Books I give as gifts • Books about other worlds (that help you see this one) • Practical books • Not-quite books
Books
Books I give as gifts
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeline L'Engle
The Books of Earthsea (Illustrated) - Ursula K. Le Guin
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman
The Broken Earth Trilogy - N.K. Jemisin
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Humans - Brandon Stanton
Naked - David Sedaris
⚠️ The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicle)
CAUTION: THIS BOOK HAS NOT YET BEEN COMPLETED. START READING AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Books about other worlds — that help you see the water you're swimming in
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
See also
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Practical Books
Everything by Brené Brown
The life-changing magic of tidying up by KonMari
How to Read a Book
See also:
Not-Quite-Books
This doesn't have a clear category, but, I remember loving the opening section of each annual edition of "America's Best Nonrequired Reading" (Though I've only read the first 8 editions and after the 12th, they replaced Dave Eggers as their editor, so maybe harder to vouch for).
The whole situation is cool:
There's a writing project in SF called "826 Valencia" that facilitates a bunch of cool young people who meet throughout the year and collect the best things they've read, which (beginning in 2002) are then published as part of "The Best American Series."
Once I realized how much I loved the little snippets at the start, I just checked them all out of the library and burned through them all at once. The longer pieces might also be good, but not good enough to capture my (admittedly fickle) attention.
See also: