Lots of people, including myself, have included “read more books” on their list of New Year’s Resolutions. So I thought I’d compile some book recommendations to provide you guys with inspiration! In no particular order, here’s a list of 101 books I’ve read and loved.
FICTION
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (my all-time favorite!)
- Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- Sabriel by Garth Nix
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
- A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
- The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom
- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
- Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
- The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
- Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
- Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith (an underrated but oh-so-beautiful book)
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (duh)
- Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
- Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
- The Odyssey by Homer (I recommend the Robert Fagles translation)
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- It by Stephen King
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (even better if you can read it in the original French!)
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- Savvy by Ingrid Law
- The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Once and Future King by T.H. White
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane
- The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- Hunger by Knut Hamsun
- Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
- The World According to Garp by John Irving
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (love, love, love!)
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
- The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg
- The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (a book whose message is especially relevant in light of the recent election)
- Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
NONFICTION/POETRY
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni (a must-read for anyone stressed out about college admissions and the Ivy League hype)
- Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
- The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida
- salt. by Nayyirah Waheed
- Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O'Reilly
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The Princess Saves Herself in this One by Amanda Lovelace
- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
- A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
- Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (this is the memoir that baby memoirs want to be when they grow up)
- Cosmos by Carl Sagan
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir
- Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
- How to Become a Straight‑A Student by Cal Newport
- The Color of Water by James McBride
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
- We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Road to Character by David Brooks
- Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (all of Gladwell’s books are great tbh)
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay
- Our Numbered Days by Neil Hilborn
P.S. If you’re trying to read more in 2017, check out my posts about goal-setting and habits!
Thanks for reading! If you have questions, feedback, or post requests, feel free to drop me an ask.
+Click here for the rest of my original reference posts!
—Sophia :)