essay on book reading in english

Importance Of Reading Essay

Importance of Reading Essay

500+ words essay on reading.

Reading is a key to learning. It’s a skill that everyone should develop in their life. The ability to read enables us to discover new facts and opens the door to a new world of ideas, stories and opportunities. We can gather ample information and use it in the right direction to perform various tasks in our life. The habit of reading also increases our knowledge and makes us more intellectual and sensible. With the help of this essay on the Importance of Reading, we will help you know the benefits of reading and its various advantages in our life. Students must go through this essay in detail, as it will help them to create their own essay based on this topic.

Importance of Reading

Reading is one of the best hobbies that one can have. It’s fun to read different types of books. By reading the books, we get to know the people of different areas around the world, different cultures, traditions and much more. There is so much to explore by reading different books. They are the abundance of knowledge and are best friends of human beings. We get to know about every field and area by reading books related to it. There are various types of books available in the market, such as science and technology books, fictitious books, cultural books, historical events and wars related books etc. Also, there are many magazines and novels which people can read anytime and anywhere while travelling to utilise their time effectively.

Benefits of Reading for Students

Reading plays an important role in academics and has an impactful influence on learning. Researchers have highlighted the value of developing reading skills and the benefits of reading to children at an early age. Children who cannot read well at the end of primary school are less likely to succeed in secondary school and, in adulthood, are likely to earn less than their peers. Therefore, the focus is given to encouraging students to develop reading habits.

Reading is an indispensable skill. It is fundamentally interrelated to the process of education and to students achieving educational success. Reading helps students to learn how to use language to make sense of words. It improves their vocabulary, information-processing skills and comprehension. Discussions generated by reading in the classroom can be used to encourage students to construct meanings and connect ideas and experiences across texts. They can use their knowledge to clear their doubts and understand the topic in a better way. The development of good reading habits and skills improves students’ ability to write.

In today’s world of the modern age and digital era, people can easily access resources online for reading. The online books and availability of ebooks in the form of pdf have made reading much easier. So, everyone should build this habit of reading and devote at least 30 minutes daily. If someone is a beginner, then they can start reading the books based on the area of their interest. By doing so, they will gradually build up a habit of reading and start enjoying it.

Frequently Asked Questions on the Importance of Reading Essay

What is the importance of reading.

1. Improves general knowledge 2. Expands attention span/vocabulary 3. Helps in focusing better 4. Enhances language proficiency

What is the power of reading?

1. Develop inference 2. Improves comprehension skills 3. Cohesive learning 4. Broadens knowledge of various topics

How can reading change a student’s life?

1. Empathy towards others 2. Acquisition of qualities like kindness, courtesy

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Essays About Reading: 5 Examples And Topic Ideas

As a writer, you love to read and talk to others about reading books. Check out some examples of essays about reading and topic ideas for your essay.

Many people fall in love with good books at an early age, as experiencing the joy of reading can help transport a child’s imagination to new places. Reading isn’t just for fun, of course—the importance of reading has been shown time and again in educational research studies.

If you love to sit down with a good book, you likely want to share your love of reading with others. Reading can offer a new perspective and transport readers to different worlds, whether you’re into autobiographies, books about positive thinking, or stories that share life lessons.

When explaining your love of reading to others, it’s important to let your passion shine through in your writing. Try not to take a negative view of people who don’t enjoy reading, as reading and writing skills are tougher for some people than others.

Talk about the positive effects of reading and how it’s positively benefitted your life. Offer helpful tips on how people can learn to enjoy reading, even if it’s something that they’ve struggled with for a long time. Remember, your goal when writing essays about reading is to make others interested in exploring the world of books as a source of knowledge and entertainment.

Now, let’s explore some popular essays on reading to help get you inspired and some topics that you can use as a starting point for your essay about how books have positively impacted your life.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

Examples Of Essays About Reading

1. The Book That Changed My Life By The New York Times
2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan
3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

4. How ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ Saved Me By Isaac Fitzgerald

5. catcher in the rye: that time a banned book changed my life by pat kelly, topic ideas for essays about reading, 1. how can a high school student improve their reading skills, 2. what’s the best piece of literature ever written, 3. how reading books from authors of varied backgrounds can provide a different perspective, 4. challenging your point of view: how reading essays you disagree with can provide a new perspective, 1. the book that changed my life by the new york times.

“My error the first time around was to read “Middlemarch” as one would a typical novel. But “Middlemarch” isn’t really about plot and dialogue. It’s all about character, as mediated through the wise and compassionate (but sharply astute) voice of the omniscient narrator. The book shows us that we cannot live without other people and that we cannot live with other people unless we recognize their flaws and foibles in ourselves.” The New York Times

In this collection of reader essays, people share the books that have shaped how they see the world and live their lives. Talking about a life-changing piece of literature can offer a new perspective to people who tend to shy away from reading and can encourage others to pick up your favorite book.

2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan

“Consistent reading helps you develop your analytical thinking skills over time. It stimulates your brain and allows you to think in new ways. When you are actively engaged in what you’re reading, you would be able to ask better questions, look at things from a different perspective, identify patterns and make connections.” Anangsha Alammyan

Alammyan shares how she got away from habits that weren’t serving her life (such as scrolling on social media) and instead turned her attention to focus on reading. She shares how she changed her schedule and time management processes to allow herself to devote more time to reading, and she also shares the many ways that she benefited from spending more time on her Kindle and less time on her phone.

3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

“When my learning specialist convinced me that I was an intelligent person with a reading disorder, I gradually stopped hiding from what I was most afraid of—the belief that I was a person of mediocre intelligence with overambitious goals for herself. As I slowly let go of this fear, I became much more aware of my learning issues. For the first time, I felt that I could dig below the surface of my unhappiness in school without being ashamed of what I might find.” Blair Kenney

Reading does not come easily to everyone, and dyslexia can make it especially difficult for a person to process words. In this essay, Kenney shares her experience of being diagnosed with dyslexia during her sophomore year of college at Yale. She gave herself more patience, grew in her confidence, and developed techniques that worked to improve her reading and processing skills.

“I took that book home to finish reading it. I’d sit somewhat uncomfortably in a tree or against a stone wall or, more often than not, in my sparsely decorated bedroom with the door closed as my mother had hushed arguments with my father on the phone. There were many things in the book that went over my head during my first time reading it. But a land left with neither Rhyme nor Reason, as I listened to my parents fight, that I understood.” Isaac Fitzgerald

Books can transport a reader to another world. In this essay, Fitzgerald explains how Norton Juster’s novel allowed him to escape a difficult time in his childhood through the magic of his imagination. Writing about a book that had a significant impact on your childhood can help you form an instant connection with your reader, as many people hold a childhood literature favorite near and dear to their hearts.

“From the first paragraph my mind was blown wide open. It not only changed my whole perspective on what literature could be, it changed the way I looked at myself in relation to the world. This was heavy stuff. Of the countless books I had read up to this point, even the ones written in first person, none of them felt like they were speaking directly to me. Not really anyway.” Pat Kelly

Many readers have had the experience of feeling like a book was written specifically for them, and in this essay, Kelly shares that experience with J.D. Salinger’s classic American novel. Writing about a book that felt like it was written specifically for you can give you the chance to share what was happening in your life when you read the book and the lasting impact that the book had on you as a person.

There are several topic options to choose from when you’re writing about reading. You may want to write about how literature you love has changed your life or how others can develop their reading skills to derive similar pleasure from reading.

Middle and high school students who struggle with reading can feel discouraged when, despite their best efforts, their skills do not improve. Research the latest educational techniques for boosting reading skills in high school students (the research often changes) and offer concrete tips (such as using active reading skills) to help students grow.

It’s an excellent persuasive essay topic; it’s fun to write about the piece of literature you believe to be the greatest of all time. Of course, much of this topic is a matter of opinion, and it’s impossible to prove that one piece of literature is “better” than another. Write your essay about how the piece of literature you consider the best positive affected your life and discuss how it’s impacted the world of literature in general.

The world is full of many perspectives and points of view, and it can be hard to imagine the world through someone else’s eyes. Reading books by authors of different gender, race, or socioeconomic status can help open your eyes to the challenges and issues others face. Explain how reading books by authors with different backgrounds has changed your worldview in your essay.

It’s fun to read the information that reinforces viewpoints that you already have, but doing so doesn’t contribute to expanding your mind and helping you see the world from a different perspective. Explain how pushing oneself to see a different point of view can help you better understand your perspective and help open your eyes to ideas you may not have considered.

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Reading Books — My Personal Passion: Favorite Books & Authors

Why I Like Reading Books: a Narrative

Categories: Reading Books

About this sample

Words: 1014 |

Published: Mar 14, 2019

Words: 1014 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Why i like reading (essay), my favorite type of books, works cited.

Coleridge, S. T. (1817). Biographia Literaria: Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Restless Books.
Lawrence, D. H. (2000). Lady Chatterley's Lover. Wordsworth Editions.
Maas, S. J. (2012). Throne of Glass. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.
Shakespeare, W. (2008). The Merchant's Tale. In The Canterbury Tales (2nd ed., pp. 121-134). Penguin Classics.
Stowe, H. B. (1852). Uncle Tom's Cabin. J. P. Jewett and Company.
Tolkein, J. R. R. (2012). The Lord of the Rings. HarperCollins.
Tonnard, M., & Van Kesteren, E. (2007). Reading Ed Ruscha: Novels. Ludion.
Wells, H. G. (1932). Brave New World. Chatto & Windus.
Wood, J. (2014). The Theatre of Absurd. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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📖Essay on Importance of Reading: Samples in 100, 150, and 250 Words

Updated on
Apr 26, 2024

Language learning requires four skills i.e. Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. It is an important part that eventually builds up the communication skills of a person. Reading will help in attaining knowledge of variable fields. It enhances the intellect of a person. Reading helps students to enhance their language fluency. Students must adopt the habit of reading good books. Reading books can also improve the writing skills. If you are a school student and searching for a good sample essay on the importance of reading then, you landed at the right place. Here in this blog, we have covered some sample essays on the importance of reading!

Table of Contents

1 Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words
2 Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words
3 Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words
4 Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Essay on the Importance of Reading in 100 Words

The English language is considered the global language because it is the most widely spoken language worldwide. Reading is one of the important parts of acquiring complete knowledge of any language. Reading helps in maintaining a good vocabulary that is helpful for every field, whether in school, interviews , competitive exams , or jobs.

Students must inculcate the habit of reading from a young age. Making a habit of reading good books will eventually convert into an addiction over time and you will surely explore a whole new world of information.

Being exposed to different topics through reading can help you look at the wider perspective of life. You will eventually discover a creative side of yours while developing the habit of reading.

Essay on Importance of Reading 150 Words

Reading is considered an important aspect that contributes to the development of the overall personality of any person. If a person wants to do good at a professional level then he/she must practice reading.

There are various advantages of reading. It is not only a source of entertainment but also opens up the creative ability of any person. Reading helps in self-improvement, enhances communication skills, and reduces stress. It is one of the sources of pleasure and also enhances the analytical skills.

Here are some of the best books to study that may help you enhance your reading skills:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling .
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee .
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri .
Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby

A person with good reading skills would be able to communicate with more confidence and shine brighter at the professional level. Reading is a mental exercise, as it can provide you with the best experience because while reading fiction, or non-fiction you use your imagination without any restrictions thereby exploring a whole new world on your own. So, Just Enjoy Reading!

Also Read: Communication Skills to Succeed at Work

Essay on Importance of Reading 250 Words

Reading is a language skill necessary to present yourself in front of others because without being a good reader, it’s difficult to be a good communicator. Reading books should be practised regularly. Books are considered a human’s best friend.

It is right to say that knowledge can’t be stolen. Reading enhances the knowledge of a person. There are numerous benefits of reading.

I love reading books and one of my all-time favorite authors is William Shakespeare. His work “As You Like It” is my favourite book. By reading that book I came across many new words. It enabled me to add many words to my vocabulary that I can use in my life.

Apart from this, there are many other benefits of reading books such as reading can help you write in a certain way that can impress the reader. It also enhances communication skills and serves as a source of entertainment .

Schools conduct various competitions which directly or indirectly involve reading. Some such competitions include debate, essay writing competitions, elocution, new reading in assembly, etc. All such activities require active reading because without reading a person might not be able to speak on a specific topic.

All such activities are conducted to polish the language skills of students from the very beginning so that they can do good at a professional level.

In conclusion, in a world of technological advancement, you are more likely to get easy access to online reading material available on the internet. So, you must not miss this opportunity and devote some time to reading different kinds of books.

Short Essay on Importance of Reading

Find a sample of a short essay on importance of reading below:

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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Short Essay on Importance of Reading Books

Read this article to know about the value and importance of reading books.

Importance of Reading Books

It is noted in our society, that even educated people do not like reading books. They try to spend their leisure time with their friends or hanging around without any reason, thus wasting it in unhealthy and frivolous activities.

A person can always avoid such company by indulging in other activities such as keeping company with those who have a positive approach to life as well as a constructive and creative mind.

However, spending time with books is much better than all these activities. A book never speaks without one’s permission; it does not bother and is always at one’s disposal.

A person who intends to read should try to pick good books because life is busy and time is scarce. We cannot afford to spend time reading all sorts of books. A thinker says. “ Life is short…too short to everything. Choose, you must. Choose only the best friends and in books!”

Books are real treasures and everyone should look for these. When a person opens books, he finds treasures of goodness and wisdom which spring out from its pages along with good pieces of advice, sound teaching, counsels and truths.

Good books are the light house that enlightens our minds, families, schools and societies. They educate hearts, improve characters, console and delight us.

Reading books is a source to beat boredom and defeat loneliness. It is also a source to resume day with new vigour and enthusiasm. For the sound body, a nourished mind is important and for a nourished mind, book reading it important.

People from all walks of life should read because it has great importance, especially for people like politicians, instructors and teachers. If they develop the habit of reading, they can prove themselves as the master of their fields and secure the best place in practical life!

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Academic Reading Strategies

Completing reading assignments is one of the biggest challenges in academia. However, are you managing your reading efficiently? Consider this cooking analogy, noting the differences in process:

Taylor’s process was more efficient because his purpose was clear. Establishing why you are reading something will help you decide how to read it, which saves time and improves comprehension. This guide lists some purposes for reading as well as different strategies to try at different stages of the reading process.

Purposes for reading

People read different kinds of text (e.g., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews) for different reasons. Some purposes for reading might be

to scan for specific information
to skim to get an overview of the text
to relate new content to existing knowledge
to write something (often depends on a prompt)
to critique an argument
to learn something
for general comprehension

Strategies differ from reader to reader. The same reader may use different strategies for different contexts because their purpose for reading changes. Ask yourself “why am I reading?” and “what am I reading?” when deciding which strategies to try.

Before reading

Establish your purpose for reading
Speculate about the author’s purpose for writing
Review what you already know and want to learn about the topic (see the guides below)
Preview the text to get an overview of its structure, looking at headings, figures, tables, glossary, etc.
Predict the contents of the text and pose questions about it. If the authors have provided discussion questions, read them and write them on a note-taking sheet.
Note any discussion questions that have been provided (sometimes at the end of the text)
Sample pre-reading guides – K-W-L guide
Critical reading questionnaire

During reading

Annotate and mark (sparingly) sections of the text to easily recall important or interesting ideas
Check your predictions and find answers to posed questions
Use headings and transition words to identify relationships in the text
Create a vocabulary list of other unfamiliar words to define later
Try to infer unfamiliar words’ meanings by identifying their relationship to the main idea
Connect the text to what you already know about the topic
Take breaks (split the text into segments if necessary)
Sample annotated texts – Journal article · Book chapter excerpt

After reading

Summarize the text in your own words (note what you learned, impressions, and reactions) in an outline, concept map, or matrix (for several texts)
Talk to someone about the author’s ideas to check your comprehension
Identify and reread difficult parts of the text
Define words on your vocabulary list (try a learner’s dictionary ) and practice using them
Sample graphic organizers – Concept map · Literature review matrix

Works consulted

Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2002). Teaching and researching reading. Harlow: Longman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout (just click print) and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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Books Essay

Essay on Books

Books are an important resource for many people who have a keen interest in gaining knowledge on a variety of subjects. There are certain bibliophile‘s who love the smell of old books. They find that the smell of an old book is similar to that of dust and they can smell a whole lot of culture and history in those pages. There is a word in the dictionary for loving the smell of old books and that is - Bibliosmia. Books are meant to get a quick escape from ourselves and our surroundings which might feel troublesome at times. Books help in enriching the brain with various kinds of information and it imparts the kind of knowledge that becomes useful in our day to day lives.

Reading extensively makes a person an intellectual, it enables him/her to view society and the things happening within the society in an intellectual manner. People who read books have an excellent character and other people find them attractive and easy to talk to as they can talk about any topic given the situation and circumstances. Reading books helps in the overall development of the brain as well as the character.

History of Books

Books introduce us to a world of wisdom and knowledge. Nowadays knowledge can be gained from anywhere as books have gone through years of evolution. The first book that was ever printed was the Gutenberg bible, it was printed in 1455. In primitive times, men learned how to read and write, they saw the need for writing which helped them to record transactions, send messages to their loved ones who lived afar, they made certain discoveries and wrote about them on various manuscripts.

Manuscripts are the most ancient form of paper that was used to write important information, it was made of the papyrus plant. They were introduced in Egypt and many kings and queens hired writers to write about their glorious Egyptian empires and about the wars that they had won. These manuscripts also contain information about various transactions that were made in the court and this depicts their trading lifestyle, Egyptian economy and their religion, after doing analysis we can find that Egyptians were very similar to Roman beliefs. All the little information that we know today about ancient times is because of these manuscripts, they are the only source for knowing our past closely.

Then came the 1900s when people started hand stitching books, this process made the books extremely expensive to purchase. In the 1930s some publishers like the Penguin publishers started to glue their books together which helped in reducing the cost of production, which then made the books affordable for everybody.

Now as we are moving towards a digitalised era, we can now download any book that we want to read through the Internet, the books are available in PDF and other various versions, With the coming up of Kindle, people started reading books on the Kindle tablet, enabling readers to reach a wide range of genres all while sitting at the comfort of their home. Books occupy a significant meaning in our lives and people should share their books with others or the information that they gathered while reading a particular book as such knowledge can become an inspiration for others and they might start reading as well.

More About Books

If one has enough books, then the person can never be friendless. Books are one of the biggest friends that one can ever ask for. It has helped to evolve mankind since time immemorial. Books which are good in subject matter and quality can be a storehouse of wisdom and information. They enrich our hearts and souls. Some books can leave a permanent mark in our lives. Yet, they are unbelievably inexpensive. So, everyone can afford at least some good books. Those who cannot afford too many books can always visit the library.

Starting Early

My parents have always encouraged me to read books ever since I learnt to read. There are books to suit readers of all age groups. Also, there are books on various subjects. No matter what interests you, there is going to be a book in that subject. So, once we pick a book that interests us, we can get hours with it.

Advantages of Reading Books

A regular reader can enhance his or her knowledge on an array of subjects. It helps us to learn a lot of new things about the subjects that interest us. And it is a fun way to explore a new world in a fun way. So learning with entertainment is a perk of reading regularly. They can be a very powerful answer to boredom. Whenever I am alone, a book can be the only companion that we might be needing.

Moreover, the fact that different books deal with different subjects has an advantage. It allows us to explore different subject matters. It can help to identify our different aspects of interest. Our choice of books can also go a long way to decide on our career in the future.

Another important benefit of reading books is that it helps to improve our word power. We can read the works of different authors. This will make us come across different new words. By learning new words, we can nurture our vocabulary. When we use the newly learned works in day to day conversation, people do appreciate that. Also, it helps to improve our writing skills, as well.

With new words and new expressions empowering us, we can also participate in the debates, public speaking competitors, and the quiz sessions with more confidence than ever.

Different Types of Books

There seems to be a book for almost every subject under the sky. There are creations of literature, as well as academic books and travelogues. There are books on historical events, mythology, cookery, mechanics, astronomy, astrology, fashion, and whatnot. Though I love reading different genres of books, I have my own selection and favourites. Here's a lowdown on the different genres of books that I find interesting.

Folklore: Almost every country in the world has its bounty of rich folklore. They are evidence of the heritage of a country. Folklores are all about songs from the bygone days, ballads dedicated to the ancient kings, queens, princes and princesses, legends, myths, and traditional tales. In most cases, there is no known author of these folklores.

Fantasies: These are the fascinating takes of an imaginative world. Often, fantasies come with references to make-believe places. There are charming stories with beautiful yet imaginary countries in the background. We come across interesting characters and intriguing creatures. But none of them exist in the real world.

Science Fiction: The sci-fi tales are primarily based on real-life scientific facts and principles. Though the plots might be imaginary, the stories often have some true references to what might happen in the future.

Realistic Fiction: These are my favourite set of "what if" novels and stories. This genre comprises imaginary situations that might occur just anytime. The characters seem to be real, as well.

Biography: The themes of biographies revolve around the life of famous people. A biography comes with a person's memoirs, letters, journals, and the like.

FAQs on Books Essay

1. When is World Book Day? What is its Purpose?

The 5th March of every year is celebrated as the international day of books and copyrights. The day is observed to celebrate the works of various authors and books. Also, it aims at encouraging new readers to read more books and discover the joy of studying. Booklovers also try different ways to promote reading as a fun hobby.

2. Which are the Most Read and Printed Books in the World?

After several surveys across the world, it has appeared that the Holy Bible is the most widely read book in the world. In the last 50 years, more than 3.9 million copies of the Bible have been sold. If we consider the translated versions and the Bibles that have been distributed, then the number of prints and sales of this book goes over 6 million! And it is also the most widely read book on this planet.

3. How to Start Our Reading Habit?

Even if you are not much into reading, you can start the habit with some simple steps:

Start reading for at least 5-10 minutes a day.

Carry a book everywhere you go, even if you don't have the time to read outside.

Find a quiet place while reading books.

Regularly visit the old bookstalls. You will be tempted to explore the wonderful world.

Research and make your list of books that you want to read.

4. Give some pointers to include while writing about an essay on books.

Some pointers that can be included while forming an essay on books are-

It is important to inculcate reading habits at an early age as the knowledge gained as it aids in the overall development of the brain and builds character.

Children who are avid readers can never have difficulty reading academic textbooks as opposed to children who don’t read on a daily basis.

Children should read books that are advised by their elders or teachers as they can help you get a good experience at reading and gaining knowledge.

Books never run out of trends, one of the best ways to get a good experience at book reading is to read classics written by great writers such as – Animal Farm by Arthur Blair, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, jane eyre by charlotte Bronte, little women by Louisa May Alcott.

5. Where can I find an essay on books?

Essays on books can be easily accessed by visiting Vedantu's website . This website provides essays on various topics so that students can get a hint on how to form their essays and what important points they can include. After reading a wide range of essays given on Vedantu's website, students will be able to construct their own essays in a much easier and efficient manner. Students can find relatable pointers and can get a good look at effective essay writing techniques.

6. List some advantages of reading books.

Reading books makes a person wiser, it is a journey from the unknown to the known.

Most importantly it increases the vocabulary. A good vocabulary is key to having a good conversation. A good vocabulary can also fetch you good marks in academics and help you get ahead of everyone.

Reading books helps to increase fluency in any language. Students who are learning a foreign language should read books written In that particular language to get a good grasp of it.

7. What are the different types of books?

The different types of books are as follows- folklore, fantasies, science fiction, realistic fiction, biography etc.

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Importance Of Books Essay in English - 100, 200, 500 Words

Essay on Importance of Books

Books play a vital role in our lives. They are an infinite source of knowledge, entertainment, and new ideas, that help to make the reader’s mind sharp, and develop creativity. Reading books can also stimulate our imagination and creativity faculty of brain. As we read, we are transported to different worlds and experiences, which can spark our own ideas and inspire us to think in new ways. Here are a few sample essays on importance of books .

100 Words Essay on Importance of Books

200 words essay on importance of books, 500 words essay on importance of books.

Importance Of Books Essay in English - 100, 200, 500 Words

Books are a really an important part of everyone’s life in some way or the other. Books have a high significance in our lives because they provide knowledge, information, and entertainment to the reader. They can broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding of the world around us. Books can also help us develop our critical thinking skills by exposing us to different ideas and perspectives. Additionally, books can help us escape from the stresses of everyday life and provide us with a temporary relief from our daily routine. Overall, books are a valuable resource that can enrich our lives in countless ways.

Books are an essential part of our lives. They provide us with knowledge, entertainment, and the opportunity to escape from the stresses of everyday life. Books can open up new worlds and experiences, and allow us to learn about different cultures and perspectives. They can also help us to develop our critical thinking skills and broaden our understanding of the world around us.

Books have the power to inspire and motivate us, and can provide us with the tools and knowledge we need to overcome challenges and achieve our goals. They can also serve as a source of comfort and solace, providing us with a sense of connection and understanding during difficult times. Additionally, books are an important tool for preserving knowledge and history. They allow us to learn from the past and gain insight into the experiences and thoughts of those who came before us. This can help us to better understand our own place in the world and the challenges and opportunities that we face.

In short, books play a vital role in our lives. They provide us with knowledge, entertainment, and the opportunity to expand our minds and explore new ideas. They are a valuable resource that we should continue to cherish and support.

Books are an invaluable part of our lives. They are the inevitable tool for knowledge, and entertainment and have been proven to be stress relievers. Books can help us experience new worlds, explore deep insights into the world and help us form a wider perspective. Books have the power to inspire and motivate us, and can provide us with the tools and knowledge we need to overcome challenges and achieve our goals . For example, a biography of a successful person can inspire us to pursue our dreams and work towards our goals. A self-help book can provide us with the tools and strategies we need to overcome a personal challenge or improve an aspect of our lives.

Books are a powerful tool for preserving knowledge and history. They allow us to learn from the past and gain insight into the experiences and thoughts of those who came before us. This can help us to better understand our own place in the world and the challenges and opportunities that we face. Books can also serve as a source of comfort and solace, providing us with a sense of connection and understanding during difficult times.

How the book “The Alchemist” helped me

One of the books that have had a profound impact on my life is ' The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho . I first read this book when I was going through a difficult time in my life, feeling lost and unsure of my direction. The story of the main character, Santiago, who embarks on a journey to find his "Personal Legend," resonated with me deeply.

As I read the book, I was struck by the idea that each of us has a unique purpose in life, and that it is up to us to pursue it with determination and passion. The book also emphasized the importance of following our hearts and listening to our inner guidance, even when it goes against the norms and expectations of society. The message of ' The Alchemist' gave me the courage and inspiration to follow my own dreams and pursue my own ' Personal Legend' . It also helped me to let go of my fears and doubts, and trust in the power of the universe to support me on my journey

In short, "The Alchemist" has been a guiding light in my life, providing me with wisdom, guidance, and motivation to pursue my dreams. It is a book that I have re-read many times, and one that I will continue to turn to whenever I need guidance and inspiration.

In conclusion, books are an essential part of our lives in one way or the other. They provide us with knowledge, entertainment, and the opportunity to expand our minds and explore new ideas. They are a valuable resource that we should continue to cherish and support. Whether we are reading for personal growth, to learn about the world, or to escape from the stresses of everyday life, books have the power to enrich and enhance our lives in countless ways.

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Essay on Reading is Good Habit in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on Reading is Good Habit: Reading is one of the most important and beneficial activities. If you have ever read a book in life you will know the pleasure and rewards of reading. Reading is the kind of exercise that keeps your mind engaged, active and healthy. It is important to develop the habit of reading not only for the sake of knowledge but also for personal growth and development.

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It develops positive thinking and gives you a better perspective of life. Reading enhances your knowledge, improves your concentration and makes you more confident and debate ready. The more you read the more wise you become and the more you will be recognized and appreciated.

Long and Short Essay on Reading is a Good Habit in English

Here are short and long essay on “Reading is a Good Habit” of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exams/school assignments.

These Reading is a Good Habit Essay will inspire you to take up reading as a hobby, by letting you know the benefits of reading and the changes that it brings to your personality and life.

Also Check: Essay on Importance of Education

You can select any Reading is a Good Habit Essay as per your need and interest:

Essay on Reading is Good Habit in 200 words

Reading daily is one of the best habits one can posses. It develops your imagination and provides you with a fortune of knowledge. Books are your best friend is rightly said as reading helps build up your confidence and uplifts your mood. Once you start reading, you experience a whole new world.

When you develop the habit of reading you eventually get addicted to it. Reading can help you grow and give a new perspective about life. Good books can influence you positively and guide you towards the right direction in life. The more you read the more you fall in love with reading. Reading develops language skills and vocabulary. Reading books is also a way to relax and reduce stress.

Reading increases creativity and enhances your understanding of life. Reading also inspires you to write and one can fall in love with writing as well. If we want to adopt some good habits in life then reading should definitely be on the top of our list. It plays a vital role in the optimistic growth and development of a person.

Reading leads to self-improvement. The pleasure of reading cannot be expressed in words. One needs to read to experience the joy of reading.

Also Check: Me & My Habits

Essay on Importance of Good Reading is a Habit in 300 words

Reading is one of the most important and best habits one can inculcate. Those who have the habit of reading are actually the ones who can really understand the value and pleasure of reading. There are very few who are aware of the advantages of reading good books.

Importance of Good Reading Habits

Reading habits develop vivid imagination, knowledge and vocabulary. Here are some points describing importance of good reading habits:

The most important reason of reading is that we gain knowledge. Books are a rich source of information and knowledge. Reading books on diverse genres imparts information and gives you a deep insight of to the topic you read about. You always learn something new when you read.
It is a proven fact that those who have good reading habit show signs of higher intelligence. With diverse and bountiful genres books open up the mind and enhance the creative ability and language skills.
Reading fiction develops empathy and helps build better relations with others. You become a part of the story and naturally empathize and sympathize with characters. You become more aware about how people get affected in different situations. It enhances your overall ability to empathize with others.
Good reading also inspires you to write. Many writers get inspired and gain expertise by reading more and more. You learn the art of using language and enjoy playing with words.
Reading is also a kind of motivation that works wonders in when it comes to de-stressing. Reading motivational books can really change our life for better. Reading autobiographies can also encourage us to work hard and stay dedicated to achieve our goals. It helps us become a better person in life.

There are many perks of good reading habits. It keeps your mind active, strong and healthy. Reading is important for your overall personal growth and development. Besides, you never feel bored or lonely if you develop good reading habits.

Essay on Reading and Its Importance in 400 words

We do so many activities for entertainment but one is really missing out something if he/she is not reading. The most enjoyable and beneficial activity is reading. Reading is important because it is good for your overall well-being. Lying on a couch and reading a good book is the best way to reduce stress and have a tranquil day at home.

Positive Effects of Reading on Mind and Body

Reading has following positive effects on mind and body:

Knowledge : It is rightly said that books are the best source of knowledge. Every time you read you get new bits of information and knowledge that are useful. The more knowledge you possess the more wisely you handle various situations in life. The knowledge you get from books is the true wisdom as you may lose anything in life but not knowledge.
Improves Imagination : Reading fictional stories can take you to a new world. You actually visualize the whole setup in the fictional world and get familiar to characters. It develops your imagination and makes you feel amazed. You imagine and fantasize fictional stories and characters in your mind.
Wise use of time : Reading good books means making good use of time. It is a perfect way to stay occupied and at the same time learn something and have pleasure. There is so much that you gain from reading. It is the best way to relieve your stress and enhance your mood.
Boost self-esteem : By reading more and more books you communicate better and are well informed. Since you are more confident you become more productive and dynamic. It builds your confidence and leads to higher self-esteem.
Improves Creativity : The more you read the more your thoughts and ideas develop. Your mind opens up and you start thinking in a new direction. You start thinking more creatively and rediscover life in a better way.
Helps Socialize : Reading improves individual’s communication skills and boosts confidence. It also enhances your socializing skills naturally as you are more confident about your abilities and knowledge. You can always share your knowledge and reading experience with friends and family. It also makes you more empathetic towards others.

So it is very important to develop good reading habit. We must all read on a daily basis for at least 30 minutes to enjoy the sweet fruits of reading. It is a great pleasure to sit in a quiet place and enjoy reading. Reading a good book is the most enjoyable experience one can have.

Essay on Reasons Why Reading Habits in 500 Words

Reading is one of the most important habits one needs to develop in life. It is rightly quoted that books are your best companions. Good books can inform you, enlighten you and lead you to the right direction. There is no better companion than a good book. Books give you a whole new experience. Developing reading habit from early age leads to enduring love for books.

Why is Good Reading Habit Important?

1) Sharpens your Mind: Reading is vital for the development of brain as it boosts your thinking and understanding. It enhances your critical thinking and analytical skills. It also improves the brain function. Reading gives you knowledge, information and new perception.

2) Self Improvement: Reading helps you develop positive thinking. Reading is important because it develops your mind and gives you excessive knowledge and lessons of life. It helps you understand the world around you better. It keeps your mind active and enhances your creative ability.

3) Reduces Stress: No matter how stressed or depressed you are due to personal life, work or any other problem in your life, reading a good book reduces your stress completely and enhances your mood. Reading helps you calm down your mind, releases strain from the muscles and slows down your heart rate.

4) Increases Knowledge: Active reading is the process that enables lifelong learning. It is an avid thirst for knowledge. Books enable you to have glimpse in to cultures, traditions, arts, history, geography, health, psychology and several other subjects and aspects of life. You get amazing amount of knowledge and information from books.

5) Develops your Analytical Skills: By active reading you explore several aspects of life. It involves questioning what you read. It helps you develop your thoughts and express your opinions. You engage your mind in understanding and thinking higher. You start comparing your perspective to the writer’s perspective. New ideas and thoughts pop up in your mind by active reading. It stimulates and develops your brain and gives you a new perspective.

6) Boosts your Imagination and Creativity: Reading takes you to the world of imagination and enhances your creativity. Reading helps you explore life from different perspectives. While you read books you are building new and creative thoughts, images and opinions in your mind. It makes you think creatively, fantasize and use your imagination.

7) Improves Communication: Active reading increases your vocabulary exponentially. You learn the art of using words creatively and effectively. You are able to communicate your thoughts and ideas effectively. Overall it will boost your confidence and enhance your communication skills.

8) Reading is Pleasure: Not only is reading important for knowledge and information but it is an addiction. Once you indulge yourself into reading a good book, you will surely get addicted to it. It offers intense pleasure to read a good fiction and enter a whole new world. You go through several new feelings and emotions while you read.

Reading is one of the most interesting habits one can possess. It is important to develop the habit of reading daily. We can reap the aforementioned benefits once we develop the habit of reading.

Essay on Advantages of Reading Books is a Good Habit in 600 words

Reading books has the lot of psychological benefits. Those who have a habit of reading are aware of the pleasure and value of reading books then. They know its magic and power that renders knowledge and makes one wiser. When it comes to reading, most of us these days are addicted to reading online blogs, articles, stories and tweets. It is helpful for gaining lots of knowledge and information but reading a good book is healthier for our brain and a completely different experience. It does wonder for our brains as it is the activity that helps us focus. Reading is the best exercise for your brains.

As we all are aware that mental fitness is equally important as physical fitness so like our body even mind needs to work out daily to maintain fitness. It is important to read a good book at least for a few minutes each day to stretch the brain muscles for healthy functioning.

1) Books are Your Best Friends: Books really are your best friends as you can rely on them when you are bored, upset, depressed, lonely or annoyed. They will accompany you anytime you want them and enhance your mood. They share with you information and knowledge any time you need. Good books always guide you to the correct path in life. You will never regret the company of a good book.

2) Books are Your Best Teachers: Not only can good books be your best friend but also the best teacher. Reading good books will give you immense knowledge, information and a completely different experience. Reading will give you a new and better perspective of life. It will teach you new lessons of life.

3) Great Pleasure: When I read a book, I read it for pleasure. I just indulge myself into reading and experience a whole new world. Once I start reading a book I get so captivated I never want to leave it until I finish. Most of the times it is not possible to finish the book in one sitting but there is always that curiosity until I finish the book. It always gives lot of pleasure to read a good book and cherish it for lifetime.

4) Books Help You Sleep Better: Reading a book is recommended as one of the best habits to calm down your mind before you go to bed. It helps relieve stress. So, instead of using cell phones or watching TV you can always read a good book for a sound sleep.

5) Communication Skills: Reading improves your vocabulary and develops your communication skills. It helps you learn how to use your language creatively. Not only does it improve your communication but it also makes you a better writer. Good communication is important in every aspect of life.

6) Develops Critical Thinking: The chief benefit of reading good books is that it develops your critical thinking. The more you read the deeper you understand and process the information. Critical thinking is important in life to manage day to day situations.

7) Reduces Stress: Reading a good book takes you in a new world and helps you relieve your day to day stress. It has several positive effects on your mind, body and soul. It stimulates your brain muscles and keeps your brain healthy and strong.

Reading books is the most fruitful way to use time. It keeps you occupied and helps you get rid of stress in life. Once you develop the habit of reading you can never get bored. It also improves the function of brain and is the best exercise for brain.

Essay on Reading is Good Habit FAQs

How reading is a good habit.

Reading is a good habit as it improves vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. It also enhances memory, analytical skills, and results at school. Moreover, reading is an exercise for the mind, helping individuals calm down, relax, and gain new knowledge to enlighten their minds. It is beneficial for everyone, promoting cognitive skills and providing numerous advantages for personal and societal development.

What is reading habit in 80 words?

Reading habit involves exploring new ideas, developing imagination, and enhancing conversational skills. It also improves emotional intelligence and general knowledge, contributing to a better understanding of the world and a desire for continuous learning.

Why is reading important 150 words?

Reading is important as it strengthens brain activity, boosts communication skills, and supports self-exploration. It also makes individuals intellectually sound, entertains, and lowers stress. Additionally, reading grows imaginations, develops a sense of accomplishment, and supports all areas of life, providing opportunities for education, entertainment, and personal growth.

What is the importance of reading essay?

The importance of reading lies in its ability to provide knowledge, sharpen critical thinking, and expand education. It fosters curiosity, inquiry, and discovery, leading to personal and academic accomplishments. Reading is a significant tool for learning, relaxation, and self-improvement, offering a wide range of benefits for individuals of all ages.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, ap literature reading list: 127 great books for your prep.

Advanced Placement (AP)

A lot of students wonder if there's a specific AP English reading list of books they should be reading to succeed on the AP Literature and Composition exam. While there's not an official College-Board AP reading list, there are books that will be more useful for you to read than others as you prepare for the exam. In this article, I'll break down why you need to read books to prepare, how many you should plan on reading, and what you should read—including poetry.

Why Do You Need to Read Books for the AP Literature Test?

This might seem like kind of an obvious question—you need to read books because it's a literature exam! But actually, there are three specific reasons why you need to read novels, poems, and plays in preparation for the AP Lit Test.

To Increase Your Familiarity With Different Eras and Genres of Literature

Reading a diverse array of novels, poetry and plays from different eras and genres will help you be familiar with the language that appears in the various passages on the AP Lit exam's multiple choice and essay sections. If you read primarily modern works, for example, you may stumble through analyzing a Shakespeare sonnet. So, having a basic familiarity level with the language of a broad variety of literary works will help keep you from floundering in confusion on test day because you're seeing a work unlike anything you've ever read.

To Improve Your Close-Reading Skills

You'll also want to read to improve your close-reading and rhetorical analysis skills. When you do read, really engage with the text: think about what the author's doing to construct the novel/poem/play/etc., what literary techniques and motifs are being deployed, and what major themes are at play. You don't necessarily need to drill down to the same degree on every text, but you should always be thinking, "Why did the author write this piece this way?"

For the Student Choice Free-Response Question

Perhaps the most critical piece in reading to prepare for the AP Lit test, however, is for the student choice free-response question. For the third question on the second exam section, you'll be asked to examine how a specific theme works in one novel or play that you choose. The College Board does provide an example list of works, but you can choose any work you like just so long as it has adequate "literary merit." However, you need to be closely familiar with more than one work so that you can be prepared for whatever theme the College Board throws at you!

Note: Not an effective reading method.

How Many Books Do You Need to Read for the AP Exam?

That depends. In terms of reading to increase your familiarity with literature from different eras and genres and to improve your close-reading skills, the more books you have time to read, the better. You'll want to read them all with an eye for comprehension and basic analysis, but you don't necessarily need to focus equally on every book you read.

For the purposes of the student choice question, however, you'll want to read books more closely, so that you could write a detailed, convincing analytical essay about any of their themes. So you should know the plot, characters, themes, and major literary devices or motifs used inside and out. Since you won't know what theme you'll be asked to write about in advance, you'll need to be prepared to write a student choice question on more than just one book.

Of the books you read for prep both in and out of class, choose four to five books that are thematically diverse to learn especially well in preparation for the exam. You may want to read these more than once, and you certainly want to take detailed notes on everything that's going on in those books to help you remember key points and themes. Discussing them with a friend or mentor who has also read the book will help you generate ideas on what's most interesting or intriguing about the work and how its themes operate in the text.

You may be doing some of these activities anyways for books you are assigned to read for class, and those books might be solid choices if you want to be as efficient as possible. Books you write essays about for school are also great choices to include in your four to five book stable since you will be becoming super-familiar with them for the writing you do in class anyways.

In answer to the question, then, of how many books you need to read for the AP Lit exam: you need to know four to five inside and out, and beyond that, the more the better!

Know the books. Love the books.

What Books Do You Need to Read for the AP Exam?

The most important thing for the student choice free-response question is that the work you select needs to have "literary merit." What does this mean? In the context of the College Board, this means you should stick with works of literary fiction. So in general, avoid mysteries, fantasies, romance novels, and so on.

If you're looking for ideas, authors and works that have won prestigious prizes like the Pulitzer, Man Booker, the National Book Award, and so on are good choices. Anything you read specifically for your AP literature class is a good choice, too. If you aren't sure if a particular work has the kind of literary merit the College Board is looking for, ask your AP teacher.

When creating your own AP Literature reading list for the student choice free-response, try to pick works that are diverse in author, setting, genre, and theme. This will maximize your ability to comprehensively answer a student choice question about pretty much anything with one of the works you've focused on.

So, I might, for example, choose:

A Midsummer Night's Dream , Shakespeare, play, 1605

Major themes and devices: magic, dreams, transformation, foolishness, man vs. woman, play-within-a-play

Wuthering Heights , Emily Bronte, novel, 1847

Major themes and devices: destructive love, exile, social and economic class, suffering and passion, vengeance and violence, unreliable narrator, frame narrative, family dysfunction, intergenerational narratives.

The Age of Innocence , Edith Wharton, novel, 1920

Major themes and devices: Tradition and duty, personal freedom, hypocrisy, irony, social class, family, "maintaining appearances", honor

Wide Sargasso Sea , Jean Rhys, novel, 1966

Major themes and devices: slavery, race, magic, madness, wildness, civilization vs. chaos, imperialism, gender

As you can see, while there is some thematic overlap in my chosen works, they also cover a broad swathe of themes. They are also all very different in style (although you'll just have to take my word on that one unless you go look at all of them yourself), and they span a range of time periods and genres as well.

However, while there's not necessarily a specific, mandated AP Literature reading list, there are books that come up again and again on the suggestion lists for student choice free-response questions. When a book comes up over and over again on exams, this suggests both that it's thematically rich, so you can use it to answer lots of different kinds of questions, and that the College Board sees a lot of value in the work.

To that end, I've assembled a list, separated by time period, of all the books that have appeared on the suggested works list for student choice free-response questions at least twice since 2003. While you certainly shouldn't be aiming to read all of these books (there's way too many for that!), these are all solid choices for the student choice essay. Other books by authors from this list are also going to be strong choices. It's likely that some of your class reading will overlap with this list, too.

I've divided up the works into chunks by time period. In addition to title, each entry includes the author, whether the work is a novel, play, or something else, and when it was first published or performed. Works are alphabetical by author.

Warning: Not all works pictured included in AP Literature reading list below.

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Ancient Works

The Queen of AP Literature surveys her kingdom.

Don't get trapped in a literature vortex!

1990-Present

Don't stay in one reading position for too long, or you'll end up like this guy.

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An Addendum on Poetry

You probably won't be writing about poetry on your student choice essay—most just aren't meaty enough in terms of action and character to merit a full-length essay on the themes when you don't actually have the poem in front of you (a major exception being The Odyssey ). That doesn't mean that you shouldn't be reading poetry, though! You should be reading a wide variety of poets from different eras to get comfortable with all the varieties of poetic language. This will make the poetry analysis essay and the multiple-choice questions about poetry much easier!

See this list of poets compiled from the list given on page 10 of the AP Course and Exam Description for AP Lit, separated out by time period. For those poets who were working during more than one of the time periods sketched out below, I tried to place them in the era in which they were more active.

I've placed an asterisk next to the most notable and important poets in the list; you should aim to read one or two poems by each of the starred poets to get familiar with a broad range of poetic styles and eras.

14th-17th Centuries

Anne Bradstreet
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Herbert
Andrew Marvell
John Milton
William Shakespeare*

18th-19th Centuries

William Blake*
Robert Browning
Samuel Taylor Coleridge*
Emily Dickinson*
Paul Laurence Dunbar
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Gerard Manley Hopkins
John Keats*
Edgar Allan Poe*
Alexander Pope*
Percy Bysshe Shelley*
Alfred, Lord Tennyson*
Walt Whitman*
William Wordsworth*

Early-Mid 20th Century

W. H. Auden
Elizabeth Bishop
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)
T. S. Eliot*
Robert Frost*
Langston Hughes*
Philip Larkin
Robert Lowell
Marianne Moore
Sylvia Plath*
Anne Sexton*
Wallace Stevens
William Carlos Williams
William Butler Yeats*

Late 20th Century-Present

Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Gwendolyn Brooks
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Lucille Clifton
Billy Collins
Seamus Heaney
Garrett Hongo
Adrienne Rich
Leslie Marmon Silko
Derek Walcott
Richard Wilbur

You might rather burn books than read them after the exam, but please refrain.

Key Takeaways

Why do you need to read books to prepare for AP Lit? For three reasons:

#1 : To become familiar with a variety of literary eras and genres #2 : To work on your close-reading skills #3 : To become closely familiar with four-five works for the purposes of the student choice free-response essay analyzing a theme in a work of your choice.

How many books do you need to read? Well, you definitely need to get very familiar with four-five for essay-writing purposes, and beyond that, the more the better!

Which books should you read? Check out the AP English Literature reading list in this article to see works that have appeared on two or more "suggested works" lists on free-response prompts since 2003.

And don't forget to read some poetry too! See some College Board recommended poets listed in this article.

What's Next?

See my expert guide to the AP Literature test for more exam tips!

The multiple-choice section of the AP Literature exam is a key part of your score. Learn everything you need to know about it in our complete guide to AP Lit multiple-choice questions.

Taking other APs? Check out our expert guides to the AP Chemistry exam , AP US History , AP World History , AP Psychology , and AP Biology .

Looking for other book recommendation lists from PrepScholar? We've compiled lists of the 7 books you must read if you're a pre-med and the 31 books to read before graduating high school .

Ellen has extensive education mentorship experience and is deeply committed to helping students succeed in all areas of life. She received a BA from Harvard in Folklore and Mythology and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University.

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Why Do We Still Read Books?

Humans appear to have a primal need for narrative and the written word..

Posted May 12, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

People predicted that reading books would become extinct due to digital technology.
Reading books has remained a popular activity in the Digital Age.
Reading appears to be a basic human drive rooted in cognition.

As it became clear in the 1990s that digital culture would transform everyday life, many critics predicted that books would go the way of the horse and buggy. Books, and print culture in general, would soon be seen as anachronisms in a world in which information was sent and received by more advanced technology, they held, echoing experts who expressed a similar opinion when television appeared a half-century earlier.

Print culture has not become obsolete, however, and reading books, both as hard copies and in digital form, remains a popular activity. In fact, book sales have been robust in recent years, partly due to the pandemic. Sales of print books rose 9 percent in 2021, according to Publishers Weekly , and the market has remained strong since then.

Why is this so? What is it about books, which have been around in some form since 500 BC (as hand-written scrolls) that make them an essential feature of the human condition?

Bright minds have offered some answers to these questions, one of them being Carmen Martin Gaite, who expressed her views in 1989. “Reading provides insight into a secret world that liberates one from the hostile pressures of the environment , from the routines and deceptions that the confrontation with reality produces,” she wrote, having experienced that special feeling at an early age.

It was ironic that this “prize awarded by reading,” as Gaite described it, was being recognized and appreciated at a time when sitting down with a book was already being seen by some as an antiquated, even absurd practice. The concentration required by deliberate reading afforded a sense of calm in an increasingly frenetic world, Gaite held, considering the chance to escape from the noise and chaos and embrace solitude “a miraculous feat.”

In his 1988 Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure , Victor Nell said much the same thing. Reading was for Nell, as he began his book, “as rousing, colorful and transfiguring as anything out there in the real world” and a rare opportunity to “acquire peace, become more powerful, and feel braver and wiser.”

Alongside such musings, Nell provided statistics drawn from clinical research that lent evidence to his argument that reading offered psychological benefits to those who took the time to do it. Reading was not just a joyful experience but a nearly universal one, he pointed out, implying that there was a basic human drive to both produce and consume narrative. Losing oneself in a book, as the title of his suggested, was good for both brain and body, the research showed—something that devoted readers already knew.

The questioning of the role of reading in the digital age provoked a flurry of thoughts that offered keen insights into why people chose to spend their valuable time looking at words in a book or on a screen. Why read rather than watch a film, listen to music, or take a walk in the park?

Barbara Herrnstein Smith asked that good question and provided some equally good answers. For her, reading was essentially a certain kind of scanning of the environment, i.e., a visual attempt to determine what was good or bad out there in the world. People scan the environment all the time in such a way, a natural instinct to assess signs to gain information that might be useful.

As a cognitive activity, reading could serve all kinds of purposes, with particular ones contingent on the motive of the individual in relation to the material. “What reading can do depends on who is doing the reading as much as on what is being read,” Smith wrote, with “personal, cultural, and intellectual histories, distinctive situations, interests, and anxieties, and distinctive physiologies, including brain wiring,” entering the equation.

Durable, resilient , and somehow resistant to external forces, reading at its core remains a fundamental human endeavor, and reports of its impending death are greatly exaggerated. Reading books, whether fiction, non-fiction, or everything in between, is not just a sanctuary from the cultural storm but a healing, therapeutic agent that appears to be based in brain chemistry.

Nell, Victor. (1988). Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Samuel, Lawrence R. (2024). Literacy in America: A Cultural History of the Past Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D. , is an American cultural historian who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and was a Smithsonian Institution Fellow.

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Essay on My Hobby Reading Book [With PDF]

Book reading is one of the most prevalent hobbies among children. That’s why this topic has a certain reputation to come in as an essay writing topic in various types of examinations. But I have noticed that students of different classes face a few issues while writing essays on this very topic. Therefore I have decided to come up with a session explaining the very method of writing an essay on my hobby reading book most specifically for the students from class 6 to 9.

Essay on My Hobby Reading Book within 100 Words

My Hobby Reading Book

All my school friends have chosen something as their hobby while promoted to high school from the primary standard. I also chose book reading as my hobby. I love to read different kinds of books since my early childhood. I still remember that my mother used to tell me stories at night when I was a child.

Probably my passion for reading storybooks got developed from that time. I prefer reading detective as well as ghost stories. One of my teachers has asked me to read travel stories by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. I have read the book Chander Pahar written by him. The character Shankar from the novel Chander Pahar has become very close to my heart.

Essay on My Hobby Reading Book within 200 Words

My Hobby Reading Book

Everybody in their life pursues something as a hobby. A hobby is something that any person is passionate about. People spend their leisure time pursuing a hobby. Like other people, I have chosen reading books as my hobby. This hobby of mine is not about reading regular academic books. Rather I love to read books on different topics and incidents happening all around the world.

Especially, I love to read books on real travel stories as well as adventures. My habit of reading books developed since I was a child. We had no television or mobile phone in our house but a lot of books. I used to read from them whatever I wanted to. Most of those I hardly understood. I still remember those days when my father used to buy me monthly child magazines like Anandamela and Suktara.

I still love reading comics from those magazines. My favorite comics are Tintin, Chacha Chowdhury as well as Nonte-Fonte. I have recently read a book named Aranyak written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. It is all about the life experience of the author in a remote rural location of India. In this book, the description of nature is so vivid that any passionate reader will get lost in an amazing experience. All my teachers as well as my parents appreciate this hobby.

Essay on My Hobby Reading Book within 300 Words

A hobby is something that a person pursues to take a break from the same monotonous regular routine. That’s why everyone chooses something as a hobby that they love. Because as wise men say that love can be the ultimate motivation to do something.

So, we all need to choose something as our hobby that we are passionate about. Without passion, all our efforts to do something creative go into the vein. Our hobbies necessarily can enrich us both physically and mentally. That’s why my father says that hobbies are needed to be chosen wisely and very carefully for proper utilization of both time and effort.

Hobbies can be of many different types. Many of my classmates have chosen singing, gardening, painting as their hobbies. My best friend Piyush chose stamps collection as his hobby. These all hobbies bring refreshment to them. Like my friends, I have also chosen reading books as my hobby. I enjoy my hobby the most.

I love to read about everything no matter what topic it is. Since my early childhood, I developed a passion for reading. My parents used to gift me so many books since then. Every year, I go to the Kolkata International Book Fair with my parents. Moreover, After getting promoted to high school from primary, I got exclusive student access to my school library.

Nowadays, I borrow more books from the library than buying them. Not only the school library but my father has also helped me to get a membership of the district library Khardah.

I love reading all kinds of books. But especially I am passionate about reading historical fiction. For this reason, Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay is one of my most favorite writers. Besides these, I also love to read adventure fiction as well as mythologies.

Essay on My Hobby Reading Book within 500 Words

What is a hobby? What a person should choose as a hobby? Before going deep into the discussion of my hobby, let’s talk about the hobby itself. A hobby is something that people do especially in their leisure time mostly for enjoyment. We do not expect to get paid for our hobbies.

These are some habits that come from inside us due to our natural internal tendency as well as passion. Hobbies include a wide range of activities. It can be collecting something like coins or stamps or leaves, fine arts activities like painting, dancing, Creative works like gardening, writing poetry, etc. Or it can simply be reading books, like what I have chosen as my hobby of life.

At the very beginning, I want to say that I literally admire my hobby, and one of my playschool teachers inspired me to fall in love with reading books when I was at my very early age. I still remember she used to bring me many kinds of colorful interesting books full of amazing stories as well as pictures.

At that age, I fond of those kinds of books. Later on, I came to know that those books are known as comics. I have read so many comics since my early childhood. Tintin, Phantom, Dennis the Menace, Hada Bhoda, Nonte-Phonte is a few among them. My parents always appreciate my hobby of reading books. For me, reading any book is the way of my utmost relaxation.

When I get tremendously bored of my regular monotonous life, at that point my storybooks help me to travel in some dream location being a part of some exciting adventure of imagination. After going to high school, I got exclusive access to my school’s students’ library and a different world opened there for me. From then, I borrow books so many kinds of books from my school library and read them thoroughly.

Here, I would like to mention my school librarian sir Mr. Paresh Pathak who helps me to choose the proper book according to my age and reading tendency. From my school library, I have read many works of great authors like Guru Rabindranath Tagore, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and many more.

Recently, I have developed a special interest in magic realism. Very recently, I was reading a work of the great Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The name of the book is very famous One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is an amazing work that led me to a different fantasy world along with the dark humorous touch of eternal truth.

I’ve also read some works of Franz Kafka. His famous work The Metamorphosis will be very close to my heart always. For these also all credit goes my school librarian sir. He first suggested me to read something unconventional out of the box.

I got the first book of Gabriel Garcia Marquez from him. Moreover, I learned about magic realism from him as well. I believe that no matter what happens with human beings, but books, stories, and realization are eternal. They will never abandon me in my entire life.

That was all about essay writing on my hobby reading books. Here in the session, I have tried to write some essays on the very topic following every method and all possible perspectives. Moreover, I have also tried to write them for students of different classes. Besides, I maintained the word limit relevant for various examinations.

Hope you found this session helpful as per your requirement. Let us know your valuable opinion as well as suggestions for this session in the comment section below. Thank you; see you again very soon.

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The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.” –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture. –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think. –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel Lost Children Archive (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a good conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment. Tell Me How It Ends is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.” –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing Bad Feminist that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell. This Young Monster (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from Artforum , Dazed & Confused , and Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic, This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) · Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012) · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014) · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014) · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014) · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) · Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016) · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016) · Lindy West, Shrill (2016) · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016) · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016) · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016) · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016) · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017) · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017) · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017) · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017) · Joan Didion, South and West (2017) · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017) · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017) · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) · Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018) · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018) · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018) · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018) · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018) · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019) · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019) · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019) · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019) · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019) · Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019) · Robert A. Caro, Working (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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7 Books You Should Read To Improve Your English

7 books you should read to improve your English | Oxford House Barcelona

Posted on 11/03/2020
Categories: Blog
Tags: Reading , Resources to learn English

Reading is one of the best ways to practice English. It’s fun, relaxing and helps you improve your comprehension skills and vocabulary.

To help you pick out books, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite novels. The stories are full of adventures and exciting characters – and better yet, they are easy to read for language learners.

So here are our top 7 books to help you practise English at home.

1. One Day, by David Nicholls

One Day tells the story of Dexter and Emma who spend a night together after their university graduation. Each chapter revisits the lives of the protagonists on the same date for twenty years. Their relationship evolves over the years: sometimes they’re together, sometimes they’re chasing their individual dreams. It’s a funny, endearing and bittersweet tale of friendship and the unfairness of life.

If you love this easy-to-read novel, watch the 2011 film adaptation that stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess.

2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

This mystery novel – with a mysterious title – takes the reader on a journey into the mind of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who sees the world and the people around him in a different way.

Christopher finds himself in the middle of an adventure after he discovers the dead body of the neighbour’s dog, speared by a garden fork. As the story unfolds, Christopher finds out the truth about his mother. He also travels to London alone and takes an A-level maths exam, all in a frenzy of excitement and fear.

We love this book – and the English level is perfect for intermediate learners .

Bookcase - 7 books you should read to improve your English | Oxford House Barcelona

3. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Northern Lights – known as The Golden Compass in the US – is the first book in Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. It was published in 1995 and has since become a classic in the young-adult fantasy genre .

The novel tells the story of twelve-year-old Lyra Belacqua. She’s a brave and curious girl who lives in a world of mythical creatures and parallel universes. Like all humans in this world, she has a “daemon”, a talking spirit animal that constantly accompanies her. Together, they embark on a journey that is filled with danger and excitement.

If you’re looking for a thrilling but easy book to read in English, Northern Lights is a great place to start. You won’t be able to put it down!

4. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Published in 1961, The Phantom Tollbooth is still one of the best books for young adults and language learners.

The novel follows Milo, a young boy who goes on a fantasy adventure after receiving a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth . He drives through the tollbooth in his toy car and finds himself in magical places where he meets all kinds of strange characters.

The text is littered with puns and wordplay, which make the book even more fun – and a great opportunity for language learners to practise their skills.

5. Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Wonder tells the story of August “Auggie” Pullman, a home-schooled fifth-grader living in Manhattan. He has a medical condition that has left his face disfigured . At the start of the novel, his parents decide to enrol him into a private middle school for the first time ever.

Throughout the school year, Auggie faces many challenges because of his appearance. He’s often bullied and beaten by other kids. Against all odds , the kind and courageous little boy manages to make friends.

Wonder made the New York Times bestseller list and was adapted into a hit movie starring Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as Auggie’s parents and Jacob Tremblay as Auggie.

Reading - 7 books you should read to improve your English | Oxford House Barcelona

6. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It uses a combination of drawings and text to tell the story of her childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

The novel begins in 1980 and focuses on the impact of war and extremist religious ideology on Iranian people, especially women. Marji witnesses unspeakable atrocities that change her life forever.

Persepolis was originally published in French and later translated into many languages, reaching worldwide audiences. It’s an easy read in terms of language, but difficult in terms of the subject matter.

The graphic novel was made into a beautiful and critically acclaimed adult animated film in 2007. The good news? You can watch it in Barcelona on the 12th of March in the Palacio Nacional de Montjuïc. Click here for more details!

7. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

A book that has had an impact on more than one generation of young adults, Roald Dahl’s Danny was first published in 1975. It centres on a young boy living in an old caravan with his father.

When Danny discovers that his father is a skilled poacher , he decides to accompany him on a mission, his most ambitious one yet: capturing 120 pheasants by feeding them sleeping pills. Their mischievous plan leads to all kinds of complications involving a wealthy businessman, Mr Hazell. Will Danny and his father come out triumphant?

Everyone should read this refreshingly sincere and entertaining book once in their lifetime. What better way to practice your English skills?

Can’t get enough of reading books in English? Check out our list of 7 graded readers for all levels .

Glossary for Language Learners

Find the following words in the article and then write down any new ones you didn’t know.

Round up (pv): to bring together.

Protagonist (n): the main character in a book or a film.

Endearing (adj): inspiring love or affection.

Spear (v): drive a spear or other pointed object into something.

Frenzy (n): a state of craziness.

Genre (n): a category of literature or music.

Embark on (v): begin.

Tollbooth (n): a kiosk by the side of the road where drivers pay a fee to use the road.

Disfigured (adj): ruined or spoilt, for example by a scar.

Against all odds (exp): despite something that seems unlikely or improbable.

Atrocity (n): an extremely cruel act.

Poacher (n): someone who hunts illegally.

Pheasant (n): a large, long-tailed bird.

Mischievous (adj): naughty.

pv = phrasal verb

adj = adjective

exp = expression

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English Texts for Beginners

English texts for beginners to practice reading and comprehension online and for free. Practicing your comprehension of written English will both improve your vocabulary and understanding of grammar and word order. The texts below are designed to help you develop while giving you an instant evaluation of your progress.

Prepared by experienced English teachers, the texts, articles and conversations are brief and appropriate to your level of proficiency. Take the multiple-choice quiz following each text, and you'll get the results immediately. You will feel both challenged and accomplished! You can even download (as PDF) and print the texts and exercises. It's enjoyable, fun and free. Good luck!

Wedding Wishes PREMIUM ? »
Countries and Nationalities PREMIUM My workday starts at seven. ? »

Essay on My Favourite Book for Students and Children

500+ Words Essay on My Favourite Book

Essay on My Favourite Book: Books are friends who never leave your side. I find this saying to be very true as books have always been there for me. I enjoy reading books . They have the power to help us travel through worlds without moving from our places. In addition, books also enhance our imagination. Growing up, my parents and teachers always encouraged me to read. They taught me the importance of reading. Subsequently, I have read several books. However, one boom that will always be my favourite is Harry Potter. It is one of the most intriguing reads of my life. I have read all the books of this series, yet I read them again as I never get bored of it.

Harry Potter Series

Harry Potter was a series of books authored by one of the most eminent writers of our generation, J.K. Rowling. These books showcase the wizarding world and its workings. J.K. Rowling has been so successful at weaving a picture of this world, that it feels real. Although the series contains seven books, I have a particular favourite. My favourite book from the series is The Goblet of fire.

When I started reading the book, it caught my attention instantly. Even though I had read all the previous parts, none of the books caught my attention as this one did. It gave a larger perspective into the wizarding world. One of the things which excite me the most about this book is the introduction of the other wizard schools. The concept of the Tri-wizard tournament is one of the most brilliant pieces I have come across in the Harry Potter series.

In addition, this book also contains some of my favourite characters. The moment I read about Victor Krum’s entry, I was star struck. The aura and personality of that character described by Rowling are simply brilliant. Further, it made me become a greater fan of the series.

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What Harry Potter Series Taught Me?

Even though the books are about the world of wizards and magic, the Harry Potter series contains a lot of lessons for young people to learn. Firstly, it teaches us the importance of friendship. I have read many books but never come across a friendship like that of Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. These three musketeers stuck together throughout the books and never gave up. It taught me the value of a good friend.

Further, the series of Harry Potter taught me that no one is perfect. Everyone has good and evil inside them. We are the ones who choose what we wish to be. This helped me in making better choices and becoming a better human being. We see how the most flawed characters like Snape had goodness inside them. Similarly, how the nicest ones like Dumbledore had some bad traits. This changed my perspective towards people and made me more considerate.

Finally, these books gave me hope. They taught me the meaning of hope and how there is light at the end of the tunnel. It gave me the strength to cling on to hope in the most desperate times just like Harry did all his life. These are some of the most essential things I learned from Harry Potter.

In conclusion, while there were many movies made in the books. Nothing beats the essence and originality of the books. The details and inclusiveness of books cannot be replaced by any form of media. Therefore, the Goblet of Fire remains to be my favourite book.

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50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone. Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read Would Everybody Please Stop? is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food, Longthroat Memoirs is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails, Longthroat Memoirs explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as The Believer , The New Yorker , and Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience. Betwixt and Between is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In Look Alive Out There, whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview, Idiophone is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch . From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick , Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby

“With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul

“In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues, Shrewed is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber), Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God) by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask , edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

The Most Anticipated Books of Summer, According to Goodreads

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

An illustration of a high school student with blue hair, dreaming of what to write in their college essay.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

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