 | A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | Betty Smith | 1943 | The best protagonists are precocious girls |
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 | Flowers for Algernon | Daniel Keyes | 1966 | I read this in middle school and still think about it a lot |
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 | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 2006 | Haunting post-apocalyptic journey |
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 | American Gods | Neil Gaiman | 2013 | A creepy, mystical adventure set in middle America |
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| Sci-fi & fantasy |
 | Desert Solitaire | Edward Abbey | 1968 | Wil make you want to crawl through the desert just to watch the sunset |
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| Top favesNonfiction |
 | The Princess Bride | William Goldman | 1973 | Even more delightful than the movie |
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| Top favesSci-fi & fantasy |
 | Human Acts | Han Kang | 2025 | Devastating |
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| Top faves |
 | Invisible Cities | Italo Calvino | 1972 | Dreamy vignettes about voyaging & home |
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| Short storiesTranslated |
 | Normal People | Sally Rooney | 2018 | Coming of age as a fucked up millennial |
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 | Anxious People | Fredrik Backman | 2012 | Some lovable dysfunctional strangers are thrown together |
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| Translated |
 | The Heart's Invisible Furies | John Boyne | 2017 | Tender, sorrowful, solace-giving |
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 | So Late in the Day | Claire Keegan | 2022 | An empathetic but cutting character study of "nice guys" who never examine their own misogyny |
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 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | 1967 | Magical, multigenerational misfortune |
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| Translated |
 | The Left Hand of Darkness | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1974 | Tender, otherworldly |
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| Sci-fi & fantasy |
 | The Door | Magda Szabó | 1987 | Bleak, powerful story set in post-WWII Hungary |
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| Translated |
 | The Blind Assassin | Margaret Atwood | 2015 | Twisty story-in-a-story of sisters, war, love |
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| Top favesHistorical fic |
 | More Than I Love My Life | David Grossman | 2019 | Three generations of women & their Eastern European trauma |
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| Historical ficTranslated |
 | Danny the Champion of the World | Roald Dahl | 1986 | A father and son plan a heist |
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 | In Memoriam | Alice Winn | 2023 | Will probably make you cry |
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| Top favesHistorical fic |
 | The Time of Cherries | Montserrat Roig | 1977 | The scars of the Spanish Civil War and the burdens of family |
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| Top favesTranslated |
 | East of Eden | John Steinbeck | 1952 | A bleak family saga |
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| Top favesHistorical fic |
 | Fingersmith | Sarah Waters | 2002 | Victorian lesbian schemes |
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| Historical fic |
 | All Our Yesterdays | Natalia Ginzburg | 1962 | Mundane and lovely moments of living, set in Italy during WWII |
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| Top favesTranslated |
 | Sometimes a Great Notion | Ken Kesey | 1964 | It will break your heart, then tell you to buck up & take it on the chin |
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| Top favesHistorical fic |
 | Euphoria | Lily King | 2025 | Anthropologist adventures and a love triangle |
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| Historical fic |
 | A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories | Lucia Berlin | 2015 | Destructive and difficult white women |
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 | This Strange Eventful History | Claire Messud | 2024 | Family secrets, colonial guilt, and the question of what home means |
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| Historical fic |
 | Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory | Raphael Bob-Waksberg | 2019 | The comedy of modern heartbreak |
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| Short stories |
 | Red Sorghum | Mo Yan | 1987 | Non-chronological story of a rural family in China from 1923-1976 |
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| Historical ficTranslated |
 | Afterparties | Anthony Veasna So | 2021 | Raucous, cheeky, sad short stories about the Cambodian American experience |
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| Short stories |
 | Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion | Jia Tolentino | 2019 | Made me feel like a smarter person |
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| Nonfiction |
 | When We Were Friends | Holly Bourne | 2022 | The ugly side of girlhood in the 2000s/2010s |
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 | Disgrace | J.M. Coetzee | 1999 | Tense story about a white South African man and his daughter |
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 | Open Secrets | Alice Munro | 1994 | Dark and loaded stories about women at a crucial point |
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| Short stories |
 | The Promise | Damon Galgut | 2021 | A family lives, dies, and struggles in post-apartheid South Africa |
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| Top faves |
 | The Body in the Library (Miss Marple, #2) | Agatha Christie | 1965 | Never underestimate old ladies |
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 | Clytemnestra | Costanza Casati | 2023 | Female rage through a Greek myth |
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| Sci-fi & fantasy |
 | If on a Winter's Night a Traveler | Italo Calvino | 1972 | You, the reader, are the main character |
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| Short storiesSci-fi & fantasyTranslated |
 | The Grass is Singing | Doris Lessing | 1950 | The bleakness of racism and patriarchy in colonial southern Africa |
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 | Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies | Maddie Mortimer | 2022 | Experimental & poetic writing on cancer, daughterhood, grief |
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 | Strange Beasts of China | Yan Ge | 2021 | Weird and dreamy |
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| Short storiesSci-fi & fantasyTranslated |
 | Night in Delhi | Ranbir Sidhu | 2024 | Gritty, electric |
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| |
 | Stoner | John Williams | 1932 | The despairs of ordinary life |
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 | Ghost Wall | Sarah Moss | 2018 | Insidious, slow-burning |
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 | Life After Life | Kate Atkinson | 2013 | Time loops & alternate universes in WWII |
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| Historical ficSci-fi & fantasy |
 | Death is Hard Work | Khaled Khalifa | 2016 | Siblings on an unexpectedly difficult roadtrip in Syria |
|
| Translated |
 | Song of Solomon | Toni Morrison | 1977 | To call this a coming-of-sage story would not do it justice |
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 | Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China | Fuchsia Dunlop | 2008 | A fun romp through Chinese food, through a foreigner's eyes |
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| Nonfiction |
 | Something Fresh | P.G. Wodehouse | 1915 | Foibles! |
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| |
 | Orbital | Samantha Harvey | 2024 | Astronauts contemplate the universe |
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| Short storiesSci-fi & fantasy |