So you’re keen to become well-read, yay! You may think that you’ve done the hard yards, but have you read the hard words? If you didn’t have the easiest start in life, you might find reading really difficult or just not have done much of it. I promise you with every fibre of my being, reading is worth it. Knowledge is worth it. Your brain is like any muscle, the more you use it the easier it gets, so just start somewhere and keep practicing.

Different groups of people will naturally tend towards different types of literature. While it’s great to be well rounded in your reading, if you’re just trying to catch up it’s probably best to think about what kind of books would be respected by your peers. To make life a bit easier, I’m breaking down this reading list by the type of crowd you’re trying to join, since that was the kind of thing I was interested in when I was a bit younger and ready to take on the world.

Nerdy and Geeky

• Isaac Asimov – I, Robot and the Foundation Series
• Robert Jordan – The Wheel of Time
• JRR Tolkein – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• George RR Martin – Game of Thrones
• Timothy Zahn – Heir to the Empire
• Stephanie Meyer – Twilight (for better or worse it was an important cultural milestone)
• J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter series (it won’t kill you)
• Rick Riordan – Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• Arthur Conan Doyle – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game

Finance or Business

• J. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
• George Owell – 1984
• P.G. Wodehouse – The Golf Stories and a bit of Jeeves
• Steig Larsson – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
• William Golding – Lord of the Flies
• Bryce Courtenay – The Power of One
• Shane Warne – No Spin
• J.D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye

Cottagecore

• Jane Austen – Everything. Just everything.
• Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
• Stephanie Meyer – Twilight
• Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games
• LM Montgomery – Anne of Green Gables
• Henry James – Portrait of a Lady
• Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
• E.B. White – Charlotte’s Web
• JK Rowling – Harry Potter
• Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
• Anne Frank – Diary of a Young Girl
• CS Lewis – The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
• Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Snooty People

• JRR Tolkein – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
• Mark Twain – Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer
• Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist
• Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
• George Orwell – Animal Farm and 1984
• Lois Lowry – The Giver
• Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
• Joseph Heller – Catch-22
• Jonathon Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
• Arthur Conan Doyle – ALL THE SHERLOCK
• Kazuo Ishiguro – Anything really, just pick one
• John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
• Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
• William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing
• Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Grey
• Dan Brown – The DaVinci Code
• Bram Stoker – Dracula
• Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game
• Ancient Greek Epics – The Odyssey and The Iliad
• Frank Herbert – Dune
• Richard Adams – Watership Down
• Karl Marx – The Communist Manifesto
• Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
• Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange (and please google the guy it’s a fascinating story)

I know that if you’re not used to reading much it can seem overwhelming to even try to catch up, but I promise you it’s worth it. Apart from being able to discuss these books with new friends, coworkers, romantic entanglements and acquaintances you’ll get exposure to each authors understanding of human nature. This will then help you interact with the wider world, as you’ll start to understand society a bit better. It’s like practicing socialising, but on your own. Try and think about what the author might have been trying to say, and imagine what you might have done if you were a character – that sort of thing.

Warmest,

Rose