Life Entertainment 30 Must-Read Books These editor-approved classics have stood the test of time. Happy reading! By Real Simple Editors Real Simple Editors Facebook Instagram Twitter An article attributed to "Real Simple Editors" indicates a collaborative effort from our in-house team. Sometimes, several writers and editors have contributed to an article over the years. These collaborations allow us to provide you with the most accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive information available.The REAL SIMPLE team strives to make life easier for you. They are experts in their fields who research, test and clearly explain the best recipes, strategies, trends and products. They have worked for some of the most prestigious brands in lifestyle journalism, including Apartment Therapy, Better Homes & Gardens, Food & Wine, the Food Network, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, Parents, POPSUGAR, Rachel Ray Every Day, and Vogue. Real Simple's Editorial Guidelines Updated on November 26, 2022 Share Tweet Pin Email Trending Videos Photo: amazon.com What would you put on a list of absolute must-read books? We asked 30 noted authors, across genres, that question; here are their picks. 01 of 30 A House for Mr. Biswas, by V. S. Naipaul amazon.com “The title character, based on Naipaul’s own father, born inauspiciously with a sixth finger in colonial Trinidad, struggles against ignorance, superstition, and bullying in-laws to scratch a tenuous living as a yellow journalist, in this heartbreaking and excruciatingly funny story that speaks of the universal longing for self-expression and freedom.”—Pauline Chen is the author of The Red Chamber ($16, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 02 of 30 The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald amazon.com “It’s hard to say what anyone should or shouldn’t read, let alone everyone, but The Great Gatsby is a book I find myself continually going back to, and I always seem to find something new. If you’ve read it once, it rewards a second look. If you haven’t read it yet, well, I’m jealous of anyone who gets to read it for the first time.”—Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds ($9, amazon.com) and A Shout in the Ruins ($18, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 03 of 30 A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki amazon.com “Everyone—and I mean everyone—should read Ruth Ozeki’s new book, A Tale for the Time Being, which is smart, insightful, revelatory, and uncompromising while remaining gripping, accessible, and often very, very funny.”—Laurie Frankel is the author of This Is How It Always Is ($11, amazon.com), among other novels. Buy on Amazon 04 of 30 Bleak House, by Charles Dickens amazon.com “Bleak House is, to my mind, one of the most finely crafted works of literature ever written. The story lines and characters still feel fresh and alive today, 160 years after Dickens created them.”—J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of Saints for All Occasions ($16, amazon.com), among other novels. Buy on Amazon 05 of 30 Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White amazon.com “If everyone on earth read Charlotte’s Web, preferably once a year, the world would be a better place—more generous, more patient, and more receptive to the unlikely.”—Annie Barrows is the author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ($15, amazon.com), among other books. Buy on Amazon 06 of 30 The Wisdom of No Escape, by Pema Chödrön amazon.com “I think almost everyone could benefit from having a copy of Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape lying around somewhere to pick up if needed. She’s a Buddhist nun writing about various teachings, but she’s also a true writer, and the book is suffused with the work she has done on herself. You can feel it in the prose. This is a book that can feel ordinary on an ordinary day, but at the right moment (usually a difficult moment), it has the potential to turn into liquid and pour into a person.”—Aimee Bender is the author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake ($16, amazon.com), among other books. Buy on Amazon 07 of 30 Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain amazon.com “Forget that this is an important book, one that captures our country in a moment in time like none I’ve ever read. Fountain’s real accomplishment is his dizzying prose, fabulous dialogue, and wonderful characters.”—Maria Semple is the author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette ($11, amazon.com) and Today Will Be Different ($11, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 08 of 30 True Grit, by Charles Portis amazon.com “Many older folks recall the ’60s movie with John Wayne, and a few years ago, Jeff Bridges played the role of the gruff, true-hearted, one-eyed marshal Rooster Cogburn. But the book, in which Mattie Ross, a very old woman, tells Jesse James’s brother the story of how she set out at 14 to avenge her father’s murder, is pure genius.”—Jacquelyn Mitchard, the author of Two If By Sea ($11, amazon.com), among other books. Buy on Amazon 09 of 30 The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman amazon.com “On tiny, isolated Janus Rock, off the perilous Western Australian coastline, a childless lighthouse keeper and his grief-stricken wife are swept into a series of life-changing decisions when an infant washes onto their shores in a rowboat. Every character is insightfully drawn, morally complex, and so very human, I was absolutely riveted.”—Paula McLain is the author of The Paris Wife ($10, amazon.com) and Love and Ruin ($20, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 10 of 30 Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy amazon.com “Everyone should read Anna Karenina. When I reread it in 2010, I learned two things: When I was 19, I clearly hadn’t any idea what parts of the text were important—and so I presumed everything was. I think I underlined half the sentences in the novel. (And when a novel is 800 pages long, that’s a lot of sentences.) Second, Tolstoy was a spectacularly astute chronicler of the demons and dreams that really drive human nature. Despite the carriages and oysters and all that fur, the story felt achingly contemporary and I just loved it.”—Chris Bohjalian is the author of The Flight Attendant ($16, amazon.com) and others. Buy on Amazon 11 of 30 The Information, by James Gleick amazon.com “Here we have a biography of the idea of information, which might have been boring, except for two crucial things: (1) Gleick is a great writer, and (2) The idea of information has had a huge crazy life! I mean, who knew? The life of a poet, a rock star, a conquering king! Put down that celebrity bio. Pick up The Information.”—Robin Sloan is the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore ($12, amazon.com) and Sourdough ($12, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 12 of 30 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell amazon.com “Vampires in the Lemon Grove was a huge hit this year and deserved every accolade. Which makes me think that we should all go back and read her first collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. I love the exuberance in these stories. Reading them you feel as if the writer is having as good as time as you and the characters, running around hunting for turtles or mapping the stars. When the sadness hits, as sadness so often does in all very good fiction, it’s startling but earned, a slow bolt of lightning to the heart. A book that sticks with you for life.”—Leigh Newman is the author of Still Points North ($17, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 13 of 30 Beloved, by Toni Morrison amazon.com “It helps us understand the pernicious effects of slavery and how we are still grappling with America’s Original Sin.”—Thrity Umrigar is the author of The Secrets Between Us ($18, amazon.com), among other novels. Buy on Amazon 14 of 30 Kindly Bent to Ease Us, by Longchenpa (translated by Herbert V. Guenther) amazon.com “A three-volume Buddhist classic filled with poetic, profound—and profoundly simple—wisdom.”—J.I. Baker is the author of The Empty Glass ($11, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 15 of 30 The Eight, by Katherine Neville amazon.com “It may be 600-plus pages long, but this historical thriller has a cult following for a reason: The story hurtles along, following two women protagonists in different times—an 18th-century ex-nun hiding the pieces to a dangerous chess set during European revolution and a 20th-century American banker whose life depends on unraveling the secrets to the very same chess set.”—Nancy Bilyeau is the author of the Joanna Stafford series, the first of which is The Crown ($17, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 16 of 30 Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala amazon.com “This is a book about unimaginable loss, but it’s also about not waiting to recognize the kinds of everyday happiness most of us are lucky enough to experience. It’s a stunning memoir that will change you.”—Will Schwalbe is the author of The End of Your Life Book Club ($12, amazon.com), among others. Buy on Amazon 17 of 30 Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson amazon.com “Fascinating, accessible, and endlessly revelatory, this pop-science book literally changed my life, helping me come to terms with the human compulsion to fight by understanding its evolutionary roots.”—Jane Bordon’s memoir is I Totally Meant to Do That ($13, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 18 of 30 The Middlesteins, by Jami Attenberg amazon.com “The Middlesteins is about a Jewish midwestern family whose matriarch is eating herself to death, but it has the universal appeal of a classic American novel.”—Kate Christensen is the author several novels, including The Last Cruise ($18, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 19 of 30 Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi amazon.com “This book, based on psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s pioneering work, describes the state of mind we should all seek to attain as often as possible: the state of flow, when you’re so absorbed by an activity that you forget both yourself and time.”—Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking ($16, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 20 of 30 The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green amazon.com “This story of two teens with terminal cancer is heartbreakingly honest and charmingly funny.”—Jamie Ford is the author of Songs of Willow Frost ($9, amazon.com) and other books. Buy on Amazon 21 of 30 Howards End, by E.M. Forster amazon.com “Time and again, I recommend Howards End, by E.M. Forster. It’s all about our need to connect with our fellow humans, no matter how different they might appear on the surface.”—Melanie Benjamin is the author of several books, including The Aviator’s Wife ($14, amazon.com) and The Girls in the Picture ($12, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 22 of 30 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey amazon.com “Oregon State Hospital, where the adaptation of this brilliant novel was filmed, was recently converted to the Museum of Mental Health. What better way to commemorate this moment than by rereading Kesey’s classic? Moving, jarring, gut-wrenching, yes. But Kesey’s novel is also expertly crafted and superbly written.”—Garth Stein’s novels include The Art of Racing in the Rain ($11, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 23 of 30 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra amazon.com “This haunting, unforgettable novel about an orphaned 8-year-old girl, the neighbor who rescues her, and the bitter female doctor who hides her is set in Chechnya over a few days in 2004, but manages to reveal that country’s history as well as the characters’ pasts and futures.”—Ann Hood’s books include The Obituary Writer ($14, amazon.com) and The Book That Matters Most ($11, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 24 of 30 My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. amazon.com “A woman’s devastating stroke forces her to think from the right side of her brain, and she not only recovers but becomes happier and more fulfilled.”—Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle ($10, amazon.com) and The Silver Star ($10, amazon.com), among others. Buy on Amazon 25 of 30 Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon amazon.com “Everyone should read Telegraph Avenue, not just for the stylistic fireworks (such as a breathtaking 12-page sentence) but for the heart and soul Michael Chabon infuses into every character in this multiracial, multi-everything tale of people getting by in 1990s California.”—Emma Donoghue is the author of Room ($14, amazon.com) and other books. Buy on Amazon 26 of 30 In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway amazon.com “This collection of Hemingway’s short stories and interstitial episodes represents some of the finest, most spare writing of the twentieth century, including my all-time favorite short story, ‘Hills Like White Elephants,’ which distills to perfection the writerly art of not saying. He never tells you what’s going on, but you know, exactly.”—Erik Larson is the author of In the Garden of Beasts ($14, amazon.com), Devil in the White City ($10, amazon.com), and more. Buy on Amazon 27 of 30 Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf amazon.com “I think everyone should read Virginia Woolf for her sparkling writing and for her profound insight into the experience of everyday life.”—Karen Thompson Walker is the author of the The Age of Miracles ($13, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 28 of 30 Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, by Rachel Lloyd amazon.com “Not only is this a riveting, inspirational memoir about a profoundly troubled youth, but it also exposes the epidemic of human trafficking that’s thriving in our own country. It’s a life-changing book.”—Joanna Hershon is the author of A Dual Inheritance ($16, amazon.com) and more. Buy on Amazon 29 of 30 The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas amazon.com “An oldie but always satisfying is The Count of Monte Cristo. This one has it all—suspense, romance, adventure—and it played a major role in inspiring me, as a child, to attempt to write fiction.”—Jonathan Kellerman is the author of more than three dozen novels, including A Measure of Darkness ($21, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon 30 of 30 The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame amazon.com “While this is ostensibly a children’s book, for me it’s an ode to friendship. Funny, poignant, and beautifully illustrated, it radiates kindness and understanding of the imperfect human heart.”—M.L. Stedman is the author of The Light Between Oceans ($10, amazon.com). Buy on Amazon Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit