I’ve been a non-fiction reader most of my life, but recently I stumbled into a very specific kind of fiction that I cannot put down.
I love to finish the book and feel like I’ve learned something about myself or the world (almost like the same dopamine hit I usually get from non-fiction.)
Some recent favorites:
- The Giver (reread – middle school me had great taste)
- The Measure – Nikki Erlick
- The Midnight Library + The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
I guess I’m looking for more “philosophical but readable” fiction? Thought-provoking without being dense.
What should I read next?
by jules_franklin
14 Comments
Try some Walker Percy. Start with “The Moviegoer” or “Love in the Ruins”
Hesse is goood for this. Try Siddhartha or Demian.
Anna Karenina is Tolstoy’s best pure novel in my opinion and you will come away knowing a ton about 19th century Russian society. Much more approachable than War and Peace.
The Baroque Cycle by Stephenson is incredibly detailed and compulsively readable historical fiction that’s also pretty funny.
The Jungle by Sinclair
Butcher’s Crossing by Williams
A Gentleman in Moscow
These are also considered “magical realism” – maybe more in that area? Big ones in this genre: Jitterbug Perfume; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Beloved; Master and the Margarita.
Edit: You may also like “speculative fiction”: Handmaid’s Tale; I Who Have Never Known Men; etc.
I’ll throw Ender’s Game into the mix here. It’s sci-fi but the focus of the novel (NOT the movie for the love of all things holy) is way more about human nature. You definitely walk away from it feeling like you watched some high-yield truth bombs play out in the story.
I can’t recommend John Williams enough. Stoner is incredible, Butchers Crossing is brutal. Kurt Vonnegut is very thought provoking and not at all dense.
The lies of the ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi. It’s part of a trilogy of novellas that take place at different times in the same world.
Long way down: the graphic novel by Jason Reynolds
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
I’ll stop the world by Lauren Thoman
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans! It’s epistolary style composed of letters to/from a woman in her 70s reflecting back on her life. I found it to be very readable and thought provoking.
Come down the dystopian path/sci fi. There are so many good ones. The Hunger Games (including prequels) if you haven’t read those yet. The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. If you like that Oryx and Crake Trilogy and The Heart Goes Last. The One by John Marrs. Pines Trilogy, Recursion, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger (and I think you could also love other time travel books along this vein as well).
“Thought provoking without being dense.”
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant is actually my favorite book by this same author (I’ve read all of them). It is also magical realism. It’s very charming, but still kind of dark. I haven’t read it in a long time, but I think all of his work is thought-provoking. I think the nearest thing about him is that every book seems like a slightly different genre. He definitely gets some criticism for a couple of his works, which I find valid.
Homeland by Barbra Kingsolver is a collection of short stories. Beautifully written. Each one earns reflection afterwards.
I will never not suggest Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick. That actually should be at the top. It’s relatively short, but your brain is chewing on plot, perspective, and character the entire time.
Hope this helps!
There’s a lot of great suggestions here, but I do think some of the suggestions are (to me anyway) dense.
Keep us posted on what you pick and what you think of it 🙂
Babel by R.F. Kuang, Thousand Autumns by Meng Xi Shi – easy read, but with though-provoking themes
you might really connect with Klara and the Sun, it’s very simple on the surface but quietly asks huge questions about love and what it means to be human. I finished it and just kinda sat there for a bit lol
you can try Next one piece (thenextonepiece dot substack dot com) it is something I found when I was in a similar mood, it starts off feeling like a dystopian story but then opens into this bigger strategic world with multiple characters and factions, lots of moral gray areas and emotional decisions. it weirdly hits that “thinking about people and choices” itch even with the scale
you could try Piranesi too, it’s short and very readable but has this strange, almost dreamlike world that slowly reveals deeper ideas about memory and identity. I felt kinda changed after it in a quiet way
and maybe Before the Coffee Gets Cold, it’s structured in small connected stories so it’s easy to get into, but each one has that reflective “what would I do differently” feeling. some of them hit harder than I expected tbh
LA TERCERA LUZ por Walter Ragazzini son solo 10 capítulos que te van a dejar pensando..