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30 Books Every Man Should Read By 30
30 works of fiction every man should read by the time he’s a grown up (and why)
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How To Lose Friends And Alienate People – Toby Young
Our journalist narrator tries to penetrate the glamorous New York scene, but is hampered by his alarming ability to always say the wrong thing. A great lesson in how not tackle your first move to the big city.
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Thought you had it tough? Growi
My Uncle Oswald – Roald Dahl
For any man who still associates Dahl with giant peaches and magic fingers, step into the mad world of his adult stories. The eponymous Oswald hatches a plan to obtain the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac, and, with the help of a female accomplice, steals the sperm of the world’s most brilliant men. Einstein, Freud, and Picasso all fall victim to the scheme.
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
Everyone should read at least one Murakami (several, really), and this up there with the best. Hearing The Beatle’s song that this novel takes its title from, protagonist Toru dwells upon his student days in the sixties protesting against the status quo. His relationship with the beautiful but damaged Naoko is a lesson that emotional dependence is not love.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kessey
A paranoid schizophrenic, confined to an asylum, narrates a tale full of racial tension, sexual repression and confronts the treatment of the mentally ill. Ken Kesey wrote this after his experiments with various narcotics. It shows…
The Picture Of Dorian Grey – Oscar Wilde
Hedonism, vanity and the selfishness of youth are key in this book. The original cocky upstart, Wilde’s precocious wit is also a valuable lesson in pissing off the powers that be.
The Love Song Of Alfred J. Pruflock – T. S. Eliot
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” – there are a handful of poems every man should read whether they like poetry or not, and Eliot’s stream-of-consciousness moan about the frustrations and disillusionment of modern life is emphatically one of them.
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Conspiracy, secrecy and murder are a thrilling backbone of this tale of a group of elite Classics students. The theme? How we the young and insecure can be easily manipulated.
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut’s most famous novel contains an account of when the Allies bombed Dresden, which he was caught up in as a German prisoner of war. Time-shifting also plays a part in this weird tale, which gives an insight into one of the most important events in recent history.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz
A second generation Dominican growing up in New Jersey, Oscar is a nerdy fat kid who loves comics and sci- fi. Unable to display the machismo expected of boys in the Latin community, he is a likeable embodiment of the misunderstood outsider. And we’ve all been one of those, haven’t we?
The Fall – Albert Camus
A Parisian barrister recounts his fall from wealth and high regard. An advocate for the less fortunate, he nevertheless fails to do anything when he hears a woman fall to her death on a riverbank. A riveting look at that great preoccupation: how we want others to see us.
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
A look at Communism in the 1950s through the thoughts of Anna Wulf, a radical left- winger in post-war Britain. Read for an insight into what it’s like to be the enemy in your own country.
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
A young architect refuses to create the work that others want, believing that his own, new interpretations are superior to the traditions of the past. The lesson here: being an individual is about more than dying your hair black and liking rubbish bands.
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
In a bleak, post-apocalyptic world, a man and his son travel South to avoid the coming winter. In with the terse prose and unbearable tension is a great story of fatherhood.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver
What are years 0-30 about if not fickle affections and brutal heartbreak? Conversations over gin are serialised in this collection of short stories that make for bleak but crucial reading.
Generation X – Douglas Coupland
Three friends reach trapped in dead-end “McJobs” reach adulthood in early eighties California. The ultimate post-graduation book about intellectualising not knowing what the hell to do with yourself.
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great American Novel captures the decadence of the 1920s, while telling the story of a man who has desperately reinvented himself to win back the woman he loves. Relatable for anyone who ever obsessively chased a first love. Ring any bells?
Money – Martin Amis
A loud, often vulgar but always entertaining romp through the life of a London ad-man drafted in to make a feature film in 1980s Hollywood. It follows John Self as he pursues commercial success and, in the process, all of the vacuous accouterments it brings with it. It somehow manages to be both a searing indictment and celebration of the excesses of the “me” decade.
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Any young man who loved The Catcher In The Rye ought to read Plath’s novel, a similar story told from a female perspective. The beautifully written semi-autobiographical tale follows a young woman in the cusp of adulthood who struggles with her mental health.
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
The book that launched a million gap years, On The Road is beat poet pioneer Jack Kerouac’s free form account of hedonistic road trip across America in the 50s that excites you when you’re still young enough to grab a backpack and follow him, and frustrates the hell out of you with its pretentiousness thereafter.
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
Written by the prodigious Smith aged just 24 (a fact either painful or inspiring – you decide), this is the best exploration of modern multicultural Britain we have. And you’re going to laugh out loud. A lot.
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
One of the great dystopian novels, Huxley’s idea of a world in which we distract ourselves from reality to the point we accept a totalitarian regime seems more plausible than ever in the X- Factor age.
The Watchmen – Alan Moore
The ‘graphic novel’ that made reading comic books OK (as if it ever wasn’t…), The Watchmen is of course much more than that – one of the most gripping fictional narratives of the past 40 years.
High Windows – Philip Larkin
Grump old sod that he was, Larkin produced some of modern Britain’s most accessible and compelling poetry. Even the most verse-phobic men will shudder with recognition at the devastating ‘This Be The Verse’…
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas – Hunters S. Thompson
What is being in your twenties all about if not going on a road trip with your best friend, and losing your mind in Vegas? OK, so few of us ever came remotely near matching Thompson’s hedonism even during our wild years, but Fear & Loathing remains the definitive tome to being young and reckless.
The Line Of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
Set in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1983, Hollinghurst’s Booker winning novel makes lbeing a young man seem sexy and London seem conquerable.
The Catcher In The Rye – J D Salinger
Perhaps the ultimate ‘someone understands me!’ moment literature has to offer any reasonably sensitive and intelligent teenage boy, Salinger’s idiosyncratic and often hilarious tale of a teenage boy struggling with his mental health in the face of a world of ‘phonies’ is, like sport, something you either fall for when you’re a kid or spend you adult years wondering what all the fuss is about. For the former, this book still has few equals.
Men Without Women – Ernest Hemingway
There’s a strong case to say all men should read all Hemingway, but as an introduction to his style and major themes (bullfighting, drinking, not knowing what the hell to do about women), this collection of short stores is priceless and should whet the appetite to tackle the major novels (specifically The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls – in that order).
1984 – George Orwell
Along with Animal Farm, 1984 is George Orwell’s gift to anyone experiencing their moment of political awakening, a book that drags you from the self-involvement of adolescence to the harrowing realisation that politics and the wider world can and will impact your life. Every important reason to be watchful, sceptical and demanding of your government is in there.
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