Books for males
Here are some of the best reads for men, and in some cases for boys (add your favourites in the comments at the bottom):
Hamlet (published in 1623) by William Shakespeare
Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain (whose name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
The Jungle (1905) by Upton Sinclair
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) by T.E. Lawrence
The Hobbit (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus
The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If This Is a Man (1947) by Primo Levi
1984 (published in 1949) by George Orwell
I, Robot (1950) by Isaac Asimov
Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov (1951-1953)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
The Lord of the Rings (1954) trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
The Tree of Man (1955) by Patrick White
My Family and Other Animals (1956) by Gerald Durrell
On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
Storm Boy (1963) by Colin Thiele
A Personal Matter (1964) by Kenzaburō Oē
Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) by Hunter S. Thompson
Post Office (1971) by Charles Bukowski
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) by John le Carré
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
The Neverending Story (1979) by Michael Ende
A Good Man in Africa (1981) by William Boyd
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) by Raymond Carver
Cathedral (1984) by Raymond Carver
Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson
Money (1984) by Martin Amis
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) by Tom Wolfe
Grin and Bear It: a survivor’s guide to marriage, kids, family holidays, home renovations, the English and other horrors (1990) by Richard Glover
Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot (published in 1991)
Cloudstreet (1991) by Tim Winton
The Power of One (1992) by Bryce Courtenay
All The Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy
Trainspotting (1993) by Irvine Welsh
A Suitable Boy (1993) by Vikram Seth
Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
Boyhood (1997) by J.M. Coetzee
Harry Potter series (1997-2007) by J.K. Rowling
About a Boy (1998) by Nick Hornby
Raw (1998) by Scott Monk
In Bed with Jocasta (2000) by Richard Glover
How to Be Good (2001) by Nick Hornby
How to be Alone (2002) by Jonathan Franzen
Songbook (2003) by Nick Hornby
31 Songs (2003) by Nick Hornby
Desperate Husbands (2005) by Richard Glover
The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
The Innocent Man (2006) by John Grisham
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007) by Haruki Murakami
Open: An Autobiography (2009) by Andre Agassi
Freedom (2010) by Jonathan Franzen
Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) by E.L. James
Men Without Women (2014) by Haruki Murakami
The boy behind the curtain (2016) by Tim Winton
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) by Arundhati Roy
Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George Saunders
Boy Swallows Universe (2018) by Trent Dalton
28: A Memoir of Football, Addiction, Art, Masculinity and Love (2021) by Brandon Jack
The Sheriff’s Catch by James Vella Bardon, which is the first novel in The Sassana Stone Pentalogy (2021-2024)
The Adventures of Toby Baxter (four book series from 2023 to 2025) by Tim Wright
The Bogan Book Club (2024) by John Larkin
Vince Lombardi (2025) by Paul Drewitt
Ramblings of an Untamed Mind: A Man’s Journey Through Poetry (2025) by Robert Parr
The Dog Walker (2025) by R.A. Stone
The Bank Robber’s Boy (2025) by Peter Norris
Trapped (2025) by Glenn Sullivan
It Began With a Whisper: YA Dystopian with political and educational themes (2025) by Michael Matteo
Promising Young Man (2025) by Elias Axel
Add your favourite books here…