Buzzfeed's 65 Books to Read in Your Twenties

Guys, I'm not sure if being a twenty-something just feels trendy right now because I am a twenty-something and therefore all the twenty-something articles seem relevant to me, or if it is actually trendy, but either way, I feel there has been an EXPLOSION of content for, by, about, and catered to twenty-somethings in the last few months. Just me? Anyone else?

Perhaps one of my favorites of these posts so far has come from Buzzfeed, famous curator of llama pictures and cat memes and baby-animals-doing-cute-things gifs (which is apparently pronounced "jiff", but that's a whole different story). They compiled a list of 65 books you need to read in your twenties, full of a ton of books I've mostly never even heard of.

Image from Buzzfeed.

Anyhoo, because I am a twenty-something with a penchant for reading and a slight obsession with reading lists, I thought I'd share the list here along with notes on which I've read. (And also because Alley at What Red Read did this and I'm not feeling particularly original today, so this post is posted with apologies to Alley).

Since I've read so few of these books, perhaps this will be my new reading challenge after I get to my 26th birthday and realize I've failed to read all of Hemingway's works and/or complete War and Peace?

Bold are books I own.
Strikethroughs are books I've read.

Great Novels

1. The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
2. What She Saw... by Lucinda Rosenfeld
3. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
4. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
5. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
6. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
8. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
9. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
10. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
11. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
12. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
13. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
14. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
15. Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman
16. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
17. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
20. A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
21. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
22. The Group by Mary McCarthy
23. Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen
24. Pastoralia by George Saunders
25. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
26. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
27. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
28. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
29. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
30. Generation X by Douglas Coupland
31. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
32. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
33. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
34. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
35. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
36. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murakami

I've read a whopping four of the novels above (seven if you count the His Dark Materials as three books instead of one), and of the unread ones, only have a few on my to-read list. Well, only had a few on my to-read list, because now I've added more.

Great Memoirs

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey
2. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
3. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young
4. The Dirt by Motley Crue and Neil Strauss
5. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
6. Just Kids by Patti Smith
7. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
8. Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
9. I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner
10. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
11. Lit by Mary Karr
12. I'm with the Band by Pamela Des Barres
13. Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin

Only two memoirs, but at least my percentage is higher here...

Poetry

1. The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton by Anne Sexton
2. Actual Air by David Berman
3. The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch by Kenneth Koch
4. Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins
5. The Collected Poems of Audre Lord by Audre Lord

No surprise here, since I rarely, if ever, read poetry that isn't Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein.

Essays That Will Make You Think And/Or Laugh

1. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
2. How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
3. My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum
4. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
5. Up in the Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

One. Still, that's a 20% rate, which might make essays my best category so far.

General Life How-Tos

1. How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
2. How's Your Drink? by Eric Felten
3. The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
4. Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
5. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
6. He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo

Two general life how-to books! Well, two if you count How to Cook Everything, which I confess I've never read cover-to-cover but do own and reference with fair regularity. And I read He's Just Not That Into You in high school, not as a twenty-something, and honestly, I think most of it went over my head, but I'm counting it here anyway.