30 Non-YA Books I Want to Read (Including Adult Fiction, Classics, and Non-Fiction!)

A moment of silence for YA…

Just kidding! I probably will never stop reading YA, BUT I’ve been wanting to branch out of it for a while now. So I finally took the plunge and made a list of adult fiction, classic, and non-fiction books I want to read! I was already excited to read these beforehand (though also a bit intimidated), but making the list made me a lot more excited somehow!!

I definitely will not be reading all of these by the end of the year, but I want to start reading at least one book from this post every month! Hopefully it’s not just one book, because one book a month would take over 2 years and… I don’t have the patience for that.

Click for BLM resources. I’d like to bring special attention to the Portland bail fund because of the way the government and police are responding to protesters right now.

• petitions
• numbers/emails
• videos to stream (ad revenue will be donated)
• George Floyd gofundme
• Gianna Floyd (his daughter) gofundme
• Breonna Taylor gofundme
• Ahmaud Arbery gofundme
• Elijah McClain gofundme
• bail funds, research local ones near you too
• organizations
• small Black businesses that were destroyed
• Black-owned businesses
• indie Black-owned bookstores
• tips on overall protest safety
• google doc masterlist of BLM resources

ADULT FICTION

I have a lot more adult books on my TBR, mostly in SFF, but these are my top 5 SFF and top 5 general/literary picks!

       

• The Fifth Season: I’ve been meaning to finishing this one for so long!! I’m finally reading it again in August because my friend Breana picked it for her book club, but what I’ve read was so great and I’m excited to finally finish it.
• The Starless Sea: Ah yes… another book I put down and never finished. The writing is slow to get through, but absolutely gorgeous, and I am 99% sure this will be a new favorite!! Books and gays, my two favorite things in the world.
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: Another NK Jemisin! I feel like she could definitely be a new favorite author. But this one features gods, ancient magic, and a power struggle, and it all sounds very exciting!
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January: I lowkey want to own a physical copy of this, since it’s so gorgeous? But I know so many people who have fallen in love with this story and its writing and I can’t wait to join them!!
• A Memory Called Empire: I’m very bad at reading sci-fi, but this one is a political space opera with court intrigue and a f/f romance! Quite a few of my trusted reviewers rated this super highly, so I am really really excited to read it.

       

• Little Fires Everywhere: Oh god, this is the third book I never finished reading, look AWAY!! It took me like 90 minutes to read 60 pages which is terribly slow for me, but what I read was intriguing and I’m excited to see where it goes!
• My Dark Vanessa: This one will definitely be a disturbing, hard-hitting book, as it highlights the relationship between a 15yo and 42yo. So I don’t know when I’ll be in the headspace for it, but I think it’s going to be a very powerful read.
• Homegoing: I have only heard glowing things about this book, and it sounds amazing! It follows two the paths and descendants of two sisters from Ghana, as one marries an Englishman and the other is sold into the slave trade.
• The Vanishing Half: So I solely know this book as the “book with the cover with a lot of colors and two outlined figures,” but it also is apparently actually about two sisters who live different lives, as one Black person and one white(-passing) person!
• Pachinko: I feel like this book is pretty well-known! But if you don’t know it, it follows multiple generations of a family who leaves Korea after it has been colonized by Japan, and what it means to be Korean-Japanese during this time.

 

Bonus: The Bone Shard Daughter and Bestiary, which are both releasing later this year! F/f Asian-inspired fantasy for fans of The Poppy War, and literary fiction following the generations and migration of queer Taiwanese women, yes please.

CLASSICS

I’m terrified to read classics, because I know I’ll have a hard time with the way they’re written. But I’m willing to try, and I think they’ll be a great way to enrich my reading!! I also tried to make a diverse selection instead of just white cishet male authors—I’m very open to more diverse classic recs, especially Asian classics!

       

• Pride and Prejudice: This is like the One Classic everyone adores, so I want to see what the hype is about! I read an abridged kids’ version when I was younger, and I thought it was interesting. So I have very high hopes for this one!
• The Well of Loneliness: This is a famous lesbian classic, and it was also banned for “obscenity” so I would like to see how truly “obscene” it is! (I am betting: not at all, beyond being—gasp—a romance between two women.)
• The Bluest Eye: I am so sad that I haven’t read any Toni Morrison so I’m of course amending that! This one is going to be a very hard-hitting read for me, as it discusses beauty and how a Black girl wants to be as white as she can be to fit in.
• Song of Solomon: This is another Toni Morrison book because why would I not want to read more from her! It’s a coming of age story that features “a cast of liars and assassins” and.. I know I shouldn’t love it already for that but I do.
• Rebecca: I first heard of this when Victoria Lee named it as one of their favorite books for this post (and… I did not include it), and then I just kept seeing it everywhere? So obviously that’s a sign! And it looks very intriguing: a gothic, romancey thriller!!

      

• Maurice: Elle once just slid into my DMs to tell me to read this, so I must listen! It is a gay classic that was actually written in 1914 but wasn’t published until after the author’s death (because of The Homophobes), and I’m really really excited for it.
• The Color Purple: I feel like everyone knows about this book? So I am ashamed to not have read it yet! But it’s told in letters and is about African American women (including two sisters), race, gender, and resilience.
• Orlando: I really want to read from Virginia Woolf, and this one interested me because Orlando, the protagonist, is supposed to be the fictional embodiment of Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, which I think is so cool!!
• Giovanni’s Room: I definitely want to read lots of James Baldwin’s works, but this one particularly caught my eye! It is another classic of gay literature, and it follows an American man in Paris as he discovers his sexuality.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray: This is another classic I see talked about quite a bit, and as of 6 seconds ago, I actually had no idea what it was about! But it follows a man who sells his soul for eternal youth and… this sounds exactly up my alley. (I always forget that classics can be fantasy.)

NON-FICTION

I have read very few non-fiction books, which is very saddening! I’ve always been a read for enjoyment and escapism type reader, and I read simply because I love to. But if I can educate myself and learn things through this hobby, I think it’s also important that I actually do that and utilize the many books at my disposal.

       

• All Boys Aren’t Blue: This one is actually YA, so perhaps I’m cheating a bit, but it’s an essay collection/memoir about what it was like to grow up Black and gay, as well as covering topics like Black joy, gender identity, and toxic masculinity.
• Angela Davis works: I’m in the middle of reading Are Prisons Obsolete? right now (which is fantastic!) but I know all of Angela Davis’ works are must-reads. So I’m very much looking forward to getting to all of them and encourage you to read them too!
• Long Live the Fatherless Tribe of Girls: I’m really excited about this one! It’s a memoir by a Chinese-Hawaiian lesbian, discussing topics like trauma, privilege, and family, and it’s supposed to have really gorgeous writing.
• The Rape of Nanking: I’m particularly interested in this one after RF Kuang talked about reading it for The Poppy War. While it’s going to be heavy, as it covers the Nanking Massacre, I think it’s going to be a well-written and important book!
• Hood Feminism: This is an essay collection that discusses feminism, emphasizing the need for intersectionality within the movement and highlighting how certain social issues disproportionately affect women of color, particularly Black women!

       

• Between the World and Me: This is a book told in letters from the author to his son, answering questions about race, slavery, and white supremacy, in America’s past and present.
• In Order to Live: My friend Tiffany read this one recently and fell in love with it, so she’s made me really excited to read it! Yeonmi Park tells her survival story about how she escaped North Korea and the hardships she still faced after.
• Know My Name: I know this will be difficult to read, as it’s a memoir by Chanel Miller recounting her trauma and sexual assault, but I know it will be such an important book, discussing sexual assault overall but also the US justice system and her Asian American identity.
• Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions: I want to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s books in general, but this one is told as a letter about how to raise a daughter to be a strong woman! And it’s really short, which is a major bonus.
• Sister Outsider: Audre Lorde is absolutely someone I need to read from, and I want to start out with this collection of fifteen essays! These cover race, sexuality, class, and gender.

(If you have any non-fiction recs, I would absolutely love to hear them!!)

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have you read any of these books? any you think i should prioritize? do you have any recs for me? and if you want to buddy read any, i’d be happy to!!

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