#258: My reading list (fiction, addictive)

I finally catalogued it

Good morning,

Today’s newsletter is based on the premise that something I’ve long desired might also be something you’ve long desired, which is an organized spreadsheet of all the literary fiction Maybe Baby readers have passionately recommended to me over the last four years. I’ve always wanted to document and categorize these books, pulling out the ones I’d most like to read, so I finally did! And today I’m sharing the results.

Last Friday, when I wrote that I finished Lily King’s Heart the Lover in less than 24 hours, I asked readers to share books they’d finished similarly quickly, or at least interrupted their lives to finish. More than 250 people commented. Four years ago, I asked for books that were both literary and page-turners, which garnered over 200 comments. And a while after that, I asked for the last book you couldn’t put down, and received about the same. These comment sections demanded to be combined and collated. My book-related comment sections always pop off (I’ve also done best children’s books, best audiobooks, best sci-fi books, best non-fiction books, which together accumulated over 1,000 recs), and I plan to organize those one day, too. But today I’m focusing on my favorite genre: literary fiction, or genre fiction that reasonably connects with that category.

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TIP: If you ever want to find a particular Rec of the Week comment section, you can head to the 15 Things section of my archive and scroll through the posts—the Rec of the Week is listed as the subtitle, so you can scan them all without clicking in until you find the one you’re looking for. (To go even faster, I often have luck Googling “Haley Nahman 15 things [insert rec topic].”)

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Before we get into my personal edit, here is a spreadsheet of all 269 books that were recommended to me, including some notable reader commentary. There has been some light curation here. I didn’t include books that felt more appropriate for another data dump (e.g. non-fiction, sci-fi), and may have skipped some that were included in a long list that lacked explanation, as I find those less convincing. I also omitted a few that I’d read and didn’t find worthy (sorry). On that note, I cannot personally endorse all the books on this list! I’ve only read 18% of them. But I do believe (brag) my subscribers have good taste.

By the way, I don’t think “quickly” is necessarily the best way to read a book. Many books I’ve read slowly are very important to me. But my initial love for reading is so intertwined with the sensation of staying up late, with my mom flipping the lights on in the living room to find me with a book an inch from my nose, that I often find myself longing for that reading experience as an adult. Sometimes I just want to recapture the magic.

Moving on to my breakouts: Below are the 30 books which, after reading through nearly a thousand comments, I would now urgently like to read. I’ve given them some flair and also broken them into tiers. Tier 1 is basically: I need to buy these books and read them ASAP, with Tier 2 and 3 denoting slightly softer versions of that sentiment. Some of these were only shared by a couple people, but their commentary sold me. If I had to pick three, I’d say I’m most eager to read God of the Woods, Small Things Like These, and (based on title alone) Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

👍Number of times it was recommended (actual comments, not “likes”)
📣Extra convincing endorsements
👀Book I was already curious about

Tier 1 (alphabetized)

The Wedding People by Alison Espach👍👍👍👍👍👍👍📣
Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes👍👍👍📣
On the Calculation of Volume (a series, but this is Part 1) by Solvej Balle👍👍👍👍📣👀
A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst👍👍👍👍👍📣
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier👍👍📣
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore👍👍👍👍👍👍📣
Euphoria by Lily King👍👍👍👍👍👍📣👀
Luster by Raven Leilani👍👍👍👍📣
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan👍👍👍👍👍👍👍📣
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata👍👍👍👍📣
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk👍👍👍👍📣

Tier 2

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue👍👍👍👍📣
Open Throat by Henry Hoke👍👍📣
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas 👍👍👍👍👍
An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector👍👀
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami👍👍👀
Popisho by Leone Ross👍📣
Flesh by David Szalay👍📣
How to Be Both by Ali Smith👍👍👀
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout👍👍👍📣
Blindness by José Saramago👍📣

Tier 3

Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt👍👍📣
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan👍👍👍👍👀
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash👍👍📣
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli👍📣
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw👍📣
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead👍👍📣
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt👍📣
There There by Tommy Orange👍👍👀
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden👍👍👍👍📣

And finally, here are 49 books people recommended that I had already read, including Lonesome Dove, which I’m currently reading and can’t yet endorse. Other than that one, I sincerely enjoyed these books—they all fell in the category of “looking forward to reading tonight,” but I’ve highlighted a few for being memorably addictive, an all-time fave of mine, or special to me for some other reason (particularly thought-provoking or lovely prose, etc).

⭐️memorably addictive
❤️ all-time fave
🌸falls short of all-time fave but special to me nonetheless

(alphabetized)
The Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Push by Ashley Audrain⭐️
Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker🌸
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Milkfed by Melissa Broder
Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
The Idiot by Elif Batuman🌸
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke⭐️
The Guest by Emma Cline
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
The Neapolitan Novels (series) by Elena Ferrante🌸
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen🌸
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill🌸
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi🌸
Lungfish by Meghan Gillis
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman⭐️❤️
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro⭐️
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro⭐️❤️
All Fours by Miranda July🌸
Heart the Lover by Lily King⭐️
Writers & Lovers by Lily King⭐️
Intimacies by Katie Kitamura🌸
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee⭐️
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood🌸
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
Severance by Ling Ma
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai⭐️
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason⭐️
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (current)
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid⭐️
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney🌸
Normal People by Sally Rooney⭐️❤️
The Door by Magda Szabo⭐️❤️🌸❤️🌸❤️🌸 (I loved this book)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt🌸
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt❤️
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin⭐️

For the handful of you that have complained over the years that I don’t use Goodreads—shout out to my sister specifically—this will have to do. I hope you find this as useful as I did! If you’d like to make a strong (incontrovertible…) case for a book that belongs in my Tier 1, I won’t stop you.

^literally

In case you missed it, here’s last Friday’s 15 things and last Wednesday’s reader’s digest on Iran. The rec of the week was bars of soap and how to hold them—some of your recs blew my mind.

If you’d like to receive my Wednesday and Friday newsletters, my podcast, my advice column, and especially all the reader recs, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s $6/month or $60/year (a steal if you think about it).

Hope you have a nice Sunday!
Haley