10 Books That Don't Feel Like Homework

Most "books you must read" lists are written by people who finish books for a living, which is a noble profession, but it leaves the rest of us looking at the list with the slightly defeated feeling of someone who has not finished a novel in three months and feels mildly guilty about it.

This list is for those of us. Adults who used to read, who would like to read, who keep meaning to read, and whose bedside table has a stack of three books that have been there since February with bookmarks still on page forty-two.

Three things before we get to it. You are not behind. The average Australian adult reads four books a year, so if you read one you are above average and if you read three you are winning. It is perfectly fine to abandon a book halfway through or a quarter of the way through or after three pages. Reading is not an obligation. And the right book at the right time is everything. A book you abandoned in 2019 might be the best thing you read in 2026.

Here are ten books that read like a hot bath. They are recent, they are not too long, and none of them feel like assigned reading.

1. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

A novel told in thirteen short stories about a difficult, brilliant, retired schoolteacher in coastal Maine. You can read one story a night without committing to anything bigger. By the end she is one of the great characters of modern fiction, and the whole book reads like a quiet hand resting on your shoulder. It won the Pulitzer in 2009 and has aged extremely well.

2. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

A big funny devastating Irish family novel that comes in at six hundred pages but reads fast. It is about what happens when a small-businessman's wealth starts to disappear and the family quietly comes undone, told from four different points of view. Funny on every page and sad on most of them. The kind of book you finish and feel grateful for.

3. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The novel of the last few years that absolutely everyone has read and that you may have already missed your moment on. If so, this is your sign to pick it up anyway. Two friends make video games together over thirty years, but the book is not really about video games. It is about creative partnership and grief and love and what we make of each other. You will probably cry, and you will text a friend about it.

4. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

A memoir about food and grief and the author's Korean mother dying. It sounds heavy because it is, but it is also lit up with such specific alive love that you finish it and immediately call your mum. The author is also the singer of the band Japanese Breakfast, which is a small unrelated bonus.

5. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Short, weird, dark, very funny. The narrator is a deeply unhinged female photographer in Newcastle who photographs men she meets online. It reads like a knife, it will not be for everyone, and if you liked Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation this is the next book you want to read.

6. Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

A love story set in 1970s Belfast during the Troubles. Schoolteacher Cushla, married Catholic barrister Michael, all set against a background of political violence. The pace is slow and the prose is glassy and the emotional damage at the end is enormous. The kind of book where you finish a chapter and have to put it down and stare at a wall for a minute.

7. A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

A short novel set in northern Ontario, told from three points of view. A seven-year-old girl, a seventy-five-year-old woman, a forty-something man, all of them caught up in the same small town situation. About what we owe each other across generations. It reads in two long evenings and is quietly perfect.

8. All Fours by Miranda July

The horny midlife crisis novel of the moment. A forty-five-year-old artist sets off on a road trip and does not actually go anywhere very far. Genuinely funny and genuinely unhinged, it is about marriage and motherhood and perimenopause and the strange new chapter of female adulthood that nobody warned us about. You will either love it or rage-quit by chapter four. There is not much middle ground.

9. The Push by Ashley Audrain

A psychological thriller about motherhood, specifically about a mother who suspects her daughter is dangerous. Hard to put down, you will read it in two or three evenings, it is tense and smart and dark, and you should not read it during your own postpartum brain-fog moment. Save it for later if so.

10. Funny Story by Emily Henry

The lightest of the list and entirely shaped like a romcom. Two strangers find themselves living together after both their partners fall in love with each other, and the rest of the story is what you would expect. Easy, charming, you will finish in a weekend. Reading is allowed to be fun, and we forget that more often than we should.

How to actually finish a book

A few small tricks that work in practice. Read for ten minutes before bed instead of scrolling, which is sixty minutes a week, which is roughly a book a month. Get a paper book, because a Kindle is fine and phone reading is fine but a paper book on the bedside table is a visual prompt and your phone is not. Read more than one book at a time, which is mildly heretical advice but I always have a fiction, a non-fiction, and a comfort re-read going at the same time, and I pick up whichever one I want on a given day. Give yourself permission to abandon a book if you are sixty pages in and do not care. The book is not in charge of you. And finally, match the book to the mood: a heavy literary novel does not read well on a stressful Tuesday, and a romcom is perfect for a flu day.

A book is a real-life thing

The act of reading a paper book in bed with a cup of tea and the phone in another room is one of the slow rituals that has not yet been ruined by an app. Keep it slow, keep it ordinary, read what you actually want.

The Offline Box ships a hand-picked surprise book every month, exactly the kind that reads like a slow Sunday. Founding fifty for June, a handful left.

With love, Jen