the "getting back into reading" reading list

As a normal functioning member of society, I noticed that people often tell me how they want to "get back into reading." Over the past year I have accumulated an "adult beginner" reading list of sorts that i pull up on my notes app whenever people say this. The criteria is: 1) enjoyable an 2) relatively easy-reading but still "serious" whatever that means 3) a jumping board that allows you to "get into" a million other things 4) hasn't acquired a "hard" cultural reputation (like gatsby) such that it creates a psychological barrier for entry and 5) not quite contemporary, whatever that means and 6) SHORT SHORT SHORT. This list is America heavy because it mainly resulted in me going "how come you've never read this in school but I was told about this book in 3rd grade in Chinese public school"

short stories

the aim here is that if you liked the story, then there's a whole collection or a novel to read.

a wagner matinee by willa cather --> my antonia

my jockey by lucia berlin -> a manual for cleaning women

the house of asterion by jorge luis borges --> ficciones

the dead by james joyce --> dubliners

trilobites by breece d'j pancake --> collected stories

sonny's blues by james baldwin --> another country

tenth of december by george saunders

sealed off by eileen chang

novels

open city by teju cole

the god of small things by arundhati roy

the price of salt by patricia highsmith

the sun also rises by ernest hemingway

breakfast at tiffany's by truman capote

drama

cat on a hot tin roof by tennessee williams

fucking A by suzan-lori parks

arcadia by tom stoppard

top girls by caryl churchill

for colored girls who have considered suicide by ntozake shange

non-fiction

midnight in the garden of good and evil by john berendt

on photography by susan sontag

the argonauts by maggie nelson