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Incisive and exacting, these collections make light work of untangling the last 10 years, writes annabel nugent.
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Between the climate crisis, Brexit and the launch of winter Love Island , it is easy to feel caught in an existential spiderweb, waiting for anxiety (or the onset of World War Three, whichever comes first) to consume you.
But some writers are making light work of untangling the last 10 years. Incisive and exacting, their essays tackle the big and the small – meme culture, Dostoyevsky, Bieber pandemonium, race politics, and the climate crisis are made comprehensible in their hands. These are the essay collections that make any resolution to “read more nonfiction” infinitely more enjoyable.
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)
Jia Tolentino rebuffs critics’ claims that she’s the voice of a generation, but after reading Trick Mirror , any other title seems to fall short. The New Yorker staff writer is most astute when deciphering her home ground – the internet. Her best essays talk double-tapping automaton, monetisation and surveillance, and hardcore fans begging their favourite celebrities to kill them. For anyone simultaneously disillusioned and addicted to the perils of modern life, Tolentino’s words will strike a chord.
White Girls by Hilton Als (2013)
Hilton Als cut his teeth on theatre reviews (earning him a Pulitzer Prize in 2017), but the writer’s talents are anything but narrow. Race, class and sexuality coalesce in a collection of essays that opens up American culture for prying eyes. Als writes equally well on Eminem and porn as he does queerness and love. Flannery O’Connor, Michael Jackson and Truman Capote all feature in this politically astute, moving collection.
See What Can be Done by Lorrie Moore (2018)
The title borrows from a phrase that Moore’s editor at The New York Review would use when editing her fiction. See What Can be Done does not simply despair at the state of today, but mines that despair to find some way forward. The master of short stories writes expectedly well on fellow literary greats such as Margaret Atwood , Miranda July and Philip Roth . More surprising is her poetic wrestling with subjects like Barack Obama , HBO’s True Detective and the Republican primary debate. Each chapter offers up enormous wisdom far beyond its bite-sized proportions.
Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)
John Jeremiah Sullivan takes a scalpel to pop culture and history in Pulphead . Incisive prose on everything from Christian Rock festivals in the Ozarks to Bunny Wailer with vigour and humanity. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, Sullivan writes prose with the qualities of storytelling and the grounding of in-depth research.
Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami (2011)
The Japanese author is known for surrealist fiction and running ultra-marathons, but here, he sits down instead with friend and former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa. What ensues is an enthusiastic and unpretentious discussion on their shared love for classical music. Their metiers are in perfect sync – boring industry topics like mundane bureaucracies and performer personalities are transformed by Murakami’s deft hand. While the subject may be esoteric, its appeal is definitely not.‘
When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (2012)
The list of books by Marilynne Robinson is upsettingly short, but every brilliant word she writes makes up for the scarcity. Robinson’s prose takes on a more exacting frankness in her nonfiction than in her Gilead trilogy. Essays on society and theology sound like a drag, but in this collection they are anything but. The Christian core of her Pulitzer prize-winning fiction comes through more visibly in these essays, but similarly does not have the alienating effect you would expect.
Feel Free by Zadie Smith (2018)
Razor-sharp essays take a long, hard look at topics both large – think intelligent takes on Bieber fever – and very, very small, as in the author’s childhood bathroom. As the title suggests, each essay explores the concept of freedom in all its meanings, but most are concerned with the artistic kind and the act of taking it, whether it’s given to you or not. Smith’s writing is casual and discursive but never rambling. Feel Free champions art as a place where freedom allows for complex issues to be safely explored.
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (2010)
Elif Batuman makes Russian literature fun. An unapologetic nerd for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Batuman’s book is likely to be the best thing that’s happened to the genre in modern times. The Possessed is a biblio-memoir of sorts, tracking the author’s time spent studying Russian lit at Stanford. The New Yorker staff writer fires on all cylinders in a collection of essays more about reading as a way of life than the idiosyncrasies of The Idiot .
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks (2010)
In this collection, bell hooks moves deftly between affection, respect, commitment, gender stereotypes, domination, ego and aggression. With the help of psychological and philosophical ideas, the author pins down the airiness of love in a ruthless dissection, moments of ecstasy offset by brooding on patriarchal thinking. This collection paves the way for a more universal understanding of love.
This Young Monster by Charlie Fox (2017)
The last decade has birthed monsters of the good, bad and ugly varieties. In his debut novel, art critic Charlie Fox writes on modern monstrosity. In nine essays, Fox pays tribute to the art world’s outsiders. His subjects are diverse, taking on the 19th century poet Rimbaud as impressively as he grapples with The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things . This Young Monster is a love letter to those who “rebel against a reality that’s too cruel or boring for them to inhabit”. Fox’s voice is equal parts critical and personal, and always playful.
This Changes Everything: Capitalism v the Climate by Naomi Klein (2014)
Naomi Klein takes no prisoners in this polemic book on climate change. Klein makes a damning argument against powerful right-wing think tanks, lobby groups and corporate elites that have dictated catastrophic environmental policies and contributed to widespread climate change denial. Klein’s writing is forthright in its condemnation of capitalism. This Changes Everything is an urgent read and one that couldn’t be more pertinent than it is today – or tomorrow, and all the days after that.
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If there’s one topic that writers can be counted on to tackle at least once in their working lives, it’s writing itself. A good thing too, especially for all those aspiring writers out there looking for a little bit of guidance. For some winter inspiration and honing of your craft, here you’ll find ten great essays on writing, from the classic to the contemporary, from the specific to the all-encompassing. Note: there are many, many, many great essays on writing. Bias has been extended here to personal favorites and those available to read online. Also of note but not included: full books on the subject like Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird , Stephen King’s On Writing , and Ron Carlson’s Ron Carlson Writes a Story , or, in a somewhat different sense, David Shields’ Reality Hunger , for those looking for a longer commitment. Read on, and add your own favorite essays on writing to the list in the comments.
“Not-Knowing,” Donald Barthelme, from Not Knowing: the Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme . Read it here .
In which Barthelme, a personal favorite and king of strange and wonderful stories, muses on not-knowing, style, our ability to “quarrel with the world, constructively,” messiness, Mallarmé, and a thief named Zeno passed out wearing a chastity belt.
“The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.”
“Fairy Tale Is Form, Form Is Fairy Tale,” Kate Bernheimer, from The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays From Tin House . Read it here .
Bernheimer is a constant champion of the fairy tale and its influence on literature at large (not least as editor of The Fairy Tale Review ), and a writer we couldn’t do without. This essay unpacks the formal elements of fairy tales, and does a fair bit more than hint at their essentialness to writers of all kinds.
“Fairy tales hold a key to the door fiercely locked between so-called realism and nonrealism, convention and experimentalism, psychology and abstraction. A key for those who see these as binaries, that is… Every writer is like a topsy- turvy doll that on one side is Red Riding Hood and on the other side the Wolf, or on the one side is a Boy and on the other, a Raven and Coffin. The traditional techniques of fairy tales—identifiable, named—are reborn in the different ways we all tell stories.”
“Reflections on Writing,” Henry Miller, from The Wisdom of the Heart . Read a few excerpts here .
A characteristically wonderful exploration of Miller’s own emotional, psychological, and technical struggles with writing.
“I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything; smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.”
“The Figure a Poem Makes,” Robert Frost, from Collected Poems . Read it here .
A gorgeous mini-essay from an American giant that is equally relevant to writers of poetry or prose, and is almost a poem itself.
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”
“On Style,” Susan Sontag, from Against Interpretation . Read it here .
As much about criticism as it is about writing (and perhaps more), Sontag dissects style versus form versus content versus the conceptions of all these things that we have in our heads.
“In other words, what is inevitable in a work of art is the style. To the extent that a work seems right, just, unimaginable otherwise (without loss or damage) , what we are responding to is a quality of its style. The most attractive works of art are those which give us the illusion that the artist had no alternatives, so wholly centered is he in his style. Compare that which is forced, labored, synthetic in the construction of Madame Bovary and of Ulysses with the ease and harmony of such equally ambitious works as Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Kafka’s Metamorphosis . The first two books I have mentioned are great indeed. But the greatest art seems secreted, not constructed.”
“Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot, from The Sacred Wood . Read it here .
Whether or not you subscribe to Eliot’s “impersonal theory” of poetry, or his conception of the artist’s inevitable “self-sacrifice” to the past, there’s no arguing that this essay is a barn-burner.
“If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.”
“The Ecstasy of Influence,” Jonathan Lethem, from The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, etc. . Read it here .
Here, Lethem discusses not just the shifty concept of plagiarism in fiction, but the anxiety of appropriating pop culture, copyright, Disney, the power of a gift economy, the idea of a “commons of cultural materials,” art of all forms. A must-read for any contemporary creator, especially if you’ve ever nicked a line from a favorite book.
“Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing.”
“How to Write with Style,” Kurt Vonnegut, from How to Use the Power of the Written Word . Read it here .
Vonnegut is an enduring treasure trove of literary advice — everyone you know has seen this excellent video of the man explaining the shapes of stories — and this little essay is no different: clever, whip-smart, and told with joy.
“Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your reader will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an ego maniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.”
“Why I Write,” George Orwell. Read it here .
It’s hard to put together a list of great essays without including something from Orwell. So why not this one, forever quoted by anyone who has ever tried to write a novel, or wanted to?
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”
“On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem . Read it here .
But of course: the essay that has launched a thousand notebook-keepers.
“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
Reviews for the would-be booklover.
Essay collections exist in a kind of literary no-man’s-land. They’re non-fiction, but they don’t often slip neatly into a particular category (like “science” or “history”). Often, they draw from the author’s own life, but they don’t follow the chronology we expect of a memoir or autobiography . But if you can figure out where they’re shelved in your local independent bookshop, essay collections can make for some of the best reads. Check out these twenty brilliant essay collections, from all kinds of authors about all kinds of subjects.
Men Explain Things To Me is a slim little essay collection with a provocative title and a brilliant premise. Rebecca Solnit writes about the lived experience of women in the patriarchy in seven essays (or nine, if you get a later edition) from the last twenty years. She addresses violence against women, marriage equality, the influence of Virginia Woolf, the erasure of women from the archive, fraught online spaces, and more. Solnit was even credited with coining the term “mansplaining” – even though the word itself doesn’t appear in the title essay, and she later said she didn’t necessarily agree with such a gendered term.
Zadie Smith is a once-in-a-generation literary darling, writing beloved fiction and brilliant non-fiction with the same zeal. In Feel Free , her 2018 essay collection, she addresses questions we all find ourselves pondering from time to time. Why do we love libraries? How will we explain our inaction on climate change to future generations? What are online social networks doing to us? Her answers are categorised in the book’s five sections: In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free (from which the essay collection gets its name). Smith interrogates major world-changing events and small personal disruptions with equal fascination, which makes for an illuminating read.
Roxane Gay has built a career on being forthright, unabashed, and holding a microphone to the best and worst of the little voices in our heads. Bad Feminist is a collection of her essays, most published individually elsewhere prior to the 2014 release, grouped thematically. They’re all loosely tied to the overarching ideas of feminism and womanhood, what it means to do it well, and what the consequences are for doing it badly. As the title suggests, in one of the collection’s most memorable moments, she addresses the difficulty of reconciling her feminism with her love of hip-hop music and the colour pink. She contends throughout this essay collection that it’s better to be a ‘bad feminist’ than to be no kind of feminist at all. Read my full review of Bad Feminist here.
Have you ever felt like you just take up too much space in a world that wants you to be small and quiet? Lindy West has, and that’s what she writes in Shrill , the first of her brilliant and insightful essay collections. She lays bear the shame and humiliation that comes with the journey to self-awareness and self-acceptance, in a world that insists you be smaller and quieter. West has battled internet trolls, waged war against rape jokes, and reached an uneasy accord with her unruly body and mind. These essays are sharp and deeply relatable for all women who have felt like they didn’t quite fit. Read my full review of Shrill here.
How To Write An Autobiographical Novel seems like an odd title for an essay collection, but it makes sense once you hear Alexander Chee’s explanation behind it. On book tours and at speaking events regarding his novels, he found himself facing the same question over and over: “how much of this fictional story is autobiographical?”. He started thinking about how we forge identities in literature, giving rise to this brilliant collection of essays. It’s his “manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him”.
Samantha Irby describes herself as a “cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person… with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees… who still hides past due bills under her pillow”. Wow, No Thank You a collection of her essays about… stuff. Life. Ridiculous jobs. Trying to make friends as an adult. The lost art of making a mix-tape. Living in a place where most people don’t share your politics. Getting your period and bleeding all over the sheets of your Airbnb. Trying to remember why you ever found nightclubs fun. There’s even a whole essay of “Sure, sex is fun, but have you ever…” jokes (the format might mystify you if you’re not on Twitter , but it’s hilarious). Read my full review of Wow, No Thank You here.
Are you sick of the trope where a nice, skinny, white girl shows up dead and that’s all we ever get to know about her? You’re not the only one. Alice Bolin’s Dead Girls interrogates “iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories”. This is one of those essay collections that will stick with you, and change the way you consume stories forever.
If you want alternatives to read, check out my list of crime thrillers without dead girls here .
Jia Tolentino has been called “a peerless voice of our generation” and a “Joan Didion of our time”. Trick Mirror is one of the most critically acclaimed essay collections of recent years, a “dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays… [that] delves into the forces that warp our vision”. Have you ever wondered why we think what we do and the way we do? Normally, that’s the kind of question we’d leave to marketing professionals and moral philosophy professors, but Tolentino addresses it in an accessible and relatable way. She wants us to understand what advertising, social media, consumerism, and the whole she-bang has done to our consciousness and our understanding of ourselves.
I’ll confess: David Foster Wallace is kind of my literary secret shame. The man was hardly a paragon of virtue, he treated the women in his life horribly, and he clearly had a lot of troubles that were never adequately addressed. But damn, if his essays aren’t some of the funniest I’ve ever read! Seriously, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is one of those brilliant essay collections that will have you howling with laughter so loud your neighbours might call the cops. Wallace is, at turns, cynical, curious, credulous, and cutting – and yet his essays feel seamless. They’re long, they’re stuffed with footnotes that would make a lit professor weep, and yet you’ll read them feeling like no time is passing at all because you’re having so much fun. I can’t speak for his fiction, but his essay collections? Must-reads, especially this one!
Any library of brilliant essay collections is woefully incomplete without David Sedaris, especially his 2000 collection Me Talk Pretty One Day . It’s over twenty years old, and yet it’s still as pertinent and resonant as ever. Sedaris’s wry humour and keen observations, of everything from family life to travel to cooking to education, are timeless. It’s truly masterful, a kind of comic genius you don’t see everyday. It’s also a great read for when your attention span is shot. The essays are short enough that you can read the whole thing in bite-sized chunks, but the through-line is strong enough that it will keep pulling you back in. Read my full review of Me Talk Pretty One Day here.
I find it hard not to build up a head of steam when I talk about Nora Ephron, because she is criminally underrated. Because she wrote about women and their relationships (to each other and themselves), instead of men with businesses or guns, she’s relegated to the “chick lit” and “rom-com” shelves, described as “fluffy” instead of ingenious. Want proof? Pick up I Feel Bad About My Neck , one of the most brilliant and incisive essay collections you’ll read anywhere. With her trademark candour and dry humour, she tackles the unspeakable: aging as a woman in a society that values perpetual youth.
Scan the headlines of any celebrity gossip website, and you’ll notice: times have changed. We’re a long way from Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. The women of today’s front pages are boundary pushers, provocative and powerful in ways that women of previous generations wouldn’t dare dream about. Anne Helen Petersen has had a lot of cause to study these women in her role as a Buzzfeed editor, and she’s written Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud to explain what she’s seen. She “uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of powerhouses like Serena Williams, Hillary Clinton, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures”.
“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks in All About Love, one of her most widely-read and lauded essay collections. She posits that our society is descending into lovelessness. Not romantic lovelessness – we’re drowning in smooches – but the kind where we lack basic compassion and empathy for each other, and ourselves. We are divided and discontented, due to “society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love”. You’ll want to set aside a lot of time to read and think about this one, to really absorb its message – if you do, it’ll change your life.
Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race is Eddo-Lodge’s first essay collection. It started with her blog post of the same name that she published back in 2014, but there’s no need to go trawling the internet for it: Eddo-Lodge reproduces it in full in the preface. It serves as a thesis statement, framing and contextualising everything that is to follow. So, the $64,000 question: why isn’t Eddo-Lodge talking to white people about race? Well, basically, she’s fed up: with white denial, with white self-flagellation, with trying to shake hands with a brick wall. Ironically, this is a collection of essays about race and racism that every white person should absolutely read. Read my full review of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race here.
If you loved Say Nothing and Empire Of Pain (like I did), you’ll be overjoyed (as I was) to get your hands on a copy of Rogues , a collection of Patrick Radden Keefe’s most celebrated essays from The New Yorker . These delightfully detailed investigative pieces focus on his favourite subjects: “crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial”. They’re like delectable bite-sized true crime tales, all meticulously researched and fact-checked so as to ensure they’re completely believable. Each and every one is masterfully crafted, perfectly balanced, and totally gripping. Read my full review of Rogues here.
The best essay collections combine both sweeping views of the way we live our lives and the minutiae of how the author lives their own. How To Be A Woman is the perfect example. Caitlin Moran interrogates what it means to be a woman in the 21st century, with broad observations as well as deeply personal (not to mention riotously funny) anecdotes. From abortions to Brazilian waxes to pop culture to reproduction, Moran explores the opportunities and constraints for women in all areas of life. She “lays bare the reasons why female rights and empowerment are essential issues not only for women today but also for society itself”.
When you think about it, essay collections are a medium well suited to the millennial generation, with our attention spans ruined by television and our ingrained narcissism and all. Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love is to our generation what Bridget Jones’s Diary was to the Gen Xers. In it, she writes about contemporary young adulthood and all its essential components: “falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends”.
If you’ve ever Googled any kind of lofty question – what did Toni Morrison say makes life worth living? is stoicism a solution to anxiety? what the heck is a ‘growth mindset’? – chances are you’ve stumbled upon BrainPickings.org (now renamed The Marginalian). The mind behind the brilliant website is Maria Popova, and while her online archives constitute about a hundred essay collections’ worth of material, she’s condensed her best and made her contribution in the form of Figuring . This one is a must-read for the literary nerds and the philosophy students and the history buffs. It features snippets and essential lessons from the lives of figures like Herman Melville , Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.
It took Maria Tumarkin nine years to research and write Axiomatic , one of the most powerful essay collections you’ll encounter at your local independent bookstore. She seeks to understand grief, loss, and trauma, and how they inform who we are as people. So, as you can probably already tell, it’s not exactly a light read – but if you’re in the mood to do some deep thinking, it’s an excellent selection. Each of its five sections is based on an axiom about the past and present (like “history repeats itself” or “time heals all wounds”), and examines true stories from Tumarkin’s own life and those around her to illustrate her wider points.
The problem with essay collections about successful people is that too many of them are of the “here’s how you can be successful too, invest in this stock and get rich quick!” variety. Outliers is the exception (and you have no idea how hard it was not to call it an ‘outlier’ just now). Malcolm Gladwell takes an intellectual look at the best and the brightest, the shining stars of innovation and industry, with the aim of finding out what exactly makes them different. This isn’t just about waking up early or taking cold showers; there are very specific concoctions of culture, community, and cunning that get people to the very top of the game, and Gladwell lays them out for us.
Features & Discussion
November 26, 2022 at 1:54 AM
Wow this is such a great list and now I want to read them all? I have, in fact, read a handful of them – but am adding a whole bunch more to my wishlist.
Some brilliant essay collections I’ve read in recent years are Notes To Self by Emilie Pine, Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth, Miss Fortune by Lauren Weedman, How We Love by Clementine Ford. Notes From No-Man’s Land by Eula Biss is uneven, but the first essay in it is unforgettable. It’s only now that I realise I apparently never read essay collections by men…
December 13, 2022 at 9:16 PM
Interesting, I was fifty-fifty on whether I’d check out How We Love, but your commendation is definitely weighing the scale in its favour! Thank you 😀
December 3, 2022 at 2:47 PM
A favorite genre of mine that I don’t read enough in. Bookmarking this post for future reference. (One of my favorite essayists is C.S. Lewis, the master philosopher and apologist IMHO.)
Oooh! I’ve not read any of C.S. Lewis’s essay, great tip Hannah – I’ll be keeping an eye out for them!
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Rebecca Solnit | 5.00
Chelsea Handler Goes deep with statistics, personal stories, and others’ accounts of how brutal this world can be for women, the history of how we've been treated, and what it will take to change the conversation: MEN. We need them to be as outraged as we are and join our fight. (Source)
See more recommendations for this book...
David Sedaris | 4.96
Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.94
Barack Obama The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)
Jack Dorsey Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)
Doug McMillon Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)
Joan Didion | 4.94
Peter Hessler I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. (Source)
Liz Lambert I love [this book] so much. (Source)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.92
Roxane Gay | 4.88
Irina Nica It’s hard to pick an all-time favorite because, as time goes by and I grow older, my reading list becomes more “mature” and I find myself interested in new things. I probably have a personal favorite book for each stage of my life. Right now I’m absolutely blown away by everything Roxane Gay wrote, especially Bad Feminist. (Source)
Reflections on Self-Delusion
Jia Tolentino | 4.86
Lydia Polgreen This book is amazing and you should read it. https://t.co/pcbmYUR4QP (Source)
Maryanne Hobbs @jiatolentino hello Jia :) finding your perspectives in the new book fascinating and so resonant.. thank you 🌹 m/a..x https://t.co/BoNzB1BuDf (Source)
Yashar Ali . @jiatolentino’s fabulous book is one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2019 https://t.co/QHzZsHl2rF (Source)
And Other Essays
David Foster Wallace | 4.85
Virginia Woolf | 4.75
David Sedaris | 4.73
Adam Kay @penceyprepmemes How about David Sedaris, for starters - "Dress your family in corduroy and denim" is an amazing book. (Source)
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
James Baldwin | 4.69
Barack Obama Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein Sapiens: A Brief History of... (Source)
David Sedaris | 4.67
David Sedaris | 4.63
David Blaine It’s hilarious. (Source)
Joan Didion | 4.62
Dan Richards I feel Joan Didion is the patron saint of a maelstrom of culture and environment of a particular time. She is the great American road-trip writer, to my mind. She has that great widescreen filmic quality to her work. (Source)
Steven Amsterdam With her gaze on California of the late 60s and early 70s, Didion gives us the Black Panthers, Janis Joplin, Nancy Reagan, and the Manson follower Linda Kasabian. (Source)
Essays and Arguments
David Foster Wallace | 4.61
Tressie McMillan Cottom | 4.60
Melissa Moore The best book I read this year was Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I read it twice and both times found it challenging and revelatory. (Source)
David Sedaris and Hachette Audi | 4.60
Essays and Speeches
Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke | 4.60
Bianca Belair For #BHM I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 26th Book: Sister Outsider By: Audre Lorde My first time reading anything by Audre Lorde. I am now really looking forward to reading more of her poems/writings. What she writes is important & timeless. https://t.co/dUDMcaAAbx (Source)
David Sedaris | 4.58
Austin Kleon I read this one, then I read his collected diaries, Theft By Finding, and then I read the visual compendium, which might have even been the most interesting of the three books, but I’m listing this one because it’s hilarious, although with the interstitial fiction bits, it’s sort of like one of those classic 90s hip-hop albums where you skip the “skit” tracks. (Source)
Notes from a Loud Woman
Lindy West | 4.56
Matt Mcgorry "Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman" by Lindy West @TheLindyWest # Lovvvvveeedddd, loved, loved, loved this book!!! West is a truly remarkable writer and her stories are beautifully poignant while dosed with her… https://t.co/nzJtXtOGTn (Source)
Shannon Coulter @JennLHaglund @tomi_adeyemi I love that feeling! Just finished the audiobook version of Shrill by Lindy West after _years_ of meaning to read it and that's the exact feeling it gave me. Give me your book recommendations! (Source)
Esmé Weijun Wang | 4.52
Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Cheryl Strayed | 4.49
Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. Cheryl Strayed, also the author of Wild, was the anonymous columnist behind the online column, Dear Sugar and boy, are we better off for it. This is not a random smattering of advice. This book contains some of the most cogent insights on life, pain, loss, love, success, youth that I... (Source)
James Altucher Cheryl had an advice column called “Dear Sugar”. I was reading the column long before Oprah recommended “Wild” by Cheryl and then Wild became a movie and “Tiny Beautiful Things” (the collection of her advice column) became a book. She is so wise and compassionate. A modern saint. I used to do Q&A sessions on Twitter. I’d read her book beforehand to get inspiration about what true advice is. (Source)
An American Tragedy
Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.47
Albert Camu | 4.47
David Heinemeier Hansson Camus’ philosophical exposition of absurdity, suicide in the face of meaninglessness, and other cherry topics that continue on from his fictional work in novels like The Stranger. It’s surprisingly readable, unlike many other mid 20th century philosophers, yet no less deep or pointy. It’s a great follow-up, as an original text, to that book The Age of Absurdity, I recommended last year. Still... (Source)
Kenan Malik The Myth of Sisyphus is a small work, but Camus’s meditation on faith and fate has personally been hugely important in developing my ideas. Writing in the embers of World War II, Camus confronts in The Myth of Sisyphus both the tragedy of recent history and what he sees as the absurdity of the human condition. There is, he observes, a chasm between the human need for meaning and what he calls... (Source)
George Orwell, Bernard Crick | 4.46
Peter Kellner George Orwell was not only an extraordinary writer but he also hated any form of cant. Some of his most widely read works such as 1984 and Animal Farm are an assault on the nastier, narrow-minded, dictatorial tendencies of the left, although Orwell was himself on the left. (Source)
Essays and Stories
Marina Keegan, Anne Fadiman | 4.46
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.45
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell | 4.45
Kevin Rose Bunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. (Source)
Seth Godin Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. (Source)
Andy Stern I think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then... (Source)
Selected Essays
Mary Oliver | 4.44
Samantha Irby | 4.44
Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne, Charles Cotton | 4.42
Ryan Holiday There is plenty to study and see simply by looking inwards — maybe even an alarming amount. (Source)
Alain de Botton I’ve given quite a lot of copies of [this book] to people down the years. (Source)
Mindy Kaling | 4.42
Angela Kinsey .@mindykaling I am rereading your book and cracking up. I appreciate your chapter on The Office so much more now. But all of it is fantastic. Thanks for starting my day with laughter. You know I loves ya. ❤️ https://t.co/EB99xnyt0p (Source)
Yashar Ali Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from @mindykaling's book (even though I'm an early riser): “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” https://t.co/pS56bmyYjS (Source)
Dispatches from Rape Culture
Roxane Gay, Brandon Taylor, et al | 4.40
Henry David Thoreau | 4.40
Laura Dassow Walls The book that we love as Walden began in the journal entries that he wrote starting with his first day at the pond. (Source)
Roman Krznaric In 1845 the American naturalist went out to live in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Thoreau was one of the great masters of the art of simple living. (Source)
John Kaag There’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today. (Source)
Confessions of a Common Reader
Anne Fadiman | 4.40
And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Nora Ephron | 4.39
David Sedaris | 4.37
An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine | 4.36
Cheryl Strayed A really important book for us to be reading right now. (Source)
Jeremy Noel-Tod Obviously, it’s been admired and acclaimed, but I do feel the general reception of it has underplayed its artfulness. Its technical subtlety and overall arrangement has been neglected, because it has been classified as a kind of documentary work. (Source)
Christopher Hitchens | 4.36
Le Grove @billysubway Hitchens book under your arm. I’m reading Arguably. When he’s at his best, he is a savage. Unbelievable prose. (Source)
James Baldwin | 4.35
Oliver Sacks | 4.34
Suzanne O'Sullivan I didn’t choose neurology because of it but the way Oliver Sacks writes about neurology is very compelling. (Source)
Tanya Byron This is a seminal book that anyone who wants to work in mental health should read. It is a charming and gentle and also an honest exposé of what can happen to us when our mental health is compromised for whatever reason. (Source)
Bradley Voytek I can’t imagine one day waking up and not knowing who my wife is, or seeing my wife and thinking that she was replaced by some sort of clone or robot. But that could happen to any of us. (Source)
Leslie Jamison | 4.33
Ann Patchett | 4.31
A Low Culture Manifesto
Chuck Klosterman | 4.30
Karen Pfaff Manganillo Never have I read a book that I said “this is so perfect, amazing, hilarious, he’s thinking what I’m thinking (in a much more thought out and cool way)”. (Source)
Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Anne Lamott | 4.29
Susan Cain I love [this book]. Such a good book. (Source)
Timothy Ferriss Bird by Bird is one of my absolute favorite books, and I gift it to everybody, which I should probably also give to startup founders, quite frankly. A lot of the lessons are the same. But you can get to your destination, even though you can only see 20 feet in front of you. (Source)
Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. [...] Anne Lamott’s book is ostensibly about the art of writing, but really it too is about life and how to tackle the problems, temptations and opportunities life throws at us. Both will make you think and both made me a better person this year. (Source)
Zadie Smith | 4.29
Barack Obama As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)
Malcolm Gladwell | 4.28
Sam Freedman @mrianleslie (Also I agree What the Dog Saw is his best book). (Source)
Lindy West | 4.27
Susan Sontag | 4.25
Alexander Chee | 4.25
Eula Biss Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. (Source)
Occasional Essays
Zadie Smith | 4.25
David Sedaris | 4.24
Chelsea Handler [The author] is fucking hilarious and there's nothing I prefer to do more than laugh. If this book doesn't make you laugh, I'll refund you the money. (Source)
A New Generation Speaks About Race
Jesmyn Ward | 4.24
Mindy Kaling | 4.24
Selected Nonfiction
Neil Gaiman | 4.24
Sloane Crosley | 4.24
The Classic Text on Value Investing
Benjamin Graham | 4.23
Warren Buffett To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline. (Source)
Kevin Rose The foundation for investing. A lot of people have used this as their guide to getting into investment, basic strategies. Actually Warren Buffett cites this as the book that got him into investing and he says that principles he learned here helped him to become a great investor. Highly recommend this book. It’s a great way understand what’s going on and how to evaluate different companies out... (Source)
John Kay The idea is that you look at the underlying value of the company’s activities instead of relying on market gossip. (Source)
An Essay in Forty Questions
Valeria Luiselli | 4.23
Tina Fey | 4.22
Sheryl Sandberg I absolutely loved Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only was I laughing on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy. [...] It is so, so good. As a young girl, I was labeled bossy, too, so as a former - O.K., current - bossypants, I am grateful to Tina for being outspoken, unapologetic and hysterically... (Source)
Hanif Abdurraqib, Dr. Eve L. Ewing | 4.22
Saadia Muzaffar Man, this is such an amazing book of essays. Meditations on music and musicians and their moments and meaning-making. @NifMuhammad's mindworks are a gift. Go find it. (thank you @asad_ch!) https://t.co/htSueYYBUT (Source)
Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
David Foster Wallace | 4.21
John Jeremiah Sullivan | 4.21
Greil Marcus This is a new book by a writer in his mid-thirties, about all kinds of things. A lot of it is about the South, some of it is autobiographical, there is a long and quite wonderful piece about going to a Christian music camp. (Source)
Rebecca Solnit | 4.20
Sarah Vowell, Katherine Streeter | 4.20
E. B. White | 4.19
Adam Gopnik White, for me, is the great maker of the New Yorker style. Though it seems self-serving for me to say it, I think that style was the next step in the creation of the essay tone. One of the things White does is use a lot of the habits of the American newspaper in his essays. He is a genuinely simple, spare, understated writer. In the presence of White, even writers as inspired as Woolf and... (Source)
Rebecca Solnit | 4.19
Kurt Vonnegut | 4.18
Thinking About What Matters
Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler | 4.17
Annie Dillard | 4.16
Laura Dassow Walls She’s enacting Thoreau, but in a 20th-century context: she takes on quantum physics, the latest research on DNA and the nature of life. (Source)
Sara Maitland This book, which won the Pulitzer literature prize when it was released, is the most beautiful book about the wild. (Source)
Maggie Nelson | 4.14
A Funny Book About Horrible Things
Jenny Lawson | 4.13
A Manifesto
Mary Beard | 4.13
Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder | 4.12
George Saunders Please read this book. So smart, so timely. (Source)
Tom Holland "There isn’t a page of this magnificent book that does not contain some fascinating detail and the narrative is held together with a novelist’s eye for character and theme." #Dominion https://t.co/FESSNxVDLC (Source)
Maya Wiley Prof. Tim Snyder, author of “In Tyranny” reminded us in that important little book that we must protect our institutions. #DOJ is one of our most important in gov’t for the rule of law. This is our collective house & #Barr should be evicted. https://t.co/PPxM9IMQUm (Source)
Barbara Kingsolver | 4.11
Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Toni Morrison | 4.11
Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
Allie Brosh | 4.11
Bill Gates While she self-deprecatingly depicts herself in words and art as an odd outsider, we can all relate to her struggles. Rather than laughing at her, you laugh with her. It is no hyperbole to say I love her approach -- looking, listening, and describing with the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian. (Source)
Samantha Irby | 4.10
David Foster Wallace | 4.10
David Papineau People can learn to do amazing things with their bodies, and people start honing and developing these skills as an end in itself, a very natural thing for humans to do. (Source)
Personal Essays
Melissa Broder | 4.10
Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Rebecca Solnit | 4.09
Prem Panicker @sanjayen This is from an essay Solnit wrote to introduce the updated version of her book Hope In The Dark. Anything Solnit is brilliant; at times like these, she is the North Star. (Source)
Jonathan Franzen | 4.08
Susan Sontag | 4.08
Lessons for Corporate America, Fifth Edition
Lawrence A. Cunningham and Warren E. Buffett | 4.08
Scaachi Koul | 4.07
Amy Poehler | 4.06
W.E.B. Du Bois | 4.05
Barack Obama According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black... (Source)
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki | 4.05
Kyle Chayka Tanizaki is mourning what has been paved over, which is the old Japanese aesthetic of darkness, of softness, of appreciating the imperfect—rather than the cold, glossy surfaces of industrialized modernity that the West had brought to Japan at that moment. For me, that’s really valuable, because it does preserve a different way of looking at the world. (Source)
John Berger | 4.04
Robert Jones He’s a Marxist and says that the role of publicity or branding is to make people marginally dissatisfied with their current way of life. (Source)
David McCammon Ways of Seeing goes beyond photography and will continue to develop your language around images. (Source)
John Harrison (Eton College) You have to understand the Marxist interpretation of art; it is absolutely fundamental to the way that art history departments now study the material. Then you have to critique it, because we’ve moved on from the 1970s and the collapse of Marxism in most of the world shows—amongst other things—that the model was flawed. But it’s still a very good book to read, for a teenager especially. (Source)
Efficient Preparation for the Texas Bar Exam
Catherine Martin Christopher | 4.04
Ross Gay | 4.04
C. S. Lewis | 4.04
Anoop Anthony "Mere Christianity" is first and foremost a rational book — it is in many ways the opposite of a traditional religious tome. Lewis, who was once an atheist, has been on both sides of the table, and he approaches the notion of God with accessible, clear thinking. The book reveals that experiencing God doesn't have to be a mystical exercise; God can be a concrete and logical conclusion. Lewis was... (Source)
and Other Reflections
Nora Ephron | 4.04
Susan Sontag | 4.03
Susan Bordo Sontag was the first to make the claim, which at the time was very controversial, that photography is misleading and seductive because it looks like reality but is in fact highly selective. (Source)
American Essays
Eula Biss | 4.03
Heaven and Hell (Thinking Classics)
Aldous Huxley, Robbie McCallum | 4.03
Michelle Rodriguez Aldous Huxley on Technodictators https://t.co/RDyX70lnZz via @YouTube ‘Doors of Perception’ is a great book entry level to hallucinogenics (Source)
Auston Bunsen I also really loved “The doors of perception” by Aldous Huxley. (Source)
Dr. Andrew Weil Came first [in terms of my interests]. (Source)
Kameron Hurley | 4.02
Samantha Irby | 4.01
Jonathan Swift | 4.01
Familiar Essays
Anne Fadiman | 4.00
Discover big ideas in small doses.
Anyone who has read very much of it knows that some of the best prose around is happening in nonfiction. From personal essays to political ones, cultural criticism to travelogues, these 10 books represent some of the best essay writing of the last century, spanning continents and languages, tackling subjects that range from political unrest to pulp fiction—and everything in-between.
So, if you’re ready to expand your mind and change your outlook, add these essay collections to your TBR list today!
By Roger Angell
While you may not recognize Roger Angell’s name, you probably know who he is. The stepson of legendary author E. B. White, Angell has worked for the New Yorker in various capacities for decades, including as a frequent contributing writer.
He has written about all sorts of subjects, especially baseball, and this unique collection pulls together a variety of his best-loved pieces, including his famous Christmas poems, a variety of parodies, and a “tense correspondence over a short fiction contest that pays only in baked goods.”
Related: "Your Horoscope," by Roger Angell
By Arundhati Roy
A New York Times bestseller and Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy is many things, and in My Seditious Heart she proves that among those is an “electrifying political essayist” ( Booklist ).
Collecting essays from two decades of her life, this “lucid and probing” ( Time Magazine ) book presents a lifetime of battling for social and political justice and human rights, from American capitalism to the Hindu caste system and beyond. “The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering,” writes The New York Times Book Review . “Her pointed indictment is devastating.”
Sign up for the Early Bird Books newsletter and get the best free and discounted ebooks delivered straight to your inbox.
By Rebecca Solnit
In these “personal but unsentimental essays” ( The New York Times ), National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Rebecca Solnit provides the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” ( The Stranger ).
From the title essay, which explores why men talk over women and what the ultimate cost of that is, to essays about Virginia Woolf and marriage equality, Solnit’s unsparing prose has been called “ essential feminist reading ” by The New Republic – and simply “essential” by Marketplace .
By Italo Calvino
Newly translated into English for the first time by Martin McLaughlin, this “brilliant collection of essays” and travelogues, the last piece of new writing published by the legendary Italo Calvino before his death, “may change the way you see the world around you” ( The Guardian ).
From antique maps to Japanese gardens, Calvino takes us on a tour of the world, but also of his own mind, in the process heightening our appreciation of the visual world around us.
By Joan Didion
In her first work of nonfiction, one of America’s most “dazzling” prose stylists ( The New York Times ) also establishes herself as a singular voice on American culture, painting a vivid portrait of a nation in the midst of tumultuous change.
First published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic , hailed as “a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country” by the New York Times Book Review . No wonder Time Magazine chose it as one of the 100 best and most influential nonfiction books to date.
Related: Joan Didion: Her Books, Life and Legacy
By Donald Hall
A former Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall has “wrought his prose to a keen autumnal edge” in his waning years, according to The Wall Street Journal . This collection of essays written, as the title implies, after he turned 80, sees Hall reflecting on his life, on his career, on writing itself, and on the view out his window.
“Alternately lyrical and laugh-out-loud funny ” ( The New York Times ), these essays show that Hall has never lost his deft touch, nor his passion for life and all of its mysteries, whimsies, and wonders.
By Angela Y. Davis
Author of such classic works as Women, Race, and Class, Angela Y. Davis made a name for herself as an activist and scholar with a penetrating insight into social issues.
In this new collection of essays, she tackles some of the most pressing issues that affect our present moment , from the Black Lives Matter movement to Palestine and beyond, calling upon us all to imagine a better world – and do the important work required to make it possible.
By Walter Benjamin
A German cultural critic who has been called one of most original thinkers of the 20th century, Walter Benjamin fled Germany in 1932, as the Nazi party rose to power, and died in exile before the end of the second World War.
Hannah Arendt, herself one of the most influential political theorists of the modern age, hand-assembled this collection of some of Benjamin’s most famous and most important essays, including his legendary “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” to form this unforgettable book from a unique mind.
By Valeria Luiselli
An American Book Award Winner and a finalist for both the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, this “essay in forty questions” is a “moving, intimate” account of serving as a translator for undocumented children facing deportation ( The New York Times Book Review ).
As a volunteer worker, Luiselli translated these forty questions from a court form to ask undocumented children who were under threat of deportation. By structuring her writing around them, she helps to put a vitally human face on children who are thrust into an often-uncaring system in this book that is, “Worth of inclusion in a great American (and international) canon of writing about migration” ( Texas Observer ).
By Michael Chabon
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay “makes an inviting case for bridging the gap between popular and literary writing” ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) in this appreciation of everything from pulp fiction to comic books, horror to westerns.
By writing about the stories that move him, speak to him, and inspired him to write, Chabon also talks about his own identity as an author, and what storytelling means to all of us, whether he’s writing about Superman or Sherlock Holmes.
Related: 12 Michael Chabon Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down
Keep Reading: 10 Essential Essay-Length Memoirs You Can Read Online for Free
The pen is truly mightier than the sword, and if you’re a book enthusiast you know that to be true. Some of history’s most influential people were authors, writing the most important literature and political works of all time. Writers have shaped human history, capturing some of the most important historical events and reflecting the culture of a changing world around us in a profound way. Who are the best writers of all time? Vote up the authors you think are the best and see how they rank!
The famous writers on this list are the best in history, writing books, plays, essays, and poetry that has stood the test of time and make up the world's canon of literature and written work. No matter what type of writing you like to read, you can't go wrong with a book by one of these best writers of all time. Simply put, they're easily some of the most famous authors of all time.
This list of authors features the best writers ever, including, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Geoffrey Chaucer, Homer, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Herman Melleville, William Faulkner, and Edgar Allan Poe. Vote up the best authors of all time below or add the writer you think is the best who isn't already on the list.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, a towering figure in literature, delved into the depths of the human psyche through his novels. His exploration of existentialism and the moral struggles within society earned him a place among the most influential novelists of all time.
William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, transformed the English language with his timeless plays and sonnets. His profound exploration of the human condition, love, power, and tragedy has left an indelible mark on literature and theater worldwide.
Leo Tolstoy, a Russian literary giant, is best known for epic novels like War and Peace and Anna Karenina . His intricate narratives, philosophical depth, and incisive analysis of societal issues cement his legacy as a master of realistic fiction.
Homer, the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , stands at the dawn of Western literature. His epic tales of heroes, gods, and warfare have laid the foundation for much of Western narrative tradition and continue to inspire today.
Charles Dickens, with his keen observation of Victorian society, brought to life some of literature's most memorable characters and stories. His novels, rich in social commentary and imbued with humor and pathos, remain enduring classics that captivate readers across generations.
J.R.R. Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy literature, created the unparalleled Middle-earth universe. His The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit not only ignited the genre's popularity but also set a high bar for world-building and linguistic creativity.
The meta-lists website, best essays of all time – chronological.
A reader suggested I create a meta-list of the best essays of all time, so I did. I found over 12 best essays lists and several essay anthologies and combined the essays into one meta-list. The meta-list below includes every essay that was on at least two of the original source lists. They are organized chronologically, by date of publication. For the same list organized by rank, that is, with the essays on the most lists at the top, go HERE .
Note 1: Some of the essays are actually chapters from books. In such cases, I have identified the source book.
Note 2: Some of the essays are book-length, such as Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own . One book listed as an essay by two listers – Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet – is also regularly categorized as a work of fiction.
11 th Century Sei Shonagon – Hateful Things (from The Pillow Book ) (1002) (on 2 lists)
14 th Century Yoshida Kenko – Essays in Idleness (1332) (on 2 lists)
16 th Century Michel de Montaigne – On Some Verses of Virgil (1580) (on 2 lists)
17 th Century Robert Burton – Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) (on 2 lists) John Milton – Areopagitica (1644) (on 2 lists)
18 th Century Jonathan Swift – A Modest Proposal (1729) (on 3 lists)
19 th Century William Hazlitt – On Going a Journey (1822) (on 2 lists) Charles Lamb – The Superannuated Man (1823) (on 2 lists) William Hazlitt – On the Pleasure of Hating (1823) (on 4 lists) Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance (1841) (on 4 lists) Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience (1849) (on 2 lists) Henry David Thoreau – Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (from Walden ) (1854) (on 2 lists)Henry David Thoreau – Economy (from Walden ) (1854) (on 2 lists) Henry David Thoreau – Walking (1861) (on 2 lists) Robert Louis Stevenson – The Lantern-Bearers (1888) (on 2 lists)
20 th Century Zora Neale Hurston – How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928) (on 2 lists) Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own (1928) (on 4 lists) Virginia Woolf – Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1930) (on 3 lists) George Orwell – A Hanging (1931) (on 2 lists) Junichiro Tanizaki – In Praise of Shadows (1933) (on 2 lists) Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet (1935) (on 2 lists) George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant (1936) (on 6 lists) E.B. White – Once More to the Lake (1941) (on 6 lists) James Agee and Walker Evans – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) (on 2 lists) Virginia Woolf – The Death of a Moth (1942) (on 4 lists) Simone Weil – On Human Personality (1943) (on 2 lists) M.F.K. Fisher – The Flaw (1943) (on 2 lists) Vladimir Nabokov – Speak, Memory (1951, revised 1966) (on 2 lists) George Orwell – Such, Such Were the Joys (1952) (on 4 lists) Mary McCarthy – Artists in Uniform: A Story (1953) (on 2 lists) James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son (1955) (on 11 lists) E.B. White – Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street (1957) (on 2 lists) Martin Luther King, Jr. – Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) (on 2 lists) Joseph Mitchell – Joe Gould’s Secret (1964) (on 2 lists) Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation (1966) (on 2 lists) Joan Didion – Goodbye To All That (1968) (on 6 lists) Joan Didion – On Keeping A Notebook (1968) (on 5 lists) Joan Didion – In Bed (1968) (on 4 lists) Edward Hoagland – The Courage of Turtles (1970) (on 2 lists) John McPhee – The Search for Marvin Gardens (1972) (on 3 lists) Annie Dillard – Seeing (from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ) (1974) (on 2 lists) Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman (from The Woman Warrior ) (1976) (on 2 lists) Joan Didion – The White Album (1968-1978) (on 3 lists) Eudora Welty – The Little Store (1978) (on 3 lists) Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse (1982) (on 5 lists) Annie Dillard – Living Like Weasels (1982) (on 2 lists) Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1982) (on 2 lists) Gloria E. Anzaldúa – How to Tame a Wild Tongue (1987) (on 2 lists) Italo Calvino – Exactitude (1988) (on 2 lists) Phillip Lopate – Against Joie de Vivre (1989) (on 3 lists) Richard Rodriguez – Late Victorians (1990) (on 2 lists) Amy Tan – Mother Tongue (1991) (on 4 lists) Seymour Krim – To My Brothers & Sisters in the Failure Business (1991) (on 2 lists) David Wojnarowicz – Being Queer in America: A Journal of Disintegration (1991) (on 2 lists) Anne Carson – The Anthropology of Water (1995) (on 2 lists) Jo Ann Beard – The Fourth State of Matter (1996) (on 5 lists) David Foster Wallace – A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again (1996) (on 5 lists)
21 st Century Susan Sontag – Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) (on 2 lists) David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster (2005) (on 4 lists) Etel Adnan – In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005) (on 2 lists) Paul LaFarge – Destroy All Monsters (2006) (on 2 lists) Brian Doyle – Joyas Voladoras (2012) (on 2 lists)
Essays! Oh no! Not again!
Worry not. Once you’ve finished formal education you are unlikely to have to write an essay , unless you want to.
That’s right, some people choose to write essays. The good news is that essays can be really entertaining and engaging: you may enjoy reading all the works mentioned in this article as we have chosen to focus on the ones that are the most fun and approachable!
The best essay writers of all time are George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Haruki Murakami, and Jonathan Swift. In their works you will find humor, humanity, intense wit, and arguments for the betterment of humankind. They’re great to read and nourish the mind and soul!
Most of us had to read and write essays at school. The word still gives me the cold sweats.
But what is an essay exactly? And what is not?
It’s pretty broad to be honest. The word essay was first used by Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592). He used the French word essayer, which means ‘to try’. He thought of what he had written as an attempt to get his thoughts on paper, or to make his argument. So an essay is an ‘attempt’! Sounds like a pretty accurate description of most of my high school papers.
These days, essays are usually reasonably short. The sort of thing you could read in a single setting: otherwise they start to fall into other categories of writing. There are some longer essays, but they are the exception.
Two categories split the body of work. Formal essays are what we were taught to write in the education system. They have all the features associated with formal writing, like introduction + conclusion, and a logical argument that progresses and is substantiated throughout.
Informal essays are thoughts and argument recorded in a way that is more personalised, and not as restricted by rules. The author is likely to write from a personal and perhaps intimate perspective, as though sharing a subjective position, rather than trying to position their arguments as objectively true.
It might be surprising to learn that essays are hugely popular , or it might not!
Columns written by popular figures in the media fall under the definition of essays. Anywhere someone organizes their thoughts on the page for the purpose of communication with others comes close. So Carrie’s column in Sex and the City is probably an essay.
Essays can also have profound effects on the world politically, and immediate effects for individuals too. When we look at the essayists below we’ll go into more detail.
Essays are popular because they convey important information to readers, often in a way that is highly accessible, or highly entertaining.
Essays are very important.
Essayists like Joan Didion help us to understand ourselves, and the society we live in.
Ideas and movements often begin as essays. Before an idea is turned into a law, it usually comes into the world in the form of an essay. This is one reason that universities remain a powerhouse of intellectual development. Movements like feminism often begin, or have their clearest enunciations, on university campuses partially because these institutions pump out thoughtful essays for the world to consider and debate.
Essays can also be very entertaining. Especially informal ones. The ability of the formal essay to entertain while offering information for consideration makes the form important and valued!
George orwell.
Orwell is one of the most celebrated essayists in the English language. Irving Howe has written that Orwell was “the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson”.
He wrote on a wide variety of subjects, often commissioned by newspapers, and in this way was a very popular essayist. He wrote extensively about English culture, and Englishness.
He also wrote highly influential political essays, and focussed on documenting international politics.
He wrote about the use of language, and his essays on style are still influential. Here are his rules for good writing.
He is famous for the lengths he went to to prepare his essays: for instance he tried to have himself incarcerated in order to write about prison. He also spent time ‘tramping’ up and down England with people who were without a home to learn more about financial struggles.
Woolf is a towering figure in the world of novels and essays. She is one of the leading figures in feminist thought, and regarded as one of the best novelists of all time.
Her essays were highly influential in shaping feminist theory, especially A Room of One’s Own, which is based on a couple of Woolf’s lectures. She argues that an individual must have a room of one’s own, and sufficient money to survive, in order to write: these items have been denied to women .
She invents a character by the name of ‘Judith Shakespeare’ and uses this passage to demonstrate the way in which a sister of Shakespeare’s would not have had the opportunities available to Shakespeare.
This essay has been adapted into many mediums, including some wonderful theatrical performances.
Once you read Joan Didion, you never forget it. She became a cultural phenomenon and is still popular and revered today.
A phenom from the outset, she is considered one of the pioneers of ‘new journalism.’ She focussed particularly on 60s culture, Hollywood culture, and Californian culture more broadly. As Californian culture was so influential at that time, and is still to this day, her writing was of international interest.
Check out The Year of Magical Thinking, or Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Murakami is a Japanese writer of international stature who has won an enormous number of awards primarily for his fiction . His work is engaged with Western culture to the extent that some in the Japanese literary establishment refer to him as un-Japanese.
He has also contributed a number of highly influential essays. See ‘What I talk about when I talk about running’. In this work he discusses his relationship with marathon running: he has completed an ultra marathon – 100 kms!
It’s hard to accurately describe Swift’s influence on Western culture. The Encyclopædia Britannica describes him as the leading satirist in the English language … that’s impressive. There have been quite a few satirists in the English language.
Gulliver’s Travels is a hugely entertaining and satirical novel which pokes fun at all different types of people, big and small!
He was a humanist and decried injustice wherever he spied it. For instance, he wrote an essay titled ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick’. In this, as a joke, he proposes selling Irish children as food for the rich. While also dropping all sorts of hints about the types of reforms in Ireland which would actually make a difference to the lives of the Irish poor.
So there you have it. The best essayists. You now know all you need to know to get started on a lifelong journey of essay reading, and potentially writing! Feel like you have something to say? Well, you probably do! Get it down on paper in the form of an essay: either a formal one, or a more informal one if you want to appeal to your reader on a personal level. We hope you enjoy reading the essays mentioned above, and go out seeking even more great writing to nourish your mind and heart.
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Of all the cinematic genres, comedy is the hardest to truly master. Humor is so context-dependent, and changes so wildly from person to person (let alone between generations) that many comedies struggle to have a strong, immediate impact, and a lot of the ones that do soon become outdated and glaringly of their time. However, there have been plenty of comedy movies throughout cinematic history that have proven themselves to be timeless and stand among the best movies of all time.
In a sprawling range that spans from masterpieces of the silent era to striking satires and 70s spoofs, and even to some instant classics of the modern age, comedy cinema is littered with hilarious hits. United by runaway creativity and a universal embracing of the sheer, unbridled joy of a good laugh, these quintessential comedy classics are sure to leave audiences in stitches.
Directed by jay roach.
Offering emphatic proof that spoof movies didn’t completely die in the 80s, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was the perfect parody of what was, at the time, a dwindling Bond franchise. It follows the titular spy, an agent from the 1960s awoken from cryogenic sleep to face off against his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil ( also played by Mike Myers ), when he returns to Earth and holds the planet to ransom.
The spy spoof is relentless in its pursuit of gags, taking direct aim at 007’s more anachronistic and chauvinistic tendencies with reckless abandon. The end result is so ridiculous that it works, hinging on its parody prowess and its central goofiness to stand among the most brilliantly ingenious dumb comedies ever made. The catchphrases alone are enough to leave fans in hysterics.
Not available
Directed by peter cattaneo.
Delightfully cheeky, The Full Monty may run with a rather obscure and absurd premise, but its ability to blend grounded and lovable characters with genuine pathos that doesn’t stoop to soggy sentiment makes it a finely tuned comedy that fires on all cylinders. Set in Sheffield, it follows a small group of steelers workers who, after their mill shuts down and they find themselves in need of money, decide to put on a strip show to make some quick coin.
The film finds hysterical situational comedy in every step of the characters’ journey, from their ideation to their practicing and rehearsals, inevitable hesitation, and to the show itself. Also thriving with strong comedy performances from every member of the main cast, The Full Monty is an uproarious English comedy that balances wit, social commentary, crass humor, and character drama together to be both hilarious and moving.
53 'the nice guys' (2015), directed by shane black.
Quite possibly the best buddy comedy of the century so far, The Nice Guys has overcome its initial commercial failure to be widely revered as one of the most enjoyable and hilarious movies in recent decades. The crime-comedy follows a shifty private investigator and a thug for hire in 1970s L.A. as they join forces to work the case of a missing girl and the death of a porn star. Their investigation soon unearths political corruption as well.
The core of the film hearkens back to the buddy cop movies of old, but its implementation of some racier themes and jokes gives it a distinctly modern sensitivity as well. Further complemented by a brilliantly constructed screenplay and the fantastic chemistry between Ryan Gosling , Russell Crowe , and even Angourie Rice , The Nice Guys is a genre-meshing masterpiece that deserves every bit of its growing cult classic status .
52 'arsenic and old lace' (1944), directed by frank capra.
A delightful pivot to the macabre from Frank Capra , Arsenic and Old Lace is a black comedy gem that has maintained its hilarious punch over the decades. It focuses on Mortimer Brewster ( Cary Grant ), a notorious marriage detractor who is amazed to find himself in love and eager to marry. When he travels home to tell his family the news, he is disturbed by a corpse hidden in the window seat, a discovery that forces Mortimer to take more notice of his aunts’ misdeeds.
Grant excels at the film’s particular blend of fast-paced, frenzied storytelling and the dark comic allure that bubbles to the surface as he learns his aunts are serial killers. While its shock factor has dissipated over the years, Arsenic and Old Lace still thrives as a brilliant comedy that does justice to the Joseph Kesselring play it was based on.
Rent on Apple TV
Directed by russell chuck.
It is hard to observe modern cinematic comedy without addressing the seismic impact the physically outrageous genius Jim Carrey had on the genre through the 1990s, with his 1994 picture, The Mask , among the most iconic movies of all time. Presenting Carrey with ample opportunity to flaunt his zany hilarity, The Mask sees him star as a meek bank employee whose life is uprooted when he discovers a mask that contains the spirit of the Norse god Loki.
A wild adventure ensues when he succumbs to the mask’s allure, transforming into a confident playboy with a dangerous criminal urge to boot. Wild and exhilarating, the film displays Carrey at his bombastic, cartoonish best while also coasting on an excellent supporting performance from Cameron Diaz to be a true comedy classic and one of the defining movies of the 90s .
Directed by martin mcdonagh.
Martin McDonagh has risen to great heights with his ability to mesh black comedy with dramatic punch, notably doing so with the Oscar-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin , which also made exceptional use of stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson . However, the writer-director's funniest movie is still his debut feature, In Bruges , with the anxiety-inducing crime-dramedy following two Irish hitmen as they are sent to the picturesque Belgian city of Bruges after a job goes horribly wrong.
Embedded within the film's dark comedic allure, there is an unpredictable tale of morality and regret which was largely defining of the picture's brilliance. Also running with fabulous, profanity-laden dialogue, occasional strong violence, and an unforgettably erratic yet hilarious villainous performance from Ralph Fiennes , In Bruges is a laugh-a-minute comedy that thrives as a contemplative tale of crime and remorse as well .
Directed by judd apatow.
One of the most polarizing yet celebrated comedies of the 2000s that saw Steve Carell become a noteworthy leading man while also ushering in a new generation of Hollywood comedy stars, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is an outrageous gem that has only grown more hilarious (and more excruciatingly painful) with age. It focuses on an awkward though amiable store clerk whose co-workers learn has never had sex. While his colleagues try to help him lose his virginity, he begins to form a romance with a local shop owner.
While it isn’t shy when it comes to shock humor and contains hilariously juvenile moments like the famous waxing scene, the film finds its true quality in the tenderness with which Carell’s Andy is explored. Beneath the vulgarity and smut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is one of the most surprisingly earnest rom-coms of the 2000s and a true highlight of 21st-century comedy cinema .
48 'the jerk' (1979), directed by carl reiner.
The movie which saw Steve Martin truly make the leap from a stand-up comic to a leading man in Hollywood comedies, The Jerk was the actor's first starring role in film. Serving primarily as a vehicle for Martin's effervescent and highly energetic brand of goofy comedy to take center stage , The Jerk follows Navin Johnson (Martin), the adopted son of a black family whose sheltered naivety explodes into a journey of self-discovery which takes him to St. Louis.
Embarking on one chaotic misadventure after another, Navin goes from rags to riches and back to rags again all while pursuing the love of cosmetologist, Marie Kimble ( Bernadette Peters ). Even finding an unlikely diehard fan in Stanley Kubrick , The Jerk displays Martin at his high-octane best and proves that, when it comes to being stupid, there is no greater genius than Steve Martin.
Directed by charles chaplin.
Charles Chaplin is arguably the defining icon of cinema for his pioneering work in the medium during the silent era. However, while he has several silent masterpieces, he is also responsible for some acclaimed and sharply satirical “talkies” through the 30s, 40s, and 50s. One of the most underrated of which is 1947’s Monsieur Verdoux , following a dapper Parisian bank teller who, after being laid off, takes to romancing wealthy widows and murdering them for the inheritance as a means to provide for his family.
Chaplin’s mastery of physical comedy remains a centerpiece of the film, but so too is his dry wit, satirical insights into social values, and the arresting air of menace he underlines his cheery performance with. Monsieur Verdoux is undeniably taboo , even by modern standards, but its commentary on civilized morality in times of war is both pointed and intriguing , making it one of the most underappreciated comedy movies ever made.
46 'galaxy quest' (1999), directed by dean parisot.
Lovingly referred to as one of the best, albeit unofficial, Star Trek movies ever made, Galaxy Quest is one of the more underrated spoof movies , winning admirers aplenty through the love and affection it shows its source material. Jason Nesmith ( Tim Allen ) is a washed-up star of the once-popular sci-fi series ‘Galaxy Quest,’ which has attracted a dedicated cult following. As he and his former co-stars get by appearing at conventions, they are approached by an alien race who has mistaken the series to be historical records and enlists the cast to help them fight an intergalactic tyrant.
Capitalizing on its sensational premise, Galaxy Quest dazzles as a fun-fueled sci-comedy that doesn’t skimp on elements of action and adventure either. Buoyed by an exceptional supporting cast that includes Sigourney Weaver , Alan Rickman , Sam Rockwell , and Tony Shalhoub among others, it transcends its comedy framework to simply be a stunning, pure-hearted spectacle of sci-fi adventure.
45 'a night at the opera' (1935), directed by sam wood.
A successful vaudeville and Broadway comedy troupe through the early part of the 20th century before they made the transition to film with the advent of the talkies, the Marx Brothers were arguably Hollywood's greatest comedic talents through the 30s and 40s. The first film of the group's post-Zeppo era , A Night at the Opera sees the three brothers infiltrating the highbrow opera scene to help a young aspiring singer, Rosa ( Kitty Carlisle ), achieve her dreams while thwarting her enemies.
Featuring witty wordplay, physical comedy, and musical numbers, as well as elaborate set pieces like the famous stateroom scene , the film has become an all-time comedy classic. The feverishly upbeat movie is jam-packed with gags while allowing the brothers a rare chance to show off a more sympathetic side to their anarchic personas.
Watch on Tubi
Directed by michael lehmann.
A critical counter-punch to the sunny optimism of many '80s teen comedies , Heathers offers a masterclass in cynical and subversive dark comedy. Tired of the elitist and cruel clique led by three girls, all of whom are named Heather, Veronica Sawyner ( Winona Ryder ) teams up with her rebellious new boyfriend, J.D. ( Christian Slater ), to devise a twisted plot that will rid the school of the rigid and oppressive social order. However, things spiral out of control when J.D.'s plan escalates to full-blown murder.
An astute deconstruction of high school tropes, Heathers takes plenty of potshots at teenage alienation and schoolyard hierarchies . Despite being a box office flop on release, it has become a cult film of significant acclaim. More than 35 years on from its release, it still feels pointed and modern, thanks in no small part to its inventive dialogue written by Daniel Waters .
Directed by armando iannucci.
A criminally underrated satire that takes great delight in skewering politics and power plays in the historical setting of the Soviet Union immediately after Stalin’s death, The Death of Stalin is a modern masterpiece of comedy. Its focus resides on the tyrannical dictator’s underlings as each of them scrambles and schemes to succeed Stalin as the next Soviet leader all while having to put on a united front as the nation ceremoniously mourns Stalin.
Using its acidic wit and comedic prowess like a scalpel, The Death of Stalin excels as a dissection of political power and the people who most crave it. Featuring the likes of Steve Buscemi , Paddy Considine , Simon Russell Beale , Rupert Friend , and Jeffrey Tambor , the film capitalizes on its sharp script with its incredible cast, which also includes a now-famous supporting turn from Jason Isaacs as the medallion-speckled Georgy Zhukov .
Watch on Mubi
Directed by greg mottola.
Following three high school boys in their pursuit to gain access to a party and hook up with the girls they like, Superbad has become a modern teen comedy classic with its mix of awkward adolescent angst and vulgar hilarity. It focuses on Seth ( Jonah Hill ), Evan ( Michael Cera ), and Fogell ( Christopher Mintz-Plasse ), a trio of unpopular youths who try everything to illegally obtain alcohol in order to attend a student house party.
A wild adventure of chaotic, teenage exuberance that ranges from the absurd and audacious to the surprisingly heartfelt, Superbad excels as both a vibrant and vile comedy, and an earnest meditation on friendship . Writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg loosely based the film on their own experiences as teens in Vancouver in the late 1990s. It is further enhanced by an incredible supporting cast including Rogen, Emma Stone , Joe Lo Truglio , and Bill Hader .
Watch on Hulu
Directed by edgar wright.
The first film in Edgar Wright ’s famous ‘Cornetto Trilogy’, Shaun of the Dead is a true modern classic of comedy cinema, as well as a brilliant nod to the history of zombie horror cinema. It follows an aimless sales assistant, Shaun ( Simon Pegg ), whose uneventful life is imbued with new meaning when the dead rise. Desperate to save his mother and his failing relationship, Shaun sets out with his lazy flatmate to face the zombie apocalypse.
With Wright utilizing his trademark style, Pegg and Nick Frost performing at their hilarious best, and plenty of comical yet shocking bloody effects, it has become one of the all-time great horror comedies . It also served as a significant big-screen success for Wright following his hit series Spaced , while Shaun of the Dead ’s toying with an established American film genre in zombie horror enabled it to reach an international audience .
40 'office space' (1999), directed by mike judge.
Office Space is Mike Judge 's send-up of corporate culture and the drudgery of the modern workplace. Starring Ron Livingstone , it follows software engineer Peter Gibbons who despises his mundane job at a soulless, life-sapping tech company. Further frustrated by his micromanaging boss, Bill Lumbergh ( Gary Cole ), and the mind-numbing routine of cubicle life, Peter finds clarity when a hypnosis session goes askew, inspiring him and his co-workers to take revenge on their boss.
Judge's story taps into the understated, maniacal rage that the monotonous boredom of such jobs can instill in many employees, an achievement complemented by hilarious performances from all involved. Its commentary on the modern workplace and its resonant ideas have made Office Space a cult classic comedy that has influenced pop culture through the memes that have spawned from it.
39 'the naked gun: from the files of police squad' (1988), directed by david zucker.
As pure and potent as comedy cinema gets, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! hinges on Leslie Nielsen ’s spoof movie starring brilliance as it lampoons police movies while serving as a continuation of the short-lived 1982 series Police Squad! . It focuses on a bumbling and inept NYPD policeman whose rivalry with a notorious criminal grows urgent when he learns the crook is planning on assassinating the Queen of England.
Given that Nielsen and much of the creative team behind the film worked on Police Squad! as well, The Naked Gun presented a rare opportunity for the masters of mockery to not only poke fun but deepen their comedic understanding of a character. The end result is as precise as it is plentiful, offering a laugh-a-minute frenzy of crude humor and slapstick hilarity that perfects the comedic art of unbridled silliness and stands as one of the most outrageously funny movies ever made.
38 'the producers' (1967), directed by mel brooks.
A Mel Brooks masterpiece that danced on society's sensitivities, The Producers followed washed-up Broadway producer Max Bialystock ( Zero Mostel ) and his timid accountant Leo Bloom ( played by Gene Wilder ) as they hatch a devious scheme to get rich quick. Realizing that if they can get people to invest in a play which flops that they'll be able to keep the leftover money, Max and Leo gather financiers for their surefire musical flop, "Springtime for Hitler."
The Producers received only mixed reviews upon release, with many critics finding its narrative detailing two Jews trying to profit off Hitler to be in poor taste (it is worth noting the film was released at a time when WWII was in living memory for most). However, it has come to be celebrated as a daring and divine success, with its searing mockery of the entertainment industry and its willingness to explore controversial topics making it a timeless classic.
37 'hot fuzz' (2007).
The first and best entry of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost's acclaimed 'Cornetto' Trilogy, Hot Fuzz saw the idiosyncratic filmmaker firing on all cylinders. When elite London police officer Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is transferred due to making everyone else in his station look bad, he lands in the sleepy country town of Sandford. When a series of violent murders hit the town, Angel and his partner Danny Butterman (Frost) begin investigating the malicious mystery.
Wright and Pegg's script is consistently hilarious, as is every single one of the performances, but what truly made Hot Fuzz distinct as a comedy masterstroke was its visual gags . Wright is peerless among his generation when it comes to visual humor, be it his smash cuts and dynamic camera moves or simple set pieces like Nick Frost running through a fence. He was at his very best with Hot Fuzz which is a masterpiece of modern comedy. All those who agree say "Yarp."
Directed by terry jones.
Throughout cinematic history, there is no comedic troupe that has become as notorious, nor as polarizing, as Monty Python . More so than any other film that they made, Life of Brian exhibits the comedy group's appetite to dismantle sacrosanct ideas and serious topics in attention-grabbing ways. It revolves around Brian of Nazareth ( Graham Chapman ), a man born on the same night as Jesus and who is often mistaken to be the Messiah, even as he inadvertently becomes the face of a revolutionary group's stance against the Romans.
The Monty Python movie is a fantastic satire of religious dogmatism, packed with hard-hitting references to Christianity , politics, history, and even classic literature. From gags like Biggus Dickus to "what did the Romans ever do for us?", and, of course, to the finale which sees Brian and his comrades in crucifixion looking on the bright side of life, Life of Brian is loaded with moments which are as gut-bustlingly hilarious as they are iconic.
9-1-1: lone star ep on the show's cancelation & writing out grace: "we had to share the pain we felt behind the scenes".
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9-1-1: lone star season 5's time jump & its impact explained by ep, how 9-1-1: lone star season 5 will address grace's absence explained by ep.
The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star premieres September 23 on FOX, with new episodes airing weekly on Mondays. Although its ending feels premature from a story perspective, there have been rumors about the show's cancelation ever since 9-1-1 moved to ABC in 2024. The news came months after Deadline reported that main cast member, Sierra McClain, had exited the series, leaving the fate of Grace and her relationship with Judd in question.
The 9-1-1: Lone Star season 4 finale saw fan-favorite couple, TK and Carlos, finally tie the knot after years of build-up. However, the ceremony was accompanied by an unexpected tragedy. Days before his son's wedding, Gabriel Reyes (Benito Martinez, How to Get Away With Murder ) is shot and killed by an unseen attacker. The Texas Ranger isn't the only character who meets their end, with Owen's brother, Robert, choosing to die humanely rather than succumb to his Huntington's disease. Co-showrunner and executive producer, Rashad Raisani, shares that the new season will pick up one year later, with the events still weighing heavily on the characters' minds.
As many expected, 9-1-1: Lone Star season 5 is set to be the procedural drama TV show's last, and many things must happen before it ends.
Screen Rant interviewed Raisani about the creative decision behind season 5's time jump, what Sierra McClain's exit means for Grace and Judd, TK and Carlos' year of marriage, and whether fans will be satisfied by the 9-1-1: Lone Star series finale .
"we knew that a big-budgeted show like ours, in the current tv environment, where people are all trying to cut costs and make savings, was kind of a perfect storm against us.".
Screen Rant: When you were writing the fifth season of Lone Star , did you know it was going to be the last one?
Rashad Raisani: We had a sense that it very well could have been because of some of the financial realities of our situation. We're a Disney-owned show, and we're airing on Fox, and we were hitting the end of our contract cycle before there was a big renegotiation for fees. So we knew that a big-budgeted show like ours, in the current TV environment, where people are all trying to cut costs and make savings, was kind of a perfect storm against us. Even though, I think the show has never been more successful from a viewership point of view, our financial realities and our corporate alignment wasn't right. And so we had the sense that it was coming, although it was not official-official, because I think people from the two different companies tried to find ways to make it work, but I think it was just not in reach. So that said, we definitely came into this season thinking we have to make sure that our stories line up to give us a proper ending if this ends up being the last season.
Sierra McClain has exited the series. Is she completely absent from the final season, or did you have a little bit of time with her beforehand?
Rashad Raisani: Yeah, unfortunately, she departed before we rolled any cameras. We didn't have access to her at all, as much as we tried.
Grace has been such an integral part of the show since the beginning. Is there anything you can tease about how the show will address her absence?
Rashad Raisani: The thing that I would say is that Sierra McClain is so central to the DNA of this show. She's literally the voice on the other end of a call on a show with 9-1-1 in the title. She's the one who says, "What's your emergency?" So not even just from her job, but her spirit and her soul have been sort of the center of the show from an emotional point of view. I think most people would say Judd and Grace are the heart and soul of Lone Star, and half of that is gone now. So there's no way that we could just dispatch of it or quickly write it off. We just had to embrace that loss to our show and, frankly, share the pain that we felt behind the scenes in front of the cameras, as well, and make that the story, particularly, for Judd. To not hide from it, but at the same time, to try to honor what both Grace and Sierra McClain meant to the show and to try and make sure that we kept the utmost respect and love for Grace and for Sierra as we went forward. And I think we did it.
"his wife is gone, his son is moving out, he gave up his beloved job, and now he doesn't have anything. he doesn't have his center in grace, so where does he go from there".
What's next for Judd without Grace physically present?
Rashad Raisani: That's a great question. If you remember in our sort of prequel episode called "Saving Grace", when Judd and Grace met each other, Judd was in a very desperate place. He was even considering suicide going back to when he met Grace, and she saved him. I mean, "Saving Grace" is the title of the episode. Since day one for them, she has been the center of his life, the moral center. She's the thing that's just kind of held Judd together. And so as we were approaching this season, we were thinking, if Judd is a guy who needs purpose, he needs the purpose of being a firefighter, he needs the purpose of being a good husband to Grace, he needs the purpose of being a father to Wyatt, particularly in the wake of Wyatt's horrific injury, what would happen to Judd if we stripped all of that purpose away? And his wife is gone, his son is moving out, he gave up his beloved job, and now he doesn't have anything. He doesn't have his center in Grace, so where does he go from there? And so his arc for our final season is to find his purpose on his own two feet. And then, as far as his job goes, Judd desperately wants his old job back at the firehouse. That's who he's meant to be. But as he's going to find out, there's no way to just walk back into the situation he was in before because the world has changed. And so if he's going to find a way back to that purpose, he's going to have to pay a significant price. And so we'll see just how comfortable he is doing that.
There were multiple deaths last season. Owen kept his word and stayed by Robert's side, so what impact will that have on him?
Rashad Raisani: It is going to have a massive impact because, as you said, we did a number of deaths, and two of them in particular, the death of Robert, Owen's brother, and Gabriel Reyes, Carlos' father, but also Owen's consuegro, which is his co-father-in-law, they were going to be in-laws together with Carlos and TK, he had that double loss right at the end of last season, and so he was traumatized by it. A year later, when we pick up, he's been trapped in this fog of both grief and guilt. Because, to your point about his brother, Robert, not only was he there, we're going to find out that there was more to the story than sort of a pretty painless exit for Robert, and Owen is harboring a lot of complicated feelings about how it went down. And those feelings haven't really gone away, and they're festering in ways that Owen doesn't even want to be conscious of. But we're going to have some incidents later this season that are going to force that to the surface. So he'll have to have a reckoning to move on from it.
"you get kind of a nice snapshot of where they are as a couple.".
So there is going to be a one-year time jump between seasons 4 and 5?
Rashad Raisani: Exactly. Just under a year. In fact, that becomes a major story point. To be honest, we didn't know, as we were writing this and shooting it when exactly we would re-air. So we kind of picked the number a year. At the time, it seemed like that was about when we'd come back on. It turned out to be a little longer than that. But also, there are some story reasons. For example, for Judd to come back as a firefighter, if a year elapses while a firefighter is on sabbatical, they have to go back and start over. So for Judd, it becomes a sort of impossible situation to think I'd have to start all the way over as a probie and have to come back. For TK and Carlos, they're coming up on their year anniversary. It's a nice benchmark to see, how has that relationship progressed? What are their struggles? What are their joys in a year? You get kind of a nice snapshot of where they are as a couple.
Why did you decide that the season 4 finale was the right time for TK and Carlos to get married?
Rashad Raisani: I think that the wedding was a long time coming. Since we saw their chemistry, pretty early in season 1, I think we knew that this was going to be a relationship that was going to stick, but we wanted it to have its own space. And I think that season 2, they weren't committed to each other enough. Season 3, we didn't have enough real estate to give them the proper lead up to their wedding. I think in season 4, we finally had the chance to say, "Okay, we've done all this, we have enough ground to build this story the right way, so let's do it." And then it allowed us, in season 5, because for me, when you talk about a marriage, the wedding isn't the end of the story—it's the beginning of the story. And so if season 4 was about them getting to that wedding, season 5 is about, what does this marriage look like? And what will it look like going forward? And so that's what we're able to really dive into this season.
Well, flashbacks do happen...is it possible that we could see Benito Martinez again in some capacity?
Rashad Raisani: Nothing's impossible. I'll just say nothing's impossible. Put it that way.
"i hope everybody feels like, 'well, that was too soon.'".
Everyone at the 126 has had incredible growth over the past four years, but is there a character whose arc really resonates with you in the final season?
Rashad Raisani: Owen's arc is about loss and about guilt, and to me, it's very powerful and universal. I've lost family since we've been doing this show, and that fog that you're in, I've gone through it and have, fortunately, I think, just come out of it. And so that one's very personal. I think Carlos and his obsession about finding who killed his father—a lot of us find ourselves stuck in the past over a trauma that we just can't get past or get through. And we watch his character deal with that and watch this actor, Rafael Silva, really come into his own. He's always been a great actor, but when we got him, he was so young. He's still very young, but he's really just grown so much as a person, as an actor, and to watch it all fuse into his storyline in this fifth season was really special. And then with Gina Torres and Jim Parrack, we gave them two of the most compelling storylines that we've ever given anybody. They have to go to some dark places as actors. They're not always known for going to those darker places, even though they're more than capable of it. And I think we see just the full extent of their power as actors. And so watching those arcs was also great. And then there's Brianna Baker, who plays Nancy, who hardly had any lines in season 1. And then in season 5, she has a massive storyline where I think she proves that she's a star who's going to have her own series before too long. I could keep going. And then I feel bad not talking about Julian, who's magnificent. I mean, all of them—Ronen and Natacha and Brian—I love all of them, and I think they all do so great with their stories.
Do you think fans will be satisfied with how everything wraps up?
Rashad Raisani: I hope everybody feels like, "Well, that was too soon." That's what I really want people to feel like. I am immensely proud of how we end this show. Obviously, I'm a little biased, but I think it's got the perfect poetic ending for everybody. And that's not to say it's necessarily a happy ending, but I think it's a beautiful ending for these characters and a true ending to who they are. I'm immensely proud of it. I'm still cutting it, so I haven't technically seen it yet all finished. But the main thing is, I think people are going to feel like, "Well, wait a second. How come we're done? I want more." And I think maybe that's the sign of a good place to leave, if people still want more. But I have some real mixed feelings because I do wish that it wasn't the end of the journey with all of these characters.
The series was created by ryan murphy, brad falchuk, and tim minear.
In the upcoming fifth season, Captains Strand and Vega, along with the 126 team, race into action when in a multi-episodic opening storyline, a catastrophic train derailment endangers several lives including some of their own. With Judd resigning from the 126 to take care of his recently handicapped son Wyatt (Jackson Pace), Owen must find a new lieutenant to replace Judd and has a difficult decision ahead of him when both Marjan and Paul apply for the promotion.
9-1-1: Lone Star season 5 stars Rob Lowe, Gina Torres, Ronen Rubinstein, Jim Parrack, Natacha Karam, Brian Michael Smith, Rafael Silva, and Julian Works.
Tommy is ready to take the next step in her relationship, but she finds the road to happiness is filled with obstacles. On his 30th birthday, T.K. gets a surprise visit from someone from his past that could change his and Carlos’ lives forever. Now officially husband and husband, T.K. and Carlos’ marriage is put to the test when Carlos becomes obsessed with solving his father’s murder.
9-1-1: Lone Star season 5 premieres on FOX on Monday, September 23 at 8 a.m. ET.
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A spin-off series of 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star is an action-drama series created for Fox. The series follows Rob Lowe as Owen Strand, a firefighter from New York City who, after having rebuilt a team in the aftermath of September 11th's attacks, is brought in to form a new one in Austin, Texas.
Saxophonist nubya garcia writes her own odyssey, string section and all.
Jonaki Mehta
Patrick Jarenwattananon
Ailsa Chang
The London-based saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia talks with NPR's Ailsa Chang about the diverse sounds on her new album Odyssey. It's her first time writing for and conducting strings.
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1. David Sedaris - Laugh, Kookaburra. A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs…. This is one of the top essays of the lot. It's a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what's most important in life.
The 10 Best Memoirs of the Decade. The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction. of the Decade. Aleksandar Hemon Best of the Decade Charlie Fox Edwidge Danticat Elena Passarello Elif Batuman Esme Weijun Wang essay collections essays Eula Biss Hilton Als John Jeremiah Sullivan Oliver Sacks Rebecca Solnit Rivka Galchen Robin Wall Kimmerer Ross Gay Roxane Gay ...
A reader suggested I create a meta-list of the best essays of all time, so I did. I found over 12 best essays lists and several essay anthologies and combined the essays into one meta-list. The meta-list below includes every essay that was on at least two of the original source lists. They are organized by rank, that is, with the essays on the ...
The 25 Greatest Essay Collections of All Time. Today marks the release of Aleksandar Hemon's excellent book of personal essays, The Book of My Lives , which we loved, and which we're convinced ...
So to make my list of the top ten essays since 1950 less impossible, I decided to exclude all the great examples of New Journalism--Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr, and many others can be ...
The 801st Greatest Book of All Time. 11. Collected Essays of George Orwell by George Orwell. This book is a compilation of essays by a renowned author, known for his sharp wit and critical eye. It covers a wide range of topics, from politics and language to literature and culture.
Walter Kirn. Lists about novelists, poets, short story authors, journalists, essayists, and playwrights, from simple rankings to fun facts about the men and women behind the pens. Over 1K readers have voted on the 75+ Best Essayists Of All Time, Ranked. Current Top 3: Michel de Montaigne, George Orwell, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Even the best-written essays can fail due to ineffectively placed arguments. Transitional phrases are useful for displaying the reader where one section ends and another begins. It may be useful to see them as the written equivalent of the sorts of spoken cues used in formal speeches that sign the end of 1 set of ideas and the start of another.
First line: Once upon a time I met a stranger and in my mind we lived an entire life together. 3. Wesley Morris: " My Mustache, My Self ". Morris weaves a riveting, sometimes funny, often probing and moving essay about what might be the most boring topic — growing a pandemic mustache.
Art & Ardor — Cynthia Ozick. 5. The Art of the Personal Essay — anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. 6. Bad Feminist — Roxane Gay. 7. The Best American Essays of the Century — anthology, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. 8. The Best American Essays series — published every year, series edited by Robert Atwan.
Besides essays on Book Riot, I love looking for essays on The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature. But there are great nonfiction essays available for free all over the Internet. From contemporary to classic writers and personal essays to researched ones—here are 25 of my favorite nonfiction essays you can read today.
The Daily Beast. Goodreads. Book Riot. Flavorwire 2. Better World Books. The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America―particularly California―in the sixties.
The decade's best essay collections, from Zadie Smith to Jia Tolentino. Incisive and exacting, these collections make light work of untangling the last 10 years, writes Annabel Nugent
Read it here. A gorgeous mini-essay from an American giant that is equally relevant to writers of poetry or prose, and is almost a poem itself. "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader ...
Men Explain Things To Me is a slim little essay collection with a provocative title and a brilliant premise. Rebecca Solnit writes about the lived experience of women in the patriarchy in seven essays (or nine, if you get a later edition) from the last twenty years. She addresses violence against women, marriage equality, the influence of ...
Winner of the 1972 Booker Prize for his novel, G., John Peter Berger (born November 5th, 1926) is an art critic, painter and author of many novels including A Painter of Our Time From A to X Bento's Sketchbook. Recommended by Robert Jones, David McCammon, John Harrison (Eton College), and 4 others.
From personal essays to political ones, cultural criticism to travelogues, these 10 books represent some of the best essay writing of the last century, spanning continents and languages, tackling subjects that range from political unrest to pulp fiction—and everything in-between. ... No wonder Time Magazine chose it as one of the 100 best and ...
Deep. This student goes to Hamilton College, studies science, and wrote easily one of the most dry and wry college essays I have ever read. Perhaps he is British. The premise of this essay, which we have listed in its entirety on the Essays page of CollegeMapper, is that this science guy goes to the museum and is handed a worksheet on "How to ...
Over 90K readers have voted on the 500+ Best Writers of All Time. Current Top 3: William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy ... The famous writers on this list are the best in history, writing books, plays, essays, and poetry that has stood the test of time and make up the world's canon of literature and written work. No matter what ...
A reader suggested I create a meta-list of the best essays of all time, so I did. I found over 12 best essays lists and several essay anthologies and combined the essays into one meta-list. The meta-list below includes every essay that was on at least two of the original source lists. They are organized chronologically, by date of publication.
The best essay writers of all time are George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Haruki Murakami, and Jonathan Swift. In their works you will find humor, humanity, intense wit, and arguments for the betterment of humankind. ... Irving Howe has written that Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson". He ...
Best Essay Collections of All Time: Your Famous Essay Inspo Is Out There. Even with all the music icons popping up here and there, nobody can beat The Beatles, Pink Floyd, or Sinatra. ... Luckily, dozens of history essay writing gurus have done the homework for you and put the heaviest words into inspirational texts about the nonphysical realm ...
Offering emphatic proof that spoof movies didn't completely die in the 80s, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was the perfect parody of what was, at the time, a dwindling Bond ...
The essays are not listed in any particular order. Just browse through them, read the summary, writing tips, and if you think it's good for you, go ahead and read it. There's also some bonus material at the end. 40 Best Essays Ever Written (With Links And Writing Tips) 1. David Sedaris - Laugh, Kookaburra 2/26
The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star premieres September 23 on FOX, with new episodes airing weekly on Mondays. Although its ending feels premature from a story perspective, there have been rumors about the show's cancelation ever since 9-1-1 moved to ABC in 2024. The news came months after Deadline reported that main cast member, Sierra McClain, had exited the series, leaving the ...
The London-based saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia talks with NPR's Ailsa Chang about the diverse sounds on her new album Odyssey. It's her first time writing for and conducting strings.