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Reading List · Essential ReadsBooks Everyone Should Read at Least Once
Some books come up again and again: in school, in conversation, in films and in the news. They have shaped how people talk about justice, freedom, love, power and what it means to live well. Books everyone should read at least once are the ones that keep being recommended across generations, and reading them makes many other books, arguments and references easier to understand. Readers turn to lists like this to fill gaps or find a good place to start.
The list is drawn from books that appear again and again on reader-voted lists, including Goodreads’ long-running list of books everyone should read at least once, as well as school curricula. It mixes classic novels with memoirs, a diary, letters and one work of history, from 1813 to 2018, and ranges from an evening’s read to long, demanding novels.
Fifteen books everyone should read at least once
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960
Scout Finch looks back on her childhood in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. While she and her brother Jem are fascinated by their reclusive neighbour Boo Radley, their father Atticus, a lawyer, agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.
Told through a child’s eyes, it is one of the most widely read novels about racism, conscience and standing up for what is right. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 and was filmed in 1962 with Gregory Peck as Atticus.
Read it if you want the novel most often named first on lists like this one.
1984
George Orwell · 1949
Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth in London, now Airstrip One, a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, rewriting old records to fit the Party’s current version of history. Under the gaze of Big Brother, he begins a forbidden affair with Julia and a quiet rebellion against the Party.
Words and ideas from the novel, including Big Brother, doublethink, Newspeak, thoughtcrime and Room 101, have entered everyday language. Reading it explains references that turn up constantly in debates about surveillance, propaganda and truth.
Read it if you want to understand the book behind the vocabulary of surveillance and propaganda.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813
Elizabeth Bennet is the second of five sisters in a Hertfordshire family whose estate will pass to a male cousin, so marriage matters. Her quick judgements put her at odds with the wealthy, aloof Mr Darcy, while the charming officer Wickham and her sisters’ romances complicate everything.
It is the classic story of first impressions proved wrong, and the model for countless later romances. Austen’s wit about money, class and marriage makes it an accessible way into classic fiction for readers who think the classics are not for them.
Read it if you want a witty, accessible classic with a romance at its centre.
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank · 1947
From June 1942 to August 1944, Anne Frank kept a diary while her Jewish family hid from the Nazis in the sealed-off rooms of an annex behind her father’s company building in Amsterdam, concealed by a movable bookcase. She died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Her father, Otto Frank, had the diary published in Dutch as Het Achterhuis.
It is one of the most personal ways into the history of the Holocaust: the voice of a teenager writing about family quarrels, growing up, fear and hope. It has been translated into more than 70 languages.
Read it if you want to understand the Holocaust through one young person’s own words.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
Narrated by Nick Carraway, the novel follows his mysterious neighbour Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire who throws lavish parties on Long Island in the hope of winning back Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loved before the war. Old money, new money and careless wealth collide over one summer in the 1920s.
It is short, but it is often taught as the defining story of the American Dream, self-invention and the limits of wealth. It suits readers who want a classic they can finish in a weekend.
Read it if you want a short classic about ambition, wealth and reinvention.
Read my full recommendation →Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl · 1946
The Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl describes his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and what he observed about how prisoners endured or gave up. The second part introduces logotherapy, his approach to psychotherapy built on the search for meaning.
Frankl’s conclusion, that people keep the freedom to choose their attitude even in extreme suffering, is why the book is recommended so widely. It is short and can be read in a few sittings, but readers often return to it.
Read it if you want a short book about finding meaning in the hardest circumstances.
Read my full recommendation →Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954
A group of British schoolboys survive a plane crash and find themselves alone on an uninhabited island. They try to organise themselves with rules, a leader and a signal fire, but the order breaks down as fear, rivalry and the thrill of the hunt take over, and the island turns violent.
It is perhaps the best-known fictional argument that cruelty lies just beneath the surface of civilised behaviour, and it is still cited whenever people discuss human nature. It suits readers who want a gripping story with a big question behind it.
Read it if you want the classic story about what happens when the rules disappear.
Read my full recommendation →The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
After being expelled from Pencey Prep, a boarding school in Pennsylvania, Holden Caulfield spends a long weekend wandering New York City before going home. He drifts between hotels, bars and old acquaintances, scornful of the "phony" adults around him and struggling with loss and loneliness.
Holden’s voice made the novel a touchstone for writing about adolescence, alienation and lost innocence. It was also among the most challenged books in American schools for decades, which is part of its reputation.
Read it if you want the classic novel about feeling out of place as a teenager.
Educated
Tara Westover · 2018
Tara Westover grew up in an isolated survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho, where her father distrusted doctors, the government and public schools. She had no formal schooling before entering Brigham Young University at 17, and went on to study at Cambridge, where she completed a PhD, and at Harvard.
It is the most recent book on this list and one of the most widely recommended memoirs of its decade. It explores family loyalty against the right to think for yourself, and what education can change about a life.
Read it if you want a modern memoir about education, family and becoming yourself.
Read my full recommendation →Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987
In Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873, Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, lives at 124 Bluestone Road, a house haunted by the ghost of her dead daughter. When a young woman calling herself Beloved arrives, the past Sethe has tried to bury returns. The story was inspired by Margaret Garner, who fled slavery in Kentucky in 1856.
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, and Morrison received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. It asks for close attention, and suits readers ready for a demanding novel about memory and the human cost of slavery.
Read it if you are ready for a demanding novel about slavery, memory and motherhood.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 1967
First published in Spanish as Cien años de soledad, the novel follows seven generations of the Buendía family in Macondo, a fictional town founded by José Arcadio Buendía. Wars, love affairs, inventions and miracles pass through the town, with the supernatural treated as ordinary.
It is perhaps the best-known example of magical realism and a central work of Latin American literature; García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Netflix adapted it as a series from 2024. Keeping a family tree to hand helps.
Read it if you want a sweeping family saga where the magical feels everyday.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
Rodion Raskolnikov, a poor former law student in Saint Petersburg, convinces himself that an extraordinary man may cross moral lines for a greater purpose, and murders an old pawnbroker with an axe. The novel follows his feverish guilt, his duel of wits with the investigator Porfiry Petrovich and his bond with Sonya Marmeladova.
It is a psychological crime novel in which the question is not who did it but what it does to him. It suits readers who want a Russian classic with the tension of a thriller.
Read it if you want a Russian classic that reads like a psychological thriller.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 2011
The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, drawing on lectures he gave at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, tells the story of Homo sapiens through four turning points: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the unification of humankind and the Scientific Revolution. First published in Hebrew; English edition 2014.
Its central argument, that humans dominate because they cooperate in large numbers around shared stories such as gods, nations, money and human rights, gives readers a big-picture frame for the rest of history.
Read it if you want one book that puts the whole of human history in perspective.
I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb · 2013
Malala Yousafzai describes her childhood in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where her father ran schools, and the rise of the Pakistani Taliban, who banned girls from going to school. She recounts writing about life under the Taliban for the BBC under a pseudonym, the 2012 attack on her school bus, and her recovery in Birmingham.
It is a first-hand account of the fight for girls’ right to an education, written by someone who was a teenager at the time. In 2014 she shared the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming its youngest laureate.
Read it if you want a first-hand story of courage and the right to education.
Read my full recommendation →Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke · 1929
Ten letters Rilke wrote between 1902 and 1908 to Franz Xaver Kappus, a young military academy student who had sent him his poems for criticism. Kappus published them after Rilke’s death. Rilke says little about technique and a great deal about solitude, patience and looking inward.
Its best-known advice, to live the questions rather than force answers, reaches well beyond poetry. It is the shortest book on this list, easy to read in an evening and to return to at different stages of life.
Read it if you want a short book of advice to return to at different stages of life.
Read my full recommendation →Which book should you read first?
The best starting point depends on what you want from a book.
- For the classic starting point — To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
- For a short read you can finish in a weekend — The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
- For a true story told in a young voice — The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
- For a modern memoir — Educated by Tara Westover (2018)
- For the big picture of human history — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011)
- For a novel with the tension of a thriller — Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
What is the one book everyone should read?
There is no single answer, but To Kill a Mockingbird tops Goodreads’ reader-voted list of books everyone should read at least once, with Pride and Prejudice and The Diary of a Young Girl close behind.
Which books on this list are non-fiction?
The Diary of a Young Girl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Educated, Sapiens, I Am Malala and Letters to a Young Poet are non-fiction. The rest are novels.
Which books on this list are the shortest?
Letters to a Young Poet can be read in an evening, and The Great Gatsby and Man’s Search for Meaning are short enough for a weekend.
Which classic should I start with if I find classics difficult?
The Great Gatsby is short and Pride and Prejudice is witty and easy to follow. 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird are also very readable for their age.
Are there modern books on the list?
Yes. Educated (2018), I Am Malala (2013) and Sapiens (first published in 2011) are the most recent, alongside classics going back to 1813.
Which books on this list have won major prizes?
To Kill a Mockingbird and Beloved both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Malala Yousafzai shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
Pick the book that answers the question you are asking right now. The rest of the list will still be here when you are ready for the next one.
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