Popular Culture: Recommended Books for Adults
Damn good stories, but not much thinking needed
Author Title
1) Jane Austin - Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility
2) Edith Wharton - House of Mirth and Age of Innocence
3) Willa Cather - My Antonia (and her other short stories)
4) Truman Capote - The Grass Harp and My Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5) Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles
6) Rachel Ingalls - Mrs Caliban (and her other books of short stories).
7) Amy Tan - The Joy Luck Club andThe Kitchen God’s Wife
9)) Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek
10) Donna Tart The Secret History
11) Barbara Kingsolver The Prodigal Summer
12) Philipa Gregory The Other Boleyn Girl
Bittersweet Books (Sad books that make you feel good anyway)
1) George Eliot Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss
2) Kate Chopin The Awakening
3) Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
4) Marilyn French The Women’s Room and The Bleeding Heart
5) Marge Piercy -- Woman on the Edge of Time
6) Gloria Naylor -- The Women of Brewster Place
7) Isabelle Allende The House of Spirits and Daughter of Fortune
8) Michael Dorris -- The Yellow Raft in Blue Water
9) Julia Alvarez -- In the Time of the Butterflies and YO!
10) Greg Macguire Wicked
11) Sheri Reynolds Bitterroot Landing
12) Barbara Kingsolver -- Poisonwood Bible
13) Banana Yoshimoto-- Kitchen
14) Lynn Tsukiyama The Samauri Garden, Women of the Silk
15) Armisted Maupin Maybe the Moon
16) Chris Bohjalian Midwives
17) Anita Diamont The Red Tent
18) Anchee Minn The Red Azalea
19) Sena Jeta Aslund Ahab’s Wife
20) Arundati Roy God of Small Things
21) Louise Erdrich Love Medicine
22) Tess Holthe When the Elephants Dance
23) Kholeid Hosseini The Kite Runner and Thousand Splendid Suns
Just Plain Sad Books, But Worth the Tears
1) Primo Levi The Drowned and the Saved and The Reawakening
2) Keri Hulme The Bone People
3) Saphire Push
4 ) Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance
Memoirs: Books that Make You Reflect
1) Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own
2) Alice Walker Living By the Word
3) Rebecca Walker’s memior Black, White, Jewish: An Autobiography of a Shifting Self
4) Janet McDonald Project Girl
5) Masha Gessen Esther and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War
6) John Perkins -- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (not funny, but compelling)
7) Shirin Ebadi --- Iran Awakening
Funny Books/Memoirs
1) Annie Lamott -- Operating Instructions: A Diary of My Son’s First Year
2) David Sedaris -- Naked; most of his books!
3) Marion Winik -- The Lunch Box Chronicles
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