Books like

Books like A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

12 books with a reading profile close to A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments by David Foster Wallace. Deep; a moderate read.

1

ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS

by Omar El Akkad

Also deep · analytical, narrative

Omar El Akkad’s collection of essays examines the cognitive dissonance inherent in Western humanitarian responses to global atrocities.
2

Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

by David Foster Wallace

Also deep · analytical, narrative

In this collection, David Foster Wallace reports on late-twentieth-century American life through dense, footnote-heavy investigations into subcultures and political rhetoric.
3

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

by Jia Tolentino

Also deep · analytical, narrative

Jia Tolentino examines the psychological distortion caused by living within systems that prioritize marketability and digital performance.
4

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Also deep · analytical, narrative

In 1959, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith entered the Clutter family home in Holcomb, Kansas, and murdered four people.
5

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

by Anne Fadiman

Also deep · analytical, narrative

Anne Fadiman details the medical crisis of Lia Lee, a Hmong child in California diagnosed with severe epilepsy.
6

Wellness

by Nathan Hill

Also deep · analytical, narrative

Jack and Elizabeth meet as art students in 1990s Chicago, bonding over an underground lifestyle and the belief that they are escaping their stifling Midwestern upbringings.
7

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

by Joan Didion

Also deep · analytical, narrative

Joan Didion captures the disintegration of American institutional life during the late 1960s with a focus on California.
8

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

by Katherine Boo

analytical, narrative

Katherine Boo tracks the interconnected lives of several residents in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement bordering the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s international airport.
9

Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

narrative, literary

Barbara Kingsolver weaves two narratives set in the same dilapidated house in Vineland, New Jersey, during periods of intense cultural upheaval.
10

The Arabian Nights

by Anonymous

Also deep · narrative, literary

This collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories is built around a frame tale.
11

Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories

by Gabriel García Márquez

narrative, literary

These twelve stories, written over eighteen years, are about Latin Americans who find themselves in Europe, mainly in Barcelona, Rome, Geneva and Paris.
12

Torto Arado

by Itamar Vieira Junior

narrative, literary

Two sisters, Bibiana and Belonísia, grow up in a farming community of descendants of enslaved people in the backlands of Bahia, Brazil.

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