№ 01
“Carter's renovations of traditional fairy tales and terror motifs are told in an ornate prose lush as velvet.” source
Author of The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is the Canadian author of The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake, and many other novels, poems, and works of nonfiction. With a taste for the strange and speculative, she shares picks in interviews and cover blurbs. Books below come from those sources.
29
Recommendations
2022
Most recent list
Literary Fiction
Most-recommended
On the record
All Margaret Atwood book recommendations.
№ 02
“This is technically a children's book, but be careful what sort of child you give it to.” source
№ 03
“A highly regarded edgy tale that turns the tables on the Playboy Bunny, as well as taking a few satiric bites out of college Creative Writing courses.” source
№ 04
“A collection of smart, deft, and unsettling tales in which our expectations of reality are challenged.” source
№ 05
“A Canadian Indigenous riff on the werewolf or loup garou theme.” source
№ 06
“A collection of riotous, intricately woven, off-kilter stories, less starkly terrifying than intelligently wacko.” source
№ 07
“A forgotten gem resurrected: a creepy, shadowy group is rooting out independent thought and creativity.” source
№ 08
“This disturbing but seductive 1982 novella tells the story of a benumbed, bereft housewife.” source
№ 09
“Many classics, but also a huge number of lesser-known stories from the Uncanny Valley, collected by the widely-read and multilingual Manguel.” source
№ 10
“A rich legacy of ghost literature, featuring writers like M.R. James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and J. Sheridan LeFanu.” source
№ 11
“Geppetto, carver of naughty Pinocchio, keeps a haunting journal of his years inside the whale. Bizarre [and] moving.” source
№ 12
“The old original; perhaps the first twentieth-century dystopia.” source
№ 13
“Which is better, shopping or a soul? Your choice!” source
№ 14
“Orwell nailed fake news and distortions of language before anyone else did.” source
№ 15
“Radical in the ways it forces the reader to imagine other ways of being human.” source
№ 16
“It tackles various social issues, especially those concerning gender, unsparingly.” source
№ 17
“This series is now a classic, and underlines a true thing.” source
№ 18
“Philip Marlowe on speed, with water as blue gold.” source
№ 19
“Station Eleven's surprising hopefulness something of a rarity in apocalyptic fiction.” source
№ 20
“She's also well up on the progress of AI, if progress it is.” source
№ 21
“Looking Backward is more '20th C' in its briskness, and it predicted credit cards.” source
№ 22
“Surreal and puncturing.” source
№ 23
“Electrifying! Shocking! Will knock your socks off! Then you'll think twice, about everything.” source
№ 24
“Eggers treats his material with admirable inventiveness and gusto. The plot capers along, the trap doors open underfoot, the language ripples and morphs.” source
№ 25
“King's inventiveness and skill show no signs of slacking: Doctor Sleep has all the virtues of his best work.” source
№ 26
“Part epic-inspired adventure story, part philosophy-of-life, part many-layered mid-century Alabama viewed in finely observed detail, part ant life up close, part lyrical hymn to the wonders of earth.” source
№ 27
“The Echo Maker is a grand novel, grand in its reach, grand in its themes, grand in its patterning.” source
№ 28
“A brilliantly executed book by a master craftsman who has chosen a difficult subject: ourselves, seen through a glass, darkly.” source
№ 29
“If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest. In three words or less, it's a hair-raiser.” source
Readers with overlapping taste
