21 Books You’ve Been Meaning To Read
Reading lists begin as a shelf full of hope until the year flies by, and you find yourself flooded with procrastination. Cheers to the books we’ve been meaning to read all these years and should probably start at some point. And for more book recommendations, find out what’s trending right now with Today’s Top Books.
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Add to BookshelfLittle Women
by Louisa May Alcott
It is no surprise that Little Women, the adored classic of four devoted sisters, has been an avidly read tale for generations. Follow the sisters from innocent adolescence to sage adulthood, with all the joy and sorrow of life in between. Your life won’t be the same once you’ve met Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
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Becoming
by Michelle Obama
In her memoir, First Lady Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her story as she lived it — in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations — and whose story inspires us to do the same.
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The Creative Act
by Rick Rubin
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
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The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birth rates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.
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Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Delia Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
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Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.
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Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
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Ulysses
by James Joyce
Set entirely on one day, 16 June 1904, Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus as they go about their daily business in Dublin. From this starting point, James Joyce constructs a novel of extraordinary imaginative richness and depth. Unique in the history of literature, Ulysses is one of the most important and enjoyable works of the twentieth century.
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The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
A stunning novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
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The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: a terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in mid-flight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
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The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons — their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
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The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Barcelona, 1945: In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Daniel mourns the loss of his mother and stumbles upon a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets — an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
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There There
by Tommy Orange
A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.
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Normal People
by Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation — awkward but electrifying — something life changing begins. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. Set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirts with disaster, and embraces the comedy of daily existence.
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Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
Toru, a serious college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
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All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
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The Color Purple (Movie Tie-In)
by Alice Walker
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early-twentieth-century rural Georgia, drawing readers into a rich and memorable portrayal of Black women — their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, The Color Purple breaks the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, and carries readers on an epic and spirit-affirming journey toward transformation, redemption, and love.
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Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores what it means to call a place home.
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The Secret History: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Donna Tartt
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
by Junot Díaz
Oscar is a sweet nerd who — from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister — dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú — a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere — and risk it all — in the name of love.
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