65 Books to Read in Your Twenties

Books are one of my favorite things, and I always feel like I read the most in the summer. Now that summer has (almost) arrived, I've been planning what books to read. My taste runs the gamut of everything from non-fiction works about the brain to trashy romance novels (I love me some trashy romance novels...don't judge), and I'm always open for recommendations. Whenever I see a news article or list of "must read" books, I save it. So when Buzzfeed published a list called "65 Books You Need to Read in Your 20s," I tuned in. I'm in my twenties. I like books. I just turned 26, so I'm in the last few years of my twenties (can we say GAH?!). Obviously, I need to read them all. So I'm making that my goal for the last 4 years of my twenties. Read these books (except those I've already read). Quite a few were already on my radar as ones to read, but others I've never heard of. I'm excited to challenge myself to this. Hopefully I will learn a little more about myself and others from these books.

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The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
What She Saw... - Lucinda Rosenfeld
The Deptford Trilogy - Robertson Davies
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Lucy - Jamaica Kincaid
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
Infinite Jest - David Foster WAllace
Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Call Me by Your Name - Andre Aciman
The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (March 2013)
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
The Sandman Series - Neil Gaiman
The Group - Mary McCarthy
Quicksand and Passing - Nella Larsen
Pastoralia - George Saunders
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
His Dark Materials Trilogy - Philip Pullman (2010)
Generation X - Douglas Coupland
The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
Housekeeping - Marilyn Robinson
I Love Dick - Chris Kraus
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain (2011)
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young
The Dirt - Motley Crue and Neil Strauss
Lunar Park - Brett Easton Ellis
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City - Nick Flynn
Oh the Glory of it All - Sean Wilsey
I Don't Care About Your Band - Julie Klausner
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
Lit - Mary Karr
I'm with the Band - Pamela Des Barres
Dear Diary - Leslie Arfin
The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton - Anne Sexton
Actual Air - David Berman
The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch - Kenneth Koch
Alien vs. Predator - Michael Robbins
The Collected Poems of Audre Lord - Audre Lord
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran
My Misspent Youth - Megan Daum
Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell
How to Cook Everything - Mark Bittman
How's Your Drink - Eric Felten
The Elements of Style - Strunk & White (NO!)
Letters to a Young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards
He's Just Not that Into You - Edward Behrendt and Liz Tucillo

If you're in your twenties (and even if you're not!) and you want to join in, please do! I'll be updating periodically, so please let me know in the comments if you plan to read some of the books too! And you can follow along with me here and on my Goodreads!
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