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Original poster

What one book, fiction or non - fiction, would you make everyone read if you could?

62 replies

OnlyFangs · 25/10/2025 19:39

I think mine would be Edith Eger's The Choice.

It felt like it profoundly altered the way I viewed my life after leaving a DV relationship. Powerful stuff both personally and on a broader level too.

I also absolutely loved North and South which I read recently and can't believe I hadn't got round to reading it sooner. And same for Middlemarch.

OP posts:
TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 27/10/2025 23:16

The Diary of a Nobody.
(George and Weedon Grossmith)

HewasH2O · 27/10/2025 23:19

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari on why big tech has created a world of doom scrolling zombies

Original poster
OnlyFangs · 27/10/2025 23:30

HewasH2O · 27/10/2025 23:19

Stolen Focus by Johann Hari on why big tech has created a world of doom scrolling zombies

I've got that in my kindle ready to read! Keep being distracted by doomscrolling ...Grin

OP posts:
LambriniBobInIsleworthISeesYa · 28/10/2025 00:23

Somersetbaker · 25/10/2025 20:45

Austerlitz by W G Sebald. Is it fact or fiction,

Yes! Wrote my MA dissertation on Sebald. He is very underrated.

SnowflakeSmasher86 · 28/10/2025 00:26

Probably not the sort of thing you’re after, but two popular books that have changed the way I live my life, The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters and The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo. Recommend both to my kids for a fun way to understand impulses and how they can fuck us over, and Kondo is a quirky but very useful look at how we value possessions and how to live with joy.

lifeisastrangejourney · 28/10/2025 00:30

The grapes of wrath by Steinbeck

Original poster
OnlyFangs · 28/10/2025 00:31

SnowflakeSmasher86 · 28/10/2025 00:26

Probably not the sort of thing you’re after, but two popular books that have changed the way I live my life, The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters and The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo. Recommend both to my kids for a fun way to understand impulses and how they can fuck us over, and Kondo is a quirky but very useful look at how we value possessions and how to live with joy.

Oh no it's exactly the sort of thing I am after.
I've read the Chimp Paradox and I agree, it's brilliant..Proper "therapy in a book" stuff. I found it profoundly helpful

OP posts:
therewasafishinthepercolator · 28/10/2025 00:50

ChaliceinWonderland · 27/10/2025 23:14

Probably john boyne ' The Hearts Invisible Furies'
Anything by Kurt Vonnegurt

Loved Hearts Invisible Furies. Loved it.

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Aavalon57 · 28/10/2025 00:56

This is an obvious one, The Handmaid’s Tale. I read it when it first came out and then again some 30 years later.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Anything by Terry Pratchett

LilyCanna · 28/10/2025 02:27

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

JH0404 · 28/10/2025 02:29

My dark Vanessa

BlueEyedBogWitch · 28/10/2025 02:53

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Stroud. It helps us remember that older people are still people.

The Kids by Hannah Lowe - a book of poetry that does the above, but with teens.

I May Be Wrong by Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff.

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