Building a Home Library: Ten Books to Start With
People who want to start a home library usually ask the same question: not what is the best book,
but what should I buy first. Those are different questions. A first shelf has a job to do. It has to
cover enough ground that whoever picks something off it finds a way in, and it has to survive being
re-read.
Here is a starting ten. Nothing on it is obscure, and that is deliberate.
Start with the ones that stayed
Moby Dick and The Idiot are the two most
common answers to “which classic should I actually own”. Both are long, and both are far more readable
than their reputations suggest. If you want a gentler way into the same shelf,
Sophie’s World teaches the whole history of philosophy inside
a novel about a fourteen-year-old, and does it without ever feeling like homework.
The rest of that shelf is in Classics.
Add fiction that people pass around
The Shadow of the Wind is the
book most often handed from one reader to the next in this shop. It opens in a hidden library in Barcelona
and turns into a mystery. It is also the first of four, which matters when you are building a shelf rather
than buying a single book.
The Alchemist belongs here too — short,
translated into more languages than almost any modern novel, and the book most people in the region have
either read or been given.
More in Fiction & Literary.
One that keeps you up
Every shelf needs something you finish in two sittings.
And Then There Were None is the best-selling crime
novel ever written and still the cleanest introduction to the genre. See
Mystery, Thriller & Crime.
One that argues with you
The Handmaid’s Tale is the dystopia people keep returning to.
If you want more of that, Science Fiction & Fantasy runs from
entry-level fantasy up to literary science fiction.
And leave room for whoever else lives there
A home library that only serves one reader stops growing. If there are children in the house,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and
The Magic Finger are the two Roald Dahl titles most likely to be read more
than once. The rest are in Children’s Books, and for older children
Young Adult.
Where to go next
Once the first shelf is full, the useful move is to pick a direction rather than keep buying widely:
follow an author, follow a translator, or follow a series. If you are not sure which,
tell us what you have enjoyed and we will point you at
the next three books rather than the next thirty.
