Last week, we put out a call asking that those of you who need something good to read in this trying, frightening time, might send us a few of your favorite books (and other things) so we could recommend a good book for you to read. And turns out quite a lot of you are looking for something new to read! We got hundreds of requests, from everywhere from Belgium to Rome to Cape Town to Ireland to Tasmania to Singapore. So firstly: thank you. We are all reading together in solidarity! You can find our first round of answers, pulled from email, Facebook, and Twitter, here. Our second round is below. While we (still) haven’t been able to get to every request, we’re hoping to keep it up—so keep writing to us!—and we’re also hoping that these recommendations might be useful to more than just the people who requested them, which is why we are publishing them as a column here. Kerry M. loves: Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita Lit Hub recommends: Looking at your list of masterful yet irreverent texts, I instantly thought of recent Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s quasi-Arthurian epic The Buried Giant, which begins with an elderly couple who set off through the mists and ogre-plagued lands to reconnect with their son—a son who, like their own pasts, they barely remember for some reason. This novel has . . . well, sometimes confused critics. But I suspect that you, Kerry, will enjoy it: and you’ll even meet someone you know along the way. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor Yasmin S. loves: Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch and The Secret History (I’ve tried reading Ali Smith and Rachel Cusk, but for some reason I just couldn’t get into them.) Lit Hub recommends: Ah, novels to sink your teeth into! I completely relate—Circe and Song of Achilles were two of my recent favorites, too. I think you’d like Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, a cinematic novel set in New York City in the 1930s and 40s. It’s a novel of crimes and secrets as well as a deeply researched story of time and place. Like the two Madeline Millers, it demands that you leave the present behind as you read, which is perhaps the greatest gift a novel can give us right now. –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor Andrea B. loves: Donna Tartt, The Secret History Lit Hub recommends: Because you like university settings and also the dark mood of Night Film, you may enjoy Black Chalk, by Christopher J. Yates, in which six students at Oxford start a game with increasing stakes and increasing consequences, and keep it going until things get pretty dark. Definite page-turner, too. Should keep your mind off things, and maybe make you a little glad to be away from other people. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor Karen V. loves: Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek I’m looking for good, hopeful books about natural history to combat the deluge of doom-and-gloom climate chaos books. Lit Hub recommends: Karen, I don’t blame you. We all need a little reprieve from bad news. I’m going to suggest a classic by a living legend: John McPhee’s Coming Into the Country (1976), which is all about Alaska: its landscapes and wilderness, its animals and settlers and miners, at a time before we could navigate places easily using our cell phones and GPS. McPhee is one of the most admired and prolific nonfiction writers working (and, I must proudly boast, a former teacher of mine). Coming Into the Country was the first of his books I got acquainted with, and Karen, when I say it’s good, I mean so good that Alaskans themselves consider it a seminal work of regional literature. –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor Sydney W. loves: Donna Tartt, The Secret History Lit Hub recommends: Ah, three of my favorites, all moody literary mysteries full of gorgeous writing. Same goes for Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies. If you’ve read all those, maybe you haven’t read The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits—and either way, you should. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor Ioana D. loves: Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles Lit Hub recommends: Hi Ioana. I’m going to guess, based on your selections, that you like books that offer new, particular takes on history, and (this is less of a guess) play with time. Have you ever read Possession by A.S. Byatt? It’s a story about two archivists in the present whose lives grow entwined with one another’s as they become more and more obsessed researching a romance between two nineteenth-century writers. I might also try The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, which retells the Odyssey from the perspective of Odysseus’s wife, or Madeline Miller’s new book Circe, which offers a new take on Greek mythology’s most infamous witch. But also, on a different note, have you read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon? This might be the perfect time to start a very long book series. –Olivia Rutigliano, LitHub & CrimeReads staff writer Jeanine K. loves: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem Lit Hub recommends: You have very good taste, Jeanine. I’ve been trying to tell people that Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment is her best work (no shade to the Neapolitan series, but still) for years. Since you have a taste for modernism and the minds of complicated, brilliant, women, I think you’ll devour Speedboat, by Renata Adler. This goes double if you’re a writer yourself. They say everyone who reads it ends up writing a novel. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor Rish*tha S. loves: Garth Greenwell, Cleanness Lit Hub recommends: Hi Rish*tha, I also loved Cleanness! On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong might also strike your fancy; the protagonist’s account of childhood, intimate relationships, love, and sex is narrated with similarly gorgeous sentences. I also think you would like Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh, narrated by a rare book dealer whose story involves history, mythology, and questions about our future in the midst of a climate crisis. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor P f loves: Laurie King’s Mary Russell books Lit Hub recommends: Howdy! I also love the Mary Russell books. Have you tried Cara Black’s Aimee Leduc series? They have a very different setting, but for me, anyway, they itch the same scratch. I would also encourage you to read A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang if you’re craving that postwar setting. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor @shioridotomo loves: Ali Smith, Spring Lit Hub recommends: A fellow Ali Smith fan! My cop-out first reaction is: have you read her story collection First Person and Other Stories?! It’s weird and surreal and so beautiful. She’ll have you turning pages and doing double-takes the whole way through. (Get tissues in preparation for the last story.) I also want to recommend Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, for the magical and heartbreaking way creatures guide us through life lessons. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor Shal M. loves: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey Lit Hub recommends: I do love a good dystopia, Shal (in fiction, at least; current shades of the dystopian IRL have proven less fun…) For a humane and quietly heartbreaking take on the genre, I would recommend Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give away too much about this melancholy, quasi-sci-fi coming-of-age tale, but it’s a lovely, understated, deeply sorrowful novel (the same can be said for Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which is even better btw!). –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor Nero B. loves: Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time Among so many more. I like prose written by women for women and one genre in particular, Sci Fi. Lit Hub recommends: I imagine you’re read a lot of the classics already, considering your list, so let me recommend a more recent novel that I think you might like: Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun, translated into English by Lola Rogers in 2016. It’s set in an alternative historical present in which the Finnish government has bred a line of submissive, beautiful women called eloi—and sterilized all the intelligent ones. Told through multiple perspectives and including a chili pepper cult, it is totally unlike any of the other books out there—but I think that might be just what you need. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Richard Powers, The Overstory
The Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles and Circe
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Eileen
John Williams, Stoner
Marisha Pessl, Night Film
Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love In the Time of Cholera
Tana French, In the Woods
Sandra Newman, The Heavens
Boyxboy fan fictions
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Valeria Luiselli, The Lost Children Archive
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
The Outlander series
Lawrence Sanders, First Deadly Sin
Eric Von Lustbader’s The Ninja
Andrew Krivak, The Bear
George Orwell, 1984
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Naomi Alderman, The Power
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Melisa Y. loves:
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Ruth Ware, In a Dark, Dark Wood
The Dead Files tv show on Travel Channel
Lit Hub recommends:
If you like Ruth Ware, then have I got some recommendations for you! Ware’s books impress with their signature mixture of gothic, psychological thriller, and traditional mystery (plus they’re super fun!). Here are a few books that also like to mix things up in these genres: check out Shari Lapena’s An Unwanted Guest, Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down, and (especially for those who enjoy the disastrous party element of In a Dark, Dark Wood) try Lucy Foley’s upcoming The Guest List, or if you don’t want to wait till May, her equally good The Hunting Party. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Anna B. loves:
Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Liao Yiwu, The Corpse Walker
Lit Hub recommends:
Since you have a strong love of fabulist literatureandan interest in the struggles of the less than fortunate everyman, I think you will be moved by Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes, a mesmerizing short novel in which an amateur entomologist who misses his bus takes shelter in the house of a woman who lives in the dunes—only to discover that he is trapped there, with this stranger, and that they are tasked every day to shovel and shovel and shovel to keep the sand at bay. It’s not, you know, uplifting. But it is very, very good. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Billie E. loves:
Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck
Amor Towles, The Rules of Civility
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Lit Hub recommends:
I can’t get enough of classic New York City stories these days, and I’ve also been reading a lot of Nora Ephron, an emblematic New York City personality if ever there was one. Being cooped up in my Brooklyn apartment, this seems to be the only way to live out my city life these days. So I’m going to recommend two other books focused on the mythology of this place: Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the book is very different than the movie) and M Train, Patti Smith’s memoir that begins in a cafe in the Village and expands as she thinks about life, loss, and family. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor
Daria C. loves:
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Lit Hub recommends:
Only the best for you, Daria, eh? That’s my girl. I won’t lead you off the golden path. For a book that combines all of what I divine to be your literary interests—intense emotions, beautiful language, and a compelling, unique quality of mind—pick up Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, which is ostensibly a love letter to the color blue, but is so much more. It absolutely belongs on the above list of literary classics. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Erik M. loves:
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
Lit Hub recommends:
Hardened men adventuring in lawless lands. Villains committing unspeakable acts. Evocative depictions of near-mystical places. You should check out The North Water, Ian McGuire’s 2016 novel (soon to be made into a miniseries starring Colin Farrell as the amoral Henry Drax) which Colm Toibin, in his New York Times review, referred to as being like “the result of an encounter between Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a long, sour nod of recognition.” It’s the story of a nineteenth-century whaling ship that sets sail for the Arctic with a tortured doctor and a vicious killer aboard. Fair warning: there are parts of this novel that are as brutal and graphic as anything in early McCarthy, but it’s a hell of a ride. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor
Michael G. loves:
Nico Walker, Cherry
Wanted to know if you had any suggestions of books like this one (current crime world – almost documentary style realism).
Lit Hub recommends:
If you haven’t read it before, I’d recommend checking out Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter, a moving and hard-boiled tale of surprising bonds formed during incarceration. I’d also recommend Meditations in Green, by Stephen Wright, a gorgeous meditation on the nature of trauma and addiction post-Vietnam. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Dennis D. loves:
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven
And
Simenon
And
Sjon
Lit Hub recommends:
If you haven’t readWittgenstein’s Mistress, by David Markson, that is absolutely the book for you—postmodern, disjointed, philosophical, historical—but considering the moment, I’ll only truly recommend it if you’re the kind of person who wants to self-isolate while reading about the last woman on earth (maybe). To me, it’s the perfect book for the moment, and considering your love of Station Eleven, I bet you’ll agree. Otherwise, have you dug into Fernando Pessoa’sThe Book of Disquiet? I think that may tickle your fancy too. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Aimee L. loves:
Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Lit Hub recommends:
Sprawling, big-hearted, kaleidoscopic, decades-spanning, heavily-peopled literary novels about America, eh? Well it sounds like you might enjoy Salvatore Scibona’s The Volunteer. Scibona’s lyrical, wildly ambitious second novel, published just last year, is the tale of four lost generations of American fathers and sons, and moves from 1950s Iowa, to 60s Vietnam, to 70s New York, and into the future. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor
Jacob W. loves:
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Karen Russell’s short stories
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Lit Hub recommends:
Karen Russell is sort of the wild card in this list—but I take it your love of her work means that you’ll tolerate a little bit of the speculative in your serious (and sometimes Southern) literature. To you I recommend everything that Jesmyn Ward has ever written, but particularly her latest, Sing, Unburied, Sing, in which a road trip to prison is populated by more ghosts than expected. And speaking of ghosts, I’ll also mention Téa Obreht’s latest, Inland, which fits right in with your list of hardship and silver linings too. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Jill D. loves:
Jenny Offill, Weather
Jill Ciment, The Body in Question
Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here
Lit Hub recommends:
Assuming that you’ve already read Dept. of Speculation (Jenny Offil’s first groundbreaking novel of a failing marriage told in beautiful, sometimes funny, fragments) your next step should be towards Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. She and Jenny Offill share a similar dry wit. Plus, if you were drawn to the more fantastical side of Kevin Wilson’s novel, you will enjoy the surreal twists Aimee Bender puts on everyday mundanity. (Also, fire!) –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor
Kristen J. loves:
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Patrick deWitt, French Exit
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This is How You Lose the Time War
Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
I love weird, but not scary or too violent.
Lit Hub recommends:
I, too, am partial to the weird in fiction, Kristen, and perhaps my favorite weird novel (at least among those I’ve read in the last few years) is Katherine Dunn’s singular oddball masterpiece, Geek Love. The story of the Binewski siblings (a brood of genetically altered children who are bred to become the stars of their parents traveling carnival), it’s a grotesque, hypnotic, and at times hilarious tale of obsession, fanaticism, and familial love. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor
Carolyn F. loves:
Ling Ma, Severance
Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Looking for something where the stakes feel urgent but not anxiety-inducing. A little magical realism, readable but not necessarily easy, and memorable.
Lit Hub recommends:
For a delightful bit of surreal mischief to hold in your hands, look no further than Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners. These stories invigorate, infuse the everyday banality with a little otherworldly mysticism. (A trip to a Boston thrift shop amongst friends, for example, quickly becomes a search for a magical handbag that our hero’s ancestors got lost in—and that’s just the start!) Might I also recommend, depending on what you deem anxiety-inducing, a slender gem called Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba? It follows a young girl named Marina whose parents perish in a car crash and recounts her first days at the orphanage as she finds her place amongst the other girls there. There’s less actual magic, but the prose gives off a sinister, otherworldly feel that will haunt you in the best possible way. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor
Claudia W. loves:
John Wyndham, Day of the Triffids
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
Lit Hub recommends:
I see you’re partial to the classics, and in particular those that question the nature of humanity through a science fiction lens. In that case, I recommend the great Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris, translated from the Polish by Joanna Kilmartin, in which a psychologist visits a distant planet to investigate the mysterious—and possibly sentient, and definitely troublesome—sea that envelops it. Ignore the bad film—this is weird and wonderful stuff. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Luke G. loves:
Denis Johnson, Angels
Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Lit Hub recommends:
Given how few people seem to still remember Angels these days (Jesus’ Son still gets all the love), it’s almost required that I recommend you read Leonard Gardner’s Fat City, which was a major influence on Johnson’s debut—but judging from your list, I suspect you’ve already read it. If that’s the case, maybe take a look at Edward Bunker’s No Beast So Fierce, a gritty, semi-autobiographical novel in which an ex-con in L.A., newly out on parole, tries to go straight. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Erik K. loves:
Recent book I read that I loved: Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others
3rd Favorite book ever: Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel
I like stories about people who “leave it all behind”
Lit Hub recommends:
I respect your decision to only tell us your third favorite book ever, but I have to admit I spent a long time wondering what the top two are. I’m also wondering if you’ve been hearing a lot about Ling Ma’s Severance, which tells the story of a woman working in publishing, in New York City, when a mysterious fever spreads rapidly, taking down the city and the rest of the world. Companies close, families flee, and our hero is left wandering the abandoned streets until she, too, (spoiler alert) leaves. About halfway through the book (my favorite part), we get a flashback to her childhood and her immigrant parents who left it all behind to come to America. Echoes of leaving and being left resound throughout the novel in a beautiful and propulsive way. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor
Stephanie H. loves:
Samantha Hunt, The Dark Dark
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Lit Hub recommends:
More people should read short stories, right? I know you feel me. One of my absolute favorite collections of the last decade—which really not enough people have read—is Diane Cook’s Man V. Nature, which will satisfy your urge for fabulist storytelling and tales that uncover the truth of human feeling. These are brilliant, evocative, and truly special stories—if you haven’t read them yet, I’m jealous that you get to experience them for the first time. And not for nothing, but “The Way the End of Days Should Be” seems like useful reading at the moment. P.S. if you like Man V. Nature, Cook’s first novel, The New Wilderness, comes out in August, and I can confirm it is also great. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Kristain M. loves:
Durga Chew Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood
Jenny Slate, Little Weirds
Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends
Lit Hub recommends:
I was just reading Durga Chew Bose’s Too Much and Not the Mood—can we be friends? Can we book club Lindy West’s The Witches Are Coming, which is the collection that should be at the top of your TBR pile? From the voice behind the bestselling Shrill (which, yes, is also a Hulu series!) comes a series of bold (and often funny) essays on climate change, Grumpy Cat, dresses with pockets, and not being a white man in America. (Relatable.) –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor
Timothy P. loves:
Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe
Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters
Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kaleidoscope
Lit Hub recommends:
For you, lover of synth, historical underpinnings, irreverence, and a healthy sense of the Kafkaesque, I recommend one of my favorite debuts from last year: Adam Ehrlich Sachs’ The Organs of Sense, which concerns a young Gottfried Leibniz and a blind astronomer. Semi-historical, semi-absurdist, semi-philosophical, wholly brilliant, definitely up your alley. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Toomas K. loves:
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Also I like graphic novels, for example Locke&Key, Scott Pilgrim, and Blacksad
Lit Hub recommends:
It’s not exactly a one to one, but considering your interest in magic and the cleverly bombastic, I have a strong feeling you would enjoy Claire North’s The Gameshouse, a novel that takes the reader from 17th century Venice to 1930s Thailand to the present day all over the world, as its characters play games for the highest of stakes, with the most valuable of pieces. It has something of that graphic novel feel, too—at least in the sense that I can, months after reading it, see it all very clearly. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Toni W. loves:
Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Madeline Miller, Circe
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
Lit Hub recommends: These books are fully-realized, self-contained worlds—obviously the best kind of escapism for the right now. I suggest you tuck into David Mitchell’s fantastical speculative fiction masterpiece Cloud Atlas, which is built of six fully-realized, interconnected worlds—all the better to lose reality just a little bit. –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor
Sophia H. loves:
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Angela Carter, “Wolf Alice” (I know this is just a short story, but I think it’s perfect)
Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream
Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows
Lit Hub recommends:
Here’s what I see in the tea leaves: an interest in twisted fairy tales, a tolerance for the surreal, a penchant for the epic, a soft spot for human struggles. With all that in mind, I must recommend one of my favorite novels, Duplex, by Kathryn Davis, a book which is very difficult to describe but deeply pleasing to read, if you’re possessed of a certain temperament—and I’m confident you are. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Sophia S. loves:
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
Lit Hub recommends:
I feel confident that you will love Kate Atkinson’s debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum—a brilliantly funny, heartrending novel that’s part bildungsroman, part family saga, and part mystery. It’s one of my all-time favorites. And if you love it, you should absolutely move on to Atkinson’s other excellent novels (though perhaps not Life After Life right this minute, unless you feel up for some rather vivid descriptions of the Spanish flu). –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor
Samantha L. loves:
Neil Gaiman, Stardust
Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale
Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
Lit Hub recommends:
If you’re willing to try something a little edgier but still fairy tale infused, I’d recommend getting into Helen Oyeyemi—I’d cosign anything she’s written, really, but my favorite is still Mr. Fox, which is based (loosely!) on the Bluebeard tale. And then once you’ve gobbled up all of the Oyeyemi, start in on Naomi Novik—her recent Spinning Silver is fantastic. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Nancy G. loves:
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
Michael Crummey, Sweetland
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
Susan Orlean, Orchid Thief
Lit Hub recommends:
I’m getting a preference for sprawling, cinematic narratives with a hint of mystery. Excellent! My number one recommendation is The Corrections. I know, Jonathan Franzen not-unreasonably rubs some people the wrong way, but if you haven’t read The Corrections, it’s a genuinely great, tooth-sinkable novel that’s both propulsive and satisfyingly complex. It’s also surprisingly and darkly funny. I’d also check out Nathan Hill’s The Nix, for similar reasons: deft complexity, beautiful pacing, masterful plot. Both novels have the added treat of allowing you to escape into someone else’s (very dramatic) familial problems for a spell. –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor
Colin B. loves:
George Saunders
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties
Denis Johnson, Largesse of the Sea Maiden.
If you’re sensing a pattern, I would enjoy anything that deals with tearing down the world as we know it right now, or humbles my over-inflated ego during this period of social distancing.White male authors not required at this time.
Lit Hub recommends:
I am indeed sensing a pattern. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I recommend Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s excellent debut collection Friday Black, which should scratch your Saundersian (and world-destroying) itch. I also feel moved to recommend Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater, which could humble any reader who thinks they know all about what books are or what they can do. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Evander C. loves:
José Saramago, Blindness
Dan Simmons, The Terror
H. P. Lovecraft, Shadow Out of Time
Lit Hub recommends:
A trio of chilling literary tales you’ve aligned yourself with there, Evander. I think you might enjoy Ahmed Saadawi’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-winning novel, Frankenstein in Baghdad. A contemporary take on the Frankenstein myth, set during the aftermath of the US invasion of the Iraqi capital, this novel (part horror, part disquieting political satire) tells the story of a junk-dealer named Hadi al-Attag who collects the scattered body parts of bomb victims, stitches them together, and inadvertently creates a grotesque creature, hell-bent on vengeance. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor
Osama S. loves:
Amitava Kumar, Immigrant, Montana
Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
Lit Hub recommends:
I’m seeing a love for writers and their literary hijinks here. For you, I recommend Andrew Martin’s Early Work, in which a young writer tries (and basically fails) not to derail his whole life over an infatuation. It is very well written, and will make you cringe in a similar way to Lucky Jim. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor
Curtis R. loves:
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
Stephen King, It
Clive Barker, The Damnation Game
Lit Hub recommends:
Not only do I have one book recommendation for you, I have six (and counting): Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. To be honest, this is a recommendation tinged with envy, because now is the perfect time to tear through them all. Your affinity for Gillian Flynn suggests that you value tension and atmosphere, and French has both by the bucketful. While the series never approaches the pure horror of King, they share with It an interest in childhood fears and the role they play in shaping us. Besides all that, they’re beautifully written. –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor
Carlotta E. loves:
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Mark Greif, Against Everything
Anna Burns, Milkman
Here are three other things I love:
baking bread
my border terrier
running
Lit Hub recommends:
Hmm. This is a tricky mix: the darkly carnal humor of Bulgakov, the kindhearted (and exasperated) erudition of Greif, the wry, fatalistic rhythms of Burns… set against the down-to-earth pleasures of bread, dogs, and running? This may sound weird, but I’m going to hazard Peter Carey’s virtuosic inhabitation of Aussie outlaw Ned Kelly, in True History of the Kelly Gang. Hell, it’s worth it alone for the unpunctuated first-person cadences of the main character (who most certainly eats bread, definitely runs, and likely crosses paths with a border terrier). –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Michael C. loves:
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
EM Forster, Howards End
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Lit Hub recommends:
Ah, these are such bighearted books, filled with characters who (whether they admit it or not) so love the world it is almost unbearable to see their disappointment in it. So that’s why I’m recommending The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, which centers on 14-year-old boy just trying to get through WWII with his bighearted family in California’s Central Valley, waiting for dad to come home. The kid would have had a HUGE crush on Mick Kelly. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Bilbo P. loves:
Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women
Hugh Selby, Last Exit to Brooklyn
Leonard Gardner, Fat City
(I know Denis Johnson is reminiscent, so something else would be appreciated.)
Lit Hub recommends:
This one is easy: A Fan’s Notes, by Fred Exley. The writers you mention (who I love) each seemed to have one story to tell, and they kept telling it with varying levels of success. Exley also had one story to tell, and he told it only once, in this incredible autobiographical novel of football, failure, and getting by on the outskirts of America. (This is one of my favorite books.) –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Danielle B. loves:
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked this Way Comes
Lit Hub recommends:
Ah, I see you have a taste for the darkness dwelling down all the green and sunlit laneways of our rural imaginings! I haven’t read the Bradley, but for a wholly unique and tenebrous account of rural England—before it was even called England—might I recommend The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth? Stylistically, it may be a reach for you—the 11th-century Albion patois takes some commitment to internalize—but its grim urgency and uncomfortable intimacy with the contours of the land itself align eerily with Watership Down. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Haley J. loves:
All Kurt Vonnegut books but mainly Cat’s Cradle
Georges Perec, Life, a User’s Manual
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Beloved or anything else by Toni Morrison
Lit Hub recommends:
For me these books represent something like a radical moral canon: tenderness in the service of truth, anger aimed at injustice, comedy in aid of survival. These are serious books about serious times, creating entire worlds in which to live… so I’m going to recommend William T. Vollman’s Europe Central, a wildly ambitious (even for him!) novelization of the siege of Stalingrad in WWII, featuring the likes of Shostakovich and Akhmatova and a whole cast of poor, benighted souls lost in the bloodlands of far Eastern Europe. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Mary Jo A. loves:
Anne Enright, The Gathering
Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai
Sebastian Barry, Days without End
David Grossman, To the End of the Land
Pat Barker, Regeneration Trilogy
Lit Hub recommends:
The Last Samurai is probably the real outlier here, nested among these more conventional accounts of war and its inevitable tragedies, but I’m going to take it as a sign you’re up for anything. So I’m going to recommend Delia Falconer’s remarkable novel, The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, which dials us in to the staticky daydreams of retired 7th Calvary general Frederick W. Benteen (a real person who had the great misfortune of surviving General Custer’s Battle of Little Bighorn) as he lives out his days in Atlanta drifting in and out of a ghost-filled past. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Andreas D. loves:
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Lit Hub recommends:
In the interest of balancing the dude energy here, and completing the dorm room full-house, I’m just going to advise you to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Gary H. loves:
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morality
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
(I’m not just being difficult, either—I’ve read all three multiple times. I took #1 with me to Tahiti for beach reading!)
Lit Hub recommends:
Not difficult at all! This is an easy one. The World As I Found It, by Bruce Duffy, is a great work of historical-philosophical fiction, following as it does the life and times of Ludwig Wittgenstein including, of course, his time at Cambridge where he may or may not have met Whitehead, but certainly did meet Murdoch once. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Jae K. loves:
Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies
Yoko Tawada trans. Margaret Mitsutani, The Bridegroom Was a Dog
The stories of Alice Munro
Lit Hub recommends:
I am going to highly recommend the story collection Here Until August by Josephine Rowe (who has, indeed, been called a millennial Alice Munro). A master of place and mood, Rowe tenderly deploys her characters across multiple continents, and though they never think of themselves as the main characters of their own lives, they somehow occupy center stage in the reader’s mind long after the book is done. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
Trevor F. loves:
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
David Markson, Going Down
I enjoy iconoclasm (I grew up very religious—spent 2 years as a Mormon missionary in Argentina), philosophical undertones, and big words. I read in English and Spanish.
Lit Hub recommends:
Based on this list I’m going to assume you’ve probably already read The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene, the story of disgraced priest on the run in Mexico in the 1930s? Real Going Down vibes. Maybe reread it? And though I haven’t read him in Spanish, I imagine the stark, existential clarity of Miguel de Unamuno is very similar to Camus’s flat style (which is very accessible in French for non-native speakers). Highly recommend. –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief
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