As part of my New Year resolution I decided to read 52 books this year. One every week. Yes! You might think that sounds a bit superficial and you are right. But it will make me read. A lot.
For that reason I asked my friends to recommend me a book that absolutely has to be on such list. Could be anything. Non-fiction or fiction or even graphic novels.
The only limitation was that the books can´t be tooooo long and could be realistically read in a week (besides work). I am not the fastest reader after all. (Thanks Kay, for recommending The Count of Monte Cristo…)
The below list is what they came back with. I realised again what a diverse and well-read circle of friends I have. There might be an inspirational read for some of you, too. And if you can recommend any further readings…fire away!
OK; now I better start reading…
Books of note – as recommended by my friends
| FICTION | |||
| Title | Author | Kind | Country |
| The Quiet American | Graham Greene | Fiction | UK |
| Lucky Jim | Kingsley Amis | Fiction | UK |
| Ravelstein | Saul Bellow | Fiction | Canada |
| Headhunters | Jo Nesbo | Fiction | Norway |
| Ulysses | James Joyce | Fiction | Ireland |
| Atomised | Michel Houellebecq | Fiction | France |
| I am pilgrim | Terry Hayes | Fiction | UK |
| the pillars of the earth | Ken Follett | Fiction | UK |
| The Waterproof Bible | Andrew Kaufman | Fiction | Canada |
| No Name | Wilkie Collins | Fiction | UK |
| One Thousand and One Nights | Div | Fiction | Div |
| Hector and the Search for Happiness | Francois Lelord | Fiction | France |
| The Martian | andy weir | Fiction | USA |
| The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon | Fiction | USA |
| Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | Fiction | Canada |
| Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage | Haruki Murakami | Fiction | Japan |
| The Innocent | Ian McEwan | Fiction | UK |
| Dead Poets Society | Nancy H Kleinbaum | Fiction | USA |
| ON SEEING THE 100% PERFECT GIRL ONE BEAUTIFUL APRIL MORNING | Haruki Murakami | Fiction | Japan |
| The Execution of Justice | Friedrich Dürrenmatt | Fiction | Switzerland |
| Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | Fiction | Ireland |
| Summerhouse, later | Judith Hermann | Fiction | Germany |
| Wild Swans | Jung Chang | Fiction | China |
| Scarfolk | Richard Littler | Fiction | UK |
| A Heart So White | Javier Marias | Fiction | Spain |
| The Shadow of the Wind | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | Fiction | Spain |
| City of Marvels | Eduardo Garriga | Fiction | Spain |
| Homo Faber | Max Frisch | Fiction | Switzerland |
| The power of the dog | Don Winslow | Fiction | USA |
| Water for elephants | Sara Gruen | Fiction | Canada |
| A fine balance | Rohinton Mistry | Fiction | India |
| Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | Fiction | USA |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | Fiction | USA |
| Orlando | Virginia Woolf | Fiction | UK |
| Rivers of London | Ben Aaronovitch | Fiction | UK |
| Sonnets | William Shakespeare | Fiction | UK |
| Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens | Fiction | UK |
| Neverwhere | Neil Gaiman | Fiction | UK |
| The White Tiger | Aravind Adiga | Fiction | India |
| The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini | Fiction | Afghanistan |
| Anna karenina | Leo Tolstoy | Fiction | Russia |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | Fiction | Russia |
| No one Belongs Here More Than You | Miranda July | Fiction | USA |
| Care of Wooden Floors | Will Wiles | Fiction | UK |
| Celestine Prophecy | James Redfield | Fiction | USA |
| Silk | Alessandro Baricco | Fiction | Italy |
| Lennon is dead | Alexander Osang | Fiction | Germany |
| When the lion feeds | Wilbur Smith | Fiction | South Africa |
| The alchemist | Paulo Coelho | Fiction | Brazil |
| Who Will Run the Frog Hospital | Lorrie Moore | Fiction | USA |
| A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara | Fiction | USA |
| Right Ho, Jeeves | P. G. Wodehouse | Fiction | UK |
| Stories we could tell | Tony Parsons | Fiction | UK |
| Dark Matter | Juli Zeh | Fiction | Germany |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Fiction | Russia |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | Fiction | UK |
| Ham on rye | Charles Bukowski | Fiction | USA |
| a prayer for Owen meany | John Irving | Fiction | USA |
| My cousin Rachel | Daphne Du Maurier | Fiction | UK |
| The 100 year old man climbed out of a window and disappeared | Jonas Jonasson | Fiction | Sweden |
| The Flatey Enigma | Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson | Fiction | Iceland |
| Bamboo Road | Ann Bennett | Fiction | UK |
| Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Fiction | Nigeria |
| The Blizzard | Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin | Fiction | Russia |
| The Discreet Hero | Mario Vargas-Llosa | Fiction | Peru |
| Distant Star | Roberto Bolano | Fiction | Chile |
| The time, the time | Martin Suter | Fiction | Switzerland |
| Friday Night Lights | Buzz Bissinger | Fiction | USA |
| PS, I Love You | Cecelia Ahern | Fiction | Ireland |
| May We Be Forgiven | A. M. Homes | Fiction | USA |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexander Dumas | Fiction | France |
| Capital | john lanchester | Fiction | UK |
| Last Night in Twisted River | John Irving | Fiction | USA |
| Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy | John Le Carre | Fiction | UK |
| The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson | Fiction | UK |
| Anthem | Ayn Rand | Fiction | USA |
| The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Fiction | USA |
| The overcoat | Nikolai Gogol | Fiction | Russia |
| The 39 steps | John Buchan | Fiction | UK |
| Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson | Fiction | USA |
| The Sun also rises | Ernest Hemingway | Fiction | USA |
| Journey to the end of the night | Louis-Ferdinand Celine | Fiction | France |
| Peter and Mary go fishing | Nat Darke | Fiction | East-Germany |
| NON-FICTION | |||
| Becoming Animal | David Abram | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Destiny Disrupted | Tamim Ansary | Non-Fiction | Afghanistan |
| Good Strategy Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill | Matthieu Ricard | Non-Fiction | France |
| EGO | Frank Schirrmacher | Non-Fiction | Germany |
| Debt: The First 5,000 Years | David Graeber | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Pretty Boy | Roy Shaw | Non-Fiction | UK |
| Mr Nice | Howard Marks | Non-Fiction | UK |
| Little Book of Hygge | Meik Wiking | Non-Fiction | Danmark |
| Design your life | Bill Burnett | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Bossypants | Tina Fey | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Me talk pretty one day | David Sedaris | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Shoe Dog | Phil Knight | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Sailing Alone Around the World | Joshua Slocum | Non-Fiction | Canada |
| Sextant | David Barrie | Non-Fiction | UK |
| When Genius Failed | Roger Lowenstein | Non-Fiction | USA |
| The Big Short | Michael Lewis | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future | Ashlee Vance | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Into Thin Air | Jon Krakauer | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Extreme Metaphors | JG Ballard | Non-Fiction | UK |
| My Lunches with Orson | Orson Welles | Non-Fiction | USA |
| So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed | Jon Ronson | Non-Fiction | UK |
| Deep Survival | Laurence Gonzales | Non-Fiction | USA |
| In Cold blood | Truman Capote | Non-Fiction | USA |
| The man who mistook his wife for a hat | Oliver Sacks | Non-Fiction | UK |
| Leaders eat last | Simon Sinek | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | Yuval Noah Harari | Non-Fiction | USA |
| Shakespeare | Bill Bryson | Non-Fiction | UK |
| Cosmos and Psyche | Richard Tarnas | Non-Fiction | USA |
| GRAPHIC NOVELS | |||
| Habibi | Craig Thompson | Graphic Novel/Picture Book | USA |
| Black Hole | Charles Burns | Graphic Novel/Picture Book | USA |
| From Hell | Alan Moore | Graphic Novel/Picture Book | UK |
| Calvin and Hobbes | Bill Watterson | Graphic Novel/Picture Book | USA |
| The Giving Tree | Shel Silverstein | Graphic Novel/Picture Book | USA |
Universal Storyteller 