Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD BE READING
28
items A collection of my favourite books of all time spanning across a range of genres. Pick from books that are contemporary, classics, lgbtq+ or women and feminist centred. All books are wonderful written insights into other worlds.
Sections
4
LGBTQ+
WOMEN
CLASSICS
OTHERS
LGBTQ+
For readers drawn to fierce, hallucinatory fiction about outlawed lives carving space in a city that feeds on invisibility. Ideal if you crave dark-emotional intensity, fluid timelines, and mythic realism that trades tidy resolution for jagged beauty...
Vagabonds!: A thrilling new debut novel about the spirits and people of Lagos
For readers drawn to lyrical, reflective fiction about the ache of first love and the terror of choosing your real self. Perfect if you like bittersweet coming-of-age stories that move at a measured pace, favor emotional truth over plot fireworks, an...
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth
For readers drawn to dark academia exploring the violence embedded in language and the moral rot beneath scholarly pursuit—where knowledge serves empire. Ideal if you crave emotionally brutal, deliberately paced narratives with dense historical textu...
Babel by R.F. Kuang
For readers drawn to dark, emotionally-charged stories about the lethal blur between performance and reality—where friendship corrodes into rivalry. Ideal if you crave lyrical, slow-fast prose dense with literary allusion, morally gray introspection,...
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
For readers drawn to literary fiction about the collision of academic detachment and raw desire—how art both reveals and conceals our truest selves. Ideal if you appreciate reflective, sensual prose that moves at a contemplative pace, with aesthetic ...
Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill review – a bold debut of psychosexual awakening
For readers drawn to raw, lyrical coming-of-age stories about the blurred line between childhood friendship and first erotic obsession. Perfect if you crave emotional intensity, poetic-prose rhythms, and working-class island heat over tidy plot beats...
Dogs of Summer : Abreu, Andrea, Sanches, Julia
For readers who crave intimate contemporary fiction about the messy intersections of love, money, and chosen family in late-capitalist cities. Perfect if you like emotionally raw, closely-observed narratives that balance humor and ache, move at an un...
Evenings and Weekends: 'The book of the summer' Dazed
For readers drawn to intimate mythic romance that explores the devastating beauty of love sworn against the certainty of fate—passion, honor, and mortal fragility entwined. Ideal if you crave lyrical, emotionally immersive storytelling with moderate ...
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller | Goodreads
For readers drawn to unflinching literary fiction that excavates how childhood trauma calcifies into lifelong self-destruction, rendered with operatic sadness and fierce attachment. Ideal if you crave character-driven intimacy, glacial pacing, and pr...
A Little Life: The Million-Copy Bestseller
A lyrical, introspective literary novel about forbidden love under an oppressive regime. Perfect for readers who enjoy a medium‑paced, character‑driven narrative with a moody, reflective atmosphere, subtle historical texture, and sensual, poetic pros...
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski
Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds...
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
WOMEN
books centred around the female experience and what it means to be a woman
For readers who crave spare, emotionally urgent fiction that lingers in the hush between beauty and loss, this swift, elegiac portrait of a woman’s fierce farewell offers radiant, heart-cracking clarity.
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard review – an author too good to miss | Fiction
For readers who crave reflective contemporary fiction centered on the lived realities of womanhood—identity, autonomy, and the ache of bodily choice. Ideal if you like slow, interior pacing, spare urban landscapes, raw emotional candor, and the quiet...
Breasts and Eggs: A powerful and intimate novel about what it means to be ...
For readers who crave quiet contemporary fiction about the ache of isolation and the delicate awakening to self-worth. Perfect if you like meditative, between-fast-and-slow pacing, sparse Tokyo atmospherics, and emotional precision that finds beauty ...
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
For readers drawn to dark, reflective literary fiction about the burden of seeing truth while remaining forever unheard—the weight of prophecy without power. Ideal if you appreciate challenging, slow-paced narratives with dense psychological interior...
Cassandra by Christa Wolf
For readers drawn to quiet historical fiction about the charged intimacy between artist and muse—power, desire, and the peril of being seen. Ideal if you like reflective, emotionally taut narratives, measured pacing that lingers on glances and unspok...
Johannes Vermeer Girl with a Pearl Earring
CLASSICS
penguins classics
For readers drawn to darkly elegant horror about the price of eternal youth and beauty, where decadence masks decay. Ideal if you relish reflective, sensuous prose that moves between languid meditation and sharp wit, favoring aesthetic philosophy and...
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
For readers drawn to darkly cerebral literary thrillers about the intoxicating pull of intellectual elitism and moral transgression. Ideal if you crave slow-burn tension, atmospheric campus gothic, and morally complex character studies where privileg...
The Secret History: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch
For readers drawn to dark, challenging poetry exploring the soul’s journey through moral reckoning and divine justice. Ideal if you crave slow, allegorical verse dense with medieval symbolism, philosophical rigor, and terrifying beauty over fast narr...
Inferno: The Divine Comedy I by Dante | Penguin Clothbound Classics
For readers drawn to quietly devastating portraits of an ordinary life measured in small resignations and the dignity found within them. Ideal if you like meditative, mid-paced prose, spare historical backdrops, and emotional restraint that makes a s...
Stoner by John Williams
For readers drawn to stark, razor-edged fiction about the quiet implosion of a suffocating marriage. Ideal if you crave brisk yet reflective pacing, ice-blooded prose, and psychological tension that lingers like gun smoke long after the final page.
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg
For readers drawn to coming-of-age stories about seizing the day before youth’s clock runs out, steeped in dark-academia melancholy. If you crave reflective, emotionally intimate narratives that balance brisk classroom banter with lingering silences,...
Dead Poets Society (1989)
A New York Times Notable Book
An Esquire Best Book of 2011
A New Yorker Favorite Book of 2011
A Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of 2011
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the ...
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is a perfect novella
In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless...
The Road : McCarthy, Cormac - Books
OTHERS
For readers who crave breakneck puzzle-thriller energy centered on sacred art and the buried fingerprints of power across centuries. Ideal if you want clipped chapters, cliffhanger pacing, art-history riddles, and a globe-trotting scavenger hunt that...
The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon)
For readers drawn to quiet, emotionally raw fiction about the ache of intimacy and the ways two people can keep missing each other. It’s for those who like restrained prose, slow pacing, and stories that linger in the ache of almosts, silences, and t...
Normal People: The multimillion copy bestseller - Cover May Vary
For readers drawn to spare, emotionally raw contemporary fiction that probes how shared suffering can forge unexpected tenderness between the broken. Ideal if you like deliberate pacing, knife-sharp intimacy, and quiet philosophical undercurrents tha...
Heaven: The Japanese Literary Sensation, Shortlisted for ...
For readers drawn to literary thrillers that pulse with the dark electricity of how music and memory can haunt across decades. Ideal if you crave emotional intensity, dual-timeline tension, and prose that lingers between fast and slow—where fame's sh...
Hot Wax by M.L. Rio