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Person Should
Read
We invited eight female literary powerhouses,
from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane
Gay, to help us create an updated list of books
everyone should read. 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.
BY ESQUIRE EDITORS
JAN 5, 2016
What can we say? We messed up. Our list of "80 Books
Every Man Should Read," published several years ago, 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.
01 OF 88
Michiko Kakutani,
@michikokakutani
Chief book critic for The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize
winner, and perhaps the only person on earth with the guts
to call the work of Philip Roth "flimsy" and that of John
Updike "cringe-making."
02 OF 88
Sloane Crosley,
@askanyone
Novelist, essayist, and one of 2015's biggest success
stories.
24 OF 88
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29 OF 88
The Group, by Mary McCarthy
Do you have to read a novel with a character named "Priss"
to be a better person? Kind of, yeah. The Group is a
seminal, massively vital book written ahead of its time (it
was banned here and there) and yet very much of its time,
focusing on gender politics, friendship, socioeconomic
status and influencing whole genres of contemporary
fiction all while being a total blast to read. Every woman
should read it to know themselves; every man should read
it to know who they're dealing with.
SC
30 0f 88 Birds of America, by Lorrie
Moore
If you're not in love with Lorrie Moore, I worry for you. You
will hear people speak differently after reading this book,
as if you've been in need of a hearing aid for years and
you didn't know it. "People Like That Are The Only People
Here" is worth the price of admission alone, as it's one of
the most powerful and important short stories (about love
and loneliness and motherhood and death) of this century.
SC
31 0f 88
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati
Roy
Peppered and pierced with tragedy, this book is a blow to
the heart. And then another. And then another. But not in
the Cormac McCarthy way. The God of Small Thingsreveals
the beauty and grace possible in the darkness like no other
novel I have ever read. I both envy and pity the early
editors and reviewers who had the task of describing this
novel for the first time. If forced to boil it down, I'd say
this is a novel about having a family at all, about the
motivations within the structured microcosm of society
that is a family. Just that.
SC
32 of 88
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
I heard Chimamada Adichie speak about Things Fall
Apartseveral years ago. She said that as a young girl in
Nigeria, her books were filled with bouncing blond British
girls and that she "didn't know people who looked like me
could be in books" until she read Things Fall Apart.
Whatever I say about this perfect, archetypical African
novel will pale in comparison to that.
SC
33 OF 88
Lizzie Widdicombe,
@widdikombe
Staff writer and editor at The New Yorker.
46 of 88
The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena
Ferrante
An observation: People don't seem to merely read Elena
Ferrante's novels. They devour them in all-night binges,
coming to work bleary-eyed and strung out. What's her
secret? Is it that propulsive voice? The way she brings up
thoughts you'd never dared to nameabout friendships,
sex, class? To read them is to remember that the best
books are a little harrowing. Start with the Neapolitan
Novels. They go down like a warm drink of crystal meth.
LW
47 of 88
The Leopard, by Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was a Sicilian prince who
died in 1957, leaving behind an unpublished novelthe
only one he ever wrote. It's a masterpiece. Set during the
unification of Italy, it's about one of the prince's forebears,
a wry nobleman who struggles to keep his household afloat
while a new order rises. The book's most famous line is
spoken by the prince's savvy, gold-digging nephew,
Tancredi: "If we want things to stay as they are, things will
have to change." In this age of "disruption," as the
revolutions keep coming, it seems even more apt.
LW
48 of 88
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Like the whale itself, this book's sheer size is scary. And
its reputation: the Leviathan of American literature! But
crack open the first chapter (no CliffsNotes!) and you may
be surprised by how fun it is to listen to the warm, chatty
voice of Melville's narrator, Ishmaeland how fascinating
it is to spend time in the lost world of Pequod, with its
colorful crew: Starbucks, Flask, and, of course, the
tattooed harpooner Queequeg, whom Melville describes as
"George Washington cannibalistically developed." Yes, it's
an epic about man's struggle with God and fate, but it's
also a bawdy, deranged adventure with a group of
nineteenth-century sailors.
LW
49 of 88
Heartburn, by Nora Ephron
Moby Dick it ain't, but don't go through life without
reading Heartburn. To the list of great narrators we have
to add Rachel Samstat, Ephron's wisecracking cookbook
author, who is seven months pregnant when her husband
informs her that he's in love with another woman. Lemons
become lemon souffl. The whole book is funny, but the
scene where Rachel's therapy group gets held up by a
mugger is one of the most pants-peeingly hilarious in
American literature.
LW
50 of 88
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by
Muriel Spark
Miss Jean Brodie, of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, has
some unorthodox teaching methods. Putting aside the
official curriculum, she tutors a hand-picked group of
students on important topics like her love life, the fact that
she is in her "prime" (whatever that means), Renaissance
painting, and the finer points of Fascism. Spark assumes
a God-like voice, occasionally fast-forwarding to the girls'
futures: fiery deaths, disappointing marriages, etc. As you
laugh at Miss Brodie's outrageous dictums, the petty
intrigues of the faculty, and the students' adolescent
excesses, you may be surprised to notice a lump forming
in your throat. How can a book so savagely funny be so
wrenchingly, heartbreakingly sad?
LW
51 OF 88
Anna Holmes,
@annaholmes
New York Times columnist and founder of Jezebel.
57 of 88
The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret
Atwood
Margaret Atwood's classic of dystopian fiction may be
some 30 years old but its depiction of a society driven
apart by terrorism and reconstituted as an ultra-
conservative Christian theocracy where women have little
to no rights at all feels as relevant today as it did when it
was published back in 1985, and a sobering reminder that
the war on women is as characteristic of the future as the
past and present.
AH
58 of 88
The Liars' Club, by Mary Karr
This book was a bestseller for a reason. One of the most
brutal, elegant, and yes, funniest memoirs of the late 20th
century, Mary Karr's The Liars Club is an important work
that is at turns personal and political, the story of a Texas
childhood marked by anguish, adventure, and a potent
combination of toxic masculinity, alcoholism and thwarted
artistic ambitions.
AH
59 OF 88
Camille Perri
@camilleperri
Cosmopolitan's at-large books editor and writer of the
forthcoming The Assistants.
68 OF 88
Ashley Ford,
@iSmashFizzle
Contributor to BuzzFeed, ELLE, and others.
79 OF 88