The team members of LitBridge have all compiled their favorite books. Please check out some of our personal suggestions for books that you should read. LitBridge is always adding more to this list so always check back for more. If you think we should include a book, then let us know. We are always happy to check out a new book for consideration to our list of favorite books.

Fiction Books 

1. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

2. Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver

3. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

5. I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay

6. Sleepless Nights (New York Review Books Classics) by Elizabeth Hardwick

7. How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life by Shiela Heti

8. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

9. Jesus’ Son: Stories by Denis Johnson

10. The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits

11. Other Electricities: Stories by Ander Monson

12. Like Life by Lorrie Moore

13. Lives of Girls and Women: A Novel by Alice Munro

14. Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel by Haruki Murakami

15. Inferno: (a Poet’s Novel) by Eileen Myles

16. Housekeeping: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson

17. Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee by James Tate

18. This Is Not It by Lynne Tillman

19. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

20. Native Son (Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations) by Richard Wright

Nonfiction Books 

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

2. Terrain of Loss: Afghan Exiles in Their Own Land by Andrea Camuto

3. Columbine by David Cullen

4. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

5. The Life of an American Slave by Fredrick Douglass

6. One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir by Paul Guest

7. Confessions of a Plagiarist: And Other Tales from School by Kevin Kopelson

8. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

9. Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures by Mary Ruefle

10. Notes from Disappearing Lake: The River Journals of Robert Sund by Robert Sund

11. My Life with Pablo Neruda by Matilde Urrutia

12. This Boy’s Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff

13. The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young

Poetry Books 

1. Internal West by Priscilla Becker

2. Take It by Joshua Beckman

3. Saint Monica by Mary Biddinger

4. Cottonlandia: Poems (Juniper Prize for Poetry) by Rebecca Black

5. Blind Rain: Poems by Bruce Bond

6. Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems by Traci Brimhall

7. Apocalyptic Swing by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

8. Mistaking The Sea For Green Fields (Akron Series in Poetry) by Ashley Capps

9. What Is Amazing (Wesleyan Poetry Series) by Heather Christle

10. A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World: Poems by Adam Clay

11. Punchline by Nick Courtright

12. The Last Predicta by Chad Davidson

13. A Real Time of It by Sally Delehant

14. When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz

15. Cooling Board: A Long Playing Poem by Mitchell L.H. Douglas

16. Suck on the Marrow by Camille T. Dungy

17. True Bride by Amy Gerstler

18. Threshold Songs (Wesleyan Poetry Series) by Peter Gizzi

19. Pigafetta Is My Wife by Joe Hall

20. 31 Letters and 10. Dreams: Poems by Richard Hugo

21. Victory by Ben Kopel

22. The Silhouettes by Lily Ladewig

23. Elegy (Pitt Poetry Series) by Larry Levis

24. The Radio Tree by Corey Marks

25. Club Icarus by Matt W. Miller

26. The City, Our City by Wayne Miller

27. Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano

28. Whale in the Woods by Blueberry Morningsnow

29. Los versos del capitan/ The Captain’s Verses (Spanish Edition) by Pablo Neruda

30. Sweet Nothing by Nate Pritts

31. Robinson Alone by Kathleen Rooney

32. The World Doesn’t End by Charles Simic

33. Predatory (Pitt Poetry Series) by Glenn Shaheen

34. I Live in a Hut (Cleveland State University Poetry Center: New Poetry) by S.E. Smith

35. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary by King Solomon

36. Dust and Conscience by Truong Tran

37. The Colony by Jillian Marie Weise

38. Words Before Dawn by William Wenthe

39. The Branch Will Not Break: Empty-Grave Extended Edition by James Wright