As a college student, you probably spend 25 to 30 hours a week doing homework, and assigned reading is usually a central part of your assignments. So, naturally, you must be way more used to skimming through textbooks and browsing the World Book Student database than to reading for your own pleasure.
That said, reading classics like Huxley's Brave New World or Orwell's Animal Farm can make you a better human being, plain and simple. As Jordan Peterson, an educator and psychologist, put it, classics offer commentary that transcends time. They also expose you to other perspectives, enriching your worldview.
So, which books should find their way to your to-read list? We decided to start with Jordan Peterson's list and add our own selection of titles to it.
Why Give These Books a Try?
A student reading a book on their own is always a good thing to see, but these 103 titles below were all selected for specific reasons. Reading them won't just make for a good pastime, but will also:
- Develop your critical thinking skills. Both fiction and non-fiction titles make fertile ground for training your metaphorical analytical thinking muscles. Some books also demonstrate how to build solid arguments based on logical reasoning.
- Help you understand human nature. The psychology, history, and neuroscience titles listed below will give you insights into what makes humans behave the way they do. These insights into motivation, personality, and behavior are crucial for navigating challenges in adult life and developing your interpersonal skills.
- Improve your vocabulary and writing skills. You might want to shy away from complex texts in favor of simpler narratives and vocabulary. Yet, engaging with these texts is a must if you want to become a more astute writer or orator.
- Prepare you for your future career. Philosophy and literature titles on this list make for a great introduction to ethics. Its principles will help you make more well-considered decisions later in life. Great interpersonal, writing, and communication skills are also valuable in a professional setting.
These Titles Can Be a Boon for Your Studies, Too
Yes, we are encouraging you to read these books for personal development. That said, everything you learn from them can also come in handy in your studies. For instance, you can:
- Cite these titles in papers. Even if you're not majoring in English or literature, you may find some of the books to be great sources of information. You can rely on them in your essays, case studies, term papers, research papers, and even dissertations.
- Use them as examples in discussions. You never know when seemingly random knowledge can come in handy. Whenever you engage in a discussion or a debate in class, there's always a chance you may be able to enrich it and drive your point home with an example from one of the titles you read in your free time.
- Turn to them for ideas. Ever suffered from choice paralysis or blank-page syndrome whenever you need to choose the topic for your assignment? Having read a wide variety of books is bound to help you combat it. You can rely on your knowledge to brainstorm topics or return to those titles to get inspired.
So, Which Books Are Worth Reading If You're a Student?
Now that we've covered why these books are worth exploring for both your personal development and your academic success, let's move on to our list. Based on Peterson's selection of must-read books, it brings together 103 titles across six categories:
- Philosophy and literature
- Psychology and psychiatry
- Neuroscience
- Religion and spirituality
- Systems analysis and history
This list brings together both fiction and non-fiction titles, and each of them was selected for its unique insights and perspective on a certain topic. So, these books are bound to enrich your understanding of the world around you in one way or another. They'll also help you expand your vocabulary, grow your knowledge on a specific topic, develop critical thinking skills, or get better at communicating your ideas.
But how do you choose just one book to get started with? First, go ahead and browse our list below. Then, consider your personal and academic interests and create a shortlist of the titles that align with them. Rank them based on the curiosity they stir. Finally, if you can't choose just one title, you can overcome choice paralysis by picking up a random book from your short list.
Most Popular: The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato
Before we list the rest of our must-read titles, let's put one specific book into the spotlight: The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato. It's one of the most popular books among college students, as well as an award-winning title that can boast being:
- 2019 Madame De Staël Prize Winner
- 2018 Leontief Prize Winner for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought
- Financial Times Business Book of the Year Shortlist Candidate
- McKinsey Business Book of the Year Shortlist Candidate
Ever found yourself wondering, "What is value in economics?" Or couldn't bear to agree with the established definition of value in economics? In either case, this book is for you.
In her book, Mazzucato examines the dominant position of value extraction in a modern capitalist system, as opposed to value creation. She also meticulously analyzes how this status quo perpetuates inequality and supercharges the race for unlimited (and therefore unsustainable) economic growth.
That said, The Value of Everything isn't one of those depressing titles that break down in agonizing detail why the world is broken in some way. Mazzucato also explores how rethinking the question of wealth and value can help us reform capitalism into a more sustainable system.
51 Transformative Philosophy & Literature Book Titles
- Beyle, Marie-Henri (Stendhal): The Charterhouse of Parma
- Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
- Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
- Cary, Joyce: The Horse's Mouth
- Chandler, Raymond: The Big Sleep
- Chandler, Raymond: The Long Goodbye
- Dalrymple, Theodore: Our Culture: What's Left of It
- Dalrymple, Theodore: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Notes from Underground
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Devils
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
- Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
- Graves, Robert: I, Claudius
- Hammet, Dashiel: The Maltese Falcon
- Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell To Arms
- Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and the Sea
- Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
- Huxley, Aldous: Island
- Huxley, Aldous: Point Counterpoint
- Kazantzakis, Nikos: The Fratricides
- Kazantzakis, Nikos: Zorba the Greek
- Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- Kesey, Ken: Sometimes a Great Notion
- Keyes, Daniel: Flowers for Algernon
- Laurence, Margaret: The Stone Angel
- Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: On the Genealogy of Morals
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Antichrist
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Gay Science
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Will to Power
- Orwell, George: 1984
- Orwell, George: Animal Farm
- Orwell, George: Road to Wigan Pier
- Pirsig, Robert: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Shem, Samuel: The House of God
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: Cancer Ward
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: The First Circle
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: The Gulag Archipelago: Vol. 1; Vol. 2; Vol. 3. (alternatively, all three volumes in one order)
- Steinbeck, John: East of Eden
- Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
- Steinbeck, John: Of Men and Mice
- Stendhal: The Red and the Black
- Thompson, Hunter S: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
- Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
- Troyat, Henri: Tolstoy
- Wolfe, Tom: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
24 Insightful Psychology Book Titles Worth Reading
- Becker, Ernest: The Denial of Death
- Ellenberger, Henri: The Discovery of the Unconscious
- Eysenck, Hans: Genius
- Frankl, Viktor: Man's Search for Meaning
- Freud, Sigmund: An Outline of Psychoanalysis
- Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams
- Jung, Carl: Aion
- Jung, Carl: Answer to Job
- Jung, Carl: Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
- Jung, Carl: Modern Man in Search of a Soul
- Jung, Carl: Mysterium Coniunctionis (Difficult; read the last half)
- Jung, Carl: Psychology and Alchemy
- Jung, Carl: Psychology: East and West
- Jung, Carl: Psychology of Religion: East and West
- Jung, Carl: Symbols of Transformation
- Jung, Carl: The Symbolic Life
- Jung, Carl: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
- May, Rollo. Angel, Ernest & Ellenberger, Henri: Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology
- Neumann, Erich: The Origins and History of Consciousness
- Neumann, Erich: The Great Mother
- Piaget, Jean: Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood
- Piaget, Jean: The Moral Judgment of the Child
- Rogers, Carl: A Way of Being
- Rogers, Carl: On Becoming a Person
9 Neuroscience Book Titles to Expand Your Worldview
- Gibson, James J: An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
- Goldberg, Elkhonon: The New Executive Brain
- Gray, Jeffrey and Neil McNaughton: The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
- LeDoux, Joseph: The Emotional Brain
- Panksepp, Jaak: Affective Neuroscience
- Sacks, Oliver: The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
- Sacks, Oliver: Awakenings
- Sacks, Oliver: An Anthropologist on Mars
- Swanson, Larry: Brain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan
12 Enlightening Religion Book Titles
- Burton Russell, Jeffrey: Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World
- Eliade, Mircea: A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)
- Eliade, Mircea: Myth and Reality
- Eliade, Mircea: Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
- Eliade, Mircea: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
- Eliade, Mircea: The Forge and the Crucible
- Eliade, Mircea: The Sacred and the Profane
- Frye, Northrop: The Great Code
- Frye, Northrop: Words with Power
- Lewis, Bernard: The Crisis of Islam
- Smith, Huston: (introductory): The World's Religions
- The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature
6 Mind-Blowing Systems Analysis & History Book Titles
- de Solla Price, Derek J: Little Science, Big Science
- De Soto, Hernando: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
- Gall, John: Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
- Porter, Theodore M: The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900
- Radzinsky, Edvard: Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives
- Shirer, William L: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Final Thoughts
You might think reading is a thing of the past: after all, AI tools can sum up any title in a matter of seconds. Still, reading remains very much a marker of intelligence, critical spirit, and analytical thinking. Nothing can beat engaging with the text in all of its nuance and meticulous argumentation.
And if you need an extra reason to delve into another book in your free time, these titles aren't just interesting to read. They'll broaden (and perhaps even change) your worldview, help you develop soft skills, and prepare you for life beyond college.
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