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Ellen Fishbein ~ ALTAMIRA.STUDIO

Fiction recommendations

Published almost 2 years ago • 2 min read

People have been asking me for fiction recommendations. Here are the first 83 books that came to mind in 1 hour. Hope you enjoy!

Column 1

  1. ​The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
  2. ​City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
  3. ​Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  4. ​The Hobbit by Tolkien
  5. ​The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
  6. ​The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (you can read Book 2 by itself)
  7. ​Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  8. ​The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  9. ​Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  10. ​Anthem by Ayn Rand
  11. ​Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  12. ​Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet (play)
  13. ​Network by Paddy Chayevsky (AMAZING writing! But you might want to watch the movie first).
  14. ​Hamlet by William Shakespeare (if new to Shakespeare, read Brave New World first. Also, I highly recommend the 2009 movie with David Tennant playing Hamlet.)
  15. ​Othello by William Shakespeare (if new to Shakespeare, read Brave New World first.)
  16. ​Watchmen by Alan Moore (graphic novel)
  17. ​V for Vendetta by Alan Moore (graphic novel)
  18. ​Black Hole by Charles Burns (graphic novel)
  19. ​It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken by Seth (graphic novel)
  20. ​Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  21. ​Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  22. ​The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
  23. ​Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  24. ​Matilda by Roald Dahl
  25. ​James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
  26. ​Charlotte’s Web by EB White
  27. ​Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Column 2

  1. ​The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare (rare & excellent non-play)
  2. ​Paradise Lost by John Milton
  3. ​The Odyssey by Homer
  4. ​The Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles
  5. ​Harry Potter by JK Rowling
  6. ​A Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
  7. ​The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (my favorite Hemingway book)
  8. ​The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo(haven’t read this yet, but I know it’s great & high on my list.)
  9. ​Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  10. ​Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
  11. ​Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (I don’t love this book personally, but I have so many friends who love it that I often recommend it to people who seem to have an interest in dark/biting comedy)
  12. ​The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman (probably my favorite young adult story)
  13. ​The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  14. ​Eragon by Christopher Paolini
  15. ​The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  16. ​The Giver by Lois Lowry (probably my second-favorite young adult story)
  17. ​The Plague by Albert Camus
  18. ​Blindness by Jose Saramago
  19. ​The Silmarillion by Tolkien
  20. ​Metamorphoses (Ovid)​
  21. ​Metamorphosis (Kafka)​
  22. ​Lolita (my pick for the Greatest American Novel – extremely strong commentary on America)
  23. ​The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks
  24. ​The Time Machine by HG Wells
  25. ​The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (graphic novel)
  26. ​Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  27. ​The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
  28. ​Demian by Hermann Hesse

Column 3

  1. ​The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
  2. ​Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
  3. ​Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
  4. ​Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  5. ​Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  6. ​The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (haven’t read this yet, but I know it’s good. It’s up next.)
  7. ​The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho (I prefer this to his more famous Alchemist)
  8. ​Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (play)
  9. ​Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (play)
  10. ​The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  11. ​1984 by George Orwell
  12. ​We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
  13. ​Animal Farm by George Orwell
  14. ​Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  15. ​Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  16. ​Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (fun fact: when I was in 8th grade, I got this book added to the curriculum at my school.)
  17. ​On the Waterfront by Budd Schulberg (play)
  18. ​Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  19. ​Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (technically a memoir, but such an imaginative & original concept!)
  20. ​Alanna by Tamora Pierce
  21. ​Aesop’s Fables​
  22. ​Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
  23. ​John Barleycorn by Jack London
  24. ​Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
  25. ​Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (I’m still working on understanding Jane Austen; I haven’t finished this book yet, but I can see the merit of it.)
  26. ​Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  27. ​20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  28. ​The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

There are, of course, many highly recommendable fiction books besides these. Would love to hear yours. :)

- Ellen

Ellen Fishbein ~ ALTAMIRA.STUDIO

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