The dystopic books that warn us of what we could be.

1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Giver (and yes, you should still read The Giver even if you’re an adult if you’ve never read it before).

But the first book that flashed through my mind when I read the question was Slaughterhouse Five.

Hmm, considering your religious upbringing you might want to try some absurdist literature to break the mold.

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The Cyberiad
• Discworld
• The Little Prince

These are accessible too, as you’re not used to reading yet.

I can also recommend subscribing to a monthly magazine and making a point to read it from cover to cover. That way your skills will improve. You can also buy a whole stack of old national geographics cheaply. This will expand your horizons.

For literature I find 100 years of Solitude to be without equal. An absolute joy to read.

For nonfiction I have learned so much from 1491. It was recommended to me by a friend though I have never heard of it elsewhere. The premise is that basically everything we think about Native Americans before Columbus arrived is wrong. I could go on but here is one tidbit: we tend to think of Native Americans as peoples without government. Now of course there are so many different groups of peoples all over the Americas and across so many eras it’s foolish to even think of them as being this way or that way because who and when are you referring to? But there were many types of government. In fact the Incas were total bureaucrats! Anyway I’m doing a poor job selling it i know but it’s a great read.

For self-help try How to Win Friends and Influence People. I know the title sounds like it’s a guide to manipulation but it’s really not. It’s 100 years old but still holds up so well. Times change, but people don’t, you know what I mean? People 100 years later still appreciate it when you remember their name and look them in the eye and make time to listen.

While other books have made a larger personal impact, Piranesi is a wonderful, easy to read mystery novel with a charming, innocent protagonist that I wish I could read for the first time all over again.

It’s only a couple hundred pages as well, as opposed to the thousand page monsters many people love.

Fahrenheit 451 is certainly worth a read. I read it late in life, and could see immediately why it’s so often read in schools. Very well written, and a compelling story.

Another book that you may find quite personally compelling is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (Archive.org has a free audio book version), due to the themes it covers.

• Catch 22
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (series)

As far as good storytelling, some of my favs are:

• The count of monte cristo
• The arabian nights
• 100 years of solitude
• The silmarillion
• A confederacy of dunces
• The three musketeers

I have a very long ranked list, but there’s a few.

• All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing are beautiful western novels by Cormac McCarthy. Both are very much “a boy and his horse” kind of stories about learning to be yourself. They’re loosely related and there’s a third book that brings the boys together and concludes their stories

• The Jungle and Oil! by Upton Sinclair are novelizations of Sinclair’s investigative journalism work in the meat packing industry and the nascent workers rights movement respectively. Oil! was very loosely adapted into the film There Will Be Blood (the film covers maybe the first 3-4 chapters by greatly expanding upon the material

• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen was a very impactful book for me as a child. It’s a YA novel, but still worth a read. The main character Brian survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and is forced to find a way to survive on his own

A few more recent novels that I enjoyed:

• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Won the 2024 Booker Prize (best English language novel) about an authoritarian government taking power in Ireland and how that unfolds from the perspective of a mother with young children. It’s a hard read, but very well written

• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. Translated into English. A friend described it as “sexy witches in South America deal with authoritarian rule.” And that’s pretty close…

• Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park. A semi-fictionalized history of the Korean Peninsula and the desire to have a unified identity. Many people come to the peninsula (same bed) with very different goals for its use (different dreams). Really fascinating book and engaging

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Follows a trio of friends as they explore the world of video game design. Starts in the early 80s and runs through the 2000s. Reminder me very much of the show Halt and Catch Fire.

• My Friends by Hisham Matar. Follows a Libyan immigrant living in England in the 80s through 2010s as he wrestles with his identity, his homeland, his friends and family. Khaled’s closest friends serve as foils to his own feelings, reacting to the same circumstances very differently from himself

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one the books I read during my formative years that I still think about a lot.

If you like graphic novels, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman is fantastic. Great writing and great artwork.

How about some pre-transhuman solarpunk? I recommend my favorite book, Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. It’s about the birth pangs of a post scarcity society. Absolutely brilliant.

From a philosophy standpoint, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s a brutally tough read, but a very interesting perspective of a Holocaust survivor and some of the more “mundane” parts (which were still horrific) in between the parts most people know about. The philosophy that follows is interesting.

It’s certainly not without it’s faults and criticisms, though.

The Stranger by Albert Camus, Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and the entire short story collection of Edgar Allan Poe

The best science fiction has to offer:

Metro 2033

Sphere

Jurassic Park

Roadside Picnic

Metamorphosis

Add from Stephen King:

Night Shift

4 Minutes to Midnight

(Both are novellas/story collections)

And also:

The Call of Cthulhu and other weird tales

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I can never stop recommending The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.

Its some of the most beautiful, cozy writing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, all wrapped in queer and race allegory and science fiction splendour.

Please read it.