8 Books Every Man Should Read

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

A group of narcissistic, moneyed Hollywood spawn spend their time taking drugs, drinking and shagging each other in the back of their Porches. What you wish your youth was like, basically. A tale of unbridled excess and, naturally, subsequent destruction.

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

Thought you had it tough? Growing up gay, Greek and with a lisp in North Carolina, USA, Sedaris tells the story of his youth through a series of hilarious essays. Worth it for the pithy one-liners alone.

A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul

As if the fact that A House for Mr Biswas came out in 1961, when its author was only 28, isn’t remarkable enough, the ambition, humour and perceptiveness in Naipaul’s landmark novel is, frankly, mind-blowing. Based on Naipaul’s own father, Mohun Biswas is a Hindu Indian in Trinidad and Tobago, who we follow as he negotiates the slings and arrows of marriage, parenthood and human pettiness (not least his own) – and of course good old-fashioned fate – in his quest for self-determination. (Oh, and to make matters worse, Naipaul actually started writing it at 25).

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

Everyone should read at least one Murakami (several, really), and this is up there with the best. Hearing The Beatles song that this novel takes its title from, protagonist Toru dwells upon his student days in the sixties protesting against the status quo. His relationship with the beautiful but damaged Naoko is a lesson that emotional dependence is not love.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kessey

A paranoid schizophrenic, confined to an asylum, narrates a tale full of racial tension, sexual repression and confronts the treatment of the mentally ill. Ken Kesey wrote this after his experiments with LSD. It shows...

Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published in 2013, when it won the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel is ostensibly the tale of high school sweethearts in Nigeria whose paths diverge when they travel to America and Britain to make new lives for themselves, only to reconnect (or not?) years later. But the book’s fundamental power lies in Adichie’s pinpoint observations about racial identity in the modern age.

The Picture Of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde

Hedonism, vanity and the selfishness of youth are key in this book. The original cocky upstart, Wilde's precocious wit is also a valuable lesson in pissing off the powers that be.

The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" – there are a handful of poems every man should read whether they like poetry or not, and Eliot's stream-of-consciousness moan about the frustrations and disillusionments of modern life is emphatically one of them.