What books do you think are essential reading?

[JazzerMcCreary]

I’m turning 29 tomorrow. I’ve decided that as I’ve either done or have no interest in doing the typical ‘pre 30 bucket list’ activities, I’m going to try to read 30 new books over the next year.

So tell me, what books would be on your list?

Lots of the above plus
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov,
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller,

The Diary of Anne Frank

Any book by Haruki Murakami. IQ84 trilogy is my favourite.

Invisible Women

carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible-women/

You might enjoy Everything I know about Love, Dolly Alderton - she describes life growing up and her 20s. It might be a bit of light relief amongst the many excellent books already suggested.

@username059471

All of them but I'll recommend some of my favourite novellas:

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Turn of the Screw - Henry James
A Hero of our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Metamorphosis - Kafka
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Memories of my Melancholy Whores - Marquez
Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
The Lifted Veil - George Eliot
Clockwork Orange - Burgess
Do Androids Dream - K Dick
Beloved - Morrison
The Ballad of the Sad Café - Carson McCullers
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep - Chandler
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

Oh the yellow wallpaper is so subtle and horrifying isn’t it? Definitely recommend but not before bed...especially in a patterned room

I agree with @sillysmiles - Invisible Women really is essential

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats

Lots of the above plus The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller,

I’m so glad someone has mentioned The Master and Margarita! One of my all time favs and such a wonderful, layered, story. When I mention it to anyone though I get ‘huh’ face.

@Moonwatcher1234 It's wonderful and a good one for anyone who's into 'mad woman in the attic' literature. If so, see Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys which is the story of the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre. But, don't stop there as she's also a wonderful short story writer.

The Master and Margarita

A Passage to India

Burmese Days (the only book by Orwell I actually like)

Absolutely anything by Graham Green but especially Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair

Anything by Kazuo Ishiguro, his new one (Klara and the Sun) is amazing but Remains of the Day is superb

John Irving is another one I love (though while I do Love Owen Meany I hate the ending)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Poor Anne Bronte, much maligned as the weakest of the Brontes but I find her the best. Her female characters are incredibly progressive and she writes about subjects that were not the norm back then (wives leaving their husbands and setting up businesses to support themselves etc)

I’m sure I’ll think of more!

Damn, missed Ishiguro of my novella list. Also read Remains of the Day.

The Princess Bride

Pure joy! Laugh out loud, writing gold.

Since you've asked for books rather than novels I'd like to add the collected short stories of Saki.
Products of their time but they really are miniature masterpieces.

Cloud Atlas -David Mitchell

A brilliant book

Rich dad poor dad

For some reason I didn't read Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky as a teenager, so you could try the Tolstoy greats I only read much, much later, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina".

Having said that, there's a reason Dostoyevsky "Crime and Punishment" is at the top of book nerds lists, I'd read that before Tolstoy. I also found "The Gambler" quite compelling. (It's a short novel he knocked off in the midst or writing something else, because he needed the money to pay his own gambling debt!)

It’s hard to say, as it depends on what you’re looking for. If it’s something really educational but depressing, “a problem from hell” by Samantha Power which is about the origin of genocide as a legal concept, how the convention against genocide was introduced to the USA and the country’s responses to various genocides. Not exactly fun reading but I learned so much from it. “Killers of the flower moon” which is about a Native American tribe that was slowly killed off

For excellent fiction from different countries
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Ghana / USA)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Japan)
A dry white season by Andre Brink (South Africa)
Disgrace by JM Coetzee (South Africa)
The plague by Albert Camus (Algeria)

House of the spirits by Isabel Allende (chile)
100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
God of small things by Arundhati Roy (India)
A fine balance by Rohinton Misty (though this is seriously depressing) (India)
Under the shadow of the banyan tree by Vaddey Ratner (Cambodia)
Do not say we have nothing by Madeleine Thien (China)
Not fiction but reads like it could be - a Kim jong Il production by Paul Fischer. It’s about a South Korean director and actress who we’re kidnapped by the North Korean government help in making North Korea’s movie industry better.

Looking through this list I have quite depressing taste in books but they are good

I agree with almost anything by Graham Greene. (The movie of "The Quiet American" is quite good too.)

Some good suggestions here. A couple I haven’t seen mentioned and would recommend.

God of Small things by Arandhuti Roy

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

[quote username059471]@Moonwatcher1234 It's wonderful and a good one for anyone who's into 'mad woman in the attic' literature. If so, see Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys which is the story of the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre. But, don't stop there as she's also a wonderful short story writer.[/quote]
Thank you! Jean Rhys has skipped my radar but love all the other books you posted so am going to download wide Sargasso Sea now.

Apologies. Seen that someone else has indeed also recommended Roy and Mistry. So am seconding these suggestions wholeheartedly!

1984
High society

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood. No one has ever captured the brutality of little girls to each other so well.

@Moonwatcher1234 Always good to have a convert. If you like her try her short stories:
www.amazon.co.uk/Collected-Stories-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141984856/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=jean+rhys&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1624559638&sr=8-3