Curated Reading List
7 books: under 300 pages, with nothing wasted.
Concise books that say more in a few hours than many say in a few weeks. A note on every book, a question to carry while you read, and about 44 hours of reading in all.
Inside
A note from the concierge
Concise books that say more in a few hours than many say in a few weeks.
Ideal for a weekend, a flight, or a reading slump. Each is the kind of book you will want to read twice.
The Concierge
7 books
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
An impeccable English butler takes a motoring holiday and looks back on a lifetime of service, and on what he never allowed himself to say.
Consider: What does The Remains of the Day suggest about the way we choose what to remember?
Susanna Clarke, 2020
A man lives contentedly in an endless house of marble halls, statues and tides, until signs of another presence begin to unsettle his world.
Consider: Is solitude a comfort or a danger in Piranesi?
Marilynne Robinson, 2004
An elderly Iowa minister writes a long letter to his young son, a meditation on grace, fathers and the ordinary beauty of the world.
Consider: What does Gilead suggest faith is for?
Joan Didion, 2005
Didion's precise, unsentimental account of the year following her husband's sudden death.
Consider: How does The Year of Magical Thinking handle loss: by facing it, avoiding it, or something in between?
Marcus Aurelius
The private notebooks of a Roman emperor, a practical guide to composure, duty and meeting life as it comes.
Consider: What keeps the people in Meditations going when they might stop?
Virginia Woolf, 1929
Woolf's elegant argument that a woman needs money and a room of her own to write fiction, and why history made that so hard.
Consider: What does A Room of One's Own say about why people make beautiful things?
Michelle Zauner, 2021
A musician and writer reconnects with her Korean heritage through food in the wake of her mother's illness and death.
Consider: How does Crying in H Mart handle loss: by facing it, avoiding it, or something in between?
Practical
Read together, these 7 books come to about 44 hours. That is a comfortable month at roughly 11 hours a week.
If you want more
Readers who love this list tend to enjoy the following. Each is chosen for how closely it shares the mood and themes of the books above.
Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021
An Artificial Friend watches the world from a shop window and then from a family's home, learning what it means to love. Shares literary fiction and melancholy with The Remains of the Day.
Trevor Noah, 2016
A comedian recalls growing up in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa as the son of a Black mother and a white father, at a time when their relationship was against the law. Shares memoir and uplifting with Crying in H Mart.
Min Jin Lee, 2017
Four generations of a Korean family make their lives in Japan across the twentieth century, held together by stubborn love and quiet endurance. Shares literary fiction and melancholy with The Remains of the Day.
The books
An impeccable English butler takes a motoring holiday and looks back on a lifetime of service, and on what he never allowed himself to say.
A man lives contentedly in an endless house of marble halls, statues and tides, until signs of another presence begin to unsettle his world.
An elderly Iowa minister writes a long letter to his young son, a meditation on grace, fathers and the ordinary beauty of the world.
Didion's precise, unsentimental account of the year following her husband's sudden death.
The private notebooks of a Roman emperor, a practical guide to composure, duty and meeting life as it comes.
Woolf's elegant argument that a woman needs money and a room of her own to write fiction, and why history made that so hard.
A musician and writer reconnects with her Korean heritage through food in the wake of her mother's illness and death.