Whether we like it or not, the coronavirus has us quarantining indoors for a while. If you're anything like us, you've binged your favorite shows, movies and probably started a popular new series. But when that form of entertainment has run its course, we're finding happiness in picking up a good book while sitting by the fireplace—even if it transports us to another life for only an hour. Seriously, there's never been a better time to buy books.

Research shows we're not alone in our thinking. According to Pew Research Center, approximately 72 % of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, and with many places back under lock down, we're sure that number will steadily increase.

Here are the best books to read in your lifetime, broken down by genre:

Humor

Born A Crime Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

  1. Bossypants by Tina Fey
  2. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
  3. I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
  4. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D Salinger
  5. The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
  6. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
  7. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
  8. You Can't Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson
  9. The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell by W. Kamau Bell
  10. You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein
  11. Born A Crime Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  12. Delete At Your Peril by Bob Servant

Science fiction

1984 by George Orwell

  1. The Giver Novel by Lois Lowry
  2. 1984 by George Orwell
  3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  4. Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton
  5. The Martian by Andy Weir
  6. Dune by Frank Herbert
  7. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
  8. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
  9. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  10. Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

Thriller

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson

  1. House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
  2. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
  3. Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
  4. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
  5. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson
  6. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
  7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  8. The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Fantasy

The hunger games

  1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
  2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  3. A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
  4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
  5. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
  6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
  7. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
  8. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Mystery

The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  1. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
  2. The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen
  3. The Wolf Wants In by Laura McHugh
  4. The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
  5. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
  6. Knife by Jo Nesbo
  7. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
  8. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
  9. The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan
  10. In Cold Blood by Truman capote

Romance

The Proposal by jasmine Guillory

  1. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
  2. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  3. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
  4. The Proposal by jasmine Guillory
  5. Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught
  6. Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
  7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  8. Vision In White by Nora Roberts
  9. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
  10. Delta of Venus Mariner by Anais Nin
  11. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  12. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  13. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

History

The Guns of August By Barbara Tuchman

  1. The Guns of August By Barbara Tuchman
  2. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
  3. The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge
  4. Orientalism By Edward W. Said
  5. Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen
  6. 1776 by David McCullough
  7. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by David E. Stannard
  8. Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill
  9. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  10. The Contours of American History by William Appleman Williams

Biography + autobiographies

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

  1. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
  2. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
  3. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
  4. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
  5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  6. Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson
  7. The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
  8. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
  9. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
  10. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Related Stories