Recommended Reading/sub

An overview of literature and genre fiction recommended by /lit/.

Literature

By format

Novellas
Heart of a Dog (1925) by Mikhail Bulgakov	Dream Story (1926) by Arthur Schnitzler	Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad	Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) by Nathanael West	Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
A Room of One's Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
First Love (1860) by Ivan Turgenev
A Pale View of Hills (1982) by Kazuo Ishiguro
Around the World in 80 Days (1873) by Jules Verne
At the Mountains of Madness (1931) by H.P. Lovecraft
Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) by Herman Melville
Billy Budd (1888) by Herman Melville
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
Candide (1759) by Voltaire
Cannery Row (1945) by John Steinbeck
Junky (1953) by William S. Burroughs
Master and Man (1895) by Leo Tolstoy
The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka
Botchan (1906) by Natsume Soseki
The Horla (1887) by Guy de Maupassant
Looking Backward (1887) by Edward Bellamy
Child of God (1973) by Cormac McCarthy
Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck	Nausea (1938) by Jean-Paul Sartre	Notes from Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoevsky	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) by Solzhenitsyn	The Ballad of Sad Cafe (1951) by Carson McCullers
Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Daisy Miller (1878) by Henry James
Death in Venice (1912) by Thomas Mann
Night (1955) by Elie Wiesel
No One Writes the Colonel (1961) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mathilda (1820) by Mary Shelley
Pedro Paramo (1955) by Juan Rulfo
Snow Country (1947) by Yasunari Kawabata
South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) by Haruki Murakami
Diary of a Madman (1835) by Nikolai Gogol
Dusklands (1974) by J.M. Coetzee
Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton
The Dying Animal (2001) by Phillip Roth
Outer Dark (1968) by Cormac McCarthy
Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) by George Eliot
Everyman (2006) by Phillip Roth
The Fox (1923) by D.H. Lawrence
The Girl With the Golden Eyes (1833) by Honore de Balzac
Seize the Day (1956) by Saul Bellow
Siddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse
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Contemporary Novellas
1970s
Dark Spring (1970) by Unica Zurn	The White Ship (1970) by Chinghiz Aitmatov	Flats/Quake (1971-4) by Rudolph Wurlitzer	Love (1971) by Angela Carter	Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine (1972) by Stanley Crawford
Further 1970s
The Summer Book (1972) by Tove Jansson
Motorman (1972) by David Ohle
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972) by Peter Handke
Roadside Picnic (1972) by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Asleep in the Sun (1973) by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry (1973) by B.S. Johnson
Telegram (1973) by Putu Wijaya
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1974) by Heinrich Boll
For Love of Norway (1975) by Pal Espolin Johnson
Travesty (1976) by John Hawkes
Journey into the Past (1976) by Stefan Zweig
P’s Three Women (1977) by Paulo Emilio Slaes Gomes
Fatale (1977) by Jean-Patrick Manchette
The Hour of the Star (1977) by Clarice Lispector
The Painter of Signs (1977) by R.K. Narayan
Secret Rendezvous (1977) by Kobo Abe
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (1978) by Danilo Kis
Sleepless Nights (1979) by Elizabeth Hardwick
Volcano (1979) by Shusaku Endo
1980s
The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980) by Bruce Chatwin	A Month in the Country (1980) by J.L. Carr	A Bohemian Youth (1980) by Josef Hirsal	Loitering With Intent (1981) by Muriel Spark	Concrete (1982) by Thomas Bernhard
Further 1980s
So the Wind Won’t Blow it All Away (1982) by Richard Brautigan
The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town (1982) by Amos Tutuola
The Assault (1982) by Harry Mulisch
The Wine of Astonishment (1982) by Earl Lovelace
A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) by R.K. Narayan
Mr. Palomar (1983) by Italo Calvino
The Cannibal Galaxy (1983) by Cynthia Ozick
Alladin's Problem (1984) by Ernst Junger
The Lover (1984) by Marguerite Duras
In the Dutch Mountains (1984) by Cees Nooteboom
Isle of Dreams (1985) by Hino Keizo
Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas (1983-6) by Can Xue
Stone in a Landslide (1985) by Maria Barbal
The Day the Leader was Killed (1985) by Naguib Mahfouz
In the Country of Last Things (1987) by Paul Auster
The Pigeon (1987) by Patrick Suskind
Kitchen (1988) by Banana Yoshimoto
The Swordfish (1989) by Hugo Claus
Mister Blue (1989) by Jacques Poulin
1990s
Kaddish for an Unborn Child (1990) by Imre Kertesz	The Following Story (1991) by Cees Nooteboom	Chaos and All That (1991) by Lui Sola	Babyfucker (1992) by Urs Allemann	The Death of the Author (1992) by Gilbert Adai
Further 1990s
Angels and Insects (1992) by A.S. Byatt
The Other City (1993) by Michal Ajvaz
Loving Sabotage (1993) by Amelie Nothomb
The Marx Family Saga (1993) by Juan Goytisolo
The Crime Studio (1994) by Steve Aylett
Shyness and Dignity (1994) by Dag Solstad
Of Love and Other Demons (1994) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pereira Declares (1994) by Antonio Tabucchi
Phosphor in Dreamland (1995) by Rikki Ducornet
Panther in the Basement (1995) by Amos Oz
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (1996) by Kim Young-ha
Escape Hatch (1996) by Vladimir Makanin
The Diary of Mr. Pinke (1995) by Ewald Murrer
Reader's Block (1996) by David Markson
A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family (1998) by Peter Dimock
Kneller's Happy Campers (1998) by Etgar Keret
Honk if you Love Aphrodite (1999) by Daniel Evan Weiss
The Literary Conference (1999) by Cesar Aira
Earth and Ashes (1999) by Atiq Rahimi
2000s
In Her Absence (2000) by Antonio Munoz Molina	Kafka's Leopards (2000) by Moacyr Scliar	The Colors of Infamy (2000) by Albert Cossery	Tales of Galicia (2001) by Andrzej Stasiuk	Besides the Sea (2001) by Veronique Olmi
Further 2000s
Inez (2001) by Carlos Fuentes
Bait (2001) by David Albahari
Europeana (2001) by Patrik Ourednik
Good Morning Comrades (2001) by Ondjaki
All This Belongs to Me (2002) by Petra Hulova
Conversations with Spinoza (2002) by Gocec Smilevski
In the Flesh (2002) by Christa Wolf
Agape Agape (2002) by William Gaddis
The Blue Fox (2003) by Sjon
Piano (2003) by Jean Echenoz
The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003) by Yoko Ogawa
The Book of Words (2004) by Jenny Erpenbeck
Moving Parts (2004) by Magdalena Tulli
Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest (2005) by Amos Oz
Bonsai (2006) by Alejandro Zambra
The Waitress Was New (2008) by Dominique Fabre
The North of God (2008) by Steve Stern
The Hermaphrodite (2009) by Daniel Grandbois
Next World Novella (2009) by Matthias Politycki
2010s
The Brothers (2010) by Asko Sahlberg	Lightning (2010) by Jean Echenoz	Train Dreams (2011) by Denis Johnson	Down the Rabbit Hole (2011) by Juan Pablo Villalobos
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Short Story Collections
Classic
A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant	First Love and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev	The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy	Three Tales by Gustav Flaubert	Dead Men Tell No Tales by Emile Zola
Further classic collections
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
The Kruezter Sonata and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892–1895 by Anton Chekhov
The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896–1904 by Anton Chekhov
Carmen and Other Stories by Prosper Merimee
Modern
Elephant by Raymond Carver	Dubliners by James Joyce	Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges	Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway	South of No North by Charles Bukowski
Further modern collections
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Short Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In the Heart of the Country by William Gass
Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner
The Return by Andrei Platonov
The Collected Short Stories by Roald Dahl
Contemporary
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace	The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami	Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño	The Dog of the Marriage by Amy Hempel	Life After God by Douglas Coupland
Further contemporary collections
How We are Hungry by Dave Eggers
Drown by Junot Diaz
Break it Down by Lydia Davis
No One Belongs Here More than You by Miranda July
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Flash Fiction Collections
Pre-1950
The Waste Books by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg	The Complete Fables of Jean de la Fontaine	Nature Stories by Jules Renard	Microscripts by Robert Walser	Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms
Further Pre-1950
Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon
The Collected Stories by Colette
The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights
41 Stories by O. Henry
Post-1950
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata	Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth	The Voice Imitator by Thomas Bernhard	The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus	Metrophilias by Brendan Connell
Further Post-1950
The Book of Fables by W.S. Merwin
The Nimrod Flip-out by Etgar Keret
Murder in the Dark by Margaret Atwood
The Collected Stories by Lydia Davis
AM/PM by Amelia Gray
The Black Sheep and Other Fables by Augusto Monterroso
Road-Side Dog by Czeslaw Milosz
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Theatre/Drama
Classical through Medieval
The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles	The Oresteia by Aeschylus	Electra and Other Plays by Euripides	The Complete Plays by Aristophanes	Plays and Fragments by Menander
Classical through Medieval cont.
The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus
Four Tragedies and Octavia by Seneca
The Comedies by Terence
The Loom of Time by Kalidasa
The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim
Japanese Noh Dramas
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Genre fiction

By genre

Fantasy
Epic fantasy
The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien	The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien	The Black Company (1984—) by Glen Cook	The Wheel of Time (1990—) by Robert Jordan	A Song of Ice and Fire (1996—) by George R. R. Martin
Malazan Book (1999–2011) by Steven Erikson	The First Law (2006—) by Joe Abercrombie	The Kingkiller Chronicle (2007—) by Patrick Rothfuss	The Stormlight Archive (2010—) by Brandon Sanderson
Additional epic fantasy
The Silmarillion (1977) by J. R. R. Tolkien
Shannara (1977—) by Terry Brooks
The Swordbearer (1982) by Glen Cook
The Belgariad (1982–1984) by David Eddings
The Deed of Paksenarrion (1992) by Elizabeth Moon
Mistborn (2006–2008) by Brandon Sanderson
Weird fiction
The House on the Borderland (1908) William Hope Hodgson	At the Mountains of Madness (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft	Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Miéville	City of Saints and Madmen (2001) by Jeff VanderMeer	The Emperor of Dreams (2002) by Clark Ashton Smith
Additional weird fiction
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931) by H. P. Lovecraft
Kraken (2010) by China Miéville
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