Esquire 80 Books Every Person Should Read
What can we say? We messed up. Our list of "80 Books Every Man Should Read," published in 2015, was rightfully called out for its lack of diversity in both authors and titles. So we invited eight female literary powerhouses, from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane Gay, to help us create a new list. Each participant made 10 picks. It's a new year, a new Esquire.com. We're looking forward to reading and we hope you are, too.
- 1
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 43 lists
- 2
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 31 lists
- 3
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967 · 33 lists
- 4
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner · 1915 · 18 lists
- 5
Underworld
Don DeLillo · 1997 · 9 lists
- 6
- 7
Mason & Dixon
Thomas Pynchon · 1997 · 4 lists
- 8
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov · 1995 · 1 list
- 9
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz · 2007 · 14 lists
- 10
A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle · 1962 · 7 lists
- 11
Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko · 1977 · 2 lists
- 12
The Collected Stories of Grace Paley
Grace Paley · 1994 · 1 list
- 13
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871 · 26 lists
- 14
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 1956 · 8 lists
- 15
Autobiography of Red
Anne Carson · 1998 · 2 lists
- 16
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1876 · 24 lists
- 17
The Complete Poems
Emily Dickinson · 1960 · 1 list
- 18
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman · 1855 · 13 lists
- 19
So Long, See You Tomorrow
William Maxwell · 1980 · 3 lists
- 20
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759 · 18 lists
- 21
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1965 · 16 lists
- 22
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion · 1968 · 4 lists
- 23
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 1856 · 26 lists
- 24
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Alice Munro · 1998 · 3 lists
- 25
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield · 2007 · 1 list
- 26
The Group
Mary McCarthy · 1963 · 1 list
- 27
Birds of America
Lorrie Moore · 1998 · 5 lists
- 28
The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy · 1997 · 9 lists
- 29
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958 · 19 lists
- 30
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley · 1818 · 20 lists
- 31
Citizen
Claudia Rankine · 2014 · 2 lists
- 32
Balm
Dolen Perkins-Valdez · 2015 · 1 list
- 33
NW
Zadie Smith · 2012 · 3 lists
- 34
Forgotten Country
Catherine Chung · 2012 · 1 list
- 35
Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion · 1970 · 5 lists
- 36
Stone Butch Blues
Leslie Feinberg · 1993 · 1 list
- 37
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Alice Walker · 1992 · 2 lists
- 38
The Round House
Louise Erdrich · 2012 · 4 lists
- 39
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 40
The Lover
Marguerite Duras · 1982 · 4 lists
- 41
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante · 2011 · 6 lists
- 42
The Leopard
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa · 2000 · 11 lists
- 43
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851 · 34 lists
- 44
Heartburn
Nora Ephron · 1983 · 2 lists
- 45
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark · 1961 · 13 lists
- 46
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813 · 28 lists
- 47
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson · 1980 · 10 lists
- 48
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists
- 49
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 50
Memoirs of Hadrian
Marguerite Yourcenar · 1951 · 5 lists
- 51
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 52
The Liars' Club: A Memoir
Mary Karr · 2 lists
- 53
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison · 1977 · 14 lists
- 54
Parting the Waters
Taylor Branch · 1988 · 5 lists
- 55
Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow · 1974 · 10 lists
- 56
The White Album
Joan Didion · 1979 · 1 list
- 57
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1899 · 3 lists
- 58
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen · 1811 · 6 lists
- 59
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson · 2010 · 6 lists
- 60
Harriet the Spy
Louise Fitzhugh · 1960 · 4 lists
- 61
Just Kids
Patti Smith · 2006 · 6 lists
- 62
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe · 1850 · 6 lists
- 63
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847 · 26 lists
- 64
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 65
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Yiyun Li · 2005 · 1 list
- 66
Bad Behavior
Mary Gaitskill · 1988 · 2 lists
- 67
Bastard Out of Carolina
Dorothy Allison · 1992 · 6 lists
- 68
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
Carson McCullers · 1958 · 1 list
- 69
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1848 · 13 lists
- 70
The Best of Everything
Rona Jaffe · 1958 · 1 list
- 71
The Boys of My Youth
Jo Ann Beard · 1998 · 1 list
- 72
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir
Lidia Yuknavitch · 2011 · 1 list
- 73
Sula
Toni Morrison · 1973 · 5 lists
- 74
The Color Purple
Alice Walker · 1982 · 20 lists
- 75
An Untamed State
Roxane Gay · 2014 · 1 list
- 76
Redefining Realness
Janet Mock · 2014 · 1 list
- 77
Silver Sparrow
Tayari Jones · 2011 · 1 list
- 78
Shadowshaper
Daniel Jose Older · 2015 · 1 list
- 79
Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech · 1994 · 2 lists
- 80
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel · 2000 · 3 lists