Before I became someone who writes a lot, I was — and still am — someone who reads a lot. I read constantly, always at least a book a week every year. I own hundreds of books (as if moving in NYC wasn’t enough of a challenge), I live at the library, and I collect bookmarks from every indie store I visit all over the world. What I’ve read absolutely affects how I write, so I thought I’d share the books that have stuck with me and pretty much changed my life.
1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
I’ve read this about 3 million times between childhood and adulthood, and try to read it at least once a year. It’s the best coming-of-age story of all time and even though it takes place a century ago, it’s still a million percent relevant to life today. Human beings transcending time and space and we’re all connected and all that. With each read I pick up on something new, not because I missed it the first hundred times, but because I experience everything I’m reading differently as I grow up and can begin to understand Francie Nolan’s world through a greater perspective. I don’t know any other book that gets me in this way.
2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Someone once told me about philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s concept of the hedgehog and the fox, which separates writers into two categories: hedgehogs, who know a lot about one thing, and foxes, who know a little about a lot of things. In Tolstoy’s case, he was a fox by nature, but wished he was a hedgehog like his contemporary Fyodor Dostoevsky and I think it caused him a lot of inner turmoil but this duality in his classification means he actually knew a lot about literally everything, which is why War and Peace is a thing. It wasn’t the story of this book that drew me in. The story itself is rather simple and has been told a million times before with battles and love triangles and nonsense, but you do NOT read War and Peace for the plot. Oh no, sweet baby angels. The philosophy, the history, the moral code…Tolstoy’s big, beautiful brain is why you read this book. As someone who isn’t a fan of organized religion, this is the closest thing I’ve found to a bible, and I firmly believe all of the answers to the universe can be found within these one thousand pages.
3. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
A beautiful and heartbreaking look at humans who form unlikely connections that help them get by. I somehow identified with both main characters in this book, a 12-year-old girl named Paloma and a middle-aged woman named RenĂ©e who works in Paloma’s building as the concierge. On the surface, the pair couldn’t be more different if they tried, and yet somehow have so much in common. Both are geniuses who hide their true selves from the world in an effort to not stand out, but when an observant new tenant introduces them, it changes both of their lives. I’m crying writing this, not gonna lie. It’s seriously a must-read.
4. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
It’s about baseball on the surface, which intrigued me as a sports writer and fan, but like any brilliant novel it’s really about so much more than that. It’s about ambition and commitment, passion and perfection, failure and redemption. As a perfectionist whose biggest fear is failure, I really identified with the main character, Henry, who makes one bad throw in an entire brilliant career and sees that one moment unravel everything in his life, with him powerless to stop it. In that sense, this book terrified me, but his story also shows that he is a fighter. No matter how bad it gets or how low you are, once you hit bottom the only direction is up.
5. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
One of the best WWII-era novels ever. Beautiful and soul destroying. I want to give this book to everyone I know, but I don’t want to tell anyone anything about it because it’s the kind of book best experienced when you go in cold without knowing anything about anyone. One spoiler alert — you will sob your face off more than once. You’ve been warned.
6. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
I really like books about humans who find ties to each other in the most insane of circumstances, okay?! I don’t even know how to explain this one but basically this author has the power to rip your heart apart with his words. It actually reminds me a bit of War and Peace in that its a story told through wartime, spanning the nearly twenty years of fighting in Chechnya during the 1990s and 2000s, and in that it’s more about life, philosophy, and what it means to be human than about any plot. The author’s manipulation of the English language also really got me, as he can make you feel each of the senses with the power of his words. I also loved that most of the author’s research came from the works of Anna Politkovskaya, the murdered Russian journalist and human rights activist who became known for her opposition to these wars she covered so in-depth. I’ve read much of her work from an academic standpoint, and felt like this book took the stories she told and made them even more human. It felt wholly collaborative despite the two writers never having met.
7. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
As a complete contradiction to the above, which is entirely appropriate for this book, I also really like books about people who literally can’t form human connections because they’re so brilliantly fucked up. I have never been more frustrated or more in love with a character in my life. This guy has been humiliated one too many times and decides to live removed from the rest of the world, become the most petty human on earth, and write a diatribe about the ills of society, which he both reviles and exemplifies. This guy is every contradiction imaginable, with both his thoughts and actions entirely paradoxical. You will pity him, you will hate him, you will be amused by him, you will want to punch him in the face, and worst of all, you will identify with him. It’s more a mirror than a story, and it’s your job to take what you read here, look into that mirror, and refuse to end up like the underground man.
8. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Ă…sne Seierstad
Seierstad is one of my favorite investigative journalists of all time and was literally born to write this book. I was in Oslo during the terrorist attack six years ago, only about a kilometer from the bomb blast. No one knew what was going on, and I spent the rest of the day holed up at the Anker Hostel with other confused and terrified wanderers who had no idea how such a place could be under attack, and I’ve been obsessed with Norwegian politics and multiculturalism ever since. This book is the story of Breivik, the story of his victims, and the story of Norway’s sociopolitical and cultural history all at once. I returned to Oslo earlier this year for the first time since the attacks and to tie it all together, I was able to pick up the Norwegian version of this book, En av oss, which I’m currently slowly but surely making my way through.
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
It’s basically the most perfect young adult novel ever but it’s oh so much more than that. This is the kind of book everyone needs to read, now especially, because while the story is written for younger/teenage readers, the lessons within have clearly escaped many adults who exist today. This book is about how the power of words, and how people — Nazis, in this case — use rhetoric and language to compel or brainwash people to commit atrocities. But words and reading can also open your world and your mind in a way that helps you see past the propaganda, and the power of words can also be used to defy and resist. It’s uncanny how relevant this book is today. A woman was literally murdered yesterday in Virginia because of Donald Trump’s oratory and normalization of hate speech, so despite the cries of “never again” following World War II and the Holocaust, we’re seeing history repeat itself and it’s because so many people take the words from people in power as gospel without using the ability to think for themselves and say hey, this doesn’t seem right. These people are so unaware that they’re being manipulated by people in power, and despite claiming to be Christians and followers of Jesus Christ, these are the people who will commit unspeakable acts of terror and hatred against other human beings, all because of their ignorance. Make it a priority to not be fooled by the people who use words this way.
10. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
This is so a favorite partly because it’s well-written with gorgeous photos to match (seriously, this is one book actually worth the hardcover copy!) but MOSTLY because Lynsey Addario is a badass and one of the coolest women ever to fight for respect in a male-dominated field in regions of the world where women are literally garbage. Let’s all be Lynsey.
HONORABLE MENTION. Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filopovic
I didn’t include this above because it’s not a favorite book in the sense of it being well-written or well-structured, as it’s a child’s wartime diary with no real insight aside from that into her own small world. There are much better books about the siege of Sarajevo, and I wouldn’t necessarily call this ‘good’ in the sense of it being a ‘good book’ but it’s a favorite for other reasons. This is the first book I read that made me interested in international politics and war, and it’s the reason I majored in history in college, studied with an international organization that focuses on post-conflict transformation and international intervention in the Balkans, and finally got to visit Sarajevo in 2015, twenty years after I read Zlata’s story for the first time. As a whole, as I said, it has its problems, especially because it was written for the sole purpose of being published and so was therefore highly manipulated and edited by both Zlata and then actual editors rather than it being a child’s innocent diary that just happened to be published…but that aside, it’s SO important because it’s a child teaching other children about life during wartime and why war is so horrible, and it’s not sugarcoated at all. I was ten when I first read this and most ten-year-olds are completely ignorant about anything but their own lives, but this book made me care and want to learn more about other people outside my tiny suburban bubble and I will forever be grateful to my sixth grade social studies teacher for giving this to me. I still have my original copy and have read it at least five times throughout my life.
Lauren Hopkins 