I'm in the middle of a sort of DIY English Lit degree and reading like a fiend. So if you're looking for ideas about what to read next, here's a selection of literature, YA, and nonfiction for your enjoyment.

Literature

Plainsong, Kent Haruf: if you ever wondered what would happen if Cormac McCarthy had written the Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the answer is Plainsong. It's a spare, lucid story of several interrelated characters in a small plains town: two young boys grappling with their mother's departure; their dad, a high school teacher standing up for his principles; a pregnant high schooler; and a pair of elderly twin ranchers. Beautifully written, brief and affecting.

Atonement, Ian McEwan: Ducked this one for years because the title sounded angsty and depressing. Nope! Instead it's the gripping tale of a number of characters observing a single event from different perspectives, and how that difference has a spiraling impact over years and years when a crime occurs. Set in late 30s London, the story takes us to Dunkirk before landing back on British shores. The literary awakening of one of the characters, a 13yo girl, has a Woolfian angle that works really well.

Robinson Crusoe, William Dafoe: Now I see why this has stuck around for four centuries! This badboy was already old af when Dumas penned the Count of Monte Christo and it remains a good read. If you have any interest in adventure, apocalyptic, dystopian or anything related, this is the OG and you should know it. Theres some racism, but I love that Dafoe is horrified by Spain's genocide in the New World and expresses that horror as universal among thinking people. A glimmer of wokeness? I could do without some of the religious epiphany, but that's part of what's kept this on reading lists forever.

YA

Every Day, David Levithan: What if you woke up in a different consciousness every day, and lived that person's life for a day? A few constraints make this story work: you don't move too far geographically and you follow a rough age progression. Who are 'you' in that case? What's your gender if you occupy males and females evenly? And what happens when you fall in love? This story is cleverly executed and I found it surprisingly deep.

House Arrest, K.A. Holt -- Write a novel in verse?! No way that can work without being annoying! Oh wait, it's actually fantastic! Hey, is that something in my eye? Who's chopping onions in here? This is the story of a 13yo boy grinding through the juvie system after stealing medicine for his baby brother, who is chronically ill with a malformed trachea. Abandoned by their father, the boy's family is on the edge, but the narrative (told in the form of a court mandated journal) doesn't wallow, it perseveres and leaves you full of hope and compassion.

Non-Fiction

A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf: Another book I had been avoiding because I thought it was angsty and depressing. Wrong again! While this is basically a long complaint about how women are treated in 20s England, it's totally gripping! Woolf is yelled at for walking in the grass in Oxbridge and denied entry to libraries there because she's not accompanied by a man. While it's vivid reminder of progress over the past century (for Woolf there were zero social and cultural history works available, today they abound), for Woolf the vote was brand new, misogyny was rampant and accepted, and women being able to have property or money had occurred during the living memory of people she knew. Brief, vivid and has really stuck with me. A must read if you are, know, and/or have interest in women.