Ultimate Lockdown Reading List: 100 Best Reads

‘I want to read more but I just never have the time’ – sound familiar? Now that coronavirus has officially wiped out all of our social commitments, as well as many of our professional ones, a lot of us have found ourselves locked indoors with much more time on our hands. I thought I’d put together a list of 100 books, including ones that I’ve already loved, enjoyed, and would recommend, and a few that I haven’t yet made it to but are on my personal to-read list. I’ve split the list into 10 categories, so whether you’re a seasoned reader, a fiction-phobic, a classic-lover, or a self-help fiend, there should be something on this list to tickle your pickle. I’ve also linked them all for ease of finding them (note: these are affiliate links)!

Short Books

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell
2. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
3. The Vegetarian by Hang Kang
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
6. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
7. Night by Elie Wiesel
8. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
9. Silas Marner by George Eliot
10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Long Books

1. Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
3. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
7. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
8. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
9. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
10. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Classics

1. Emma by Jane Austen
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitzgerald
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. A Room with a View by E M Forster
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
8. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
9. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Comedy/Romance

1. Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
2. Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding
3. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
4. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
5. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
6. The Flat Share by Beth O’Leary
7. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
8. Eleanor Oliphant Is Compltely Fine by Gail Honeyman
9. Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
10. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Children’s Literature

1. The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling
2. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
3. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
4. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend
5. Matilda by Roald Dahl
6. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. 5 Children and It by E. Nesbitt
8. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
10. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Non-Fiction

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
2. The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell
3. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
4. Educated by Tara Westover
5. This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
7. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
8. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
10. Inside Vogue: My Diary of Vogue’s 100th Year by Alexandra Shulman

Self-Help

1. The Stress Solution by Rangan Chatterjee
2. You are a Badass by Jen Sincero
3. You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
4. Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
5. Atomic Habits by James Clear
6. Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl
7. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
8. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
9. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Richard Covey
10. The Anxiety Solution by Chloe Brotheridge

Thriller/Mystery

1. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
2. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
3. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
4. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
5. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
7. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
8. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
9. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
10. One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

Historical Fiction

1. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
4. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
5. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
6. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
7. The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gower
8. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
9. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
10. Human Acts by Han Kang

Fiction

1. Tin Man by Sarah Winman
2. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
3. Normal People by Sally Rooney
4. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
5. Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
6. Everything I Never Told Your by Celeste Ng
7. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
8. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
9. Brooklyn by Colm Tobin
10. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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