A list of literature I consider “good.” Some I consider “outstanding.”
| A Man Called Ove | Fredrick Backman |
| All The Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr |
|
Assassination
Vacation |
Sarah Vowell |
| Almost Like Being in Love | Steve Kluger |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
Balzac and the
Little Chinese Seamstress |
Dai Sijie |
|
Beloved |
Toni Morrison |
| Born Standing Up | Steve Martin |
| Buffalo Boy and Geronimo | James Janko |
|
Candide |
Voltaire |
| Catfish and Mandala | Andrew X Pham |
| Dawn | Octavia Butler |
| Dishwasher | Peter Jordan |
|
Dry |
Augusten Burroughs |
| Eating Animals | Jonathan Safran Foer |
| Everything I Never Told You | Celeste Ng |
| Everything is Illuminated | Jonathan Safran Foer |
| Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer |
|
Fahrenheit 451 |
Ray Bradbury |
| Fates and Furies | Lauren Groff |
|
Fear and Loathing in
|
Hunter S. Thompson |
|
Feeding the Ghosts |
Fred D’Aguiar |
| Flying Troutmans, The | Miriam Toews |
| Foreskin's Lament | Shalom Auslander |
|
Frankenstein |
Mary Shelley |
| Fun Home | Alison Bechdel |
| Goodbye, Columbus | Philip Roth |
| Good Morning, Midnight | Lily Brooks-Collins |
| Goat | Brad Land |
|
Hamlet |
Shakespeare |
| Hero | Perry Moore |
| A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Dave Eggers |
| History of Love | Nicole Krauss |
|
I Love You Like a
Tomato |
Marie Giordano |
|
Indian Killer |
|
| Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri |
|
Invisible Man Invisible Monsters Irma Voth look me in the eye |
Ralph Ellison Chuck Palahniuk John Elder Robison Steve Kluger |
| Little Fires Everywhere | Celeste Ng |
| Martian, The | Andy Weir |
|
Maus |
Art Spiegelman |
| My Lobotomy | Howard Dully |
| My Most Excellent Year | Steve Kluger |
|
Naked |
David Sedaris |
|
Naked Lunch |
William Burroughs |
|
Old School |
Tobias Wolff |
|
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest |
Ken Kesey |
|
Othello |
Shakespeare |
|
Partly Cloudy
Patriot |
Sarah Vowell |
| Redefining Realness | Janet Mock |
|
Reservation Blues |
|
|
Rubyfruit Jungle |
Rita Mae Brown |
|
Running with
Scissors |
Augusten Burroughs |
|
Siddhartha |
Herman Hesse |
|
Slaughterhouse Five |
Kurt Vonnegut |
| State of Wonder | Ann Patchett |
| Station Eleven | Emily St. John Mandel |
|
Ten Little Indians |
|
| The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian | Sherman Alexie |
| The Alcoholic | Jonathan Ames |
|
The Bean Trees |
Barbara Kingsolver |
|
The Catcher in the |
J.D. Salinger |
|
The Color Purple |
Alice Walker |
|
The Girl’s Guide to
Hunting and Fishing |
Melissa Bank |
| The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood |
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
Douglas Adams |
| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot |
|
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven |
|
| The Mars Room | Rachel Kushner |
|
The Picture of
Dorian Gray |
Oscar Wilde |
| The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists | Gideon Defoe |
| The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab | Gideon Defoe |
|
The Poisonwood Bible |
Barbara Kingsolver |
| The Power | Naomi Alderman |
| The Rice Room | Ben Fong-Torres |
| The Wordy Shipmates | Sarah Vowell |
|
This Boy’s Life |
Tobias Wolff |
| Three Shadows | Cyril Pedrosa |
|
Too Cool |
Duff Brenna |
| Up the Down Staircase | Bel Kaufman |
| Wandering Star | J.M.G. Le Clezio |
| War Dances | Sherman Alexie |
| What is the What | Dave Eggers |
| We Are Pirates | Daniel Handler |
|
|
|
| Zeitoun | Dave Eggers |
Anything by Zora Neale Hurston |
Anything by |
| Anything by Shakespeare | Anything by Daniel Clowes |
|
Anything by Ezra Pound |
Anything by Allen Ginsberg |
|
Anything by Jack Kerouac |
Anything by Langston Hughes |
|
Anything by John Keats |
Anything by William |
|
Anything by John Updike |
Anything by Philip Roth |
|
Anything by Edgar Allan Poe |
Anything by Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones |
|
Anything by Anton Chekhov |
Anything by August |
| Anything by Kurt Vonnegut |
Let me know when you finish these. I'll give you more.