Books every man should read - and why

We consulted with many, many sources, from Esquire to the Guide to Manliness, to our friends-who-are-men, in order to come up with a full and rich list of the top books every man should read, and why.

In no particular order, here are the best books for men:

• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  First of all, anything by Sedaris is hilariously funny. Says Esquire: Thought you had it tough? Growing up gay, Greek and with a lisp in North Carolina, USA, Sedaris tells the story of his youth through a series of hilarious essays. Worth it for the pithy one-liners alone.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  In case you haven’t burned off the vanity and selfishness of youth as yet, let this be a cautionary tale.
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  Tartt’s métier is guilt, in all its shapes and sizes. But, this book also demonstrates how gullible the young and insecure can be.
  
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  It’s a terse, post-apocalyptic novel that hides a great story of fatherhood.
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  This is a kind of companion novel to The Catcher in the Rye, but youth and the quest for self-discovery from a female perspective.
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  Because it is important to know the difference between heroic love and emotional dependence.

• ​Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
  It’s Thompson’s most famous work of gonzo journalism, which was a thing before the Internet; it’s also one of those occasions where the story is probably better than the reality.
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  This is what the website Cool Material has to say: At the surface, it’s an interesting story about a guy’s cool but manipulative neighbor. Further down, it has something to say about almost every single human vice.
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, and deeply human, this book peels the layers off of lives of quiet desperation and shows where mercy should be.

• ​Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis
  Says Esquire: “What you wish your youth was like, basically. A tale of unbridled excess and, naturally, subsequent destruction.”
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  Cool Material says this: If there’s a moral here, it’s gotta be “buck the system, but don’t buck it too hard and know when to lay low. You can always come back for more later.”
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five is an American classic and one of the world’s great antiwar books.

• ​Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  A kind of companion to Slaughterhouse Five - since its publication in 1961, no novel has matched Catch-22’s intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war.
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  It handles big chunky themes like race and immigration, friendship, war and culture-clashes with a light touch. It’s a joy to read.
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  One of the world's first psychological thrillers, this is a detective story that hinges on ethical dilemmas – including the question of whether doing a bad thing for a good outcome is ever worth it.

What book would you add to this list?

For more content, read The best motivational books of 2018 (so far).