Reading books is one of the best productive things that you can do anytime. It will entertain you, be with you, and at the same time will uplift you as you have never been. Reading good books will improve your skills, increase your vocabulary, and build your morals. It is a good stress buster and will help you feel your best self.
But it can be confusing to choose the best and suitable books for you. You can spend days choosing the right books as it is a commitment and you form a virtual relationship with the character of the books.
So here are the best books of all genres and types that are suited for everyone.
Read the best books and feel liberated!
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. However, it does not impact our reviews and comparison. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice.
Best Books to Read
All the light we cannot see is one of the best books with the most hauntingly beautiful prose you’ll ever read. It is an enthralling book brimming with rich details that fills all five senses. The metaphor rich text paints a beautiful image that feels like you are experiencing it in real.
The novel by Anthony Doerr follows the parallel lives of its two protagonists- Marie-Laure, a French girl and daughter of a master locksmith at the Natural History Museum in Paris; the other character is Werner Pfenning, a German boy growing up in the mining town of Zollverein. Their life gets intertwined against the brewing conflicts, which soon engulfs not only France and Germany, but most of the world – the Second World War.
This is a carefully constructed book that will captivate you. Both Marie and Werner are sympathetic characters that constantly make you root for them. The novel charters the course of their lives as they struggle to find out whether it is possible to own your life when it is swallowed by the black holes of history!
The book is woven with scientific and philosophical references to light, seeing and not seeing, and the differences between the two. From the chillingly beautiful prose to the realization of what the title actually means, the book will keep you engaged. This is one of the best books dealing with beautiful events and is best for those who are an avid history enthusiast.
This book by Khaled Hosseini is a heartbreaking tale of two women and is set across a time span of thirty years. It is a novel of how the lives of two women who are a generation apart get intertwined when they become the wives of the same man. This is one of those books that is perfect for the people who are losing their faith and hope and worry where their humanity is taking them.
The writing of the novel is so engrossing that you feel like you are magically transported in the city, neighborhood, and the house of those characters. The heart-wrenching portrayal of the harsh conditions by Hosseini is commendable. The novel perfectly portrays the struggle and hardships faced by Afghani after each regime change. After reading this, you feel blessed to live in the fortunate conditions you are living in now.
The book is a sticky, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love which is magical. The book redeems all the Afghanis by showing the two women’s humanity despite the hardships they faced. It shows that the now wretched place
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs and thousand splendid suns that hide behind the walls.
can be illuminated again.
Normal People is one of those books that are weird, awkward, depressing yet you can’t seem to keep that book down. This best-seller by Sally Rooney is not at all a romance novel; it’s a love story- a lonely and depressing love story.
Normal People follows two characters- Connell and Marinanne- through adolescence and into early adulthood. It takes a while to settle into their story. It shows the complexity of their relationship; their relationship is angsty but is painfully real. It is the story of two characters that are so flawed, marred by undesirable characteristics, and yet you won’t stop caring about them. This is not like the books that are out to inspire, instruct, or teach people about relationships. It is simply a novel with unfiltered nostalgia and sentimentality.
Much of the tragedies that befall Marianne and Connell are caused by other people, peer pressure, and social expectations. It creeps under your skin to make you feel the melancholy that someone might give up the person they love the most because they can’t deal with how it makes them look in front of others.
This is one of my favorite books that is written with such precision that it perfectly conjures the tension and emotions. Some days you just want to let those sad feelings sink in and this is one of the best books for the purpose.
This is one of the lesser-known books but is a modern classic portraying the traumatic life of four struggling friends. This is one of the best books with the complete package of astonishing, upsetting, and profoundness.
The book by Hanya Yanagihara follows four friends after they graduate from a small yet prestigious college in Massachusetts. Willem is a kind and talented actor, Malcolm is an aspiring architect in a well-known firm, JB is the sharp and caustic artist and Jude is a mysterious and intelligent litigator. What feels like an average book turns into a tragic and enigmatic tale after knowing Jude’s backstory. The book hones to Jude’s struggle of freeing himself from the demons of his past with the support of his beloved friends.
The book is about love and humanity and the love of friends for each other. The best thing about this book is how well it portrays the power of friendship. Over the decades their friendship endures through spats, early career struggles, JB’s drug addiction, and the traumatic past of Jude and its effects. The novel is refreshing in its depiction of race, gender, and sexual orientation. The book is beautifully written and contains some of the rawest and honest prose you’ll ever have the pleasure or the misfortune of reading.
This is one of the books that you’d like to read when you want to just feel sad and feel good about your own life. It is never explicitly beautiful nor is it flowery but the book has hope thus this the best books to make your time worthwhile.
Life is what you make of it by Preeti Shenoy is one of the best books about love, hope, and how determination can overcome even destiny. This is a heart-warming story of a young girl Ankita who struggles against all odds, gets the ideal life she thought she needed, and then suddenly life as she knows it is disrupted. This is the story of Ankita where she suffers from Bipolar Disorder and how she grows up as a person in the end. The highs of the euphoria to the abyss of crestfall are shown beautifully.
This book represents mental health so clearly that you can’t help feeling anything but helpless. The character is going through major clinical depression and the representation is real and accurate. The book accurately represents how mental health is misunderstood by society and even our parents even when they know how helpless their child is. The term being/feeling depressed will have a new meaning after you finish the book.
This book will make you realize, open your eyes and help you accept the fact that when you are suffering from mental health issues “it’s not you”. It is something out of your control, to heal and grow you need to face the facts and get help. Mental health won’t heal on its own, it’s not a paper cut!
This is one of the best books to read when you are feeling down and need to feel good.
Trigger warning for self-harm and suicidal tendencies.
Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint is one of those books that is richly layered, deep, and thought-provoking, yet at the same time captivating and enthralling. The writing of the book is so engaging that it enables you to get drawn into the story and experience the magic in the same way the protagonist is experiencing.
The novel is set across two time periods. Isabelle Copley—or Izzy is an artist with a gift. Mentored by a reclusive and manic artist named Vincent Rushkin, Izzy learns how to create paintings that act as gateways, bringing across numina from another world who manifests in the forms she paints. But after her relationship with Rushkin sours, Izzy retreats, becomes Isabelle, and turns her back on this gift. Only five years after the suicide of her best friend does Isabelle start confronting the events of twenty years ago.
By telling the story across two time periods we see two different versions of Isabelle that are so engaging and realistic you can’t help but keep reading the book.
Through the book our author Charles de Lint has managed to capture and convey the idea the bitter truth that life is hard, creating is hard, carrying someone else’s responsibility is even harder.
The book deals with the protagonist’s personal journey as it intersects with a larger external conflict. This is one of the best books to read when you feel lazy and want to read something creative or are an art enthusiast. The descriptions of art in the book are so evocative that you would feel the need to rush and create something!
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is an amazing yet daunting novel that you would find hard to forget. The author does an amazing job depicting the settings of the German Holocaust in vivid and exposing certain events that you’d constantly feel the emotional pull towards the character and the story.
The story is made with the point of view of 9-year-old Bruno, from a well standing German family, who arrives home to discover his family is moving from Berlin as his father is appointed as a commander in a faraway region. In the new house isolated from the rest of the world, Bruno finds a window that allows him to see a large area with tiny huts, endless people in striped outfits and a huge wire fenced field. He develops a friendship with Schmuel over a year who lives on the other side of the fence. The impending doom on their friendship is heartbreaking yet gripping.
The book is an easy and fast read and is one of the best books if you want to finish off a book early. This is the story of the doomed friendship between the two boys and an inevitable tragic conclusion.
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is one of the best books that you will keep you at the edge of your seat and is the perfect murder mystery you need when you are bored. This is one of the best books not only because it is a crime story but because it’s a book about life, love, mistakes made, small-town community living, boxing, running, writing and so much more.
The novel by Joel Dicker is about a summer in New Hampshire where, where a struggling author Harry Quebert fell in love with 15-year old Nola- a forbidden love. 33 years later, her body is dug up from his yard, along with the manuscript copy of the novel that secured his last fame making Quebert the only suspect. Markus Goldman, Harry’s once coached student sets out to Somerset to investigate and clear Harry of all the blames. That’s when the mystery unfolds.
This is a unique story in many ways. The calm but formidable build-up of the story you want to go steady and you always keep thinking about what’s going on. This is one of the most engaging books that you must read. The book has twists and surprises until the very last page that makes is one of the most remarkable mystery books.
This is one of those self-help books that you need to stay sane during this tough time of pandemic and quarantine. Seeing the book for the first time will get you pretty revved up about reading it- A bright orange cover with “f*ck” plastered on it definitely gives it your initial attention.
The book by Mark Mason is focused on the idea that “improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. The book challenges your pre-existing notions and shows that it is completely okay to not be positive all the time. This is what we require in our low times like the quarantine, don’t we?
The book has made a lot of solid points. It shows that it’s perfectly fine to not be extraordinary and embrace your limitations, fears, uncertainties, and accept them all.
Trigger Warning: Some people may feel the “bangs all the ladies” behavior of our author a little pretentious and absurd. Certain women might not appreciate the book so be prepared.
Kafka on the Shore is one of the best books that beautifully portray a story about needing to let go and step out of your own reality in order to find out that life is meant to be lived. Kafka on the Shore is a metaphor. It follows no rules and it doesn’t adhere to reason. It fills you up and then it tears you down. This is one of the best books to read when you are bored and need something to fill the gap.
The story by Haruki Murakami starts with the divulgence of a high profile investigation that happened in Second World War. Fast forward five decades and we are introduced to Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old, who runs away from his family to find the truth about himself. We later meet our second main character Nakata, a simpleton who talks to cats. After his retirement, Nakata survives by finding lost cats for people because of his special abilities. At the same time, we meet a whole lot of other people who lack self-awareness, living on the fringe of society. The book is a complete package of a colorful cast that will keep you entertained.
We join Kafka on his journey from a runaway to an enlightened being. You will get a fugue of emotions that you won’t be able to figure out and many different realizations will flood in keeping you occupied all the time.
What I think is this: You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.
Register on Amazon Audible for a free first month trial with your first audio book free and enjoy the best books that you like in the list.
Author Citation: Good Reads
Image Source: Instagram