If you’re a millennial, chances are that you read differently than other people. This means that you may not always be reading books, but instead scanning online articles for information.
However, that doesn’t mean you should stop reading books! Here are some of the best books for millennials that will help you become a better reader.
1. The Yoga of Max’s Discontent by Karan Bajaj
The Yoga of Max’s Discontent by New York Times best selling author Karan Bajaj is a tale of spiritual discovery and high adventure. It follows a Wall Street analyst who takes his quest for meaning to the next level by quitting his high-paying job and embarking on a journey of self-discovery in India.
The story takes Max on a voyage of the mind from hidden night markets to remote ashrams and Himalayan caves. It also features one of the best and most entertaining casts of characters in recent memory.
The main character is a young man who grew up in crime-ridden housing projects before going on to earn a scholarship at Harvard and a well paying career on Wall Street. When his mother dies, he embarks on a quest to find out what’s the secret to a happy life.
2. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
The Feminine Mystique was a bestseller that helped spark the second wave of feminist movement in America. The book was based on Friedan’s research into women’s lives. She noticed that women were not satisfied with their limited roles in society.
She believed that women needed to have more options. Instead of just being wives and mothers, they should be able to achieve anything that they wanted in life.
Her research led her to find out that American culture had created a “feminine mystique” which made women feel like they didn’t have many options. It also made them unable to feel good about themselves as they were not fulfilling their potential.
The book paved the way for women to stand up to their stereotypes and create change. It also inspired political activism, and many women started creating legal changes to make their lives better.
3. Station Eleven by St. John Mandel
If you haven’t read Station Eleven, it’s worth a try. It’s a story about post-apocalyptic survival, but it also has a lot to say about what it means to be human.
It’s also a surprisingly tender and compassionate meditation on the importance of art in the face of adversity. It’s a book that will defy your expectations and prove that there are still things to be found in life, even when the world is crumbling around you.
Mandel’s book was shortlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. It’s now being adapted into a 10-episode limited series for HBO Max.
4. Normal People by Sally Rooney
In a literary landscape that’s increasingly saturated with millennials and the media lionizing them, Irish writer Sally Rooney’s name has made headlines as the “first great millennial novelist” and the “Salinger of the Snapchat generation.”
A novel about two adolescent teens in Ireland, Normal People traces the complex articulation of growing up in a recessionary economy. It mingles youth, class and gender, portrays the precariousness of modern Irish life, and examines the complex and contradictory nuances of the millennial generation in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.
As in her debut, 2017’s Conversations with Friends, Rooney’s characters are unafraid to mock their neoliberal politics and the social conditions that have forged them. Her protagonist Frances, for example, delights in living precariously while her best friend’s family lives comfortably and carelessly.
5. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
In 1959, Shirley Jackson published her acclaimed novel The Haunting of Hill House, which has since become the benchmark for American gothic horror. It is now considered one of the best ghost stories ever written and has been adapted into two feature films and a TV series.
In this hauntingly brilliant work, Jackson explores psychological terror and complex relationships between characters’ psyches and events happening in the house. The story is laced with broken, destructive families, volatile relations between women, and a history of scandals.
Director Mike Flanagan is known for his love of difficult family dramas (Oculus) and the experience of horror when framed from the perspective of children (Ouija: Origin of Evil). The Netflix adaptation of Hill House takes these themes to new levels.
6. Severance by Ling Ma
Ling Ma’s debut novel Severance is a send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines and missed opportunities of contemporary life. A moving family story, a quirky coming-of-age tale and a deadpan satire all rolled into one, it’s also a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.
As Candace, the protagonist, begins to struggle with her post-apocalyptic world, she alternates between her monotonous pre-fever job in New York and her journey west to join a small group of survivors. The alternating chapters, a literary technique borrowed from the zombie genre, are jarring but make the book work — and readers will want to keep reading because the novel has so many other things going for it.
A bold departure from more traditionally bent predecessors, Severance radically eschews historical perspective for the uncertainty of a speculated future. It’s a striking debut that plays with the apocalyptic fears that so many people share these days.
7. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
In this stunning novel, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood. She examines filial and maternal love, memory and the reciprocal bonds of duty and obligation.
It’s a little more thematically ambitious than her 2011 Booker Prize-shortlisted Swimming Home, but it packs a lot into relatively few pages. The dazzlingly witty and complex writing of her earlier books is here at its most distinctive, with fragments of rhyme and song, misreadings, foreign languages, repetitions and mutations forming a rich mythological fabric.
A crucial epigraph comes from French feminist literary critic Helen Cixous’s 1976 essay, The Laugh of the Medusa. It’s a key text, and Sofia’s task – to be brave and separate from her mother – is shaped by it.
8. Unusual Suspects by Jia Tolentino
Unusual Suspects is a hysterical debut that explores the raw nerves of Millennial masculinity. Written like a frenetic conversation you’d have with your best friend, it will make you question the way you see yourself.
The author, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2016, previously worked as deputy editor at Jezebel and contributed to publications including The Hairpin. She is a veteran of online media and knows how to distill the dizzying complexity of the internet into compelling narratives that will have you thinking.
She’s also a master of teasing apart the intricacies of contemporary culture, which she expertly captures. She covers everything from the in-jokes of social media to Kanye West’s spiritual awakening, and she is able to do it with a clear-eyed, earnest ambivalence.
9. The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
The Zombie Survival Guide is a satirical survival manual on zombies. It covers zombie physiology and behavior, defense strategies, and a catalog of known zombie outbreaks throughout history.
Brooks outlines every possible scenario for zombie-human encounters and drafts detailed plans for defense and attack. He also lists past recorded zombie attacks dating from 60,000 BC to 2002.
The book is divided into seven sections. First, it explains the nature of “Solanum,” the virus that causes zombification. It then covers zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive a zombie invasion in any territory or terrain.
10. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret Life of Bees is an enthralling coming-of-age story. It takes place in South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement and explores race, love, and the idea of home in a time of turmoil.
It is a book that is written through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl and her nanny Rosaleen. It is a story that is about loss and betrayal, but it is also about the power of sisterhood and divine female power.
Set in the Deep South of 1964, it tells the story of Lily Owens who lives on a peach farm with her father T-Ray. She yearns for forgiveness and a mother’s love.
