60 Classic Books Everyone Should Read In Their Lifetime
These are our picks for the 60 most essential classic books. You know, the ones that everyone should get around to reading sooner, rather than later.
50 best books of the past 50 years
We've already recommended our picks for the <anchor>50 best books of the past 50 years</anchor>, but now we're diving deeper into our literary history, temporally speaking. These are our picks for the 60 most essential classic books. You know, the ones that everyone should get around to reading sooner, rather than later. These books have meant a great deal to readers throughout the centuries, and they distinguish themselves as firsts and bests, sure, but also unexpected, astonishing, and boundary-breaking additions to the canon. That's why we're still reading them. Everyone has his or her own definition of a literary classic, and our choices span the centuries, from the 8th century B.C. to the English Renaissance to the mid-20th century. (We've even included a book from the 1990s, as we're convinced it's going to go down in history as a classic.) No matter your definition of classic literature, you'll see that these books have stood—and are standing—the test of time, which is why we think they should be on your must-read list. We're betting a few of them already are.
50 Books From The Past 50 Years Everyone Should Read At Least Once​
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# 50 Books From The Past 50 Years Everyone Should Read At Least Once

By

Caroline Rogers was formerly the travel and culture editor at Southern Living, where she wrote and edited travel stories exploring the American South. She also contributed articles about books, arts, and the outdoors to the brand's digital platforms. She joined the magazine in 2016 and since then has reported on the beaches of the Florida Keys, opera in Houston's Theater District, Knoxville, Tennessee, and waterfalls across West Virginia, among many other spaces and places.

Updated on June 2, 2023

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50 Books from the Past 50 Years:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/gettyimages-597255960-1-b7a4c9dd10804579b25950f282ffb691.jpg)

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Fifty contemporary classics everyone should read at least once—only 50? There are hundreds we could include, and if we did, this list would go on and on. That's why we're sticking with the heavy hitters, the dazzlers that have won over discerning readers across the globe since they first hit the shelves. Give yourself an education in contemporary literature (or the last 50 years of it, at least) with this handy list of great books published since the 1970s. These stories will enchant you, challenge you, and surprise you (for starters). Everyone should give this list of books a go, because these exciting, beautifully crafted novels and short story collections are currently cementing their places in the contemporary canon. On this list, we have Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, Man Booker Prize winners, and plenty of other great books that have distinguished themselves as must-reads in the years since they were first published. There are too many highlights to name, so you'll have to start browsing; a few are sure to earn a permanent place on your favorites list.

01of 50

## A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

amazon.com

Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a contemporary reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear. In it, an Iowa farmer seeks to divide his farm between his three daughters, the youngest of whom opposes his plans.

Also by Jane Smiley: Some Luck, Golden Age, Early Warning, Ordinary Love and Good Will, The Greenlanders, The Age of Grief

02of 50

## Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders

amazon.com

In her New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani described this short story collection as "A visceral and moving act of storytelling […] No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised." Devour Saunders' short stories (and his 2017 novel, Lincoln in the Bardo), and return to them again and again.

Also by George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo, Pastoralia, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, Congratulations, by the way, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

03of 50

## All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

amazon.com

Anthony Doerr's lauded 2014 novel immerses readers in World War II-era France during the occupation. The paths of a blind French girl and a young German boy intersect amid the dangers of war.

Also by Anthony Doerr: About Grace, The Shell Collector, Four Seasons in Rome, Memory Wall

04of 50

## Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

amazon.com

In Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi tells the story of two sisters born into different villages in Ghana whose lives diverge as they grow up. The novel was published in 2016 and won the American Book Award.

Also by Yaa Gyasi: Transcendent Kingdom

05of 50

## Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

amazon.com

This quietly stunning epistolary novel grapples with family relationships—especially those between fathers and sons—as Reverend John Ames records his memories on paper for his young son.

Also by Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping, The Givenness of Things, Home, Lila, The Death of Adam, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind

06of 50

## Beloved by Toni Morrison

amazon.com

Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her unforgettable novel Beloved, which illuminates the life of Sethe, a formerly enslaved person whose life is haunted by the horrors she endured years earlier . Morrison was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Also by Toni Morrison: The Origin of Others, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula, Home, Jazz, A Mercy, Paradise

07of 50

## Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

amazon.com

Hilary Mantel's brilliant, Booker Prize-winning novel reimagines the lives of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, two men who upended tradition to remake England in the 1520s.

Also by Hilary Mantel: Bring Up the Bodies, The Mirror and the Light, A Place of Greater Safety, Giving Up the Ghost, Beyond Black, A Change of Climate, Eight Months of Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

08of 50

## The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

amazon.com

Colson Whitehead combines fantasy and brutal reality in this astonishing National Book Award-winning novel about Cora, an enslaved person who escapes bondage via the Underground Railroad, which, in Whitehead's imagination, comes to life as an actual network below ground. In this odyssey, Cora navigates dangers that span centuries with only her indomitable will to guide her.

Also by Colson Whitehead: Zone One, The Intuitionist, The Colossus of New York, Sag Harbor, Apex Hides the Hurt, John Henry Days, Harlem Shuffle, The Nickel Boys, Crook Manifesto

09of 50

## A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

amazon.com

This stunning Pulitzer honoree excavates the inner lives of characters whose paths weave in and out, colliding with each other against the background of the music industry.

Also by Jennifer Egan: Manhattan Beach, The Keep, Look at Me, Emerald City, The Invisible Circus

10of 50

## A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

amazon.com

This novel explores four generations of the Whitshank family, the threads their lives follow over the decades, and the family home that plays host to it all.

Also by Anne Tyler: Vinegar Girl, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, French Braid, Ladder of Years, Redhead by the Side of the Road, Clock Dance

11of 50

## The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

amazon.com

In this recent Pulitzer finalist by Ann Patchett, siblings Danny and Maeve Conroy grapple with their past when they return to the eponymous Dutch House of their childhood.

Also by Ann Patchett: Bel Canto, Commonwealth, State of Wonder, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, These Precious Days, Truth & Beauty

12of 50

## The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

amazon.com

The Shipping News spins a tale of a crumbling family in Newfoundland, relatives thrown together in a bleak home on a stark landscape who struggle to come to terms with the lives they've begun to live.

Also by Annie Proulx: Barkskins, Brokeback Mountain, Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2, Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3, Accordion Crimes, Heart Songs and Other Stories, Bird Cloud, Postcards, That Old Ace in the Hole

13of 50

## Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

amazon.com

Uncontrollable natural forces mirror the tumult and sacrifice of family life in this astonishing novel by Jesmyn Ward. Set in the days before the arrival and accompanying destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the story introduces Esch and her three brothers, Skeetah, Randall, and Junior, who navigate life in their small town and make preparations for the imminent storm.

Also by Jesmyn Ward: Sing, Unburied, Sing; The Fire This Time; Men We Reaped; Where the Line Bleeds

14of 50

## Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro

amazon.com

Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro has written countless short story collections, each one more moving and attentive than the last.

Also by Alice Munro: Family Furnishings, Runaway, Too Much Happiness, Lives of Girls and Women, The Love of a Good Woman, The Moons of Jupiter, Open Secrets, Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, The Beggar Maid, Friend of My Youth, Dance of the Happy Shades, The View from Castle Rock, The Progress of Love, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

15of 50

## A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

amazon.com

Ernest J. Gaines' essential 1993 novel is set in fictional Bayonne, Louisiana, where Grant Wiggins, a teacher, is compelled to visit a wrongfully imprisoned man named Jefferson who has been sentenced to death; the two men build a relationship in the shadow of Jefferson's impending execution.

Also by Ernest J. Gaines: A Gathering of Old Men, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Tragedy of Brady Sims, In My Father's House, Of Love and Dust

16of 50

## Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

amazon.com

This Booker Prize-winning novel introduces readers to two friends, Clive Linely and Vernon Halliday, whose lives are connected by a woman named Molly Lane—whom both men once loved.

Also by Ian McEwan: Atonement, On Chesil Beach, Saturday, Sweet Tooth, Enduring Love, The Children Act, The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers

17of 50

## Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

amazon.com

These twelve stories crackle with truth, spanning the globe and excavating the quibbles, wits, and humors of memorable characters and situations, as is writer Lorrie Moore's specialty.

Also by Lorrie Moore: Self-Help, Bark, Like Life, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Anagrams, A Gate at the Stairs

18of 50

## Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Amazon

This love story set during the American Civil War became an instant classic when it was published in 1997. It tells the intertwined stories of Ada and Inman, two people separated by war and trying to make their ways back to each other.

Also by Charles Frazier: The Trackers, Thirteen Moons, Nightwoods, Varina

19of 50

## The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

amazon.com

This astonishing Man Booker Prize-winning novel is set in New Zealand in 1866—in the middle of the country's gold rush—where author Eleanor Catton builds a story at once suspenseful, luminous, and utterly unexpected.

Also by Eleanor Catton: The Rehearsal, Birnam Wood

20of 50

## Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

amazon.com

Mohsin Hamid's Exit West is a love story set amid questions of movement, change, and global turmoil. It follows Nadia and Saeed, a young couple whose home is rocked by violence. When mysterious doors begin appearing throughout the city, Nadia and Saeed make a choice to step through a threshold and seek out a new world.

Also by Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

21of 50

## Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

amazon.com

The characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection grapple with change, reimagine their inheritances and their ailments, and struggle to navigate new worlds both physical and cultural.

Also by Jhumpa Lahiri: In Other Words, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, The Lowland, The Clothing of Books

22of 50

## The Color Purple by Alice Walker

amazon.com

Grief and rebirth fuel this heart-rending Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning novel by Alice Walker, which tells the story of Celie, her life in rural Georgia, her tragedies, and her triumphs through her letters and diary entries.

Also by Alice Walker: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, Possessing the Secret of Joy, In Love & Trouble, The Temple of My Familiar, Meridian, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down

23of 50

## I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

amazon.com

Oprah Winfrey says it best in the forward to this moving memoir: "Maya Angelou lived what she wrote. She understood that sharing her truth connected her to the greater human truths—of longing, abandonment, security, hope, winder, prejudice, mystery, and, finally, self-discovery: the realization of who you really are and the liberation that love brings. And each of those timeless truths unfolds in this first autobiographical account of her life."

Also by Maya Angelou: Letter to My Daughter, The Heart of A Woman, And Still I Rise, The Complete Poetry, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Mom & Me & Mom, Gather Together in My Name, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

24of 50

## Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

amazon.com

Two youths in love, Florentino Arizia and Fermina Daza, find each other again after 50 years in this dazzling novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Also by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Of Love and Other Demons, No One Writes to the Colonel

25of 50

## March by Geraldine Brooks

amazon.com

Geraldine Brooks reimagines the world of Little Women by giving voice to the absent patriarch of the March family and unearthing the upheavals that war can inflict on families and the fathers that love them.

Also by Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book, The Secret Chord, Year of Wonders, Caleb's Crossing

26of 50

## The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

amazon.com

Arundhati Roy's prose spins webs of magic, stunning readers and stealing breath through gorgeously crafted sentences. Roy's debut novel tells the story of a family in India whose lives are haunted and forever altered by one tragic event and its accompanying mysteries big and small.

Also by Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, The End of Imagination, The Doctor and the Saint, Power Politics, Walking with the Comrades, The Cost of Living

27of 50

## The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

amazon.com

Amid the changes roaring through post World War II-England, a butler named Stevens grapples with broken expectations and the country's altered social landscape, and, for the first time, he begins to question his role within it all.

Also by Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant, An Artist of the Floating World, A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans, The Unconsoled, Nocturnes

28of 50

## Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

amazon.com

1970s New York plays host to this compelling novel by Colum McCann, the landscape of the city laid vividly bare alongside the interwoven lives of his characters.

Also by Colum McCann: Letters to a Young Writer, TransAtlantic, Thirteen Ways of Looking, This Side of Brightness, Everything in This Country Must, Zoli, Dancer

29of 50

## Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

amazon.com

Jeffrey Eugenides' 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is the coming-of-age story of Cal Stephanides, an intersex man coming to understand his gender identity. The novel traces the effect of a mutated gene throughout generations of Cal's Greek family, examining social constructs of gender as well as the immigrant experience in America.

Also by Jeffrey Eugenides: Fresh Complaint, The Virgin Suicides, The Marriage Plot

30of 50

## A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

amazon.com

Marlon James' 2015 Man Booker Prize- and American Book Award-winning novel is a dazzling, vivid dive into 1970s Kingston, Jamaica. It's an epic of the highest order, the plot of which hinges on the 1976 assassination attempt on the life of Bob Marley.

Also by Marlon James: The Book of Night Women; John Crow's Devil; Black Leopard, Red Wolf; Moon Witch, Spider King

31of 50

## Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

amazon.com

Saleem Sinai, The central character in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, is born at midnight on August 15, 1947, the moment at which India becomes independent. This coincidence has consequences, however, as his fate is bound up with that of his country—and the other midnight's children with whom he is connected.

Also by Salman Rushdie: Victory City, The Golden Hour, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Shame, East, West: Stories, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Shalimar the Clown

32of 50

## The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

amazon.com

Donna Tartt's novel of grief, art, and adventure won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. It tells the story of Theo, a 13-year-old boy whose life takes an unexpected turn when tragedy strikes his family in New York.

Also by Donna Tartt: The Secret History, The Little Friend

33of 50

## Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

amazon.com

Set in the Florida Everglades at the turn of the century, Peter Matthiessen's 2008 National Book Award-winning novel submerges readers in a wild and mysterious story about the outlaw sugar planter E. J. Watson.

Also by Peter Matthiessen: The Snow Leopard, Lost Man's River, Bone by Bone, In Paradise, The Birds of Heaven, Killing Mister Watson, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Far Tortuga

34of 50

## The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

amazon.com

This novel by author James McBride follows famed abolitionist John Brown and Henry, the young formerly enslaved person who narrates the novel and joins Brown on their peripatetic journey across the country (and who is disguised as a young girl along the way). McBride's novel won the National Book Award in 2013.

Also by James McBride: The Color of Water, Five-Carat Soul, Song Yet Sung, Miracle at St. Anna, Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

35of 50

## The Hours by Michael Cunningham

amazon.com

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham interweaves three stories—two fictional, one based in fact. Virginia Woolf, a poet named Samuel, and his friend Clarissa come into focus, each suspended with their own challenges within their own decades, the reach of which span nearly a century.

Also by Michael Cunningham: A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Land's End, The Snow Queen, A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, By Nightfall

36of 50

## The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

amazon.com

Sandra Cisneros' beloved book tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl coming of age in Chicago and deciding who she wants to be in the house on Mango Street and in the ever-changing world beyond.

Also by Sandra Cisneros: Woman Hollering Creek, Caramelo, A House of My Own

37of 50

## The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

amazon.com

In her beautifully crafted novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells the stories of four mothers and four daughters whose lives are entangled with one another's, beginning with the shared supper tradition the mothers call the Joy Luck Club. Their lives, secrets, and relationships unspool over decades.

Also by Amy Tan: The Kitchen God's Wife, The Valley of Amazement, Where the Past Begins, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Hundred Secret Senses, Saving Fish from Drowning

38of 50

## The Round House by Louise Erdrich

amazon.com

This National Book Award winner is set in North Dakota on the Ojibwe reservation, where a boy comes of age amid tectonic shifts in his family—shifts that are spurred by a mystery, a crime that shakes the place to its core.

Also by Louise Erdrich: LaRose, Future Home of the Living God, Love Medicine, The Painted Drum, The Plague of Doves, Four Souls, The Master Butchers Singing Club, The Red Convertible, The Birchbark House, Shadow Tag, Tracks, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Beet Queen

39of 50

## The Road by Cormac McCarthy

amazon.com

Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic vision of America follows a father and son as they journey through a scorched country, scavenging amid the destruction and defending themselves against the dangers they find there.

Also by Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, Suttree, No Country for Old Men, Child of God, Outer Dark, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, The Sunset Limited

40of 50

## Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

amazon.com

Two couples become friends and spend time together in Vermont during the summers in this beautifully observed and quietly complex novel by Wallace Stegner.

Also by Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose, The Spectator Bird, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Recapitulation, The Sound of Mountain Water

41of 50

## The Sellout by Paul Beatty

amazon.com

Paul Beatty's Man Booker Prize-winning novel is a sharp satire about race, equality, urban life, and family that is set outside Los Angeles and filled with Beatty's expertly comic voice.

Also by Paul Beatty: The White Boy Shuffle; Tuff; Slumberland; Heron Fleet; Joker, Joker, Deuce

42of 50

## The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

amazon.com

In this beautifully crafted novel, Elizabeth Gilbert weaves a glimmering biography of one Alma Whittaker, a woman born with the century who comes of age in 1800s America, becomes a gifted botanist, and searches for fulfillment, enlightenment, and atonement in the natural world and across the globe.

Also by Elizabeth Gilbert: Pilgrims; The Last American Man; Stern Men; Committed; Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear; Eat, Pray, Love; City of Girls

43of 50

## The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

amazon.com

This fictional autobiography tells the life story of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a woman whose ordinary days belie the dynamic interior world she cultivates and shares on paper in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Also by Carol Shields: Happenstance, Swann, Dressing Up for the Carnival, Larry's Party, Jane Austen: A Life

44of 50

## The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

amazon.com

Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel about a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist double agent promises pulse-pounding thrills, espionage-driven twists, and a dose of compelling, clear-eyed humor.

Also by Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies, The Committed

45of 50

## White Noise by Don DeLillo

amazon.com

The white noise of modern life gets a physical representation in this National Book Award-winning novel when an "airborne toxic event" is unleashed and begins to loom over the lives of college professor Jack Gladney and his family.

Also by Don DeLillo: Zero K, Underworld, Libra, Cosmopolis, The Body Artist, The Names, End Zone, Great Jones Street

46of 50

## White Teeth by Zadie Smith

amazon.com

Zadie Smith's 2000 debut remains a must-read. It explores the lives of Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal, World War II veterans whose lives burgeon and entangle across the decades and amid the rapidly changing landscape of 20th-century London.

Also by Zadie Smith: NW, On Beauty, Swing Time, Changing My Mind, The Autograph Man, Feel Free

47of 50

## Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

amazon.com

In her immersive 2022 novel, Barbara Kingsolver retells the story of Charles Dickens' wandering character David Copperfield amongst the landscape and fascinating characters of Appalachia.

Also by Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, The Bean Trees, Flight Behavior, Unsheltered, The Lacuna

48of 50

## The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

amazon.com

This book is made of three parts, Book of the Thieving Magpie, Book of the Prophesying Bird, and Book of the Bird-Catcher Man. It explores family relationships and loss amid the landscapes and memorable characters of a Tokyo suburb.

Also by Haruki Murakami: Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, Killing Commendatore, Men Without Women, First Person Singular, After Dark

49of 50

## My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

amazon.com

As the first of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend introduces readers to Elena (Lenù) Greco and Raffaella (Lila) Cerullo, whose lifelong friendship is unspooled in subsequent novels set in and around Naples, Italy.

Also by Elena Ferrante: The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child, The Beach at Night, The Days of Abandonment, The Lost Daughter

50of 50

## The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

amazon.com

This beautiful novel about companionship and grief tells the story of a woman who is mourning the death of her friend and agrees to take care of the Great Dane he left behind. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018.

Also by Sigrid Nunez: What Are You Going Through, Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, Sempre Susan, A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper For Rouenna, Mitz

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