Books like My Struggle: Book 1

01

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.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt · Memoir

Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's memoir of a catastrophically impoverished Irish Catholic childhood, first in Brooklyn and then in Limerick, during the 1930s and 1940s.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · Memoir

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published account of his years in Paris during the 1920s, when he and his first wife Hadley lived cheaply in Montparnasse while he apprenticed himself to the work of becoming a writer.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · Memoir

Mary Karr's debut memoir about growing up in the oil-refinery town of Leechfield, Texas in the 1960s is widely credited with sparking the memoir boom of the 1990s.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner · Literary fiction

As I Lay Dying is the story of the Bundren family's journey across Mississippi to bury Addie Bundren, wife and mother, in her hometown of Jefferson.

Both dig into death and grief.

07

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese · Literary fiction

Cutting for Stone is Abraham Verghese's debut novel, a multigenerational saga set largely in Addis Ababa from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Both dig into father and son.

08

The Sellout

Paul Beatty · Literary fiction

The Sellout opens with its unnamed narrator — Me, a Black farmer from the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Dickens — appearing before the Supreme Court of the United States, charged with reintroducing slavery and segregation.

Both dig into father and son.

09

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner · Literary fiction

The Sound and the Fury is widely considered Faulkner's greatest novel, and it is genuinely one of the most formally radical works in American fiction.

Both dig into memory and time.

10

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction

The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's first novel, published in 1926, and it remains the sharpest portrait of the "Lost Generation" — the young Americans and British expatriates who drifted through Paris and Spain in the years after World War I, drinking heavily and searching for something they couldn't name.

Both dig into masculinity.

11

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak · Historical fiction

The Book Thief is set in a small German town during World War II and narrated by Death.

Both dig into death and grief.

12

The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe · Memoir

Tom Wolfe's account of the early years of American manned spaceflight — from the test pilots of Edwards Air Force Base to the Mercury Seven astronauts — is the most celebrated work of New Journalism and one of the essential books about American culture in the twentieth century.

Both dig into masculinity.