35 Fiction Books for Men

                 As of late there have been a spat of articles and think pieces bemoaning men not reading or writing, but especially not reading fiction! Reading fiction encourages empathy and expands conversational skills; it gives folk time and space to dream beyond their experience, and in general is really fun. So, I thought I’d offer, in no particular order, 35 fictional books that I’ve really appreciated. So, without further ado, 18 good standalone books and 17 good series. So, guys, read some of these, they’re pretty good!

One off books:

1.      Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin—This is the first book to ever make me feel nostalgia!

2.      Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford—An alternative history detective novel!

3.      Erasure by Percival Everett—By the same guy who brought us James.

4.      The Plot Against America by Philip Roth—An alternative history told from below.

5.      The River Why by David James Duncan—A thoughtful book about fly fishing that is about a lot more than fly fishing.

6.      The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen—A Historical fiction about the Spanish Flu.

7.      Julian Comstock: A Story of 22^nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson—A fun sci-fi adventure where the world has fallen into a dark ages and America has fallen much like Rome.

8.      11/22/63 by Stephen King—This is a fun time travel/horror read. If you’ve read other works by King, he brings us back to Derry.

9.      The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller—This is a really good re-telling of the Trojan War. It does center around a gay relationship (you know how the Ancient Greeks are) so if that’s not your cup of tea, maybe it isn’t the book for you.

10.  Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre—Even though the Iraq War ended 14 years ago, it is still in the room with us. Pitre does an excellent job reminding us that it still here with us.

11.  Silicon Soul by Chris Halverson—This is my sci-fi book from back in 2015 where I warned everyone that AI, social media demagoguery, angry men, and hyperactive nationalistic capitalism are dangerous. Thank God it was just fiction.

12.  This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone—Romantic letters between two time traveling rivals working to shape the future in polar opposite ideological directions.

13.  The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber—I was in a weird place while reading this one. This book freaked me out in a really good way!

14.  Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir—This one was a little more hard sci-fi that I usually like, but there is also a surprise relationship that makes it worth reading.

15.  The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams—This book is all about how reading fiction can do all those positive things I said at the start of this post.

16.  The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley—Another time travel story with a romantic subplot… do I have a type? The fascinating hook for me was the experience of being dislocated from your time, the toll being a time refugee takes on the soul!

17.  Starter Villian by John Scalzi—This is the first book by Scalzi I’ve read. It was fluff, but fun fluff; what if you inherit a supervillain’s acroama?

18.  The Children of Men by P. D. James—A dystopia about a world where every aspect of life is shaped by mass infertility.

Series/Groupings of books:

19.  The Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons—My best friend in high school recommended it to me, and once I started reading it I knew it was one of those series that needs to be read at different parts of one’s life. A sprawling space opera beyond description.

20.  The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe—This series is working on a bunch of different levels, not all of them I’ve caught. I intend to re-read it when I’m 45 to see if I get it better then. Brilliant, but also opaque.

21.  Steppenwolf/Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse—Technically these two should probably each by a stand alone book in the other section, but they work well together read back to back.

22.  The Mistborn Saga by Brandon Sanderson—Sanderson writes solid stuff, and you won’t ever have to worry about not having something new to write, because he is a bit of a perpetual writing machine.

23.  The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon/Brandon Sanderson—This is the amazing series that Amazon recently tried to adapt, but lacked the courage to finish.

24.  The Gilead series by Marilynne Robinson—Four slow-burn books centered on the town of Gilead Iowa, the first told from the perspective of an old Pastor who knows he’s dying of his heart condition.

25.  The Wolf Hall series by Hilary Mantel—A series chronicling the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell.

26.  The Magicians Series by Lev Grossman—A gritty college take on the Magical School genre.

27.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Series by Stieg Larsson—An unfinished Swedish detective/spy/thriller series.

28.  The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey—A rollicking good sci-fi series about a universe where humanity is divided into three factions: Earth Mars, and “Belters.” What start off as a book about a geopolitical… solarpolitical… competition shifts once alien technology is found that changes the balance of everything!

29.  The Remembrance of Earth’s Past series by Liu Cixin—An extensive telling of the remainder of human history.

30.  The Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers—This was my first foray into solar-punk/joyful sci-fi. I highly recommend it!

31.  The Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman—I was surprised how much I enjoyed this series. Old folk in a swanky nursing home solving murders in Jolly Old England! What fun!

32.  A Declaration of Rights of Magicians H.G. Parry—The Shadow Histories series was another surprise for me. It asks the simple question, what if magic was real during the French Revolution and English debates about slavery? The book takes place in Haiti, England, and France. Amazing!

33.  The Strain series by Chuck Hogan/Guillermo del Toro—This is Vampires done different. It starts off as a sort of mystery, switches to a science drama, and ends in the mystical. Not for the faint of heart.

34.  Diskworld series by Terry Pratchett—A satirical fantasy take on anything that Pratchett puts his eyes on. It is a little too rambunctious for me at times, but still they’re much better than a whole lot of books I’ve read.

35.  The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher—Fantasy Noire, I’m reading through it to think about how to write a sustained world over multiple books. It feels a little too much like some of the scenarios are Butcher’s wish fulfillment, but it does seem to get better as the main character grows up, which is maybe the point.