Library, antilibrary

This isn’t a curated list; it’s more like me writing down names that have been caught in the cobwebs of my mind. But I think that’s a good enough reason to recommend things.

Note: Recommendations with * involve triggering topics explained in quite some detail. I don’t recommend them any lesser for it; they are still masterclasses in storytelling.

Essays and Talks

• What I love about Kyoto by Pico Iyer

• Who said science and art were two cultures?

• Jan Morris’ Diaries

• ‘Face facts: we need fiction’ by Neil Gaiman

• Fail better by Zadie Smith

• This is water by David Foster Wallace

• My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge

• Notes on road trips by The Browser Company

• On self-respect by Joan Didion

• In Search of Smoky Cafés by Lilly Dancyger

• Quietude in Marrakech

• Rajiv Surendra’s HGTV Handmade videos and his YouTube Channel

Fiction

Standalone novels

• Babel, RF Kuang

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

• The Architect’s Apprentice, Elif Shafak

• All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

• A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

• A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara *

• Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh *

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers

• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

• The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

• Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie *

• Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

• And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini

• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy *

• Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

• The Overstory, Richard Powers

• The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt *

• The Secret History, Donna Tartt *

• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

• White Teeth, Zadie Smith *

Classics

The premise of ‘classics’ and ‘canon’ is heavily contested in literature. Who is it a classic for? Who is the list catering to? Who is it alienating? Short note on this forthcoming, but the long and short of it is that these are my classics.

• Malgudi Days, R.K. Narayan

• The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

• Little Women (and the lesser-known Little Men), Louisa May Alcott

• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

• Persuasion, Jane Austen

• Nagamandala, Girish Karnad

• Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

• Demian, Herman Hesse

• Dracula, Bram Stoker

• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Series

• The Winternight Trilogy, Katherine Ardern

• The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson

• Six of Crows Duology, Leigh Bardugo

• The Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin

• Gentleman Bastards, Scott Lynch *

• Shades of Magic, V.E. Schwab

• The Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K. Le Guin

• The Expanse, James S. A. Corey

• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

• The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

• Sandman, Neil Gaiman

• Discworld, Terry Pratchett

Books about books and writing

• Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

• Four Seasons in Rome, Anthony Doerr

• This Little Art, Kate Briggs

• The Bookseller’s Tale, Martin Latham

• On Writing, Stephen King

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders

• Steering the Craft, Ursula K Le Guin

• Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami