Books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

01

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien · Memoir

Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque · History

All Quiet on the Western Front follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who enlists with his classmates during the First World War after being swept up in patriotic speeches.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

To Sell Is Human

Daniel H. Pink · Business

To Sell Is Human is Daniel Pink's case that selling — in the broad sense of moving people to think or act differently — is central to what most of us do at work every day, whether or not our job title includes the word "sales." Drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Pink estimates that Americans spend roughly 40% of their work time in non-sales selling: persuading, convincing, and nudging.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

Both dig into identity.

06

Beloved

Toni Morrison · Literary fiction

Beloved is set in post-Civil War Ohio, where Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, lives with her daughter Denver in a house shadowed by the ghost of a baby she killed rather than let be taken back into slavery.

Both dig into identity.

07

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust · Literary fiction

In Search of Lost Time is a seven-volume novel published between 1913 and 1927 in which the unnamed narrator, looking back from late middle age, attempts to recover a life that has slipped away.

Both dig into identity.

08

Life of Pi

Yann Martel · Literary fiction

Life of Pi opens in Pondicherry, India, where Pi Patel grows up as the son of a zookeeper, accumulating an unorthodox religious education — he practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam simultaneously, to the bafflement of the adults around him.

Both dig into identity.

09

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri · Literary fiction

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family across three decades, beginning with Ashoke and Ashima's arranged marriage and their immigration from Calcutta to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and extending into the American adulthood of their son, Gogol.

Both dig into identity.

10

Ulysses

James Joyce · Literary fiction

Ulysses takes place on a single day — June 16, 1904 — in Dublin, following three characters: Leopold Bloom, an advertising canvasser; his wife Molly; and Stephen Dedalus, the young writer from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Both dig into identity.

11

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas · Fantasy

Feyre Archeron is nineteen, hunting in winter to feed her family, when she kills a wolf in the forest and is taken by a creature from Prythian — the land of the fae — as payment for a life.

Both dig into freedom and captivity.

12

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

Both dig into identity.