For your girlfriends that might get three books in a year but miss the days where they could read:
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Queenie by Candice Carty Williams
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
A Place for Us by Fateema Farheen Mirza
These Impossible Things by Salma El- Wardany
In Case of Emergency by Poorna Bell
Emotionally heavy books that I adore and gravitate towards:
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
This Much I Know is True by Wally Lamb
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenidas
Make Your Home Among Strangers – if they liked American Dirt (Which I have not read but knew of the controversy and gist) by Jennie Cap Crucet
Sagas/Series:
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Marian Keyes Walsh Family books. I reread all of them last year
Nostalgic:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Music Lover:
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
Dystopian/Sci Fi:
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
The End of Men by Christina Sweeney Baird
The Blind Assassin if they liked Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Power by Naomi Alderman— Won Women’s Prize for Fiction
The Windup Bird Chronicle by Murakami
Comic/Art
Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Short Stories
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Last Girlfriend on Earth and other stories by Simon Rich
Shotgun Love Songs by Nikolas Butler
Funny:
Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Anything by Nina Stibbe start with Man at The Helm
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Domestic Bliss and Other Disasters by Jane Ions
Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane
Cooks but not cookbooks:
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (but they are likely to have read it as it is the canon)
The Lost Ravioli of Hoboken (for any Italians in your life) by Laura Schenone
Classics by Black Women that are very widely read in the states and in schools but aren’t very well known here. When I was running London Book Club I couldn’t believe that no one had read Maya Angelou when she passed away. These are incredible books that I read in high school and I still think about Janie in Their Eyes and her walk and sexuality radiating off of the page, but there is a lot of sexual violence covered.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
Essays
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. I loved this so much that I gave it to everyone that Christmas and wrote the only fan girl message I’ve ever written to an author that I don’t personally know.
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
Sports fans: