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Books for people who read like reading is food
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items I’m very lucky to be a real speed reader - I am always juggling about 3 books at a time and I wouldn’t have it any other way! I've separated this list between general fiction, myters/thrillers, and horror - there's a little bit of something for every...
Sections
3
General Fiction
Mystery/Thrillers
Horror
General Fiction
These are novels that I've read that really floored me, that would be in the general fiction category at your local bookstore. I've made separate categories for thrillers and horror books, as those tend to be more niche interests!
Adichie absolutely floors me with her writing every single time - I'd say Half a Yellow Sun is another good follow up, but Americanah is her most powerful work. This novel centers around a Nigerian woman and her childhood and loves - and then turns t...
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Wellness tackles the subject of marriage, connection, romance, health, and the dawn of internet hoaxes in a way that is absolutely stunning. I couldn't put this book down - both characters are compelling, interesting, and heartbreaking all at once.
Wellness: A novel - Nathan Hill
Marquez is another writer that has a plethora of incredible books - but this one was always my favorite. It centers on two young lovers who aren't able to be together, and it's strength is its magical realism. This book is whimsical, strange, funny, ...
Love in the Time of Cholera - Marquez
Kingsolver has been writing hit after hit for ages - this one is a classic of hers. It focuses on a white missionary family stationed in the Congo in the late 50s. The book follows each family member, but particularly the young daughters as they are ...
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
This is one of my favorite novels of all time - a novel in which women and girls everywhere wake up to find they have the ability to electroshock someone to death with their bare hands. The power imbalance between men and women worldwide gets tipped ...
The Power - Naomi Alderman
By this point, I think most people know about Watchmen. There's a movie, the HBO show, and all of the memes everyone has seen. However, I think if you haven't read the graphic novel, you're missing out. The illustrations are brilliant, and it's one o...
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Exit West is a masterpiece - it's partially fantastical but steeped in the real, harrowing, and often heartbreaking lived experience of immigrants trying to escape war-torn homelands. This novel reads like poetry.
Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
This book really messed with my emotions - you need a trigger warning bc it is about someone trying to take their own life, but its also a testament to family, sisterhood, and love. It's incredibly moving.
We Could Be Rats - Emily Austin
Don't let the cover art fool you, this isn't a romance. This is a crazy sci-fi(ish) romp. Our main character wakes up one morning and has a husband. She doesn't know who he is or where he comes from. It only gets crazier from there! This was my favor...
The Husbands - Holly Gramazio
This is one of the weirdest, oddest, most thrilling, most romantic books I've ever read. Everything about this book is absolutely magical. It takes a minute to get into the world being built around you, but once you're in it, you'll be sucked in.
This Is How You Lose the Time War - Max Gladstone
This book is so moving. It's central themes are family, ptsd, and responsibility. A man and his daughter have been living, for years, in the woods. They've been hiding from society. The adventure that unfolds before them feels really adjacent to the ...
These Silent Woods - Kimi Cunninham Grant
I loved the Silo series SOOO much - I read it right before the show came out…which I haven't watched yet because I always just prefer the book. This is a post apocalyptic series. It's written in a really crisp, clear way, and the twists are fantastic...
The Silo Series: Wool, Shift, and Dust
This book is a solid follow up if you liked the book Yellowface. We're working with similar themes here - authors and their lived experiences, diversity, what it means in the job culture today to be marginalized. I found this main character to be muc...
Victim: A Novel - Andrew Boryga
This is another book turned movie, and the movie is actually pretty wonderfully done. It's a difficult read, this book covers abuses done to young women in Ireland at the local convent - from the perspective of a working man with daughters who sees t...
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
I am a freak for Jane Austen. She doesn't even have a best novel because they're all so perfect (ok maybe p&p). It continues to astound me everyday that a woman in that time wrote stories about women in that time and found success giving them all...
Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Ferrante has made a huge name for herself over the last decade for good reason! She writes beautiful prose! This one is about a woman/mother finding herself again after being abandoned by her husband. It sounds depressing, but it's so well done.
The Days of Abandonment - Elena Ferrante
This one also goes down as one of the most creative stories I've ever read. A man is trapped in a giant never ending marble house, surrounded by statues, navigating ocassional floods. This book reads like mythology, but it's so much more than that.
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Ragtime has been heralded as one of the best modern American novels. It was written in 1975 but takes place at the dawn of the last century, following a wide variety of Americans - immigrants, wealthy citizens, Houdini (lol), poverty stricken ones. I...
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
This book shocked me to my core - it has another one of my favorite endings ever. This is a drama - it follows all four members of a very dysfunctional family as a moment in their life plays out in the most insane way possible. I thought about this b...
The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
2022's Pulitzer Prize winner! It knocked my socks off! I actually don't want to give too much away for this one because it has some twists and turns that give you whiplash (in a good way!) It's about a big time NYC business tycoon and his wife, their...
Trust - Hernan Diaz
a classic girl vs. wild book - except that there aren't very many girl vs. wild books out there and this one is fabulously written.
The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff
This book gets some flack for being too sweet, honestly. Andy Weir also wrote The Martian, which I loved, but I loved this one even more. It's about a man in space trying to save Earth who ends up getting much more than he bargained for. I'm not givi...
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Oh if you've never read Pachinko please read Pachinko. It's a saga of a story, it follows one Korean family through the many decades of their life - wars, immigration, successes, heartbreaks. It's a world of its own. This is a book I could reread bec...
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
This book is weird as hell, I won't lie - but it sucked me in. This book is playing with time travel and metaphysics and the human experience, and it will take you on a wild ride.
Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel
This book is poetry. It's also about video games. It's also about people, and love, and the ways in which we show up for each other and the ways in which we hurt each other. It's a popular choice, but it's so moving!
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Zevin
This is another book turned show that I refuse to watch because the book was sooooo damn good, it can't be beat. This is a sci-fi/thriller. I want to give nothing away besides generally, that it is about a man trying to get back to his family and thi...
Dark Matter: A Novel - Blake Crouch
A gorgeous, GORGEOUS graphic novel about Satrapi's own experience growing up in Tehran and experiencing the Islamic Revolution. This one is a must read for everyone, honestly.
Persepolis- Marjane Satrapi
This is insane to say but I'm actually not a huge Hemingway fan. However, this book, his story of his own experience living in Paris in his early twenties is beautiful!
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Ishiguro is one of the most brilliant writers in the world - at least I think so. That guy knows how to make me feel my biggest feelings. This novel turned me upside down. It's about a robot created to help with childcare - and her experience trying ...
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
A haunting novel about memory being erased by the government and what it means to live without things we're used to knowing every day. It's also a meditation on thought, control, and power.
The Memory Police: A Novel - Yoko Ogawa
Song of Achilles was brilliant, but I personally liked Circe even more. Miller has a way of taking the mythology we all learned as children and making it richer. I reread this one every so often, I loved it that much!
Circe - Madeline Miller
Mystery/Thrillers
There's nothing like a mystery or thriller with a twist you don't see coming. All of the books in this category surprised me in some way!
I'm a big fan of mystery thrillers - I read so many that sometimes I can guess the whodunit before we get there, but when I can't guess it ahead of time I get really, really impressed. This book took me on a ride! A married couple with a relationship...
Rock Paper Scissors - Alice Feeney
General plot - a nanny is hired for a young boy who is increasingly drawing strange and unusual pictures. There are some twists in here that floored me!
Hidden Pictures - Jason Rekulak
A world in which those who have died can be brought back by the government - Lou is a mom, a wife, and the victim of murder brought back to her old life only to be plagued by the question - who killed her? This one was so much fun, I love any mystery...
My Murder: A Novel - Katie Williams
Our main character Chloe had a rough childhood - six girls went missing in her small town and her father was convicted as a serial killer. Now she's an adult, and girls are going missing again, but her father can't be the reason….
Flicker in the Dark - Stacy Willingham
This one is actually nonfiction - Michelle McNamara weaves a brilliantly written true narrative about The Golden State Killer. Unfortunately, she passed two years before DNA testing revealed his identity, but her book stands alone as one of the most ...
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: Michelle McNamara
This is one I don't really want to give too much away for. Generally, it is about murder, but it's also about a murder mystery writer, the story he writes, and the hidden secrets throughout. This is a story within a story, and I absolutely loved it.
Magpie Murders: A Novel - Anthony Horowitz
In a Dexter-y way, our sexy cool main character is an English professor who also finds the worst man at her university every year to…handle. She keeps her friends close and her enemies closer, until things start to get a little out of control…
They Never Learn - Layne Fargo
Everything you really need to know about this book is in the title - any more info and I'm giving too much away. What I will say is this is one of my favorite thrillers of all time - the writing is absolutely brilliant. It's also a lot of fun to have...
My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite
This is the start of a detective series, and a brilliant one at that. This is the case of a copycat killer wreaking havoc in London, years after a prolific serial killer (The Jigsaw Killer - use your imagination for that one) has already been capture...
The Jigsaw Man: Inspector Anjelica Henley 1
Our main character Liz comes home for a friends wedding - in her childhood, several young Black girls went missing in this small town. And now, the night of her friend's wedding, another young daughter disappears. Besides being beautifully written, t...
Jackal: A Novel - Erin E. Adams
This one was turned into a film, but I always recommend reading the book first! This Aussie mystery takes place during a drought, when a detective is reluctantly visiting home and 3 members of a local family are murdered. Everything is not as it seem...
The Dry: A Novel - Jane Harper
A few things about this novel - first, it is also movie and the movie sucks (don't bother with the movie!!!). The book, however, is spooky and brilliant. Second, this is actually the 7th in a detective series - but you don't need to have read the fir...
The Snowman: A Harry Hole Novel (7) - Jo Nesbø
Another Nordic tale of mystery and murder that was turned into a miniseries, actually! The miniseries is fine - but the book was great. I actually listened to this one as an audiobook on my drives home from work, and more than once I missed my freewa...
The Chestnut Man: A Mystery Novel - Sveistrup
I won't lie, this one has severely dark themes. Like, you need to look up the trigger warnings on this one before you read it if you're sensitive, because the violence in this one is really rough stuff. That said, this is soooooo well written and tol...
Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel - Jessica Knoll
This is another super dark one - trigger warnings again should be looked up before you dive in. However, it was gripping. The most I'll say is it echoes the true, awful story of the Turpin family, but from the perspective of one of the daughters. It'...
Girl A: A Novel - Abigail Dean
Listen, I'm a freak for Jane Austen. I'm a freak for Pride and Prejudice. I read any retelling I can get my hands on. This one is a lot of fun because it's post P&P, and Wickham, that letch, has been murdered! This is such a fun romp!
Death Comes to Pemberley - P.D. James
There have been many new books, movies, and shows about cruises where everything goes awry. This book, however, has one of my all time favorite endings.
The Last Cruise - Kate Christensen
This one is a historically important novel - it was written as the Cold War was on everyone's mind. Shute imagines a world in which nuclear war has broken out and the fallout has been huge. Survivors in Australia try to live out their lives knowing a...
On the Beach - Nevil Shute
This lesser known book by Paula Hawkins was one I really enjoyed - the twist surprised me! We've all read Girl on the Train (and if you haven't by now, you should!), so we know Hawkins can do mystery right. A young mother turns up dead at the bottom ...
Into the Water: A Novel - Paula Hawkins
This is a quick read - and again it was turned into a movie that isn't worth seeing because the book is so much better. Our main character is stuck at a rest stop because of a snow storm with a few other strangers. But one of them has a very, very da...
No Exit: A Novel - Taylor Adams
It's the 1970s and a girl has gone missing from summer camp…which is odd, because a decade earlier, her brother went missing too
The God of the Woods: A Novel - Liz Moore
Horror
I am a horror fanatic - as someone terrified of normal things like flying on planes and going on roller coasters, everyone always asks me why I love the horror genre so much. It keeps me on my toes! It's a genre that uses unlimited creativity!
Starting off strong with one of my all time favorites - I think The Stand is Stephen King's Magnum Opus. I actually didn't read this book until the pandemic, which was crazy timing because this book also starts off with a pandemic, and it's a saga th...
The Stand - Stephen King
This is a visceral horror. It took off some time ago and is a super short read, but it filled me with dread. Imagine a world in which cannibalism…is real, and industrialized much like we've industrialized the cattle industry. Eugh. It's such a good b...
Tender Is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica
This book could have gone in the thriller category, but I think it expands on every parent's nightmare which makes it more of a horror novel to me. As children are kidnapped, the ransomers ask the parents to kidnap a new child in order to get theirs ...
The Chain - Adrian McKinty
A bunch of high school kids are on a plane heading to a senior class ski trip - but something evil is on the plane with them. They have to choose someone to sacrifice in order to land safely - but things are certainly NOT what they seem!
Flight 171 - Amy Christine Parker
This is another very visceral, gory book. It's a post apocalyptic world in which all men have become feral demons who want to kill and eat women. Our main characters are seasoned professionals at slaying their enemies, but things get dire. This book ...
Manhunt - Gretchen Felker-Martin
This story weaves together an absolutely terrifying tale of 3 different people, each in absolutely dire situations. It's a puzzle that comes together slowly and fills you with dread. I loved it.
The Drift: A Novel - C.J. Tudor
This book reads a little like a drug trip - it gets under your skin pretty instanty. There's a sense of magical realism here, a world in which some very bad things are happening just out of view, in your peripheral vision. 3 women go on a trip to fin...
Lost in the Garden - Adam S. Leslie
This is another horror tale with magical elements - it's so bizarre I almost don't want to give anything away. I'll leave you with this - very, very bad things are happening at a theme park in Seoul. This one has primo body horror and dread woven int...
The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre - Cho Yeeun
It's becoming clear, even to me, that I like weird as hell horror novels. This one is weird as hell. At no point will you ever know where this one is going. This novel has dread, horror, and also a kind of touching and weird take on marriage and love...
Helpmeet - Naben Ruthnum
A renowned horror novelist becomes aware of a novel credited to him that he didn't write. Things get….freaky. Weirder to me, still, is that finding a hard copy of this book is difficult!
Mr. Cables - Ronald Malfi
This is one of my recent favorite horror novels. Our main character is an adventurer - he's gone cave diving and now wants to climb Everest. But something very evil is following him…. I loved the narrative of this one, and honestly - I learned so muc...
The White Road - Sarah Lotz
This one got sooooo deeply under my skin. It's from the perspective of a very young girl who has a troubled family. But don't worry - “Other Mommy” is there to talk to her at night when she's feeling upset. This being from the perspective of a child ...
Incidents Around the House: A Novel
Nicoletta, you've put this in the wrong category! No, I haven't. For one, I know many of us read this one in school, but I think everyone should re-read this book as an adult - this is a cautionary tale that feels realer and realer as life goes on. W...
Animal Farm - George Orwell
A young couple just bought a house - but the family who used to live there shows up one night wanting a tour. Strange, unexplainable things start to happen. What happens to you when you have to start questioning your own sanity?
We Used to Live Here: A Novel - Marcus Kliewer
This is another one that could go in a different category, but it gave me so many existential feelings of dread that I think it belongs here, instead.
I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
This is a vampire tale - and it's based on one of the earliest known vampire tales - Carmilla, written 25 years before Dracula. This has elements of horror, and also elements of sapphic victorian love. It was such a good read!
Hungerstone - Kat Dunn
Our main character is constantly fatigued. She wakes up every morning feeling like death, but no doctor can explain what's going on with her in the night…
The Night Guest - Hildur Knutsdottir
There are so many Stephen King novels that could go in this list, but this book was my first taste of horror ever. I read it way too young, at 12, and fell in love with the genre ever since. King writes 14 of the spookiest short stories I've ever rea...
Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales - King