How to Get Your Friends to Read Fiction
Or how to start reading it yourself
Recently I went to a bookstore with a friend who hasn’t read fiction in years. As we walked the aisles of McNally Jackson, he asked me, “What’s your selection process when you go to a bookstore?” He had been telling me for weeks that he wanted to start reading again, but, with this question, it became clear that the sheer amount of options available felt intimidating and was delaying his initiation into the world of literature.
When I go to a bookstore, I tend to start at New Releases, then briefly stop by Staff Picks to see if anything catches my eye before making my way to the Fiction section, where I can (and will) spend hours flipping through books I’ve heard of, books I don’t have by authors I like, and books whose covers and/or summaries look enticing (this tends to be the order I skim, consciously or not.) I’ll read the first couple pages to see if the language grips me; if it does, I’ll read on.
However, it took years to develop a palette defined enough to know what I like. Also, my palette has changed as I’ve continued to read; for example, I’m currently reading 2666 by Roberto Bolaño and loving it, but I imagine that when I began reading fiction, this book would have been far too intimidating and dense for me to enjoy. I had to get through Vonnegut and Irving before I could begin Nabokov and Bolaño.
To help people like my friend, I’ve compiled a list of books that I think are good stepping stones into fiction, in that they are entertaining, digestible (i.e. not too dense) and well-written (FOH John Grisham and the like.) Most of all, they tell a story in a way I believe is unique to the written word, a trait that hopefully will reveal itself to the first time reader, pulling them into the world of fiction, gripping them tight, and never letting them leave.
Here is what to recommend to your friend who wants to start reading fiction:
Your Friend Who is a Hopeless Romantic: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
I am yet to meet someone who has read this book and hasn’t said this exact phrase: “That shit wrecked me.” The prose is both beautiful and accessible, and the story, though unique, expresses emotions that anyone who has been involved in any kind of romantic relationship can relate to. You can (and will) read this book in a day; if you don’t, you simply have no soul.
“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
Your Self-Destructive Hot Friend: Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz
This book is nothing short of electric, as well as a giant, drug-addled mess. Eve Babitz is one of my favorite writers, and this book, an auto-fictional account of her initiation into the publishing industry, written in a furious eighteen-day coke binge, is her at the top of her game. This book moves incredibly fast, and is so much fun.
“She discovered what most writers insist is true nowadays, which is that they can only write for three hours a day at the most, so what else is there to do but drink?”
Your Friend Who Works in Finance: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Your finance friend probably grew up playing Call of Duty and loving action movies, and, now that he is stuck at a desk sixteen hours a day surrounded by hellish demons cloaked in Patagonia vests and hair gel, probably craves a little violence again. Cormac is my number one recommended writer for men who don’t read; his prose is masculine, bleak, fast moving and, in the most perverse and inhumane way, FUN. He took what Hemingway did and ran with it in his own direction. A true American master.
“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
Your Funniest Friend: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
This is one of the books that made me love fiction. A male version of Sex and Rage in which Hunter S. Thompson chronicles a road trip to Vegas in search of The American Dream. This book is laugh out loud funny and has psychedelics, guns, gambling and so, so many bats. I’ve read it a dozen times, and I’m gonna keep reading it.
“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
Your Funniest Friend Who Loves To Smoke Pot: Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins
This book is pure comedy. It was said that Tom Robbins wrote his novels one sentence at a time, spending hours and sometimes days finding the right word or punctuation to get his message across. Read one chapter, and you will see for yourself this was no hyperbole. Every sentence in this book belongs on a T-shirt.
“Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is—and still not caring.”
Your Funniest Friend Who Loves To Take Shrooms: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
I’m not sure there is a better introduction to fiction for white men than Kurt Vonnegut. He is funny, he is authentic, and, if you read closely enough, he can be quite profound. This book is hilarious, and its opening chapter, a comical deconstruction of modern society, is one I return to several times a year.
“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”
Your Friend Who Loves Music: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I think this is my most gifted book. It’s an intertwined collection of short stories following a memorable cast of characters in the San Francisco music industry. This book jumps back and forth through time, and tells each story in the exact mode in which it should have been written. It’s fast-moving, it’s heartbreaking, but, most of all, it’s fucking fun.
“I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away—I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”
Your Friend Who Grew Up in Manhattan: Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
Salinger just gets it. He finds ways of describing life’s minutiae that linger, echoing in the mind every time one catches sight of a cigarette or bathtub. Everyone and their mother has read Catcher in the Rye, but Salinger’s mastery of modern prose was never more on display than when he wrote this pair of novellas, originally panned but now revered. Zooey takes place in an Upper East Side apartment, and, for those who were raised in cramped quarters with parents and siblings who involved themselves in their every move, this book will hit close to home. I bring this book with me whenever I fly.
“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete—that's what scares me…Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
Your Friend Who Grew Up in LA: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (or Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz)
Sex and Rage would still be my first pick here, but Less Than Zero would not be far behind. This is a fun novel that follows some very, very shitty people on the precipice of adulthood, and, most importantly for a beginner reader, it moves. This book has it all: sex, drugs, tons of money, and opens with something that will probably resonate greatly with those who grew up on the west coast: TRAFFIC.
“But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him.
“That doesn't matter.”
“What does?” I asked, after a little while.
“Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.”
Your Friend Who Is Going Through an Identity Crisis: How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
I’ve read this book twice this year. In this autofictional half-memoir, Sheila Heti goes through life obsessing with every turn over the same question: Is this the right way for a person to live? This book is infinitely quotable, and will make you both happy and sad, often at the exact same time.
“Such a person inevitably looks back on life as it nears its end with a feeling of emptiness and sadness, aware of what they have built: nothing. In their quest for a life without failure, suffer, or doubt, that is what they achieved … One thinks sometimes how much more alive such people would be if they suffered! If they can't be happy, let them at least be unhappy - really, really unhappy for once, and then the might become truly human!”
Your Friend Who Grew Up in LA and Is Going Through an Identity Crisis: Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
One of my all-time favorites that I have read multiple times a year for the past four years. This book chronicles life in 60s Hollywood, and follows a character who just can’t seem to get comfortable in life. This book is short and seems to move at 2x speed. The prose is spare, and in its spareness lies a haunting beauty.
“I try to live in the now and keep my eye on the hummingbird. I see no one I used to know, but then I’m not just crazy about a lot of people. I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?”
Your Friend Who Used To Love to Read But Stopped: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Eugenides is best known for his Pulitzer prize winning novel, Middlesex, and his bestselling debut, The Virgin Suicides. The latter is good (the former, less-so), but it is in his third book where Eugenides truly accesses and expands upon the human experience. This book is long, and, especially at the beginning, full of inside-baseball references to English literature, but, for the college English major who fell out of love with language, or the former reader who just let the practice of reading slip away from him, these will be met with nostalgia. This book is nothing short of a comfort read for me, and absolutely wrecks me by the end.
“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”
Your Horniest Jewish Friend: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
Philip Roth is someone who gets a lot of hate these days, as, to be seen with a Roth book in your hands is to subject yourself to a stale archetype. That said, this book about a Jewish kid addicted to masturbation is laugh out loud funny and infinitely clever. When I wrote this title down using voice-to-text, my phone correct it to “Porn Noise Contained,” which, frankly, is just as apt a title for this horny, horny collection of words. This is my coming-of-age book. This is my Catcher in the Rye.
“I am marked like a road map from head to toe with my repressions. You can travel the length and breadth of my body over superhighways of shame and inhibition and fear.”
“A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!”
Your Friend Who Might Be Autistic: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Murakami, similar to Roth (although Roth runs circles around Murakami), is a writer who gets a lot of hate, especially regarding his often stilted depictions of women. He is, in that regard, a literary Christopher Nolan. That said, Murakami has some gems, and this book, infinitely weird, hallucinatory and psychedelic, is one of them. If your friend loves computers, buy them this book.
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Sam Frank Jr is a writer and standup comedian based in New York City. He has been published in The Bangalore Review, The Gramercy Review, and his standup comedy has been mentioned in the New York Times. He was named “Best Screenwriter” at the 2021 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival.
Sam is working on his debut novel about a traveling circus.
Sam can be reached at samfrankjunior@gmail.com