Looking for a Long Read?

close up of books on shelf

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

Some say we may need to be ready to practice “social distancing” for up to three months. All the things outside the home are off the schedule for now. This might be the time for a long read, one of those big fat books you have thought you’d never have the time to read. Maybe you have it already on your TBR pile, but if not, my good friends at Bob on Books on Facebook gave a great list of recommendations from 82 different authors.

  • Hervey Allen, Anthony Adverse
  • Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy
  • Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
  • Paul Auster, 4321
  • Robert Bolano, 2666
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
  • Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
  • John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
  • Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
  • Ron Chernow, Grant
  • Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
  • Stephen Clarke, 1000 Years of Annoying the France
  • James Clavell, Sho Gun
  • Thomas B. Costain, The Tontine
  • Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
  • Daniel DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe
  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov
  • Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton
  • Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
  • Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer
  • Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White
  • James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan
  • Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
  • Diana Gabaldon, Outlander series.
  • Neil Gaiman, American Gods
  • Benito Pérez Galdós, Los Episodios Nacionales
  • Alex Haley, Roots
  • Pete Hamill, Forever
  • Jan de Hartog, The Peaceable Kingdom
  • Frank Herbert, The Dune Saga
  • Joe Hill, The Fireman
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Battlefield Earth
  • Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
  • Greg Iles, Natchez Burning
  • John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
  • Walter Isaacson, Leonard da Vinci
  • Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
  • Stephen King, 11-22-63, IT, The Stand, Under The Dome
  • Karleen Koen, Through a Glass Darkly (and subsequent novels)
  • Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
  • Wally Lamb, I Know This Much is True
  • Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
  • Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
  • Robert Ludlum, Prometheus Deception
  • Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings, The Executioner’s Song
  • George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones
  • Greg Matthews, Power in the Blood
  • Anne McCaffrey, Pern series
  • Robert McCammon, Boy’s Life
  • Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
  • Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
  • Herman Melville, Typee
  • James Michener, Hawaii, Texas, The Covenant, The Source
  • Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
  • Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
  • Felix Palma, The Map of Time, The Map of the Sky, The Map of Chaos
  • Christopher Paolini, Eragon
  • Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist
  • Marcel Proust, In Search Of Lost Time
  • Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  • Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic
  • Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking With Destiny
  • Nora Roberts, Year One Trilogy
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice & Salt
  • J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series.
  • Salman Rushdie, Quichotte
  • Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
  • Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
  • John Steinbeck, East of Eden
  • Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
  • Kathryn Stockett, The Help
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  • Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales
  • Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina,War and Peace
  • Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
  • David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
  • Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
  • Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

This is an uncurated list. I only left out a couple of religious books, The Bible and The Lost Books of the Bible. I can’t guarantee you will like all the books on the list. But there is probably something you will like. But there is probably something here for most tastes. I didn’t specify what “long” means, so the recommendations are of various lengths. Whatever you choose, when you finish, there will be plenty left to read. And one thing you don’t have to worry too much about with this list in this anxious time is what you will read next.

2 thoughts on “Looking for a Long Read?

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