65 books everyone should read before they die

This laugh-out-loud collection of short stories makes for great leisurely reading. In Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris shares the absurd and hysterical twists he’s able to round out of life’s more mundane and boring events growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina. The book continues as Sedaris moves to France, where he also shares the awkwardly charming stories of learning to live in a city and country that’s not at all familiar.

Calliope Helen Stephanides was born in Detroit in 1960, the heyday of Motor City, to a Greek-American family who lived the quintessentially suburban American life. Moving out of the city, Calliope is faced with a self-realisation that she’s not like other girls, and it takes uncovering a family secret (and an astonishing genetic history) to understand why. Middlesex is an audacious story of sexuality that transcends stereotypes of gender, sex, and identity.

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight on August 15, 1947. That is precisely the moment India became an independent state. Greeted with fireworks and fanfare, Sinai, as well as 1,000 other “midnight’s children” across India, soon find their health, well-being, thoughts, and capabilities are preternaturally linked to one another—and to their country’s national affairs, health, and power. In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie writes a beautifully enchanting story of family, heritage, and duty.

The Oakland Athletics were written off, discarded, and sure to be ignored. Yet, somehow, they became one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Was it their throwing talent or their ERA? No, not at all. Instead, as Michael Lewis details in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the real secret to winning baseball has very little to do with skills and more to do with statistics. In what’s been described as “the single most influential baseball book ever,” Lewis reveals the secrets of the A’s and an unusual brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts who’ve identified the real secret to being a winning ball team.

You’ll take no larger life lesson away from W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, and perhaps that’s what makes this novel so irresistible. The orphaned protagonist, Philip Carey, is eager for adventure and love outside his brief stays in Heidelberg and Paris. Soon, he lands in London, eager to explore, and stumbles upon his greatest adventure yet, Mildred. The irresistible waitress and roaming orphan embark on a wildly fanciful but tortured and tormented affair.

The book On the Road recounts a hedonistic cross-country road trip between friends in the aftermath of World War II, a storyline inspired by Jack Kerouac’s own adventures with friend Neal Cassady. Eager to find meaning and true experiences along the way, the duo seeks pleasures in drug-fuelled escapades and counterculture experiences.

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa recounts life in British East Africa, just after World War II. While the collection of stories is not free of the racial bias and colonial attitudes of the time, Out of Africa gives a glimpse into an area of the world that’s largely overlooked when telling the coming-of-age narrative of modern countries. Fanciful and fascinating, Dinesen’s book portrays stories of lion hunts and life with native populations and European colonisers, alongside a beautiful story of raising and freeing an orphaned antelope fawn.

This powerful graphic novel tells the story of Satrapi, a young girl living in Tehran during the overthrow of the Shah, the rise of the Islamic Revolution, and the destruction of the Iran-Iraq war. As a daughter of two Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Satrapi holds a unique perspective and position in recounting stories of daily life in Iran. Learn, alongside Satrapi, about the history and heroes that define this fascinating country.

Deemed highly controversial and too explicit when it was first published, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint is a vividly brash look at sexuality, obscenities, masturbation, and identity. The novel is a monologue of “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor,” that details many awkward and cringe-worthy moments alongside quests for identity. It remains a landmark published piece in American literature, and after you read it, you’ll most certainly never look at a piece of liver the same way.

Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice adorned shelves of many a learned reader in the 1800 and 1900s, but its timeless story and lessons earn it a spot on many home libraries even today. When eligible young men arrive in their neighbourhood, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett must prepare their five eager daughters for the role of a lifetime—finding and marrying a husband. While the wit and humour of the sisters keep the pages flipping, the story also serves as a harbinger for hasty mistakes and erred judgments.