by vivid retellings of the comic book plot, World War II, a gay romance, assimilation and so on. Even more amazing, Chabon hasn’t looked back. Since this landmark, he’s written children’s books, a sci-fi mystery set in an alternate timeline, a novella capturing Sherlock Holmes in his old age, a serialized novel about swashbuckling Jews around the turn of the last millennium and even a comic book bringing to life the comic book hero of Kavalier & Clay! Genre is his superpower and Chabon won’t ever forget it.
An American Marriage (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel
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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Writer Tayari Jones lays claim to Atlanta as her literary stomping ground, thanks to a string of acclaimed novels and her role as editor of the mystery/thriller collection Atlanta Noir. Bookseller Sarah Hollenbeck touts An American Marriage, the story of a newly married couple whose lives are torn apart when the husband is wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. “It’s an intimate look deep into the hearts of people who are victims of our current mass incarceration crisis but must somehow face the future,” says Hollenbeck of Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago. “A profound and stirring book!” She’s not alone in loving it. Oprah made it a pick for her book club, President Barack Obama touted the title and it won the prestigious Women’s Prize For Fiction.
The Chosen
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The Chosen by Chaim Potok
A father expects his son to enter the family business, but the son has other plans. You’ve heard this one before. But when that tension between expectation and desire is set in the world of Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn during World War II, it becomes fresh and surprising. Reuven and Danny are friends, even though Reuven is part of the more worldly Modern Orthodox community while Danny is the son of a rabbi leading an ultra-orthodox Hasidic yeshiva. They’re all-American boys who bond over baseball. And both want to defy their parents. Reuven yearns to be a rabbi, but his father expects the boy to pursue higher education. Danny’s father assumes the boy will become a rabbi, but Danny wants to study psychology. Who gets to choose the life you lead? Your father? Yourself? And if the Jews are the Chosen, how could the Holocaust ever take place? A novel that grapples with faith and family, The Chosen will remain a perennial favorite as long as kids and parents clash.
A Song Of Ice And Fire 7 Books Set By George R. R. Martin
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A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
How can we celebrate a fantasy series that’s not even done yet? Easy. All fantasy writers stand on the shoulders of J.R.R. Tolkien, as Martin himself readily acknowledges. But few do it with such flair and passion as he. Martin’s novels are brutal, cynical, and thrilling in their scope. In them, the smallest and kindest among us don’t pop up to save the day. More likely, they’re trampled underfoot. Major characters who die won’t be brought back to life. They’re just dead. Betrayal and honor carry a heavy price and it’s not clear which is higher. Watching leaders battle for control of Westeros while ignoring a looming (ecological?) disaster isn’t “timely.” It’s timeless. Fighting for power while sidestepping the issues that really matter is par for the course with the ruling class. Someday we’ll be able to read A Song Of Ice and Fire from start to finish. Those frustrating gaps where characters aren’t heard from for a thousand pages won’t matter. The gaps between books being published won’t matter either. All that will matter is the song. So take your time, Mr. Martin.
Related: Watch This, Read That: What to Read Based on the Fall TV Shows You Love
Selected Stories of Alice Munro, 1968-1994 (Vintage International)
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Selected Stories by Alice Munro
This is the name of the greatest hits set from 1996, gathering the best stories from Alice Munro’s first eight volumes. It’s been published under various titles, but don’t worry. You can grab any collection, like Vintage Munro (which is a redundant title) or My Best Stories. Or you can buy her first book of stories Dance Of The Happy Shades or her most recent Dear Life. Really, just look for the name Alice Munro and read it. She’s the first Canadian and only the thirteenth woman in history to win the Nobel Prize. You’ll soon understand why.
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
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Roots by Alex Haley
If you or someone in your family has taken a swab test to trace your roots, you can thank writer Alex Haley. A passion for genealogy and a desire to see if the oral history he’d heard over the years was based on truth sent Haley on a quest. It took him all the way to Africa and what is now known as The Gambia. Then it led him to a typewriter, where Haley took the facts as he best knew them and crafted a novel. That book told the story of Kunta Kinte, a 17 year old man cruelly kidnapped from his home and sold into slavery…and then it told the story of the next seven generations of Kinte’s family, moving from tragedy to triumph. They started filming the miniseries even before the novel was published; both were massive, unprecedented successes. Genealogy and our understanding of American history have never been the same.
Anne of Green Gables (Children’s Signature Classics)
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Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
A plucky young orphan girl with spunk? Check! Ornery old people who turn out to be endearing? Check! Some “disasters” and setbacks that loom large for our heroine but prove surmountable? Check! A boy who is infuriating but proves to be rather handsome and kind once you get to know him? Check! Yes, this 1908 classic was not the first of its kind (hello, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and certainly inspired countless successors. But the red-haired Anne with an “e” is special. It inspired five sequels of increasing depth and sophistication, though writer Margaret Atwood insists this first novel is the best. And who are we to argue with Margaret Atwood? By the end of the series, Anne looks on as her children sleep, while the shadows of World War I loom large. You realize how much Anne and her world mean to you…and start to read them all over again.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon Graphic Library)
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Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware
When people who don’t love comics single out a comic (or graphic novel or what-have-you) worth reading, they often light on something that is the least comic book-y thing they can find. Hence the universal—and yet deserved—praise for Chris Ware’s atypical, beautiful comic Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. Outlets that rarely get comic books can “get” this mournful story of a middle-aged man who has a troubled relationship with his dad. The stories are quiet, piercing and broken up by flashbacks to Jimmy Corrigan’s grandfather as a boy, when he had a troubled relationship with his dad. First, you’ll be enraptured by the sheer pleasure of looking at this work of art. Then, you’ll sink into the story and its quiet moments and before you know it, you’re under his spell.
Speedboat: With an introduction by Hilton Als (W&N Essentials)
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Speedboat by Renata Adler
Renata Adler became infamous for reviewing a collection of movie criticism by Pauline Kael. Both were writers at the New Yorker but that didn’t stop Adler from decimating her colleague Kael’s work, tearing it down line by line, piece by piece. In her autobiographical-ish debut novel Speedboat, Adler did much the same for modern life in the 1970s. Moments flit by, fragmented scene follows fragmented scene and yet somehow it all coheres into the story of a journalist making her way through the world of New York City and politics and parties. “Reading it is like being in a snowstorm,” said one rave review in The New Yorker (not written by Kael, needless to say). Everyone from Elizabeth Hardwick to David Foster Wallace has championed it and Speedboat went from an out-of-print cult favorite to a modern classic.
The Grapes of Wrath: 75th Anniversary Edition
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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
This is an angry book. It’s a nice, safe classic now, enshrined on lists like this, turned into a great movie starring Henry Fonda, a great stage play and even an opera. But when it came out, The Grapes Of Wrath was a thunderbolt. It was banned all over the place and burned…even by librarians! People argued about it. Debates were held on the radio. John Steinbeck was called a socialist, a communist and he would have been called worse but there was nothing worse to be called than a communist. Yet it sold and sold and sold. The debate hasn’t stopped. It was banned in Ireland in the 1950s. It was banned in Turkey in the 1970s. Today, people still raise objections to it being required reading in high schools or even optional reading or even just sitting on the shelf in libraries where some impressionable child might find it. The story of the Joad family, fleeing the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression, desperate for jobs, hounded everywhere they go when all they want is a decent wage for a decent day’s work? That’s as timeless as it gets. Steinbeck might prefer a better future where the book was long forgotten or just a relic of ancient history. But he certainly wouldn’t be surprised that it’s still blazingly relevant. And he’d still be angry.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
No matter how unique, how unexpected, how new a novel seems, even its author can readily name the many novels that inspired it, paving the way for their “unprecedented” and original work. Still, the debut novel of Susanna Clarke certainly felt wonderfully fresh and new. Clarke might have mentioned Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees as one of many predecessors in tone and style. But we simply weren’t expecting a pitch-perfect evocation of the 19th-century novel a la Dickens and Austen, a comedy of manners and high drama which combines an alternate history, the Napoleonic Wars, the re-emergence of magic and most deliciously of all the knives-out ferocity that is academia into one bewitching tale. No one is more territorial than a scholar defending their minor backwater of knowledge and Clarke punctures such pomposity with footnotes to her novel that are howlingly funny in their pedanticism. This might have turned into a cult classic, one especially treasured by tenured professors. Instead, it became a rip-roaring bestseller to the delight of all.
A Death in the Family (Penguin Classics)
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A Death in the Family by James Agee
A brilliant film critic, James Agee also penned two classic screenplays: The African Queen (along with director John Huston and two others) and The Night Of The Hunter (with an uncredited Charles Laughton also playing a role). A good collaborator, Agee worked with photographer Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a ground-breaking combination of words and images documenting the lives of impoverished tenant farmers. But his posthumous novel A Death In The Family is the riveting, anguished pinnacle of Agee’s life. People can’t leave it alone. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize after an editor pulled it together from an unfinished manuscript. Others turned it into a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a film, a TV movie and an opera. Then a scholar took issue with the editing and oversaw a new edition of the novel closer to the form it was in when Agee died. In every form, the story of a little boy in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1915—the year his father dies in a car accident—is piercing, heartwarming, nostalgic and so very moving.
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy wrote easier books. The Road is his most popular work—a dystopian novel where the brutal struggle to survive is given purpose by showing a father determined to protect his young son. All The Pretty Horses is more lyrical and open-hearted, with a doomed romance at its core. Then there’s Blood Meridian, the anti-Western, a novel few praised when it first came out in 1985. In it, a semi-lawless band of men is sent off to scalp any violent Indians that cross their path along the U.S.-Mexican border. Soon they’re attacking peaceful Indians, sleepy Mexican villages, the Mexican army and pretty much anyone else unlucky enough to come in range. The violence is unremitting and you’ll decide it puts the lie to the romantic Westerns of your youth or you’ll decide this is how it really was back then so deal with it or you’ll decide violence is just the way of humanity, as one of the novel’s epigraphs suggests. Hard to shake, and maybe you shouldn’t try.
Tipping the Velvet: A Novel
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Tipping The Velvet by Sarah Waters
Don’t get the impression that Sarah Waters peaked with her marvelous debut Tipping The Velvet. You’ll find her crime novel Fingersmith on our list of the 110 Best Thriller, Crime, Suspense Novels Of All Time. But since she began with Tipping The Velvet, you should too. Waters was writing her PhD on historical fiction, figured she’d have a go at it herself and wrote this gripping novel. Forget everything you imagine you know about the Victorian era because it’s probably wrong. Here you’ll discover Nan, a young woman working in the unromantic business of oysters. Her world is upended by Kitty, a “masher,” a woman who dresses as a man onstage. Crime, betrayal, life on the stage, sex work of unimagined variety and more take place in the late 1800s against the backdrop of the suffragette movement, socialism and the constant fear of being arrested for whom they love. It’s a proper melodrama and in a novel this well-written and historically grounded, that’s a compliment.
Howards End (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
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Howards End by E.M. Forster
A Room With A View is Forster’s wittiest and most romantic novel. Maurice, and its doomed gay love, is his most personal. (It was only published after the author died in 1970.) A Passage To India, and its take on Empire, is his most popular. But Forster is at his most focused and refined with Howards End. He diagnoses the ills of English society while gently satirizing those who saw “the poor” as their own personal pet project. It’s all-encompassing, shrewd and generous of spirit, with the titular home proving both a symbol and a burden, until it’s finally placed into the right hands.
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Underworld: A Novel
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Underworld by Don DeLillo
Like Babe Ruth pointing to where he’d hit a home run before a pitch is thrown, writer Don DeLillo’s career clearly pointed to this: a sprawling yet focused, all-encompassing masterpiece. And just like the Babe, he delivered. The 98-page opening section is devoted to The Shot Heard ‘Round The World, a home run by Bobby Thomson that won the New York Giants the pennant and sent them to the World Series. That ball is caught by a young black fan while J. Edgar Hoover watches from the stands, being informed during the game that the Soviets have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. It’s all there—America, the Cold War, race, class, sports, sexuality, politics, joy, despair—and it’s done so perfectly that this chunk of the book would later be titled Pafko At The Wall and sold separately as a novella. The rest of the novel charts the life of a man obsessed with finding out what happened to that home run ball and acquiring it for himself. Oh, and charting the 20th century as well. So far, it’s DeLillo’s best novel, but he still has innings left to play.
The God of Small Things: A Novel
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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The cruelty of caste. The dismissal of women. The pain of heartbreak. Family. Religion. All play a role in the meticulous, absorbing debut novel by Arundhati Roy that took the literary world by storm 25 years ago. Set in Kerala, India, and beginning in the 1960s, Roy’s story centers on women betrayed by love, bolstered by love and bent on love. To this day, so-called “Love Laws,” in both the cultural and legal sense, limit who can love who and how much in India, with gender, caste and faith all obstacles to be surmounted. What’s love got to do with it? Everything—and Roy demonstrates why in a novel as formally complex as it is generous of spirit.
Ubik
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Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Sci-fi author Philip K. Dick is compared to Franz Kafka and Thomas Pynchon as much as to other science fiction writers. But where to begin with his confounding body of work? The books that inspired the film Blade Runner or the TV series The Man in The High Castle? Well, a body of voters in France and the very American magazine Time both agree his masterpiece is, in fact, Ubik—a nightmare of the future where everything is monetized. Bookseller Lisa Morton agrees. “Ubik starts with a hero named Joe Chip who is unable to leave his automated apartment because he doesn’t have money to pay his door,” says Morton of Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, California. “From there, it takes off on a mind-bending story of time and evolution moving backwards, with all roads seeming to lead to death and dissolution. That mad genius Philip K. Dick was once shocked when told that French critics had chosen Ubik as one of the five best novels ever written. He thought surely the list must be the five best science fiction novels, but no—it was simply the five best novels in all of literature. After reading this funny, horrific, tragic and surprising book, you might agree with the French.”
The Golden Notebook: A Novel (Perennial Classics)
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The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Were you wowed by Cloud Atlas, the David Mitchell novel that toyed with structure so cleverly it turned his genre-hopping book into a literary Matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll? Did the way Ian McEwan ended Atonement—changing everything that came before—blow your mind? Well, open The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing’s masterpiece is often hailed for its clever-clever narrative, which goes back and forth between the four notebooks that document the life of writer Anna Wulf. Others emphasize its importance as a feminist classic. Lessing herself put the focus on the titanic issues the novel engaged with, from Stalinism to colonialism to the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement. The fact that she dazzled while doing so, thought Lessing, was not the point. She’s right, but dazzle it does.
A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel
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A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Artist Bob Marley looms large over popular music and the history of Jamaica. His greatest hits set, Legend, is one of the best-selling albums of all time. His influence is incalculable. And writer Marlon James captures both Marley—referred to only as The Singer—and decades of Jamaican history in his third novel. It leaps from an attempted assassination of Marley in 1976 to the ravages of crack in the U.S. and back to Jamaica in the 1990s. James is so masterful as he captures a remarkable range of characters and time periods that he became the first Jamaican writer to win the prestigious Booker Prize for best novel. After capturing such a broad sweep of history, the only way for James to top himself was to create an entire world. He is doing just that with a fantasy trilogy based on African myths and history. It began with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, continued with the just-out Moon Witch, Spider King and will be complete with White Wing, Dark Star.
Life After Life: A Novel
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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Oh for a chance to try again! Who hasn’t said, “If I knew then what I know now!” and meant it? It’s a tempting desire and that’s why movies like Groundhog Day are so powerful. Writer Kate Atkinson tackles this premise with relish in Life After Life. Our heroine Ursula (or should that be “heroines?”) is conceived…and then dies in the womb, strangled by an umbilical cord. Fade to black. She is conceived again, avoids the danger and is born…only to die another way. Fade to black! Again and again, Ursula is born and makes her way through life. She dies repeatedly during the Spanish Flu and tries again, dimly aware as her lives repeat that she’s done this before and learning just enough to improve her chances. Facing down a rapist, surviving the Blitz during World War II, choosing to fall in love and spending WWII in Berlin with her German husband, again and again Ursula lives out her lives with an ever-expanding sense of the possibilities we all have at our command. It’s playful, serious, mind-blowing and oh, for a chance to try again. At least, we can read it again.
The Adventures of Captain Underpants: Color Edition
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The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
When a parent is desperate to see their kids embrace reading, any book they will actually read, indeed demand to read as soon as the latest one comes out, is immediately one of the greatest books of all time. And that’s why the silly, punny, juvenile humor of the Captain Underpants series is here. Two boys turn their school principal into a superhero? Professor Poopypants? Bionic Boogie Boy? Relax! As long as they’re giggling and reading, it’s good. Bookseller Kathy Doyle Thomas of Half Price Books (headquartered in Dallas, Texas), knows that well. “My dyslexic son was obsessed with Captain Underpants and his crazy adventures,” says Doyle Thomas. “He was not a strong reader, but could easily read and comprehend the books and relate to the character. Most importantly, he felt good about himself!”
The Great Gatsby: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you want to become an indelible part of American culture, it’s always smart to write a short, easy-to-read novel that can be taught in high school English classes. For generations past, those novels included A Separate Peace by John Knowles, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They’re part of a shared memory for older generations, the way the Harry Potter books and Star Wars films are for people today. Each followed a different path to success. A Separate Peace began as a short story appearing in Cosmopolitan and was a solid success when published as a novel. To Kill A Mockingbird proved a runaway bestseller and scored the Pulitzer Prize. The Great Gatsby languished with modest sales in 1925; Fitzgerald died fifteen years later believing it was a flop. But when World War II came along, G.I.s were given a paperback copy and its popularity soared. Today, few books embody and question the American Dream quite like this novel about Nick Carraway caught up in the frenzied world of new money living it up in Long Island. Not only do some lives have a second act, so do some books. Especially the great ones.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Ravenclaw Edition; Black and Blue
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Sure, it’s just a modern updating of Tom Brown’s School Days with a dollop of fantasy. But the magic isn’t just in the spells and potions. It’s found in J.K. Rowling’s remarkable gift for naming (Dumbledore, Hagrid, Ravenclaw), plotting and humor. From the butterbeer on tap to Harry the Boy Who Lived (but did so in a cramped space underneath the stairs of his mean aunt and uncle), the invention never flags. Rowling’s expansive vision grew and grew along with the books in this seven-volume series. An entire generation simply had to read them. People lined up at midnight all over the world when a new one came out. The movies and games and plays and merchandise still stand in their shadow. And it all began with this debut, which is nigh on perfect and magical in every way that matters.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
What do you do as a critic when a major writer like Gabriel García Márquez delivers a novel so brilliant it can’t be denied? Normally, you just shout about it from the rooftops. But when that novel combines the fantastical with the ordinary, when it draws upon the magical in a way that is uncomfortably akin to the despised genre of fantasy, you’re in trouble, since fantasy can’t be taken seriously by literary critics. The answer is simple. You cast a spell and instead of calling it “fantasy,” you call it “magical realism” and everyone is happy. The novel can be praised, a new fancy phrase has been invented (and will be applied to almost any writer from Latin America, whether it fits or not) and a sprawling, sexy, bewildering tale that spans generations and is set in part in a fictional town called Macondo and includes people tied to trees for years on end and more incest than you would expect becomes one of the most acclaimed and best-selling books of all time. And realistically, that’s pretty magical.
White Teeth (Vintage International)
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White Teeth by Zadie Smith
It’s not fair, but we’re still happily waiting for writer Zadie Smith to fulfill the promise of her debut novel White Teeth. This sprawling story covers 25 years and the lives of everyone from a devout Jehovah’s Witness from Jamaica to a white Englishman dumped by his Italian wife to a Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh who is endlessly distracted from his faith by a fondness for beer, masturbation and his children’s music teacher. As Edward R. Murrow famously intoned during his war reporting: this…is London. Critics and readers agreed wholeheartedly as White Teeth won awards, hit the bestseller list and became a miniseries and a play. Smith hasn’t stopped: she overcame the sophomore slump with her excellent third novel On Beauty and continues steadily on with five novels in all, two short story collections, a play, teaching and the occasional foray into the role of public intellectual. That’s exactly how you fulfill the promise of a brilliant debut. You do the long, steady work of writing and publishing and then writing again. As Smith keeps this up, in another 30 years with another clutch of great books to her credit, we’ll gladly say her promise is fulfilled. Until then, we greedily demand more.
Les Miserables (Signet Classics)
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Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Some novels are so big, so important, so monumental, they can’t be ignored. Such is Les Misérables, just one of the great novels by Victor Hugo, an author so popular in France that when he died more than two million people—two million!—took part in the funeral procession. The story is familiar to you, the story of a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed a child and paid a terrible price. No, it’s not enough to see the musical or watch a film or TV adaptation. It’s time to read the book, all of it. When you’re done, you’ll want to make the world a better place.
All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel
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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Sometimes you just want a good story. Oh yes, Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winner is beautifully written and grapples with all sorts of themes—how could any book set in part during World War II that’s worth its salt fail to do so? But let the scholars parse its greatness. You’ll simply be caught up in the tale of Marie-Laure, a little blind girl who grows up in Paris and then flees the war to reside in Saint-Malo. Her father builds his daughter a model city of their new town so she can learn her way around. Then he disappears. Marie-Laure’s story is interwoven with the story of a little German boy named Werner who is handy with electronics. If you expect their paths to cross during the war, well, you won’t be disappointed. But first, you’ll learn about the cursed diamond known as the Sea Of Flames, an old man still haunted by World War I, a maid who takes part in the Resistance and so much more. A treat.
A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, 1)
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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
What’s not to love? You’ve got a missing father and a trio of kids determined to find him, led by 13-year-old Meg Murry. You’ve got mysterious neighbors known as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. They task Meg, her super-smart little brother Charles and their friend Calvin to save her father…and the world! You’ve got the ability to travel through time and space, centaurs, strange new planets and creatures, new friends and dangerous enemies and a race against time as Earth is slowly engulfed by an evil known as The Black Thing. Kids and adults have loved this novel (and its sequels) ever since, celebrating a story where a girl is the hero of a sci-fi/fantasy and Love is more powerful than Hate.
The Savage Detectives: A Novel
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The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
If you’re Latin or simply read a lot of Latin American literature, you might roll your eyes at The Savage Detectives being on this list. There are other authors, other books from Latin America since Gabriel García Márquez, you would say. Yes, yes, but if the died-too-young Bolaño’s novel (or his equally acclaimed 2666) is always the book, the author people tout to show they’re aware of the vast body of fiction found in Latin America, well, that’s not so bad. The Savage Detectives is bohemian, rebellious and bold in structure. It covers decades of history and the romantic—if tiresome—travels of poets proudly dubbing themselves the Visceral Realists. Think On The Road, for starters. Plus, Bolaño name-checks so many other authors and works that any reader enamored of it will surely start tracking down some of those other books. Sure, many of them are imaginary, but it’s a start.
Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel
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Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
A novel can mean everything to a reader. But sometimes we forget that a novel can mean everything to its author as well. Writer Dorothy Allison put everything into her semi-autobiographical debut. It’s about a child repeatedly beaten and assaulted by a stepfather, while the mother tries and fails again and again to leave him behind. Allison poured in the details of her own childhood, the family she was estranged from for years, the poetry and short stories she was publishing, the sense of empowerment she felt from the feminist movement, her own awakening sexuality and more. The awards, the best-seller lists, the movie, the chance to keep writing and make a living as an author was all great, of course. But the mere fact of its existence, of being published in the first place and achieving what she set out to do, that surely meant everything to Allison. And readers responded.
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (Hornblower Saga (Paperback))
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The Horatio Hornblower Series by C.S. Forester
Everyone should read the Aubrey-Maturin nautical novels of Patrick O’Brian. But before you read them, you’re well advised to dive into the Horatio Hornblower books by C.S. Forester. O’Brian just assumes you know as much about the Napoleonic era and seafaring as he did. Forester takes the reader by the hand, letting them learn the difference between a mainsail and a halyard right alongside our hero. By the end, you’ll feel immersed in the era and ready to take command of your own ship. Bookseller Ed Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii, agrees. “Reading these as an adult, any of the Hornblower books are completely engaging,” says Justus. “Forester’s writing style flows seamlessly, making action and interpersonal character development equally as interesting. I could smell the salt air, feel the movement of the ship, and the adrenaline at the sight of an approaching vessel. Really timeless stuff burned into my memory.”
Charming Billy: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics)
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Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
You’ll never catch Alice McDermott “writing.” Like her quiet, unassuming characters (people so “typical” that one extraordinary novel about an ordinary life is simply titled Someone), McDermott’s prose never calls attention to itself. Whether charting the course of young love (That Night); much of the 20th Century (The Ninth Hour); or simply the burial of a funny, loyal, complex and incurable drunk (Charming Billy); McDermott defty and invisibly brings to life a person, a community (Irish-American) and a world. She’s about due for another novel soon and we guarantee it will quietly, modestly capture your heart. Now that’s writing.
All Creatures Great and Small
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All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
This really is a novel, though fans of the books (and the TV shows based upon them) do insist on assuming they’re memoirs. What higher compliment could you pay an author than to insist it’s all true? In fact, James Alfred Wight aka James Herriot did base his stories on real-life experiences as a vet in Yorkshire. And he really did have two memorable brothers for partners—one of them terribly eccentric and the other a charming ladies’ man. (You can guess which one enjoyed the books more.) But the town of Darrowby where the stories are set is made up. Many of the characters are made up. And perhaps only the animals and their ailments are based on fact. But the stories are so vivid and funny and charming that it’s better than true. Funnily enough, it took an American publisher to take the books seriously, which sold very modestly at first in the UK. The American repackaged them with grown-up art (not some silly cartoonish images that dogged the UK version), renamed them and turned the books into bestsellers. To date, they’ve sold at least 60 million copies worldwide, turned some young people into veterinarians and made many, many folk glad they’re never called out for a calving on a cold winter’s night.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Tale Of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is the definitive tale of Camelot and probably the first novel written in English. But 400 years earlier(!) in Japan, a lady-in-waiting at the court of the Emperor beat him to it with The Tale Of Genji. (Yes, an even earlier novel might be Kādambari which was published 400 years before that, but our Sanskrit is weak so we can’t speak to it.) Not to worry. Like Don Quixote (the first novel written in Spanish) and Le Morte d’Arthur, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji isn’t just a historical curiosity or the answer to a trivia question. It’s an enthralling tale of the impossibly handsome Genji, the bastard son of the Emperor who is forever falling in and out of love when not dealing with court intrigue, domestic life and more affairs than any one man should have time for. Hey, if you’re driven to write the first novel, you must have a corker to tell and Murasaki sure did.
The Code of the Woosters
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The Code Of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brits have a gift for comic novels. Maybe primping and preening as it oversees an Empire On Which The Sun Never Set makes a nation ripe for mockery? Whatever the reason, the British love and appreciate humor, turning out witty authors by the lorry-load. For sheer silliness, none match P.G. Wodehouse. His tales of the unflappable valet Jeeves and the dim-witted but genial blueblood Wooster are especially silly. Give Wodehouse a stately home, an awkward engagement, a fulminating Lord or Earl or some such titled fool, interfering friends, a fancy dress party, incompetent or indifferent servants and by gosh he’s off to the races. (Probably Ascot.) The Code Of The Woosters is a prime example, with Wodehouse mocking British fascists and the local constabulary for good measure. Reading Wodehouse makes life worth living.
The Children of Men
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The Children Of Men by P.D. James
Baroness P.D. James is rightly remembered for her marvelously intelligent and thoughtful mysteries starring Adam Dalgleish, a police commander and poet. Any fan of mysteries should dive in. But the fourteen books she wrote about him have a cumulative power. If you’re only ready to read one book by her, we recommend the atypical dystopian novel The Children Of Men from 1991. Set in the near future, it takes place after a mass infertility event and begins with a killer opening line stating that the last person ever born has just died in a pub brawl. Things get much more complicated. James grapples with existential questions about the meaning of life and how people might react when the future becomes meaningless. But she does it with a sci-fi thriller about conspiracies and lies and the need to make some sense of the struggle to survive, rather than just doing it. And when you don’t have the knee-jerk excuse of doing it for the kids, for the next generation, well what do you have?
The Catcher in the Rye
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The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The cool people claim to prefer J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey, but they’re just being phonies. Salinger’s classic novel about a rebellious teenager may be the obvious choice, but it’s also the right choice. Just ask any kid who’s read it for the first time. “There have been a couple fiction books which made a strong impact on my life,” says bookseller Ed Justus of Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii. “As a teen, it was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The writing style told through the eyes of the main character broke through all the established ‘rules’ of traditional storytelling we had been taught in school. It caused me to realize just how flexible fiction and writing could be.”
The Women of Brewster Place: A Novel in Seven Stories (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series)
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The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Has it been 40 years already? It seems like this marvelous book came out yesterday, with its stories that tell the lives of seven women dealing with the struggles and setbacks (and men) that dominate their existence in an inner city sanctuary known as Brewster Place. At the same time, it seems like this book has always been there, with its vivid characters popping in and out of each other’s lives, each one with a story to tell. It’s a modern Canterbury Tales, except no one is going anywhere—just staying in place is triumph enough.
[We Others: New and Selected Stories] (By: Steven Millhauser) [published: September, 2012]
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We Others: New & Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser
It’s tempting to recommend Steven Millhauser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Martin Dressler. That’s a marvelous skewering and celebration of the American Dream, told through the fantastical story of a turn of the century businessman who concocts department stores of such elaborate design they become wonderlands of impossible complexity, all described in riveting prose. Think Ray Bradbury crossed with Jorge Luis Borges. But his 2011 collection of new and selected stories is dazzling and perhaps easier for beginners than the rabbit hole that is Martin Dressler. Many of Millhauser’s stories slip into the fantastical, the way Little Nemo of comic strip fame tumbles out of bed into a bewildering dreamscape: you feel yourself slipping, almost imperceptibly, and then—boom!—you’re on the floor in a daze, waking up from a reverie that seemed so very, very real. In the stories of Millhauser, the mundane becomes magical and the magical becomes, not mundane, but possible, just possible, somewhere just around the corner perhaps or down the street, especially late at night if you go for a stroll and don’t quite pay attention to where you’re headed.
Flight Behavior: A Novel
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Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Writers are tackling the climate crisis in countless ways. Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson dives into violent, earth-shaking possibilities with The Ministry For The Future. Richard Powers puts trees at the heart of The Overstory. Author Barbara Kingsolver focuses on a poor woman in Appalachia about to start an affair when she stumbles upon an amazing, upsetting discovery. Bookseller Sharon Anderson Wright of Half Price Books in Dallas, Texas, loves Flight Behavior. “It’s about the migration of a million monarch butterflies diverted from their flight path,” says Anderson Wright, “as well as deforestation, global climate change, and the rebirth of a woman trapped in an unsatisfying life. I found the story of how they are able to adapt and find new ways to survive fascinating.”
A Boy’s Own Story: A Novel
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A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White
Many gay novels came before this one, like Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and William Maxwell’s The Folded Leaf. Long before them, Homer’s The Iliad was about how unwise it is to taunt a warrior like Achilles by killing his very good “friend” Patroclus. Nonetheless, in 1982 it was still bold and a little shocking to deliver an autobiographical novel like A Boy’s Own Story. White manages to be both romantic and dispassionate in describing his thinly veiled coming of age and coming out. It forms the first part of a trilogy, though White continues to mine his life to this day in novels and memoirs. His biography of Jean Genet may be White’s masterpiece, but for influence and beauty, few can match this one.
Mason & Dixon: A Novel
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Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
If we were going to play it safe, we’d choose Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying Of Lot 49 or Gravity’s Rainbow to be on this list. They’re the twin pillars on which his reputation rests. We could get wacky and choose the crime novel Inherent Vice (indeed, we did choose it for our list of the Best Thrillers of All Time). But the historical novel Mason & Dixon has an unrestrained joy about it we can’t resist. It’s 1786 and the Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke is a shaky man of the cloth but an excellent storyteller. He keeps a clutch of little kids enthralled with nightly tales about the surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. If surveying doesn’t sound like the stuff of bedtime stories, be sure the Rev. will toss in fart jokes and unlikely escapades whenever attention flags. A yarn, and how Pynchon loves to unravel it.
The Overstory: A Novel
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The Overstory by Richard Powers
When trees are a central character in a novel, either you’re in or you’re out. For many readers of this Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of eco-fiction, they are in. Powers is no stranger to unexpected topics. His novels tackle genetics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, astrobiology and avant-garde music, among other topics. But it’s awe for the majesty of nature and trees in particular that powers The Overstory. Nine characters each discover an appreciation for trees so profound they come together to protect forests, not as a natural resource but as a good worth saving. Trees tolerate us. Trees outlive us. And trees might well outlive humanity, if we’re not careful. Powers speaks for the trees and if writing a book means cutting some down to print it, well, that’s just one more problem to be solved while we still can.
Related: For Your Fall TBR List, 30 New Books We’re Reading This Autumn Season
The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction)
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The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
We’re still catching up with the vision of writer Ursula K. Le Guin. At least we can pat ourselves on the back in recent years for realizing how much catching up we had to do. By the time of her death in 2018, Le Guin had been showered with accolades and affection and enough reappraisals to last ten lifetimes. Her Earthsea fantasies center a person of color as their hero. Her Orsinia novels are historical fiction about an imaginary country, giving Guy Gavriel Kay, among others, an entire career. Poetry, essays and so much more challenge and provoke. And her key series of the Hainish—novels and stories set on the planet of Hain—do all that and more. Then there’s The Left Hand Of Darkness from 1969. It tackles gender, androgyny and other issues few were even considering at the time and does it in a novel so compelling it was an immediate sensation. Darkness is the most mind-expanding First Contact novel of them all, thanks to ambisexual aliens who raise their children communally and are simply “beyond” gender. To call it feminist science fiction would immediately limit its scope. But it was and is and will always be feminist, science fiction and immediate.
My Name Is Red (Vintage International)
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My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Take Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose and add a dash of Jorge Luis Borges. Tell about the murder of an artist living during the Ottoman Empire. Immediately upend expectations by having the author interrupt the proceedings and make clear these are all just characters in a story. Then make it gripping, playful, fascinating and fun and you’ll start to appreciate the triumph that is My Name Is Red. Orhan Pamuk is the first Turkish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize and it’s easy to understand why. He’s not just brave in literary matters. The author faces down lawsuits and death threats for defending freedom of speech and condemning Turkey’s genocide of Armenians. In My Name Is Red, the artists are miniaturists, specialists in tiny, precise artworks. Not Pamuk—he works on a large canvas.
Harriet the Spy
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Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
For such a beloved kids book, Harriet the Spy has a lot of sharp elbows. It tells the story of a very observant child who pays attention to everyone around her and writes down what she thinks about them in her notebook. Then she loses the notebook. Then her friends find the notebook, read it and get very, very annoyed. Our heroine falls into a depression and becomes isolated from all her pals just for yearning to be a writer! But the moral is not that Harriet was wrong to write such thoughts; it was wrong of everyone else to read them. Duh! If you read someone else’s diary, you’re bound to be hurt. Generations of mystery lovers, novelists and even real-life C.I.A. agents credit Harriet the Spy as their gateway drug.
Fight Club: A Novel
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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
You don’t talk about fight club, but you do talk about Fight Club. Like many great books, it’s open to multiple interpretations. Is this story about a lonely man who bonds with other men via a “fight club” and is ultimately driven to reject cookie-cutter consumerism? Is it making fun of toxic masculinity? Is the movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton faithful to the novel? Or was the infamous, re-edited version imposed on it in China actually, weirdly more faithful to the book? Do you have to read the comic book sequels to “get it?” Rarely has a man wrestling with his own demons been dealt with so literally. Hallucinatory, incendiary and you’ll probably lose sleep over it simply because you’ll want to finish Fight Club in one go. Just…accept the insomnia, alright?
The Magic Mountain (Everyman’s Library)
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The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
War changes everything. Mann’s comic novel about people with tuberculosis seeking a cure at a spa in Davos, Switzerland was a work in progress when World War I butted in. Suddenly, Mann wasn’t in the mood to joke around, or at least not without purpose. He reimagined The Magic Mountain, kept writing and the book deepened and grew into a sly takedown of modern society, all of it shadowed by war. It’s daunting, hard to pin down, sad and funny, and if you’re not quite sure what to make of it, you can always follow Mann’s advice: read it twice. It’s so good, you won’t mind.
The Color Purple: A Novel
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker
It’s been a novel and then a movie and then a stage musical and then a radio play and soon a movie musical. But really it’s just a series of letters to God. For a book filled with so much pain and violence, Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winner is universally beloved. Just ask bookseller Lynette Yates of Half Price Books in Dallas. “The Color Purple grabs you from the first page and takes you on a rollercoaster ride covering so many issues and evoking so many emotions,” says Yates. “A real page-turner!” We believe it’s the forgiveness the novel embraces and embodies despite the pain and violence that keeps it so popular.
Infinite Jest
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Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The greatest tennis novel of all time! OK, that’s a modest claim, though there are other notable novels that encompass the sport of tennis. (Try Trophy Son by Douglas Brunt or one of Agatha Christie’s personal favorites of her mysteries, Towards Zero.) Mind you, this 1000+ page behemoth is much more than a tennis novel. It’s hilariously post-modern (even its footnotes have footnotes), sprawling (obviously), sad, controversial, erudite, show-offy (which is another word for “erudite”) and a mountain worth climbing.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: A Novel
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The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Teachers change lives. How often have we heard stories about the right teacher at the right time having a profound impact on a student? The novel How Green Was My Valley. The movie Dead Poets Society. The play The Corn Is Green. Then there’s Muriel Spark’s masterpiece The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. All the elements are in place: an inspiring teacher in 1930s Edinburgh, a group of girls singled out for promise and the reward of academic success. But what’s this? On the wall, the teacher puts up admiring images of the fascist Mussolini. And what’s that? Miss Brodie dallying with not one but two male teachers? And Miss Brodie manipulating one of the girls to perhaps dally herself with the more handsome but married of the two men? That’s a lesson in life Mr. Chips never considered. In devastating fashion, Sparks shows the danger of idolizing anyone and that the best thing a student should learn is to think for themself.
Atonement: A Novel
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Atonement by Ian McEwan
Oh, fatal misunderstanding! How much art would go differently if only people would speak clearly or explain themselves or just not jump to conclusions? Wuthering Heights. Bridget Jones’s Diary. Romeo & Juliet. Misunderstanding the situation can be the death of love, literally. So it is in Atonement, where a young girl fatally misunderstands a scene she witnesses and feels compelled to make an awful accusation, ruining the lives of those around her. Can she make it up to them, even if only in her imagination? Ian McEwan’s novels are filled with such misunderstandings. But perhaps none is so dramatic as the one in Atonement. It powers this story through the start of World War II, Dunkirk and then a final bittersweet revelation that should feel a cheat, but somehow doesn’t. Sometimes a sad ending is the right ending, no matter how much we long for things to turn out better.
Zorba the Greek
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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Are you going to sit there with your dusty books and read about life? Or are you going to live your life? Eat, drink, dance, make love, live! That’s the philosophy of Zorba the Greek, the character who brushes aside those silly books to wake up a young intellectual who experiences the world only through the words of others. Not after Zorba is done with him! That’s the action in this exuberant 1946 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, a huge bestseller made even more famous by the classic film version that gave star Anthony Quinn one of his best roles. It promises a zest for life. But, of course, you’re reading about this zest for life. You’re being inspired by a book that encourages a zest for life, which it insists can’t be found in books. Ironic? Hmm. Maybe reading books isn’t so bad after all.
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
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Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Writer Jesmyn Ward is the only woman to win the National Book Award twice. She’s also the only African American to win the National Book Award twice. Her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing has been compared to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and George Saunders’ Lincoln In The Bardo. All three of those writers are on this list too, though Faulkner is here with The Sound and the Fury. Everyone from the New York Times to the BBC to former President Barack Obama named it one of the best books of the year. The all-things-bookish website Literary Hub named this 2011 novel one of the best books of the decade. And now it’s on our list of one of the best books of all time. It tells the story of a road trip. Thirteen-year-old Jojo struggles with the demands of being a young man while caring for his little sister Kayla, wary of his mother Leonie and uncertain of the father who’s just been released from prison. If that isn’t enough, he must also help the ghost of Richie, a 12-year-old boy who can’t quite accept the fact that he’s died. It’s tough and true and—as you might expect—the prose sings.
True Grit: A Novel
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True Grit by Charles Portis
This stone-cold classic could stand in for all the great Westerns. They just aren’t usually narrated by a 14-year-old girl so distinctive in nature that you’ll never forget her. It’s so popular they made two films based on the novel, but neither can hold a candle to it. Writer Jasper Fforde insists it belongs on any list of great novels. “Mattie does not seek blood redress, she seeks justice—to see Chaney ‘hanged at Judge Parker’s convenience’ back home at Little Rock,” says Fforde, author most recently of The Constant Rabbit. “A revenge story, a manhunt, a thriller, a story of trust, love, bravery, duty and tenacity—True Grit has it all.”
The World According to Garp: A Novel
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The World According To Garp by John Irving
We stand in awe of John Irving’s fourth novel and breakthrough, The World According To Garp. In 1978, it seemed willfully odd and “out there.” An NFL quarterback who has a sex change and now goes by Roberta? A woman who wants a child but not a husband? A son who struggles to write fiction…and then watches as his strong-willed mother simply sits down, writes an autobiography she calls A Sexual Suspect, and immediately becomes a world-famous feminist icon? Radicals who cut out their tongues to protest brutal male violence? What is this madness? Well, it’s beautiful and scary and strange and above all human, somehow. In 1982, it was turned into a wonderful, perfectly edited film that captured the idiosyncratic appeal of John Irving’s worldview and proved Robin Williams was more than a funny man. Irving soon proved he was more than an offbeat eccentric with The Cider House Rules and A Prayer For Owen Meany, but his career proper began right here.
The Complete Stories (FSG Classics)
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The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
It’s never too late. Flannery O’Connor’s second short story collection came out just five months after she died. And she won the National Book Award for The Complete Stories eight years later. As a devout Catholic, O’Connor surely would have appreciated this posthumous success: for her, death was only the beginning. Her father died of lupus when O’Connor was just 15 years old. The same illness would plague her for the last twelve years of her life. It was also the period when she wrote some of the most famous short stories of her day, stories that ensured her fame. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead.” Critics saw them as bleak, gothic and grotesque. O’Connor saw them as honest and true by tackling race, faith and the daily struggle to get by in a violent, unfair world. Write about what you know? That she did.
Ministry for the Future
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The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
Writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s entire career led to his most recent, most remarkable novel. In book after book, Robinson tackles the challenge of the climate crisis and how humanity might survive it. The Three Californias trilogy shows its impact on that state. Red Mars kicks off the Mars trilogy, a look at the practical challenges of terraforming the Red Planet and how we are likely to bring our problems with us. The Science In The Capitol books show a ravaged D.C, New York 2140 a Venice-like Big Apple and on and on. Race may be the defining issue for America. But the climate crisis is the defining issue for the planet and Robinson tackles it admirably. With The Ministry For the Future, he swings for the fences. Robinson offers a near-future look at what is going to happen next and what might happen after that. It’s scary and shocking and so believable, it gets scarier still. But as bad as it gets, there’s hope. Oh it won’t be easy, Robinson says, but maybe just maybe we can get through this. He offers this ray of light in a novel so expansive and wide-ranging that only Moby-Dick comes to mind for sheer, all-encompassing vision. Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe it’s a how-to book. But it’s definitely great.
To The Lighthouse
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To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
You can’t go wrong with Virginia Woolf, one of the giants of literature. We figure movie buffs already know about her novel Orlando: A Biography thanks to the brilliant film version starring Tilda Swinton. And this list includes Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which was inspired by Mrs. Dalloway and should send readers scurrying to that masterpiece as well. So we’ll include To the Lighthouse. Woolf is a “modernist,” and her stream-of-consciousness style was strange and new to readers of the 1920s. But we’re used to it now, so the impressionistic chatter of Mrs. Dalloway and the gender fluidity of Orlando and the flitting from character to character in To the Lighthouse shouldn’t put you off. In this novel, the Ramsay family is vacationing on the Isle of Skye and plans to visit a lighthouse on a nearby island the next day. Or will they? Ten years later, they try and finally make that jaunt to the lighthouse actually happen. Amidst this simple action, the complex give and take of a married couple, the lines of tension in a family, the tangled friendships and neighbors that muddy it all up (not to mention life, war, the passage of time and so on) are captured in a rush of emotions and memories and brief moments. It’s all illuminated by Woolf the way—wait for it—the shining beam of a lighthouse pierces the fog and lights the way home. Someone in the novel insists women can’t be serious painters or writers. Woolf must have had a good laugh over that.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
A cat is missing. That’s the event kicking off writer Haruki Murakami’s mid-career masterpiece. When a writer dips into science fiction, crime novels and magical realism, not to mention nonfiction works about being a marathon runner and talking with survivors of a terrorist attack, you expect a missing cat to be just the beginning. And it is. The novel soon contains psychics, a missing wife, horror stories from World War II and much more. Murakami cranks up the story and then lets it fly, with reality always a teasingly subjective matter. His spin on 1984 titled IQ84 might be an easier way in for some. But whether you tackle his novels or short stories or nonfiction, this perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize will happily confound you.
Related: ‘Sweet Magnolias’ Books in Order: How To Read The Whole Series That Inspired The Hit Netflix Show
Bel Canto (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
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Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Singers discover new facets of their voice as they mature. Age or a new vocal coach or simply nerve open up all sorts of possibilities. Sopranos become mezzo-sopranos. Baritones evolve into tenors. The Bee Gees discover falsetto. You get the idea. Writers do the same thing. Author Ann Patchett pushed herself and found a new voice with her fourth novel Bel Canto. Inspired by a real-life terrorist act, she imagined the story of a Japanese business executive being wooed by a South American country. He’s the guest of honor at a party, an American opera singer is brought in for entertainment and it’s crashed by a terrorist group hoping to kidnap the head of the country. The result is a stand-off, with tense negotiations breaking up long dull periods of waiting, not to mention love. A translator falls for a terrorist. The businessman falls in love with the singer, though neither speaks the other’s language. And Patchett takes her writing to a whole new level of sophistication and control, winning critical acclaim and a wider audience than ever. Brava!
The Hours: A Novel (Picador Modern Classics Book 1)
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The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Moby-Dick. Jane Eyre. Great Expectations. Everything ever by Shakespeare. The list of classic works of art that inspire other classic works of art is so long and respectful that no one should blink an eye when an author says they’re writing a prequel or sequel or spin-off to a masterpiece. And yet, it took a serious amount of chutzpah for writer Michael Cunningham to not only write a novel inspired by the classic Mrs. Dalloway, but to include Virginia Woolf herself as one of the main characters. His nerve paid off. The Hours depicts one day in the life of three women separated by decades: Woolf herself, working on Mrs. Dalloway in 1923 while fighting off the black dog of depression; Mrs. Brown, planning a birthday party for her World War II veteran husband in 1949; and Clarissa, the former lover of a male poet dying of AIDS who is throwing a party with her female partner in 1999 to celebrate him. Cunningham captures Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style. He also brings to life three people of their time who deal with society’s oppressive attitudes towards their sexual orientation and status as women. And The Hours subtly makes one now commonplace but important point for women and LGBT people: it gets better.
Tales of the City: A Novel
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Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
If he wasn’t so darn entertaining, maybe people would realize how radical writer Armistead Maupin has been. His valentine to San Francisco began as a serialized novel featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. Wide-eyed newcomer Mary Ann Singleton visits the city and realizes this is the place for her! She finds a room to rent at 28 Barbary Lane, she finds a friend in Michael aka “Mouse” and she gains an inspiring mentor in her landlady Anna Madrigal. From a story about a wide-eyed girl, Maupin’s addictive drama quickly took readers to every corner of the city. Even a hip liberal newspaper in San Francisco was wary of the bathhouses and bisexuals and so much more in the serial. But everyone wanted to know what happened next, so what could they do? Nine novels, radio plays, a musical and four groundbreaking miniseries followed. Like Dickens or Balzac or Trollope, Maupin captured an entire fleeting era just as it happened. Start here but be warned: you can’t read just one.
Ragtime: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
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Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow changed the historical novel once and for all. Others came before, they always do. But Doctorow’s rigorous research mixed a playful combination of historical figures and imaginary characters in a manner that brought the past to light and commented on it at the same time. It’s as neat a stunt as any Harry Houdini ever pulled off. In the panoramic Ragtime, Doctorow starts with the lives of a wealthy family that sells fireworks, crosses their path with the musician Coalhouse Walker and then weaves in pretty much everything going on during the early 1900s, from agitator Emma Goldman to Robert Peary’s polar expeditions to tycoon J. P. Morgan and a depressed Houdini, to name just a few. It’s dazzling, fresh, alive, funny, tragic and the movie and musical it inspired have their fans, but can’t outshine the original.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: A Novel
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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler has written 24 novels and enough short stories to fill two collections. So it’s no surprise to find people arguing about which is her best. Tyler herself would say don’t read her first four novels, but that’s modesty for you. She could mention the National Book Award for The Accidental Tourist, turned into a delightful Oscar-winning film. Or the Pulitzer Prize won by Breathing Lessons, one of her most effervescent works. Or the Booker nomination for A Spool of Blue Thread. But diehards and Tyler point to Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant as the prototypical Tyler novel and a great place to start. It tells the story of three siblings, riven by the abandonment of their father yet entangled with old arguments, resentment, history and forgiveness, soon followed by new arguments. You know, siblings. Tyler said it comes closest to what she imagined at the start, which is to say it’s warm-hearted, clear-eyed, amusing and moving. Enjoy.
Cloud Atlas
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
It’s just one of those books, a work so original and fresh that everyone instantly agrees, “Oh yes, that’s a good one.” Mitchell’s third novel is daringly constructed. It begins with the journal of a man on board a ship in the 1800s, written in the style of the era. Just as you become thoroughly involved in the story, it stops mid-action. The next section is an epistolary novel set in 1930s Belgium and written by a bisexual musician to his lover. The first story was so absorbing that you’re thoroughly annoyed Mitchell jumped to something new. What is going on here? But soon enough this new story becomes equally absorbing and just as you become enthralled by this tale and forget the first story even existed, it too stops. The novel jumps forward to the 1970s, with yet another new story written in the style of a mystery. Again and again it happens. Every time Mitchell drops a tale and begins something new, you’re annoyed; the story was so good, why on earth won’t he finish it? And then he wins you over again. Then at the halfway point, the final reveal takes place and you see the entire, brilliant structure of the novel and what Mitchell has been up to all this time. You understand how ambitious and clever it is and almost sigh with pleasure. Cloud Atlas is a tour de force. The film version, which you probably didn’t see, couldn’t ever hope to recreate the pleasure of reading this book.
My Ántonia (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
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My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Sometimes it seems like all the best stories about America are stories about travel. Immigrants reach America in Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Jack Kerouac goes On the Road, Huck Finn journeys down the Mississippi and Ántonia heads out West with her Bohemian family. Willa Cather made her name for good with this finale to the Prairie Trilogy. It celebrates regular, plain-speaking people like the orphaned boy Jim and his friend Ántonia, both struggling to survive at their new homes in Nebraska. F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that his novel The Great Gatsby was a failure compared to hers, though eventually, they’d both do just fine in the eyes of critics and readers.
The Kite Runner
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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Some novels strike a chord. How else to explain why a story about a boy in Afghanistan would take the world by storm in 2003? Khaled Hosseini’s novel charts the country’s tragic history from the fall of the monarchy to the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban by focusing on fathers and sons. It’s since been adapted into a graphic novel, a movie and a Broadway play. None of them match the novel’s emotional impact, but when something is this popular, you can’t blame them for trying.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol I and II by M.T. Anderson
Some of the boldest, bravest works in recent decades are published for kids, perhaps to smuggle work into the culture without awakening the censors. Philip Pullman radically reimagines Paradise Lost with His Dark Materials. Charles M. Schulz showed little folks dealing with depression, unrequited love and the seeming futility of existence in the comic strip Peanuts. And in a young adult novel, M.T. Anderson reorients our understanding of the American Revolution, the central horror of slavery in U.S. history and how scientific studies are often influenced by the people funding them, all long before 1619. But The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing is also gripping and enthralling as we watch an enslaved boy raised by men of science who at first are determined to give him every advantage. They want to prove the African race is not inferior to Europeans, with Octavian as a test case. Later, as circumstances dictate, they’re determined to stack the deck against Octavian so somehow this bright young man fluent in several languages and an excellent violinist to boot will somehow leave white Europeans safe in the belief of their superiority. Toss in the curveball of the American Revolution and you have a work of historical fiction that stands alongside the best of them, just like Octavian Nothing.
Angle of Repose
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Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
A historian and novelist, Wallace Stegner wrote a novel about a historian. That character writes a biography about his grandmother. To give it authenticity, Stegner drew heavily upon the letters of a real person, the notable writer Mary Hallock Foote. In a move that was controversial then and more so now, Stegner quotes extensively from the letters of Foote while only obliquely giving credit to her in his acknowledgments. And yet he wrote a novel where there never was a novel. Universally acclaimed and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize 50 years ago, Angle of Repose is a wonderfully layered combination of the brave journey of pioneers colored by the disappointments and regrets of the historian recounting them. Stegner, at least, surely had no regrets about his masterpiece.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
You can feast on just the titles of novels by exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. The Festival of Insignificance. Life Is Elsewhere. And of course, his most famous work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Playful, philosophical, political and personal, it shows Kundera at his most thoughtful and profound. The story of a womanizing surgeon is interrupted by sharp insights into life under a totalitarian regime. (In one passage, Kundera dissects a photograph of government officials watching a parade, detailing how those who fell out of favor had to be erased from the image, one by one.) Arguments about the nature of existence (Kundera is not a fan of Nietzsche) take place alongside the promise of the Prague Spring and its collapse with the invasion of Soviet troops and others in 1968. There is some lightness, too; a dog is a major character, for example. Kundera is an original.
Cold Mountain: 20th Anniversary Edition
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Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Homer’s The Odyssey looms so large it would be fair to say that almost everything that followed it has been influenced by the epic. Countless works of art are directly inspired by it, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and the comic film O Brother, Where Art Thou? starring George Clooney. Still, for debut novelist Charles Frazier to combine the story of his great-granduncle with the rough outline of The Odyssey and set it all during the Civil War was an act of bravery. Readers responded, for few modern novels have been this ambitious and yet taken so to heart by such a broad audience. Maybe it’s as simple as this: everyone can identify with the powerful desire to journey home.
Endless Love: A Novel
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Endless Love by Scott Spencer
When young people fall in love, they feel like an explorer discovering a new continent. Surely no one else has ever felt like this before? Surely no love has ever been this all-consuming, this beautiful, this perfect? It happens again in Endless Love. Two young people—kids, really—fall in love and imagine Romeo and Juliet have nothing on them. What’s remarkable is that writer Scott Spencer convinces us that the love of Jade and David really is that earth-shattering. Everyone around them agrees. Their parents, their friends, literally everyone acknowledges the love those two feel really is as special as they imagine. Then Jade’s father banishes David from this earthly paradise, David hatches a cockamamie plan to win back the family’s trust, it goes horribly wrong and love becomes obsession. A huge bestseller, Endless Love has been adapted into not one but two epically bad films, movies so awful you fear they’ve kept people away from the novel ever since. Don’t make that mistake.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (SeaWolf Press Illustrated Classic): First Edition Cover
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Some books are so well-intentioned they forget to be good. Think Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It’s as important a novel as there ever was, but you wouldn’t want to read that potboiler today. Mark Twain’s masterpiece is another thing altogether. His classic “boy’s own” book The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer is a delight of youthful innocence. A rascalish character in that novel takes center stage in this one. Twain lost the “The” for some reason and called it Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. But he gained immortality with a righteous condemnation of enslavement wrapped in a story so funny and gripping and raw that few can resist it. The central dilemma? Huck knows he will be literally damned to hell for helping the escaped black man Jim avoid being put back in chains. He does it anyway. And if Huck treats Jim a little poorly after that mighty choice, well, whoever expected an abandoned, beaten, dismissed kid to always behave sensibly? Huck is just a child and Twain never forgets that. It’s the adults he damns so well.
A Fine Balance
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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
One of the worst periods in Indian history inspired one of its best novels. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ignored the Constitution and essentially declared martial law, jailing opposition leaders and clamping down on the media. Her dictatorial reign lasted almost two years and featured all sorts of atrocities, like the forced sterilization of millions. It’s called The Emergency. Writer Rohinton Mistry tells the story of this period through the lives of four people: two tailors from a caste considered “untouchable,” a wealthy Parsi widow and a young man from the Kashmir Valley who resents being sent to college by his parents. Their paths cross and crisscross during this life-changing period, a time of upheaval akin to the Partition of India in 1947 or perhaps the American Civil War. All three of his novels are worth your time. Still, it’s been 20 years since he published Family Matters and we are politely impatient for a fourth.
The Ice at the Bottom of the World: Stories
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The Ice at the Bottom of the World by Mark Richard
“Read the story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World at your own risk,” says Chuck Palahniuk, author most recently of The Invention Of Sound. “Mark Richard’s short stories will leave you unhappy with almost all other fiction for the rest of your life. In stories like ‘Strays’ and ‘This is Us, Excellent,’ he gives us characters in miserable circumstances, but who refuse to suffer. Thus the reader is forced to shoulder the emotional and psychological burden. Richard’s incredible sentences will stick in your head, and his plots rise to such unlikely beauty that you’ll find tears running down your cheeks.”
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
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The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis
In this biting, cynical novel, a man dies of pneumonia. Now dead, he’s free to say what he likes, so Brás Cubas dedicates his book to the worm that first feasted on his dead body and then tells his life story. He was a brat as a spoiled rich kid, loved often and poorly, made a mess of everything he did, wasted most of his family’s fortune, tried and failed at politics and finally dreamt up some quack medicine that could cure all diseases…but not, apparently, cure himself of pneumonia. A Brazilian classic, it’s been translated many times and is sometimes called Epitaph Of A Small Winner, which is about as much as Cubas can claim. It’s fragmented, entertaining, very modern and when you discover it was written in 1881 (not 2021 or even 1961), your astonishment and admiration is complete.
Related: The 10 Best TV Crime Dramas That Were Adapted From Books
Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition
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Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
What’s cyberpunk? Just picture the future as depicted in the film Blade Runner and you’re halfway there. When corporations or computers take over the world, you end up with something like the comic book Judge Dredd or William Gibson’s Neuromancer or even John M. Ford’s proto-cyberpunk novel Web Of Angels. Or you can read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a novel with his usual heady mix of technology, philosophy, religion, anarcho-capitalism, linguistics and other ideas we can barely follow. It’s all wrapped around our protagonist Hiro. You know he’s the protagonist because this pizza delivery dude’s full name is Hiro Protagonist. He joins up with Y.T. (a female skateboarder known as Yours Truly) and they’re soon caught up in one of those massive conspiracies involving technology, shadowy opponents and the fate of the (miserable) world. Snow Crash came out just thirty years ago and it’s amazing how quickly the world has caught up. Stephenson helped popularize ideas like an avatar and the Metaverse, which he definitely should have copyrighted. Bad science fiction tries to predict the future. Good science fiction like this holds up a mirror to the present and wonders where we’re headed. Take a look.
A Thousand Acres: A Novel
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A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Some people are crazy about Jane Smiley’s academic skewering in the novel Moo. We’re partial to her trilogy of books (Some Luck, Early Warning and Golden Age) that told the story of a family over one hundred years, with one year per chapter. They were bestsellers and nicely reviewed but deserve more hoopla. But everyone admires, loves and reads her retelling of King Lear. Sometimes the consensus is right; with Smiley, this is where to start. The novel A Thousand Acres is resolute, smart and devastating. When a father decides to split control of the family farm among his three daughters, the youngest objects. Just as in Lear, she’s frozen out of the kingdom, the two older daughters turn on their father and then secrets Shakespeare never imagined come to light. You reap what you sow.
Invisible Man
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Writer Ralph Ellison sped right past the “protest” novel or the “problem” novel. He ignored the conventions of social conscience or the “right” way to win over white readers and said, “Hey, what if I just write a modernist masterpiece?” That he did, in a novel about a young black man in flight from racism. “I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either,” begins Ellison who does just that but in a far more poetic, lasting and effective manner than any protest novel ever would. Ellison’s influences were broad, ranging from Kafka to Faulkner, T.S. Eliot to Dostoevsky, yet all of them were used in service to a voice enriched by oral traditions and a vivid, urban spirit. Other characters refused to see the narrator, but the book itself was simply too good to ignore. Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953, making Ellison the first person of color to do so. It would be 30 years before another person of color—Alice Walker, for The Color Purple in 1983—won it again.
Empire Falls (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Empire Falls, Maine is a crumbling town on its last legs in Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Miles Roby is a lot like the town. He’s running the Empire Grill and reduced to serving the new boyfriend of his ex-wife each and every day. His stoner brother is the short-order cook, his owner is the richest woman in town, his daughter in high school is a budding artist and they all know everything there is to know about each other. HBO made an excellent miniseries from this. While doing so, the production turned a pizza parlor in a small town in upstate New York into the greasy spoon Miles worked at. A few years later, the pizza parlor shut down because of course the real town was crumbling, just like Empire Falls. If that sort of irony causes a rueful laugh, Russo is the writer for you. He’s sharp, sympathetic and sadly amused by the pain of it all. You could start with The Risk Pool or Nobody’s Fool or you could just start right here.
Edisto: A Novel
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Edisto by Padgett Powell
If you want to make a name for yourself among the literati, there are rules to follow. Start out strong with an acclaimed debut. Choose one style and stick to it—everyone will know what to expect from you and can easily skip a book or two of yours without feeling they’re missing something. (Did anyone worry if they missed a John Updike novel? They did not.) Oh and don’t be funny. No one will take you seriously if you’re funny. Well, Padgett Powell got the first part right. His debut novel Edisto is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old boy named Simons Manigault and yes it’s devilishly funny. But it’s also masterful enough in style to have Saul Bellow praise Powell and Southern literary éminence grise Walker Percy declare the book better than The Catcher in the Rye. Then Powell went and blew it. He started writing short stories, each one more outrageous than the next. They were wild, wooly, unmannered. The pitch-perfect Edisto Revisited was so good it deserves comparisons to The Godfather Part II, another sequel that deepened your appreciation of the original. But it was too late. Before you knew it, Powell was performing high wire acts, like a novel composed entirely of a conversation between two men sitting on a porch chewing the fat, more vaudeville than High Art. Another one called The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? contained nothing but a series of questions. (Did he pull it off? Do you have to ask?) Is this the old-fashioned, dependable writer the gatekeepers signed up for almost forty years ago? No, it is not. Does he care? No, he does not. Read Edisto but be prepared to dive into the deep end once you become a fan.
The Pillars of the Earth: A Novel (Kingsbridge Book 1)
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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Ken Follett broke onto the bestseller list with 1978’sEye of the Needle, a blockbuster so good we named it one of the best thrillers of all time. Six more thrillers followed, two of them nonfiction. Then Follett surprised everyone with the novel that will be his legacy: The Pillars of the Earth. It’s a historical novel about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Knightsbridge, England during the 12th century. The action takes place over 50 years and the house of worship is the culmination of generations of work. What could be less thrilling than the building of a church? Ask, rather, what could be more thrilling? Follett poured everything into this, spending years on research to get it right. His passion was infectious and his story so immersive readers got lost in it, finishing in a daze. The book has sold at least 26 million copies so far. Then Follett spent the next 30 years delivering three more books in the Knightsbridge series. Unlike some of the artisans in the novel, Follett has lived to see his masterwork be complete. Sure, the series has been turned into two different miniseries and even a video game. But it’s the first novel that remains the peak of his career, as impressive and awe-inspiring as the cathedral itself.
Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics Book 2)
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Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
No, not that Elizabeth Taylor. This Elizabeth Taylor is an English novelist who wrote polite dissections of middle and upper-class Brits, works so discreet and effortless that for a long time no one but other writers realized what a genius she was. Taylor’s short stories were a mainstay of the New Yorker magazine for about 20 years and she wrote twelve novels in all. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont was the last published in her lifetime and that’s fitting since it deals with the end of life. Mrs. Palfrey is comfortable enough financially to move into the Claremont hotel alongside other aged residents. But she’s embarrassed her grandson never calls and frets over a marriage proposal and it’s all so amusingly depicted you almost don’t notice how sad and piercing Taylor can be. It’s the sort of book that is never in fashion but always read with pleasure.
The Things They Carried
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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
In twenty-one short stories, writer and Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien tells the story of soldiers fighting in that war and probably the stories of soldiers fighting in every war that’s ever been and all the ones to come. We want our war stories told by veterans because then those stories are real, authentic and to be trusted. Except O’Brien toys with that expectation. He dedicates this book to the men of the imaginary Alpha Company. He calls his main character O’Brien and that character tells his daughter that no, he never killed anyone in the war. Then he immediately tells us about the man he did kill, only to tell us in another story that this was complete fiction. O’Brien (or maybe “O’Brien”) says he made up that incident because he wanted to help us understand the truth of what the Vietnam War was like. Moving, funny and haunting, The Things They Carried is as real as it gets, made-up stories and all.
Dracula: Deluxe Edition
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Dracula by Bram Stoker
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a work of startling originality. In contrast, Bram Stoker’s Dracula takes bits and pieces from every vampire story that came before, along with folklore, myth and legend, and seasons it with fears about newly independent women, immigrants and disease. Then he cribs from the hugely popular author Wilkie Collins and especially the page-turner The Woman in White. Finally, Stoker tosses in his own personal peccadilloes—or at least, only as much of them as this acquaintance of Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde dared—to create a potent brew of erotic, Gothic horror. The result was a sensation, a vampire novel so bold and shocking and successful that it became the vampire novel and every vampire story that followed would steal from him. Like the vampire women feasting on poor Jonathan Harker, countless artists have fed on Dracula to inspire their own books, movies, plays, TV shows, games, comics, plays and more. Nothing, not even a stake through the heart, can erase this monster. Dracula survives and thrives in our imagination and probably always will.
Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Physically frail but morally strong, Carson McCullers empathized with outsiders and dreamers. Her writing was labeled Southern Gothic, because she was from the South and depicted outré characters such as mutes, closeted gay men and black people. A young white woman writing about black people! Her success was immediate, with the 1940 debut The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter seen as anti-Fascist, pro-democracy, exotic (how could there be so many mute people in one small town, wondered some?) and ultimately, just human and touching and true. If a mute man seems the safest person for a string of people to share their dreams and fears with, is that really so strange? McCullers enjoyed further success with The Member Of The Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. But McCullers remained a lonely hunter in her personal life, dying alone at age 50 after a lifetime of severe illness and unrequited love for the numerous women she pursued.
True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel (Vintage International)
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True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Western may be the most American of genres. Yet long before it joined the United States, Hawaii boasted of cowboys with enough roping skills to put the Yankees to shame at their own rodeos. And Australia’s Outback would give the Badlands a run for its money in terms of punishing danger. Besides, surely every country can boast of criminals that capture the popular imagination? So here is Aussie Peter Carey with this vulgar, violent, rollicking Western about the outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, as told to Kelly’s fictional daughter. You know you shouldn’t be loving Kelly’s outrageous justification for his actions, but a good story overwhelms moral qualms any day. And borders! Kelly’s dad was an Irishman transported to Van Diemen’s Land aka Tasmania; the author is Australian, where most of the novel takes place; and it won the prestigious UK prize the Booker. But did that stop its US publisher from calling this a “Great American Novel”? Nope. Besides, they’re right.
The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel
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The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
Why do we love these lists? Because we can spot books we love, point out books that should be on the list, yet aren’t, and be reminded of books we know we should read but haven’t. Yet. And—if we’re adventurous—we read these lists to discover books we haven’t even heard of but will soon become favorites. So here’s writer Chinelo Okparanta to champion a writer from Nigeria, the country where Okparanta was born. “Akwaeke Emezi is one of the most exciting voices of our time, even earning themself a cover feature in Time Magazine as one of the magazine’s 2021 Next Generation Leaders,” says Okparanta, author most recently of Harry Sylvester Bird. “The Death of Vivek Oji, set in an international community of families composed of foreign-born women married to Nigerian men, is the heart-wrenching story of Vivek, a gentle soul who, as his current stint at life would have it, has embarked on a tortured journey into a new self. It is about the family we are born into and [the] ones we choose for ourselves. The verdict on each family is not a tidy one, for the novel is also about the ways in which both kinds of families render earnest support, and how, despite their best intentions, they also disappoint. Vivek dies, but there is hope—a promise of a return after death. As an avid believer in reincarnation, I enjoyed the novel’s timeless contention that a body, though destined to die, will live again.”
On the Road
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On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Is he a rebel dancing to his own beat or an unwitting toxic male fleeing from responsibility? Jack Kerouac may not have anticipated the many ways his characters would be seen over the years. But his classic novel of escape is rich enough to bear the re-examination. And no one can deny the rhythmic, tumbling, finger-snapping prose that hurtles the story along at breakneck speed. The legend of its birth is as totemic as the novel itself—in 1951, Kerouac pounded out the tale on one long roll of paper in a three-week fever dream of inspiration. Writers have been jealous and inspired by him ever since.
The Old Forest and Other Stories
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The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor
Peter Taylor is an old-fashioned Southern storyteller, unremarkable in every respect except for how truly good he is. He wrote three slim, marvelous novels, but it’s his short stories that astonish—they capture a world, a character, a moment with such care that every word matters and every insight hits with an intensity no novel could sustain. Late in life, Taylor had his moment. In 1985, The Old Forest and Other Stories received an unusual amount of attention for him, along with rave reviews. Chekhov was mentioned, and often. One year later, his novel A Summons to Memphis won the Pulitzer Prize. Now? Now he sits quietly in a corner, waiting to be rediscovered as surely he will. His heyday (if one can use such a vulgar term) was so long ago that none of Taylor’s work is even available as an e-book. He might be relieved to know it.
Related: 20 Enlightening Spiritual Books for When You’re Searching for Hope and Strength
The Rings of Saturn
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The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
W.G. Sebald is unique. He is like no one else and no one is his heir because how could they be? His “novel,” The Rings of Saturn, is typical of him—it’s sort of fiction, sort of a travel book, sort of history and sort of a memoir and more, all jumbled up together. In it, the narrator (presumably Sebald) takes a walking tour in Suffolk, England. He tells you what he’s seeing and the people he meets, along with an inexhaustible stream of scientific knowledge, history, literary allusions and so on. You assume he’s (sort of) telling the truth and if you look it up you’ll discover various facts are absolutely or fairly or somewhat accurate or perhaps you can’t discover anything about a certain fact at all, though this doesn’t prove it’s not true, does it? Before you know it everything is true and fantastical and connected and it’s all so moving, so real, so unlike anything you’ve ever read before that you’ll finish it and wonder what the heck it was and how he did it. You’ll want to urge people to read The Rings of Saturn while praying no one asks you to describe it…and then you’ll eagerly track down something, anything else by Sebald.
A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Who doesn’t want to live in a fancy hotel? From Eloise at the Plaza to Count Rostov at the Hotel Metropol, the idea of endless room service and a parade of interesting house guests you can easily ignore—if so inclined—seems like heaven. In the case of Count Rostov, the protagonist of A Gentleman in Moscow, it’s supposed to be more like hell, or purgatory at least. As a nobleman who returns to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, Rostov is tried and sentenced to house arrest at the Hotel Metropol. Clearly, the last vestiges of the aristocracy hadn’t quite been swept away, though at least the Count is ordered to leave his lavish suite and take a servant’s quarters. Decades pass, all of it in charming detail and with an inventiveness that never flags. It’s no wonder Towles went from an acclaimed, best-selling debut novelist with Rules Of Civility to an absolute phenomenon thanks to this word-of-mouth sensation. It’s so entertaining, some might feel suspicious of its greatness. But we’re not. Just be prepared to fork out the bucks for a bottle of Châeauneuf-du-Pape. It’s impossible to read this without longing for a taste of that wine.
The Far Pavilions
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The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
Born and raised in India, then sent to boarding school in Great Britain, writer M.M. Kaye was destined to write a novel about the British Empire. First, she spent decades writing and/or illustrating children’s books and penning a series of thrillers and stand-alone novels—none of them creating much of a stir. They weren’t nearly as dramatic as Kaye’s real life. She fell in love during World War II with a British Indian Army officer who was married and four years younger than her. Kaye had one child and was pregnant with a second before they actually got married. It was the war, she shrugged. Then, Kaye’s literary agent, Paul Scott, urged her to write about India. (He himself shot to fame with the Raj Quartet novels.) Over the next twenty years, Kaye wrote three books of historical fiction. The first was gutted by bad editing, the second did better, and in 1978, Kaye published her doorstopper of a masterpiece: The Far Pavilions. It received major acclaim as a new spin on Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, enjoyed huge sales and became HBO’s first miniseries. Kaye lived another 26 years but, except for a trilogy of memoirs, she never wrote again.
The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
This novel’s narrator starts talking and you just can’t stop listening. His story is the confession of a political prisoner in Vietnam and it’s a doozy. Our unnamed protagonist is filled with contradictions. He’s the mixed-race son of a Vietnamese mother and a French Catholic priest father. He’s a North Vietnamese double agent living in South Vietnam. He escapes to America and continues living a double life amidst the local Vietnamese community. Then, he’s an adviser on an American war film akin to Apocalypse Now. Finally, he returns to Vietnam to fight in a guerrilla campaign against the Communist government. He’s the ultimate sympathizer—seeing all sides at once and losing track of which side he’s on. Compared to everything and everyone from Ralph Ellison to Joseph Conrad to Philip Roth and Walt Whitman, Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is one of the most acclaimed debuts in ages. And its sequel, The Committed, continues the tale with similar success.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories by Truman Capote
Truman Capote practically invented the true crime genre with his nonfiction book In Cold Blood. He also wrote remarkable magazine features, turned gossip into high art and even perfected the character of “Truman Capote” in interviews throughout his life. Yet Capote’s favorite creation was Holly Golightly, the American “geisha” at the heart of his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She’s a free spirit who lives in New York City thanks to the generosity of older, wealthier men. Holly is not a prostitute but she does enjoy nice things, and how kind of men to give them to her. You can draw a straight line from Lorelei Lee of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to Sally Bowles of Goodbye To Berlin (and later Cabaret fame) to Miss Golightly. It’s substantially different from the film version starring Audrey Hepburn. (Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe.) But the spirit of the novel is onscreen. Here, the novella is paired with three marvelous short stories, including “House Of Flowers” (turned into a fine Broadway musical), “A Diamond Guitar” and “A Christmas Memory,” itself turned into movies, plays and more. Capote could be waspish, but here he’s on his best behavior.
Ulysses (The Gabler Edition)
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Ulysses by James Joyce
The timid among us might name the short story collection Dubliners as the masterpiece of James Joyce. But cartoonist and graphic novelist Chris Ware will have none of it. He plunks for the daunting, challenging, modernist classic Ulysses. “Though apparently the Great American Novel still has yet to be published, the Great Irish Novel already was, exactly a century ago,” says Ware, author most recently of Monograph. “James Joyce’s inverted plot of the Odyssey—a husband exiling himself from his house to allow his wife her ongoing adulterous tryst—is mashed up into, amongst other things, the inside-out consciousnesses of his main characters, all of human history, and the ebb and flow of one day of life in 1904 Dublin, all written with an ever-recombined Erector set of dreamlike English that somehow, incredibly, implants sense-memories directly in the reader’s mind. And that final, 1922-outraging chapter, which so directly articulates female desire, remains Joyce’s private gift to one-half of humanity, a topic which until that point had rarely been treated as a topic worthy of consideration.”
The Outsiders
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The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Many great novels about young people came before. (Think The Catcher in the Rye or Anne of Green Gables or Little Women or Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, to name a few.) Judy Blume was just on the horizon, with her debut novel about to come out in 1969. But in 1967, The Outsiders was a young adult novel written by a young adult and for a young adult audience and it was so successful that it changed everything. Hinton was 15 years old when she started it, 16 when she really knuckled down and got serious about it and 18 when it came out. The novel depicts gang violence, underage drinking, smoking, absentee parents, and an awareness of class divides between the Greasers and the Socs (the Socials). People are still afraid of teens actually reading it, so The Outsiders remains one of the most challenged and banned books in the country. Hinton wrote other novels, but this debut manages to “stay gold” almost 60 years later. Kids hungry to see their lives in the stories they read still latch onto it. And writers hungry to capture authenticity still study it.
Darkness at Noon (Vintage Classics)
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Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler’s nightmare of a novel was inspired by the 1938 purges in the Soviet Union. In it, a man is broken down after multiple interrogations and makes a false confession about betraying the state. You are trapped with this man, you understand everything he’s feeling, you accept his decision to end the torture by saying whatever they want him to say and you walk with him as he’s led away to his death, the other unseen inmates drumming on the walls of their cells in support, just as he did for others before him and they will do again when the next one falls. It’s a shivering, unshakeable work.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
In the biker movie The Wild One, they ask Marlon Brando, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” He shoots back, “Whaddaya got?” Maybe rebellion is always in the air, but the counterculture movement sparked by the Beats and leading to the hippies of the 1970s found one of its key texts in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s narrated by a half-Native American patient of a mental ward who lumps all oppression into what he calls The Combine. “Chief” Bromden details the battle for power between a not-so-crazy inmate named Randle McMurphy and the controlling Nurse Ratched. Kirk Douglas loved it so much that he bought the rights, turned it into a play and triumphed on Broadway. But he couldn’t get anyone to back a film version. It took his son Michael to make that dream happen, succeeding beyond anyone’s dreams with the Oscar-winning classic starring Jack Nicholson. Kesey went on to found the Merry Pranksters, inspire the Grateful Dead and write the novel Sometimes A Great Notion, his own favorite. But it’s the short, sharp shock of Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest that is still banned in some schools and still inspires people to fight back against the system, the Man, or as Bromden calls it, The Combine.
So Long, See You Tomorrow
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So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
William Maxwell was the fiction editor at The New Yorker for 40 years during its glory days of 1936 to 1975. That’s enough to make his name legendary among other writers. But he also wrote novels, short stories, letters and essays. In 1980, Maxwell published one final book, almost 20 years after his previous novel came out. That new work was, naturally, published first in The New Yorker in two parts. They weren’t being kind to a venerable figure. They were lucky to have it and the publication was a sensation. So Long, See You Tomorrow is one of those perfect books; it’s simple, direct and unforgettable. The story begins with a gunshot and features an old man like Maxwell, looking back with regret on a tragedy of violence that tore through the town of his childhood. That gunshot, that murder, also abruptly ends a friendship just when that person needed their friend the most. Maxwell lived another 20 years, but this was his last novel. He was a good enough editor to know it doesn’t get any better than this, so why try?
The Greatest Short Stories of Anton Chekhov: A Collection Of Fifty Stories
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The Greatest Short Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
We’re sure you’ve been paying attention. And so again and again, you’ve seen the highest praise we give a writer—especially a writer of short stories—is “Chekhovian.” Anton Chekhov is also one of the greatest dramatists of all time and for the same reason. No one captures real life quite like Chekhov. Grab any short story collection you can. Any translation: Constance Garnett, Peavear and Volokhonsky, Miles, Dunnigan, Popkin, you name it. Everyone takes a shot at translating Chekhov into English because Chekhov is the greatest. Find out why.
American Pastoral: American Trilogy (1) (Vintage International)
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American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The perennial bridesmaid of the Nobel Prize, Philip Roth reportedly spent the days when the annual announcement approached nervously in touch with his publisher. Have they called yet? They never called but you can’t blame the award-loving Roth for expecting it. Few writers turned out acclaimed work for 50 years like Roth. Choosing just one is absurd. How about one per decade? Goodbye, Columbus (1950s). Portnoy’s Complaint (1960s). The Ghost Writer (1970s). The Counterlife (1980s). Sabbath’s Theater (1990s). The Plot Against America (2000s). And overall, American Pastoral because it’s a sprawling epic covering underground movements like the Weathermen to political corruption like Watergate. Yet it remains human-scaled and moving thanks to the travails of Seymour Levov, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jew who realizes you never really know anyone, even your closest friends and family. Looks can be deceiving, which he should have known all along.
The Known World
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The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Some writers are shockingly prolific. Some take their time. Edward P. Jones takes his time. In his 72 years, Jones has published three books. Two are collections of short stories about African Americans working in Washington D.C. His only novel, so far, is The Known World, a work that makes the complicated horrors of slavery in the U.S. fresh again. How? By telling the story of both black and white people who enslaved others in antebellum Virginia. This historical fact—that some black people also owned other human beings prior to the Civil War—changes everything and nothing for readers ignorant of this truth. And it’s just a starting point for a rich narrative that contains stories within stories, along with the varied perspective of the owners and the owned, the rebellious and those who feel betrayed, women and men, poor whites and rich blacks and more. If Jones never publishes again, his name is assured. But we can hope.
A Man Called Ove: A Novel
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A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Who needs critics? Most of them will politely admit that Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s debut novel has a certain charm. And yes, they laughed quite a bit, it’s true. But charm and humor and gentle wisdom are not the stuff of great reviews. Those qualities will, however, strike a chord when readers discover a book and tell a friend “you have to read this” and press a copy into their hands. That’s how this little book about a cranky old man with a sad past became a runaway bestseller. It’s charming, you’ll laugh a lot and the gentle wisdom is well worth hearing again. You can read it now or you can read it after seeing the Tom Hanks film version coming out in December. But you will buy it, love it and then tell a friend they have to read it while pressing a copy into their hands.
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
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Devotions by Mary Oliver
This list of the best works of fiction wasn’t meant to include poetry, but some people just can’t help themselves. Writer Garrison Keillor writes poetry, edits anthologies of poetry and celebrates poetry with a daily podcast and newsletter. In short, Keillor, author most recently of Boom Town, is crazy about poetry. And one American poet of recent years is so alive in the minds of poetry lovers that it’s hard to remember she died in 2019: Mary Oliver. Keillor immediately asked to celebrate Mary Oliver’s collection titled Devotions. Keillor calls Oliver “the poet of long walks who is cheered up by the natural world and puts it all in elegant verse that sticks with you—‘No matter who you are or how lonely, the world calls to you over and over, harsh and exciting, announcing your place in the family of things.’”
The Thin Red Line: A Novel
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The Thin Red Line by James Jones
Everyone lauds From Here to Eternity, the blockbuster novel by war veteran James Jones that climaxes with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s a great book and became a great movie. But since Jones is best when dealing with war and The Thin Red Line is the novel that’s actually steeped in combat, we’ll choose this one. Plus, it became an even greater movie than From Here to Eternity when Terence Malick released his movie version of the novel in 1998. (An earlier version came out in 1964.) Fellow veterans frequently laud Jones for telling it like it is and that makes his novels all the more surprising to modern readers. Loneliness, fear and brutality are all on display, along with unexpected touches like same-sex dalliances among soldiers trapped in foxholes and fearing for their lives. You won’t find any drum-beating or patriotic flag-waving either. This isn’t a rousing, go-get-’em war story by any stretch, though it’s not damning either. It’s just…true.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
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How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
An immigrant story? Sure, if your immigrant story involves being in a family of means in the Dominican Republic but then fleeing to the US after your dad joins a plot to overthrow that country’s dictatorship and finds out he’s a better doctor than a revolutionary. Julia Alvarez’s debut novel enjoyed instant acclaim and has remained both popular and critically celebrated ever since. It opens up the world of the DR that too few know anything about, as well as shows New York City in a fresh light, as only newcomers can.
The Three Musketeers (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
After dozens of adaptations turning The Three Musketeers into movies, TV shows, comic books, video games, stage plays, radio dramas and the like, you might be forgiven if you forgot it began as a novel by Dumas. But you won’t forgive yourself if you don’t take the time to read it (or read it again, if you were the sort of kid who saw a big thick book about swashbucklers in France and dove right in). Like Charles Dickens, Dumas weaves a lot of topical issues into his grand adventures. This one is about a young man named d’Artagnan, who heads to Paris with the dream of joining the dashing Musketeers of the Guard and succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings. Grand fun. And if you’re wondering, when it comes to movies, we recommend the 1973 version starring Michael York, and when it comes to translations, we recommend the 2006 version by Richard Pevear—maybe if we all ask nicely, he’ll translate the sequels, starting with Twenty Years After and ending with The Man in the Iron Mask.
Last Days of Summer
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Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
The epistolary novel—a story told entirely through letters or, nowadays, perhaps texts or email and the like—is a very particular treat. They range from the heart-warming innocence of 84, Charing Cross Road to the cruel darts of Les Liaison Dangereuses. Author Julia Quinn is a fan of the format in general and especially of Steve Kluger’s story about a Jewish kid in New York City in the 1930s. The boy badgers the third baseman for the New York Giants into becoming his pen pal. “I love epistolary novels, and Last Days of Summer is pure perfection” says Quinn, author most recently of Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron. “It is, at turns, side-splittingly funny and deeply sad, with characters who develop and grow with every letter, report card or Bar Mitzvah program.”
Brooklyn
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Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Irish writer Colm Tóibín has something for everyone. Travel books that dive into history and faith. Plays. Novels. Short stories. Essays. Journalism. Two hugely acclaimed and ambitious books bring to life two giants of literature: The Master illuminates Henry James and The Magician captures the complexity of Thomas Mann. Then there’s Brooklyn. His most popular work and the source for a lovely movie, Brooklyn tackles the Irish immigrant experience in prose so empathetic and fresh that you’d swear no one ever told the story before. Eilis Lacey can’t find work in 1950s Ireland, so she makes an impossible leap to New York City. A young and sensible woman, she then chances it all on a handsome Italian plumber because she loves him and he loves her. Tóibín lets us feel how risky and brave and scary that is and we love her—and him—for it.
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Any war novel worth its salt is an anti-war novel. How can you survive the hellish cruelty and uncertainty of war with dumb luck (the only thing that saves you, in the end) and not think, “Never again, no thank you!” That’s certainly true of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The author served in World War II and survived (including the firebombing of Dresden) and it’s all poured into the story of Billy Pilgrim. Billy’s a soldier and prisoner of war who makes it home alive but finds himself slipping through time, because isn’t time unmoored when war tears a hole in your life? Then there are aliens, humans on exhibition, philosophical musings, comedy and tragedy and it’s all a glorious mess and can you believe they tried to make a movie out of it? Vonnegut’s body of work is rich and strange and singular.
Middlemarch (Macmillan Collector’s Library)
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Middlemarch by George Eliot
We aren’t ranking the books on this list, but let us tell you a secret. If we did, Middlemarch would be at the top. Not because it is the greatest novel of all time. (No such thing exists.) But because it is inarguably one of the greatest novels of all time, for a thousand reasons. It’s the same reason Rolling Stone recently crowned Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On as the greatest album of all time and movie lists usually name Citizen Kane as the greatest film. Sure, your personal choice may be different, but you can’t say any of those choices are wrong. This masterpiece by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) is so solidly written, so engrossing, so heartbreaking and such an accomplishment it can’t be denied. It’s both a historical novel and a novel grappling with the issues of its day—like the role of women in a world where a genius like Evans had to choose a male pen name to avoid scandal and be taken seriously, for starters. Bookseller Nina Barrett of Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois adds her approval, praising it “for the Godlike omniscience and the incredible wisdom about human love and frailty that she packs into every page.”
Related: Let’s Get Reading! 20 New LGTBQ+ Books We’re Loving This Year
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
This semi-autobiographical novel shoulders many burdens. It’s “the” book that represents the Native American experience for many, even though it’s just about one kid on the Spokane Indian Reservation. So what about all the other tribes? And what about the girls? And what about kids who don’t live with a disability like Arnold Spirit Jr. or aren’t really smart or don’t choose to go to a practically all-white public school off the rez, like he does? And maybe don’t even like comics, while Arnold wants to be a cartoonist? Like all great books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian becomes universal by being so specific about Arnold and his world of grinding poverty and friendship and family and moments of joy. Plus, it’s funny and moving and engagingly written. And who can’t identify with that?
Bridgerton: The Duke and I (Bridgertons Book 1)
The Duke and I: A Bridgerton Novel by Julia Quinn
The Bridgerton series devotes one book to each of the eight children in a family. You know it from the Netflix series, unless you’re a huge fan of Regency romances and read this when it made a stir in 2000. In The Duke And I, the story revolves around Daphne and Simon. She’s a Bridgerton and far too sensible and smart to appeal to the men of her time who prefer their women more mysterious and less outspoken. She doesn’t care, not really. Simon hates his father and vows never to marry or have children. But society can be so tiresome when matrons are pushing their eligible daughters at you. So they make a pact and pretend to be in love to get everyone off their backs. And of course, sparks fly and they fall for each other, though not without complications and confusion and a promise things will go no further. And then they go further. Sometimes a great novel is just great fun.
The Stranger
In this 1942 novel, a French settler in Algiers kills an Arab man and is sentenced to death. That brief description raises a host of complicated issues even before the Nobel Prize-winning author Camus raises the story above the “colonial novel” to a profound grappling with the meaning of existence. Along with Camus’s The Plague, it’s a rite of passage for thinkers and writers, including Tim O’Brien. “I’ve read it at least a half dozen times, probably more, both in English and in French,” says O’Brien, author most recently of Dad’s Maybe Book. “And I’m always moved, in a guilty and mysterious way, by how unmoved the book’s protagonist is in the midst of typically shattering circumstances. (Yet, by and large, don’t we all “recover” and somehow move on from lost loves and dead mothers and our own misdeeds.) The Stranger is among the four or five novels that, as a young man, made me dream about writing one of my own.”
High Fidelity
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High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The flipside to Bridget Jones’s Diary, this laddish novel by Nick Hornby proves a tantalizing peek inside the mind of a middle-aged man-child. Rob is a 35-year-old record store owner obsessed with music but facing a mid-life crisis when his more successful lawyer girlfriend leaves him. Rob spends most of his days making up Desert Island Lists about music and pop culture. When he comes up with a Top 5 Break-ups list from his romantic travails, Rob rethinks his earlier relationships and talks to the women about where he went wrong. Rob learns to grow up without having to give up his passion for rock n roll, thank God. High Fidelity is so very, very specific to this particular man in England and that’s what makes it universal. Making a movie version and setting it in the U.S. was an absurd idea. Then it made perfect sense, but only in retrospect and only when overseen and starring John Cusack.
Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah’s Book Club)
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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Write what you know? If everyone did that, we would never have novels like Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides read a memoir by an intersex person, but felt it stopped short of revealing the emotions and reality of this rare experience. What was it like to be one of the people who have less common sex characteristics and simply don’t fit onto a male/female binary? To make it real to himself, Eugenides drew upon specific details from his own life and that of his Greek-American family to tell a sprawling, multigenerational tale of incest, love, confusion, bankruptcy and the journey of Cal/Calliope. Cal transforms from a child raised as female to a teen diagnosed as intersex and pushed towards gender reassignment surgery to make them conform to male characteristics and finally to an adult who embraces their intersex identity. The Pulitzer Prize and Oprah’s endorsement turned this into a perennial bestseller.
The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter)
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The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Yes, of course, the movie. But the novel! It’s the second of four books centering on the magnetic, chilling serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The first, Red Dragon, became an exceptionally good film called Manhunter. This one became a movie for the ages, the first horror-tinged movie to win the Best Picture Oscar. But the writing! Everyone from children’s author Roald Dahl to meta-magician David Foster Wallace have praised it to high heaven. Just don’t expect to sleep until you finish it. And then don’t expect to sleep easily.
Why Did I Ever: A Novel
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Why Did I Ever? by Mary Robison
Anyone who ran away from home to try and track down Jack Kerouac in Florida is a person worth knowing. Other writers, like Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket fame, have known and appreciated Mary Robison’s work for years. The fractured, fraying story of a Hollywood script doctor whose life is not following a three-act story arc, Why Did I Ever? may be her masterpiece. “It’s a manic, comic novel told in 536 little sections, some scarcely longer than a few words, from the point of view of a woman who is similarly scattered, troubled and jokey,” says Handler, author most recently of Poison For Breakfast. “If you’ve ever heard the lyrics (as the heroine does) as ‘It’s a grand old flag, dunt dunt high-flying flag. Dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duhhh,’ this book is for you.”
Disgrace: A Novel
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Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
What can you learn about post-apartheid South Africa from a novel about a disgraced college professor who loses his job over repeated inappropriate behavior and far worse when it comes to a student he pressures into having sex? Nothing and everything. The Nobel Prize-winning Coetzee takes a white man of some standing in South Africa who sees his place in the world slipping away, both personally and in the country at large. Coetzee really puts him through the wringer and then somehow allows you to feel for him and hope for him, just when all hope seems lost. It’s a work of empathy and grace set in a country that lacked those qualities for so many for so long. And bestowing it on a character who really doesn’t “deserve” it proves again how everyone deserves it, always.
Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” Those words at the end of Treasure Island echo in the mind of anyone who reads it long after they’ve closed the book. Has anyone spoiled the fun of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gem by discerning some commentary on colonialism or revealed Long John Silver as an example of unfettered capitalism? Let’s hope not. Because no book is more fun than Treasure Island. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is a bore. R.M. Ballantyne’s now thankfully forgotten The Coral Island is a scold. But 140 years on, Treasure Island is a tale to fire the imagination. Pirates! Mutiny! Treasure maps! Gold! A brave lad caught up in it all and he lives to tell the tale! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, indeed.
In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Modern Library Classics)
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Of course you’re intimidated. It’s multiple volumes long and contains more than 4000 pages! And if you want to keep track of who is cheating on whom and who said what at which party, you really have to read it all at once. But the Harry Potter books run to seven volumes and so will George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire. Not only are people not daunted by them, they’re angrily demanding Martin hop to it and write more. Here’s the thing—Proust’s masterwork is gossipy, scandalous, sexy, funny and deeply moving. If you’ve ever enjoyed the company of someone who tells stories about their friends (“Oh, and did you hear what happened to Y.K. last week at the cafe?”) you will enjoy Proust. Reach the end of the final volume and you’ll be rewarded with an emotion unlike anything else in literature. Yes, it’s Mount Everest: formidable, challenging and dangerous. And people line up to climb Everest every single day. You can do it.
Goodnight Moon
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Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; Pictures by Clement Hurd
Books don’t have to be read again and again to be loved. But it sure helps. Like a favorite poem or song, a classic picture book distills a story to the essential words, casting a spell through a precise combination of text and pictures. It lulls a child to sleep and enchants the person reading it. Your parents read it to you. You read it to your child. And your child will read it to their child—or maybe already is!—and down and down through the ages. And if that doesn’t move you, nothing will. So let Margaret Wise Brown have the last, quiet word: “Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.”
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Feeling dystopian? Read these 10 books similar to ‘1984’ by George Orwell.
Remember high school English class reading assignments? Sometimes those dense classics were even enough to make the booklovers in the classroom groan.
But every now and then, an assigned reading would come along and truly stick with us. For many, “1984” by George Orwell is one of those books.
This dystopian sci-fi novel is about a roaming troupe of actors traversing the Great Lakes region, performing Shakespeare and music for the scattered communities that remain 15 years after a pandemic decimated most of the world’s population. But the Traveling Symphony runs into trouble when they arrive at St. Deborah by the Water and encounter a dangerous and violent prophet who threatens their existence. “Station Eleven” parallels the “before” and “after” of a pandemic-ridden society, weaving threads of fate, hope and disaster amid the apocalypse.
This dystopian novel takes place on an island wrestling with the increasing disappearance of everyday objects and animals. Birds, hats, ribbons, roses and other items are going missing, and only some have the power to remember what’s been lost. The Memory Police, a draconian, fear-inspiring squad, ensure these items remain forever forgotten. This story follows a young novelist devising a plan to hide her editor from the clutches of the Memory Police.
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Other people can be baffling. Even in our closest relationships, loved ones frequently behave in ways that can seem inexplicable. Why can’t your friend recognize her self-destructive foibles? Why do you find your co-worker so grating? Partners insist on misinterpreting each other; voters are convinced that their political opponents are irredeemably wrong—and in these disputes, the other side’s point of view feels not just incorrect but also completely alien. In short, why are other people like this?
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Those craving an immersive exploration of the human psyche should look no further than this towering classic novel. Although most readers wouldn’t describe Eliot’s study of a provincial 19th-century English town as a work of psychology, it dissects the interlocking lives of the residents with an astute eye toward what drives them. The characters in its sprawling cast—among them the ardent, generous Dorothea Brooke and the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate—make ill-advised marriages, run up against obstacles to their ambitions, allow their reputations to be besmirched, and fall into debts that they struggle to repay. Much of the novel’s drama comes from the mutual incomprehension that arises between individuals (particularly married couples), and Eliot tracks with riveting detail the feelings and thoughts on both sides of a disagreement. Even the briefest flash of emotion on a face or the intonation of a phrase can set off a chain of misunderstandings, and the reader is privy to each character’s shortcomings as they form unrealistic expectations and read their own preoccupations into their interlocutors’ words. Total understanding of others is impossible, the novel suggests. And yet, thanks to Eliot’s keen sensitivity, reading Middlemarch might just enlarge your capacity to imagine other people’s state of mind.
[Read: Why it’s nice to know you]
Vintage
Darkness Visible, by William Styron
At 60, Styron was stricken with an episode of severe depression, one that incapacitated him and brought him to the brink of suicide. In this slim book, he attempts to put words to his experience of a disease that is “so mysteriously painful and elusive,” he writes, “as to verge close to being beyond description.” We gain an intimate sense of the illness from its beginnings, when Styron found that alcohol—a substance he had been “abusing for forty years”—suddenly triggered nausea and revulsion. His abstention kicked off a malaise that culminated in a determination to kill himself in his Connecticut farmhouse, ending only with his subsequent hospitalization and recovery. Sections about depression’s causes and treatment are woven in elegantly among meditations on suicide, an act that, Styron argues, should have “no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.” The depths of depression are nearly incomprehensible to those who haven’t experienced it, yet Styron’s rich, precise language allows his readers to grasp his suffering—and gives us a glimpse into the workings of his particular mind.
Little Brown Spark
Connected, by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler
To truly understand people, don’t focus on individuals or groups, the social scientists Christakis and Fowler write. What matter are the connections between people: the branching paths that extend from you and your family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors to, say, Kevin Bacon. The book sketches out the surprising ways that these social networks sway our behavior, moods, and health, and its conclusions can be mind-bending. If your best friend’s sister gains weight, for example, you’re more likely to gain weight too, they write. Who we know significantly affects whether we smoke, die by suicide, or vote, thanks to our human tendency to copy one another. Happiness and sadness also spread among groups, so that the mood of a person you don’t know can sway your own emotions—even though we often imagine that our internal states are under our personal control. “No man or woman is an island,” the authors write. Their book makes a convincing case that our tangled relationships determine nearly everything about how our life plays out—and reminds us that we can’t be meaningfully understood in isolation.
[Read: The complex psychology of why people like things]
Graywolf
Milkman, by Anna Burns
Milkman takes place in what appears to be 1970s Northern Ireland during the Troubles—hijackings, car bombs, and “renouncers-of-the-state” form its tumultuous backdrop—and it paints a chillingly sharp portrait of a community consumed by paranoia and violence. When its unnamed narrator appears in public with a menacing figure known only as Milkman, rumors begin to spread that she’s his mistress. Never mind the fact that the attentions of Milkman, a high-ranking paramilitary member who seems to follow her everywhere and utters oblique threats, are entirely unwanted. Where she lives, the narrator tells us, “you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn’t want to.” To protect herself from the gossip and from Milkman himself, the narrator is forced to become a “carefully constructed nothingness.” She adopts a blank expression and confides in no one—an emotional state that mirrors the hollowed-out hopelessness and self-deception of her neighbors. Burns’s dense, discursive style captures the narrator’s psyche intimately: We feel with her as she wrestles with the fear, suspicion, and longing she hides from the world, and as she observes the corrosion of an entire city under duress.
Anchor
The Personality Brokers, by Merve Emre
We often speak of “personality types” and take for granted that individuals’ inherent qualities can be categorized, predicted, and analyzed. In this intriguing book, Emre traces the development of this idea by recounting the history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the world’s most popular personality test. Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a mother-daughter duo, spent much of the 20th century developing their system’s dichotomies: introversion and extroversion, feeling and thinking, intuition and sensing, judging and perceiving. Their story is a strange, sprawling narrative marked by religious fervor and a fixation on the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and set against the historical rise of postwar white-collar work. Emre’s account is shot through with necessary skepticism—the Myers-Briggs system isn’t substantiated by scientific research, and its creators were “desperate amateurs” relying mostly on quixotic faith, she writes. At the same time, she articulates why the framework holds such enduring appeal: It provides its adherents with language to parse the murky world of their own and others’ personalities, and many use it to arrive at a self-knowledge that can be genuinely liberating. The quest to know ourselves, this book makes clear, is an ongoing one.
[Read: I gave myself three months to change my personality]
Penguin Books
Reclaiming Conversation, by Sherry Turkle
“Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do,” the sociologist Turkle writes at the beginning of her incisive 2015 book. Our reliance on digital tools that replace such interactions erodes our ability to engage in deep, open-ended discussions, she argues. Reclaiming Conversation is full of dismaying examples of this diminishment, drawn from countless interviews with teenagers and young adults, teachers, corporate executives, and families. Parents can’t tear their eyes away from their phone at family dinners; students have trouble focusing and shy away from substantive dialogue in classrooms; professionals have meetings that barely function as meetings, because every participant is also checking their email. We’ve replaced talking with texting, emailing, and posting on social media, Turkle points out, in order to sidestep the boredom, embarrassment, and vulnerability that come with real conversation. And yet, those kinds of discomfort beget intimacy—the foundation of understanding other people, and thus of empathy. Turning to those around us, she concludes, is still the best way to comprehend one another. If you want to know why people behave the way they do, the shortest path to the answer is simply to ask them.
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The Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)
Poetry in the 21st century is both ubiquitous and oddly peripheral. Verses are displayed on subway walls, recited on momentous occasions, and served up in giant fonts on social media, but rarely do they merit a book review or a position on end-of-year reading lists. Yet the medium evolves even when it isn’t the center of attention, and over the past 25 years, its authors have pursued astonishing new forms and reinvented old ones. The Atlantic has prized and published poetry since its founding in 1857. And so, a quarter of the way into this new century of cataclysmic change, we thought it was an apt time to consider how poets fit into the broader conversation—to document an emerging canon of the most significant verse of the century so far.
No list can be comprehensive or infallible, but we did not approach this one lightly. After considering various criteria, we landed on work that felt consequential. We were looking for poetry that had struck its readers, for whatever reasons, as unforgettable, enduring, and influential: maybe because it came as an unexpected gift from a friend or loved one, or in the form of a classroom discovery; maybe because it reframed the world in such a way that culture or society felt foundationally shaken. Maybe it was just because, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, it takes the top of your head off.
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To establish a consensus, we consulted with more than 450 people—poets and fiction writers, but also publishers, editors, and informed readers from a variety of fields—asking them to name 10 books apiece. Together, they cast nearly 1,000 votes and recommended more than 400 collections of verse. Finally, we limited the list to Americans: Asking 25 books to represent 25 years of artistic progress within the many traditions that feed into American poetry was difficult enough.
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“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy
“Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace
“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
“The Stand” by Stephen King
“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand
“A Suitable Boy” by Vikram Seth
“The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“1Q84” by Haruki Murakami
“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas
“A Dance to the Music of Time” by Anthony Powell
“The Recognitions” by William Gaddis
“The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shikibu
“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt
“The Luminaries” by Eleanor Catton
“2666” by Roberto Bolañ
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The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Beloved by Toni Morrison
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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The Awakening by Kate Chopin
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
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Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
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The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
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The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
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My Antonia by Willa Cather
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The Color Purple by Alice Walker
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
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The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
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The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
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All 8 Thomas Pynchon Books, Ranked
All 8 Thomas Pynchon Books, Ranked© Provided by Collider
If you’re more of a movie person than a literature person, you might only be familiar with Thomas Pynchon thanks to Inherent Vice, which is, to date, the only novel of his that’s been adapted into either a movie or TV series. Pynchon’s one of those writers whose work proves hard to translate, as his style is chaotic, unique, and sometimes pretty much indecipherable. Inherent Vice, the 2014 film, was sometimes criticized for being too hard to follow, but it’s pretty much as comprehensible as Pynchon gets.
Beyond the strangeness of his work, the other thing that stands out about Thomas Pynchon is how mysterious he is. There are only a few official photos of the man (despite him being on this planet for, as of 2024, 87 years), and just as few recordings of his voice (some of them found on The Simpsons, thanks to him having a couple of odd cameos on the show). The mystique of him as an author goes hand in hand with the bizarreness of his novels, with there being a total of eight published between 1963 and 2013. Some are long, some are punchy, some are funny, some are disturbing, and some are (somehow) all of the above. With some difficulty, they’re all ranked below, starting with his solitary misfire and ending with some of the most important literary works of the past 50 years.
‘Bleeding Edge’
First published: September 17, 2013
Many Thomas Pynchon novels take place at a certain point in America’s past, with Bleeding Edge – his most recent work – taking place the closest to the present day. It’s a difficult thing to adjust to, initially, hearing Pynchon reference figures and pop culture from the (admittedly very early) 21st century, with Bleeding Edge taking place in New York City during 2001. An event you’d expect to play a role in the narrative indeed does, but it’s not the real focus.
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Instead, Bleeding Edge is kind of definable as a techno-thriller, with a narrative that’s influenced by the dot-com boom and its aftermath, with Maxine – a single mother and detective of sorts – getting caught up in a complex plot that involves fraud, corruption, conspiracies, and hacking. It’s a confusing and mind-bending odyssey like other Pynchon novels, but the confusion is less enjoyable here. Parts seem well-researched, but Pynchon tackling things inherent to the online world so head-on also has occasional “How do you do, fellow kids” energy. There is an initial thrill to seeing a Pynchon story take place post-2000, but it wears out its welcome long before the conclusion.
‘Vineland’
First published January 1, 1990
Bleeding Edge took place about a dozen years earlier than when it was published, but the gap between Vineland’s time period and year of publication was even closer. Vineland takes place in 1984, but much of it revolves around people who were young and living their best lives during the latter half of the 1960s. Things have dried up in numerous ways for the central characters here, and the novel is at its best when it follows their attempts at redemption and/or reconciliation.
It’s hard to describe beyond that. People drift in and out of the narrative and there is a lack of focus… probably deliberate, to some extent, but it’s not wholly satisfying. Pynchon’s biggest novels are arguably more head-spinning than the likes of Bleeding Edge and Vineland, but the grandiosity of such works also serves to make them more admirable and impressive. Vineland is on the cusp of scratching the same itch as Pynchon’s better novels, but it’s just lacking a little something. It’s still more satisfying than Bleeding Edge, which might be the only bad Thomas Pynchon book, but he’s got half a dozen other novels that are better still.
‘The Crying of Lot 49’
First published: April 27, 1966
The Crying of Lot 49 is easily the most approachable novel written by Thomas Pynchon, and part of that comes about because it’s easily his shortest. It’s only about 150 pages long, with his second-shortest, Inherent Vice, being more than twice that long (depending on the edition, admittedly). It’s still mind-bending and perhaps meandering, but it can only spiral off in so many directions, owing to its length.
The plot’s comparable to that of Bleeding Edge, with a female protagonist, Oedipa Maas, uncovering a conspiracy and subsequently getting lost, alongside the viewer. But her particular journey – which starts with her being made executor of an ex-lover’s estate – is more direct, funnier, and ultimately more thrilling. If anything, The Crying of Lot 49 might’ve benefited from being a little longer, because it does end somewhat abruptly. It’s probably the only Thomas Pynchon novel you could say that about, for better or worse.
‘V.’
First published: March 18, 1963
If you were to give someone a quick rundown of Thomas Pynchon’s biography, and then give them all his books to read without telling them which year each was published, it’s very unlikely that this hypothetical person (who, in this scenario, has a lot of time on their hands) would guess V. was the first one published of the lot. It’s hugely complex, sprawling, and thematically ambitious for a debut novel, and it’s remarkable that Pynchon was only 26 the year it was published.
- has a lot going on structurally, and is perhaps more interesting to analyze on that front than it is to enjoy narratively. Like some other Pynchon novels, it’s about an ultimately fruitless search for something, in this case being the – or a – titular “V.” You can come away understanding just a fraction of what’s happening and still find it rewarding in its own strange way, though. It’s also notable for potentially influencing partsof The Master, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Speaking of Phoenix and Anderson…
‘Inherent Vice’
First published: August 4, 2009
As far as movies go, Inherent Vice is something of a challenging watch, but Inherent Vice, the novel, is a pretty easy read by Thomas Pynchon standards. Part of that comes from how funny it is on a pretty consistent basis, and because there’s a clear central character. Said character is a private detective named Doc Sportello, and he’s completely out of his depths – and usually under the influence of something – after he’s roped into a complex series of events by an ex-girlfriend.
The confusion is kind of the point, and it’s often played for laughs in a way that’s a bit reminiscent of The Big Lebowski, for a cinematic comparison. As for the film version of Inherent Vice, it captures a similar vibe and chaotic energy to the source material, all the while not proving able to fully translate it to the screen; even at his most approachable, Pynchon’s still enigmatic. It hasn’t deterred Paul Thomas Anderson from potentially adapting another Pynchon novel, though, as his mysterious next film – still untitled, as of 2024 – might be an adaptation of Vineland.
‘Mason & Dixon’
First published: April 30, 1997
It might be a cop-out to say that the most epic three novels by Thomas Pynchon are his three best, but they are undeniably impressive and his most distinctive works. No one else can sustain such madness for such a long time, with his three longest (and, again, best) novels all spanning more than 750 pages each. Stylistically, Mason & Dixon is the boldest of the three, as it’s written in a way that mirrors literature from the time it was set… and it’s set the furthest back of any Pynchon novel, with most of the action taking place during the 1760s.
Historical accuracy is not the name of the game here, but Mason & Dixon is also a story within a story, so the embellishment of certain events and people is more than justified. Even if it wasn’t, the breaks from reality are generally fun, and it’s more interesting than reading a dry biographical story about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as they establish the Mason–Dixon line. Highlights include one character being pursued by a mechanical duck, and a chapter where someone transforms into not a werewolf, but a were-beaver. You can’t make this stuff up, or maybe you can, if you’re Thomas Pynchon.
‘Against the Day’
First published: November 21, 2006
As Thomas Pynchon’s longest novel by far, it’s fitting that Against the Day also covers the longest amount of time narratively. It begins in 1893, with the Chicago World’s Fair, and moves along steadily until it concludes a little after the end of World War I. It also goes to the most different locations of any Pynchon novel, and might contain the largest number of characters, to the point where it’s not just impossible to single out a protagonist, but it’s even difficult to establish a “main cast,” so to speak.
There are a handful of families important to the plot, and also a group known as The Chums of Chance, who fly around – and in and out of the main storyline – seemingly at random. The Chums of Chance also have a team dog they can all communicate with. Some parts of Against the Day are entirely silly, much of it’s incomprehensible, and parts are strikingly emotional. It will probably never get a movie adaptation. If you have the time to read something about 1100 pages long, or listen to an audiobook that’s 50+ hours in duration, it’s worth it. It’s frustrating, weird, and wonderful in all the best ways.
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’
First published: March 14, 1973
Though Gravity’s Rainbow is the most well-known – and probably the best – novel Pynchon ever wrote, it’s not an ideal starting point for newcomers to the author’s body of work. Again, the brevity of The Crying of Lot 49, plus its relative closeness to the start of his writing career, makes that a better starting point. Inherent Vice, maybe, too. Gravity’s Rainbow is one of his longest and is certainly his most bizarre and grotesque, with it being beautifully written and also obscene/disgusting all at once.
It’s about World War II and its aftermath, largely focused on technology, atrocities, outlandish sexual escapades, and paranoia. Gravity’s Rainbow captures the madness of war better than most other works of fiction, meaning that all the shocking moments within do ultimately work in service of what the novel’s going for. It’s an exploration of so many different things all at once, with very little by way of a discernible plot, or even “plots.” that way for over 50 years, But the experience of reading it is unmatched and wholly unique. It’s been and such a statement will likely still be true in another 500.Note: I am a big Pynchon fan read all of these except Bleeding Edge My favorite is Inherit Vice
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The 14 best fantasy book series of all time
Let’s make one thing very clear. I’m going to list the 14 best fantasy series of all time. There are some operative words in this statement that it will be worth underlining before I dive in.
Fantasy: I will be interpreting this genre as I see fit, but the key distinction here is that I’ve chosen to leave sci-fi for another piece. So all you Vorkosigan stans and Asimov junkies, I see you. Yours is coming soon.
Series: This means that I will only focus on chronicles that span more than one volume. While there are some absolutely whip-smart, flooring fantasy standalone novels out there, I won’t be highlighting them here.
Best: The word that’s always the bane of interrogating any kind of popular art form. There are so many ways to get at “best” that it has nearly lost its meaning. All I want it to mean in this context is that fans of fantasy will be entranced by the following entries. And though some have their blemishes, as we’ll get into, the following series have helped define fiction as we know it. Full stop.
Organization
I’ve chosen to break the following list of 14 fantasy series into two categories: unfinished and finished. The Song of Ice and Fire and Kingkiller Chronicle series are two of the most impactful reading experiences I’ve had in my entire life. And yet there’s no guarantee that they will ever be finished. So if you don’t want to start a series that doesn’t yet have an ending, you can skip to the “Finished” section of this article.
Within each category, I’ve ranked the series based on my level of enjoyment with each one. However, I’ve chosen not to format them in the numbered, list-like style that would accompany a more formal ranking. That way, you can’t get mad at me when your favorite series ends up toward the bottom of the list.
Still, to be on here at all means a series is nearly the stuff of legend, if not already so. They’re worthwhile reads, regardless of how you feel about their authors (cough, cough J.K. Rowling).
I’ve gabbed enough. It’s about time I let these books do the talking. Without further ado, here are the 14 best fantasy book series of all time, starting with those series that are still UNFINISHED.
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin | Game of Thrones books | A Song of Ice and Fire | Image: George R.R. Martin — Not A Blog© Image: George R.R. Martin — Not A Blog
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
A Song of Ice and Fire is an epic fantasy series set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, where noble families vie for power and control. It’s also the namesake of this very website. “Winter is Coming” is the mantra of House Stark, a dire warning of trouble to come.
The story is told through the perspectives of multiple characters, many of them with vasly different perspectives on life, which lends the series a lot of depth. Through this lens, Martin explores themes of power, betrayal, honor, and the brutal realities of war.
Meanwhile, his world-building is rich and complex, drawing heavily on real-world history, particularly that of medieval Europe. Known for its unpredictable and morally ambiguous characters, A Song of Ice and Fire has been acclaimed for its intricate plot, deep character development, and gritty realism.
The series began with A Game of Thrones (1996). Martin has yet to complete the saga, with five of the planned seven books now published. Now you know what all the articles complaining about The Winds of Winter delays are about.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle #1). | Image: DAW.© Image: DAW.
The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
The Kingkiller Chronicle is a high fantasy series that follows the life of Kvothe, a legendary figure who becomes the subject of a story he narrates over the course of the trilogy. The narrative is framed as a memoir recounting Kvothe’s rise from an orphaned child to a renowned musician, wizard, and adventurer. The series is known for its lyrical prose, deep character development, and exploration of the nature of storytelling itself.
In the first book, The Name of the Wind (2007), Kvothe tells the story of his childhood in a traveling troupe, his time at the University where he learns magic, and the mysteries surrounding his family’s history with mythical beings called the Chandrian. The second book, The Wise Man’s Fear (2011), continues Kvothe’s journey as he faces trials both magical and personal, including his pursuit of knowledge, his complex relationships, and his struggle with his own identity.
Kingkiller weaves together themes of love, loss, ambition, and the cost of fame. Rothfuss’s world-building is intricate, with a unique magic system and rich lore. The series’ third and final core book, The Doors of Stone, has yet to be published, and it’s been nearly 14 years since The Wise Man’s Fear hit store shelves, leaving fans to wonder if the series will ever be completed. That said, it’s far more likely to receive an ending than A Song of Ice and Fire, which has more than one book left to go.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1). | Image: Tor Books.© Image: Tor Books.
The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Though this series finds itself at the bottom of the “Unfinished” category, it’s up against some of the most meaningful fantasy fiction to have ever been written. Also, given author Brandon Sanderson’s reputation as a mind-bogglingly prolific author, Stormlight is the only series in this section that is nearly guaranteed to receive an ending from its original author, in spite of the fact that Sanderson intends for the series to be told in two sets of five books. Sanderson’s reliability – and, of course, his reputation as one of the greatest storytellers of all time – should earn him and Stormlight some points, especially if you’re an endings person.
This is an epic high fantasy series set in the world of Roshar, a land plagued by destructive, magical storms and home to diverse cultures and mystical powers. The series is centered on multiple main characters, each of whom plays a crucial role in the unfolding events. The primary protagonists include Kaladin Stormblessed, a former slave turned soldier who struggles with depression and leadership; Shallan Davar, a noblewoman with a hidden past and the ability to create illusions through a magical power called “Lightweaving”; and Dalinar Kholin, a high-ranking military commander who begins experiencing strange visions that suggest he is destined to unite the fractured nations of Roshar. At the heart of the story is the ancient and powerful conflict between the Knights Radiant — an order of magic-wielding warriors — and the Voidbringers, mysterious entities bent on destruction. As characters uncover forgotten history and the true nature of their world, they must navigate political intrigue, ancient prophecies, and the looming threat of an apocalyptic war.
The series’ first book, The Way of Kings (2010), introduces readers to the world and its characters. It’s where you should start if you’re looking for a way into Sanderson’s epic. For all the Mistborn stans out there concerned about Stormlight making this list over it, I have the following rationale: The unique magic system that Sanderson creates and brings to life in Stormlight is second to none. Stormlight’s character development is deeper. The characters feel more visceral. Stormlight’s mythology gives the series a deeper and more interconnected sense of purpose than Mistborn. If you still disagree, I celebrate you. Most all of Sanderson’s stuff is a treat.
Now let’s move onto the great FINISHED fantasy book series!
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. | Image: William Morrow.© Image: William Morrow.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The big kahuna. The fantasy series to rule all fantasy series (sorry George R.R.). The Lord of the Rings is the cornerstone of modern fantasy literature, set in the richly detailed world of Middle-earth. The epic trilogy follows the journey of Frodo Baggins, a humble hobbit who is entrusted with the task of destroying the One Ring, a powerful and malevolent artifact created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate all of Middle-earth.
The story begins with The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), continues with The Two Towers (also 1954) and concludes with The Return of the King (1955), released back to back to back. If only some of the other fantasy titans working together could put out books with such regularly, although to be fair, Tolkien finished the whole thing before his publisher split it into three books for release.
Tolkien weaves themes of friendship, bravery, sacrifice, and the corrupting influence of power throughout his narrative. The Lord of the Rings influences pretty much everything in the genre to this day. If you haven’t read the books, you’ve likely seen the films. There’s no need to say more.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. | Image: Clarion Books.© Image: Clarion Books.
Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea Cycle is a renowned series of fantasy novels set in the archipelago of Earthsea, a world where magic is a natural and central force. The series follows the life of Ged, a powerful wizard who initially appears in A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the series’ first book. In subsequent novels — The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea (2001) — Le Guin explores themes of identity, mortality, and the complexities of good and evil while further expanding on the history, cultures, and magic of Earthsea.
Throughout her career in sci-fi and fantasy, Le Guin became known for weaving themes of diversity and environmentalism into her writing. Those themes are on full display here. The Earthsea Cycle has become a seminal work in the fantasy genre, distinguished by its intellectual depth, lyrical prose, and profound moral insights. It’s also unusual among fantasy epics in that it doesn’t focus on war, which was intentional on Le Guin’s part.
The Broken Earth trilogy deluxe edition by N.K. Jemisin. | Image courtesy of Orbit.© Image courtesy of Orbit.
Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is a groundbreaking series set in a world plagued by constant geological instability. It’s a future Earth where people known as “orogenes” have the ability to control seismic energy, but are feared and oppressed for their destructive powers.
The trilogy begins with The Fifth Season (2015), where Jemisin weaves together multiple timelines. We follow Essun, a woman whose family is wiped out by a catastrophic event, as well as two young orogenes, Damaya and Syenite.
Broken Earth is notable for its innovative narrative structure (including second-person narration) and exploration of themes such as trauma, power, survival, and social injustice. The trilogy challenges traditional notions of heroism, offering a lens through which readers can examine the consequences of systemic oppression, environmental degradation, and the cyclical nature of violence. It’s the best completed fantasy series the world has seen in recent years. Go read it right now if you haven’t. It’s the kind of story that will help you escape from the real world while teaching you invaluable things about it.
People taking photos in front of the Tribute to Akira… | Fotoholica Press/GettyImages© Fotoholica Press/GettyImages
Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama
While some folks might be surprised to see Dragon Ball on a list of epic fantasy series, it belongs in this rarified air. In spite of the fact that its format and cultural heritage diverges from the rest of the titles on the list, it’s one of the most well-loved fantasy stories of all time. That can’t go unnoticed.
Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga and anime series that follows the adventures of Son Goku, a powerful martial artist with a mysterious past, as he embarks on a quest to find the seven magical Dragon Balls, which can grant any wish when gathered together. The story all began with Dragon Ball (1984) and has captured countless hearts and minds since then, becoming one of the best-selling manga series of all time.
In Dragon Ball Z (the second part of the series, starting in 1989), Goku’s battles intensify, as he defends Earth from alien invaders like the ruthless Frieza, fights intergalactic threats like the androids, and engages in fierce martial arts tournaments. The series at large is known for its distinctive art style, humor, and iconic action scenes.
Dragon Ball remains one of the most successful and beloved franchises in the world to this day, continuing to inspire new generations of fans. Arika Toriyama was involved in its further development right up until his death in March of 2024.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. | Image: Harper Voyager.© Image: Harper Voyager.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The Poppy War is a grimdark military fantasy series set in a world inspired by 20th-century Chinese history, particularly the Second Sino-Japanese War and the opium trade. The story follows Rin, a poor, orphaned girl from the south of the fictional empire of Nikan, who dreams of escaping her abusive, impoverished life. The trilogy blends elements of dark fantasy, military strategy, and historical fiction.
Kuang’s world-building is deeply influenced by Chinese culture and history, from the political intrigue to the social hierarchies and mythologies that shape her characters’ lives. Her writing is both brutal and poetic, tackling difficult issues such as the trauma of war, colonialism, and the consequences of seeking vengeance. If there’s one word I would use to describe The Poppy War series, it’s “unrelenting.” It’s the sort of book series you stay up thinking about long after you’ve closed the cover.
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time #1). | Image: Tor Books.© Image: Tor Books.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson sickos rejoice! The Wheel of Time is an epic high fantasy series originally created by Robert Jordan and later completed by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death in 2007. The series spans 14 books, starting with The Eye of the World (1990) and concluding with A Memory of Light (2013), and is set in a place where time is cyclical, the past, present, and future are intertwined, and the forces of Light and Shadow are in constant conflict.
At the heart of the story is Rand al’Thor, a young man from the small village of Emond’s Field who is revealed to be the prophesied Dragon Reborn, the savior destined to battle the Dark One and prevent the world’s ultimate destruction…or maybe cause it. The Wheel of Time has everything you would expect from a classic fantasy series, but it is most well-known for its exceedingly vast scope. It’s had a profound impact on the fantasy genre, influencing many subsequent writers and inspiring a global fan base.
Amazon is currently adapting The Wheel of Time as a TV series. The third season is due out in 2025.
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
The Harry Potter series is a beloved seven-book saga that chronicles the life of Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is famous for surviving an attack by the dark Lord Voldemort when he was a baby. But you know all this already if you’re here. Hogwarts and all that jazz. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone kicked off the party in 1997, and you know how J.K. can be when she gets on a roll. By the time the book series concluded with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007, she’d ridden the series to record-breaking success.
Harry Potter has become a central part of modern pop culture, inspiring readers of all ages. That said, the entire franchise is marred by Rowling’s staunch anti-trans stances that have fractured her fanbase. This is a particular shame because the escape offered by Harry Potter and his wonderful wizarding world has helped countless LGBTQ+ folks find joy and community in a real-life society full of hateful muggles.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. | Image: HarperCollins Narnia.© Image: HarperCollins Narnia.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Narnia will always be so gosh-darn Narnia, but that’s what people love about it, I suppose. It’s a classic series of seven fantasy novels that transport readers to the magical land of Narnia, a world populated by talking animals, mythical creatures, and ruled by the great lion Aslan. The series begins with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), in which four British siblings — Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy — discover a wardrobe that leads to a land cursed by the White Witch, where it is always winter but never Christmas. Six other books follow, ending with 1956’s The Last Battle. C.S. Lewis also wrote a prequel book, The Magician’s Nephew, which came out in 1955.
Each subsequent book can be read independently, but the series as a whole is united by its overarching narrative of redemption and the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Very original, I know.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. | Image: S&S/Saga Press.© Image: S&S/Saga Press.
The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu
The Dandelion Dynasty is an epic fantasy series that blends elements of Chinese history, political intrigue, and high fantasy. The series, beginning with The Grace of Kings (2015), takes place in the archipelago of Dara, a fictional empire inspired by ancient China. The story is set in a world where technology, magic, and war intersect. It follows the rise and fall of empires, focusing on the complex relationships between rulers, warriors, and the people they govern.
The series is notable not only for its rich storytelling but also for Liu’s thoughtful examination of social and cultural dynamics, as well as his unique approach to fantasy. As a Chinese-American author, Liu draws upon his heritage to create a world that is both familiar and distinct from Western fantasy traditions, offering a fresh perspective on themes of power, identity, and revolution.
The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #1). | Image: Scribner.© Image: Scribner.
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Dark Tower is a genre-blending series that spans seven books, combining elements of fantasy, horror, westerns, science fiction, and psychological drama. Oh, and King does the Kingiest thing ever in this series by – for some reason – reintroducing characters from The Stand (1978) along an alternate timeline.
At the heart of the story is Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, a lone and determined hero on a quest to reach the enigmatic Dark Tower, a mystical structure that is said to hold the key to the fate of all worlds. The series opens with the aptly titled novel The Gunslinger (1982). The story goes on to weave through a complex multiverse, where different realities intersect and characters grapple with themes of destiny, free will, and the cyclical nature of time.
If you like King or have ever wanted to understand what “liking King” means, try this. It’s about as weird and King-y as it gets.
Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip. | Image: Ace.© Image: Ace.
Riddle-Master by Patricia A. McKillip
The Riddle-Master trilogy is a high fantasy series that blends mystery, mythology, and lyrical prose. The trilogy consists of The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), and Harpist in the Wind (1979). The story is set in a world of ancient magic, riddles, and long-forgotten truths, where the characters are bound by destiny and the search for knowledge.
The central protagonist is Morgon, the Prince of Hed, who is drawn into a quest that is as much about unraveling the mysteries of his own identity as it is about saving the world. The trilogy is often hailed as a classic of the genre, especially for its emphasis on language and the power of storytelling. McKillip’s ability to take her tone from dream-like one moment to completely earthy and grounded the next stands out even among the modern stories that have drawn inspiration from her original tale.
Finale
And there you have it. Fourteen of the most meaningful and thrilling series in literature. Sitting down with a cup of coffee and any of these titles will never fail to be one of life’s great pleasures. The words and worlds you find therein, in fact, might just stay with you, shining their light in all the darkest places, and showing you the way.
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This article was originally published on winteriscoming.com as The 14 best fantasy book series of all time.
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