From Mansfield Park to Jurassic Park, some reading inspiration for every age.
A book for every year of your life: Part one, ages 0-30
Here is the second instalment of a book for every year of your life. After 30, any sort of age recommendation for works of great literature is entirely arbitrary and should be treated more like a horoscope than any sort of serious guidance. Life is precious and there’s no guarantee you’ll make it past the average national life expectancy, so carpe librum.
Age 31: A book you’ve never read and hate for no reason
An important part of your 20s is taking a principled stand against an author you’ve never read and know almost nothing about, based on some vague sense of ideological superiority. An important part of your 30s is realising you are full of shit. If you spent your 20s casting vague aspersions about “David Foster Wallace boys” or making fun of “Eat Pray Love divorcees” it’s time to put your money where your mouth is and see for yourself. Even if you don’t love the book, you’ll come away with a deeper and more nuanced hatred.
Age 32: A book to make you swoon
It’s hard to discover a good literary romance, without wading through a hundred Goodreads lists of enemies-to-romance TikTok slop. Any of the above titles are beautiful books about being swept off your feet. For a lesser-known ode to young love, set during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, you can’t go past Mal Peet’s Life: An Exploded Diagram.
Age 33: A book to lick your wounds
Love affair gone wrong? There’s a book for that too. Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds is possibly the greatest break-up poetry book ever written. Excoriating but tender, cruel but generous, both comedic and transcendently beautiful. Guaranteed to make you weep hysterically on the bus.
Age 34: A book of essays
There are almost too many good contenders in this category to name. Madness, Rack and Honey by Mary Ruefle is a delightful and digressive book of essays about poetry. Braiding Sweetgrass is perfect for anyone interested in the natural world and the great web of life. And for a more lighthearted approach, you can’t go past iconic curmudgeon Fran Lebowitz.
Age 35: A book for when you truly and completely lose your shit
35. Too old for a quarter-life crisis. Too young for a midlife crisis. But while there is no age-specific term for the existential panic you encounter in your mid 30s, there are plenty of great books about the experience of completely and utterly losing your shit. Try Post-traumatic by Chantal V Johnson, for a sharp, witty and emotionally devastating book about trauma and recovery.
Age 36: A book to procreate to
Whether you’re busy perpetuating the human race, or are simply curious about the experience of parenthood, Shirley Jackson, Sarah Moss, Rachel Cusk and Anne Lamot have you covered. If you want a rose-tinted-glasses approach, read Shirley Jackson’s delightful Life Among The Savages. If you want brutal honesty, try Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work.
Age 37: A book you can’t trust
I won’t say too much about any of these books, because any kind of synopsis would instantly spoil them. Do yourself a favour and read them before looking them up online.
Age 38: The greatest book in the English language
Skip the Russians, for all I care. Put Dickens off another decade. But read Middlemarch, the greatest novel in the English language.
Age 39: A book to up your dinner game
These two recipe books by Australian darling Nagi Maehashi of Recipetin Eats, have brought me more joy than almost any other book I have read this year. Most recipe books have about 12 useable recipes, and you have to sift through endless papaya salads and raisin-studded chutneys to find something you’d actually want to eat. Tonight and Dinner are everything I have ever wanted in a cookbook. The ingredients are modest and easily available. There are short and clear instructions with short accompanying videos. Nagi provides excellent explanations on what can and can’t be substituted, how long things keep, and whether or not you can prepare ahead. I am far from a Michelin-star chef, but I’ve been making several new dishes from these books every week, and so far they’ve all been insanely easy, and utterly delicious. My new cooking bible(s).
Age 40: A gossipy biography
Sometimes memoir just doesn’t cut it. Here are four great biographies you won’t be able to resist gossiping about. The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm is one of the most fascinating biographies I have ever read, even if – like me – you have no particularly strong feelings about Plath. Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession also by Malcolm is another excellent contender with an unexpected New Zealand connection.
Age 41: A seriously fucking miserable book
Sometimes the only thing to take the edge off is an unremittingly bleak and upsetting book. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is an excellent novel that is guaranteed to ruin your week.
Age 42: A brilliant short book
Sometimes the best things come in small packages. Three exceptional short novels you can devour in a single afternoon. Try Fup, a hilarious, bawdy, little-known classic about grief, moonshine and a big beloved duck.
Age 43: A doorstopper
On the other end of the literary spectrum are the doorstoppers. Like the Mitch Hedberg joke – great for when you’re bored and want 1,000 (pages) of something.
Age 44: A book incandescent with rage
Sick of polite literary fiction about hope, redemption and the transcendent power of love? Here are a few excellent books, blistering with rage, sarcasm and general incredulity.
Age 45: A literary blockbuster
Sometimes the International Booker Shortlist just isn’t the ticket. If you’re an earnest reader of accomplished literary fiction, why not swap the latest Granta young novelist for a great airport novel?
Age 46: A book on how to write a book
You’ve put in the hard yards. Maybe it’s time to think about writing a book of your own. Here are four of the best how-to guides, for the aspiring midlife novelist.
Age 47: A book about everything
The best books of nonfiction are sprawling, digressive, and impossible to categorise because they cover too much sociological ground. Debt by David Graeber is a thrilling anthropological look at monetary systems, debt and human economies, and that’s just scratching the surface.
Age 48: A book you’ve been meaning to get around to
Let’s be real. If you don’t read Crime and Punishment now, when will you get around to it?
Age 49: A jolly memoir
All of these books have a special place in my heart, but one of the great joys of the Covid lockdowns was listening to James Herriot’s series of memoirs about his career as a rural veterinarian. A beautiful read, punctuated by the occasional prolapsed cow vagina.
Age 50: A less jolly memoir
Some lives are funnier than others. Giving up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel is an incredible memoir about chronic pain, infertility and various hauntings.
Age 51: A contemporary New Zealand book
How about a little literary patriotism? Try Damien Wilkins’s Delirious, reviewed glowingly here by Gabi Lardies and Claire Mabey.
Age 52: A book of fantasy
What’s better than one great book of fantasy? One great book of fantasy with 15 equally strong sequels. My most beloved fantasy series is Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings, which begins with a young boy, training to be an assassin’s apprentice. But if 16 books is too much of a commitment, try Scott Lynch’s excellent Gentlemen Bastard series.
Age 53: A book of philosophy
For those going through the existential wringer, why not make a little time for one of the great works of philosophy? I’m not personally brave enough to attempt Heidegger, but Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching is a beautiful and mysterious short read that won’t have you sweating over the dictionary.
Age 54: A book of short stories
Read them all at once, or space them out over the course of a year. If you’ve already made your way through Lydia Davis, Denis Johnson and Lorrie Moore, try Raymond Carver, Kelly Link, Chekhov, or Claire-Louise Bennet.
Age 55: An epic
Come on. Give it a punt. There’s something in Homer and Milton for everyone.
Age 56: A fictional diary
Technically Sterne might not fit the definition. But fictional diaries are a great literary niche, and it’s high time they had a renaissance. I’ve already included Adrian Mole in the first part of this article, but I can’t resist giving him a second mention. Try The Diary of a Provincial Lady for a dry, witty, semi-autobiographical book about a disaster prone English housewife in 1930’s Devon.
Age 57: A damn good book
What the heading says. The Dog of the South is one of the funniest books I have ever read. David Mitchell has yet to write a dull novel.
Age 58: A book about sex
An incisive feminist essay collection, a collection of risque short stories, and two spectacularly horny novels.
Age 59: A book about travel
When you’re tormented by wanderlust, but can’t afford the plane fare.
Age 60: A famously difficult book
Are any of these any good? I have no idea. They’re too (famously) difficult.
Age 61: A book from the perspective of an animal
While this is admittedly a niche genre, there are too many great contenders. I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume is a comic masterpiece about Japanese high society, narrated from the perspective of the resident feline.
Age 62: A book with a cult following
In my experience, when someone describes a book as a “cult classic” you’re either in for a thrilling and unconventional read or one of the most insufferable books you’ve ever encountered in a lifetime of niche reading. Fortunately, I can promise you these five books have earned their legend. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear is one of those uncategorisable books I would recommend to anyone over the age of 12 who has forgotten the pleasure of reading.
Age 63: A book that spans a life
From the cradle to the grave. These books span a single life, or in the case of Follet, lives. Try Stoner by John Williams for a beautiful rendering of an ordinary life.
Age 64: A book of historical fiction
Wolf Hall had me howling at the moon. Hillary Mantel didn’t win two Booker prizes by eating soup with a fork.
Age 65: A book to overhaul your understanding of reality
The galaxy brain meme, represented as fiction. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli is a short and poetic meditation on time, perfect for those curious about the mysteries of the universe, but lacking an education in quantum physics.
Age 66: A great detective series
If you ask me, every year of your life is a great year to read a good detective fiction novel. Having already read every Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers under the sun, I’ve recently been taking refuge in Ann Cleeves’s excellent Vera Stanhope mysteries. For those who prefer their detective fiction hardboiled, try Philip Kerr’s gritty noirs, set in Hitler’s Germany.
Age 67: A book on a prize shortlist
People are suspicious of prize shortlists, and for good reason. Many gold-stickered novels have aged poorly, or are critically overrated. Not so Elizabeth Strout or Marilynne Robinson. I might not die for Elizabeth Strout, but I would probably donate a kidney if she asked me to.
Age 68: A book in translation
While no translation can ever capture the true music of the original, if you’re only reading books written in English, you’re missing out. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, an interlinked collection of short stories about a girl and her grandmother summering on a small Finnish island, is one of the funniest and most touching books I have ever read. It’s one of those books you can truly give to anyone, and know they will find something to love about it, unless of course their heart is made of stone.
Age 69: A book that defies genre
One of the best feelings in literature is having absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. For a quick and brilliant read that confounds traditional notions of genre, you can’t go past Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.
Age 70: A history book
There’s nothing more exciting than a historian with the ability to bring the past to life. As a lifelong Mesoamerican enthusiast, I’m currently enjoying Fifth Sun by Camilla Townsend.
Age 71: A book you missed the first time around
At the risk of sounding like an adult quidditch player, children’s fiction isn’t just for children. Pick up a copy of Guus Kuijer’s The Book of Everything and tell me the author doesn’t deserve a Pulitzer.
Age 72: A generational saga
The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard is one of the great literary loves of my life. Howard’s five novels follow an upper-middle-class British family, the Cazalets, from the 30s to the 50s, with a particular focus on the interior lives of girls and women.
Age 73: A properly funny book
A lifetime of hyperbolic book blurbs has led me to view the promise “laugh-out-loud funny” with immense scepticism. Many books are amusing, but that’s hardly the same thing. Here are four books which live up to the hype. I love Mapp & Lucia, a novel about feuding society ladies in a 1920s British village.
Age 74: A book set on a boat
Sometimes only a book set on a boat will do. For those wanting a rollicking non-fiction adventure on the high sea, read The Wager by David Grann. For a slapstick voyage down the Thames, grab a copy of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome.
Age 75: A book of science fiction
Whether you are interested in ambisexual anthropology, Jesuit priests in space, a cyberdrug epidemic or a hysterically funny series about a cyborg searching for the meaning of life, science fiction has something to offer everyone.
Age 76: A homage to the classics
Five great books that take on the classics. Alice Oswald’s Memorial is one of the most beautiful and harrowing books of poetry, a tribute to the dead soldiers of the Iliad with the Gods scratched out.
Age 77: A great reference book
Want to know what Foggy Bottom or Furnace (The burning fiery) refers to? Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has you covered.
Age 78: A book with an elderly protagonist
None of that twee Scandinavian old-man-who-ran-away-on-a-novelty-paddleboat feel-good Netflix adaptation literature. Five excellent novels about characters in their twilight years.
Age 79: A book of top-shelf poetry
Time to get the best stuff down from the top shelf.
Age 80: A ghost story
Every love story is a ghost story, according to either Virginia Woolf or David Foster Wallace.
Age 81: A literary retelling
If you haven’t read the great works of literature these retellings are based on, that’s two for the price of one. Read James by Percival Everett, currently sweeping the prize shortlists.
Age 82: A book you can listen to
Some books are better heard, not seen. Everyone should experience Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, read by Richard Burton.
Age 83: A book about death, god and the great beyond
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’ve exceeded the average national lifespan. From this point forward, I think you can be safely trusted to choose your own books. But here’s one for the road. David Eagleman’s Sum, comprising 40 extremely short tales from the afterlife(s) is much more enjoyable than it has any right to be. See you all in chicken hell.