This list is primarily for those who seek recommendations. Reviews of more recently published works may appear as I expand my blog.
Give it a spin– these are books I’ve read from the last half-decade (or from my childhood) that stuck with me. Good writing feels sticky and you’ll still be chewing it for a while even after you’re done.
Short Story Collections
Close Range by E. Annie Proulx
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Novels
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Surrendered by Chang Rae-Lee
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Young Adult Books
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince & Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
His Dark Materials Series by Philip Pullman
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Plays
All in the Timing by David Ives
Nonfiction
Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddartha Mukherjee
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Letters from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss
Children’s Books
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Poetry
For Love by Robert Creeley
The Totality for Kids by Joshua Clover
Louder Walls by Briony Gylgayton
