curated list

books recommended by authors

What working novelists, essayists, and non-fiction writers actually read — Stephen King, Ann Patchett, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay, John Green, Colson Whitehead, Zadie Smith, and dozens more. Aggregated from interviews, public lists, and tweets.

Aggregated across 30 people we track · 60 books ranked by how many on this list have publicly recommended each one.

most recommended books on this list

3 people
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 2004
3 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
3 people
The Great Gatsby: Original Text
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
3 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Taffy Brodesser-Akner · 2019
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond · 2005
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Roxane Gay · 2017
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Cathy Park Hong · 2020
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling · 1992
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
The Library Book
Susan Orlean · 2018
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
The Master and Margarita: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Mikhail Bulgakov · 1996
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
The Odyssey
Homer and translated by Emily Wilson · 1999
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2014
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel
Gabrielle Zevin · 2022
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
2 people
Worth Dying For
Lee Child · 2010
2 recommenders
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
100 Boyfriends
Brontez Purnell · 2021
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann · 2006
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
300 Arguments
Sarah Manguso · 2017
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
61 Hours
Lee Child · 2010
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Hank Green · 2020
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Bite-Sized History of France
Stéphane Hénaut · 2018
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Black Women’s History of the United States
Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross · 2021
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
Joshua Ferris · 2021
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Cosmology of Monsters
Shaun Hamill · 2019
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Farewell To Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 2004
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit · 2006
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay · 2015
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A High Wind in Jamaica
Richard Hughes · 2002
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
Raj Patel · 2017
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
Hanif Abdurraqib · 2022
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara · 2015
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
Lucia Berlin · 2016
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Normal Pig
K-Fai Steele · 2019
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Thousand Pardons
Jonathan Dee · 2013
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor · 2005
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Velocity of Being
Maria Popova · 2018
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
A Wanted Man
Lee Child · 2012
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Acid Test
Tom Shroder · 2014
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
After Nature
and by W.G. Sebald · 2003
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Afterglow
Eileen Myles · 2017
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Against Creativity
Oli Mould · 2018
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
Evan Osnos · 2014
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
Kai-Fu Lee · 2018
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Alec
Eddie Campbell · 2010
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1865 Edition With Complete Illustrations By Sir John Tenniel (A Classic Novel of Lewis Carroll)
Lewis Carroll · 2000
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
All Aunt Hagar’s Children: Stories
Edward P. Jones · 2006
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
All the Living and the Dead
Hayley Campbell · 2022
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
American Dirt
Jeanine Cummins · 2020
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
Edmund S. Morgan · 1975
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
An Artist of the Floating World
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1986
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie · 2004
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy and translated by Rosamund Bartlett · 2012
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Archer's Goon
Diana Wynne Jones · 2003
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Ariel: The Restored Edition
Sylvia Plath · 2005
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alire Saenz · 2012
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Atonement
Ian McEwan · 2007
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald · 2001
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Back of Beyond
C. J. Box · 2011
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Bad Country
CB McKenzie · 2014
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay · 2014
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop
1 person
Bad Luck and Trouble
Lee Child · 2007
1 recommender
Amazon Bookshop

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