In Ursula K. Le Guin’s passing, literature has lost a giant. In the cruelty that always occurs after an author’s death, it has brought more attention to her work. And so it should! Le Guin was prolific, and there’s a backlog of books to work through before you reach the end of her writing. Here’s a good place to start, with books by Le Guin for every age of reader. Whether you’ve read all of her books or not, you can enjoy The Wise Words of Ursula K. Le Guin.

But what happens when you do get to the end of her works? What if you’ve already read all of her books? Where do you go from there? Well, one place to start is the long list of books she’s recommended. (She always balked at naming her “favorite” books.) Here are more than 75 of them: books she mentioned in interviews, or wrote about on her blog, or gave to the Strand for her “authors bookshelf,” or books she blurbed. I have included her blurbs or an excerpt of her review when applicable: all the others were simply listed without context. Here are the books Ursula K. Le Guin recommended at some point, roughly by genre:

Children’s Books:

Young ADult:

Listening at the Gate by Betsy James Tightly plotted, tautly written, bursting with passion and poetry, Listening at the Gate will transport you to a world both hauntingly familiar and utterly new—full of love, grief, hope, and wild adventure. (Blurb)



Classics:

Fantasy:

Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller Carol is the most unappreciated great writer we’ve got. Carmen Dog ought to be a classic in the colleges by now…It’s so funny, and it’s so keen. (Blurb)

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake [In answer to “Which fantasy novels do you consider the best of the genre?”] (NYT)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing not only with the kind of accuracy of language absolutely essential to fantasy-making, but with real music in the words as well. Wherever Pat Rothfuss goes with the big story that begins with The Name of the Wind, he’ll carry us with him as a good singer carries us through a song. (Blurb)

Jagannath: Stories by Karin Tidbeck I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck’s imagination is recognizably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable—quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories. (Blurb)

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien I always cry at the end of The Lord of the Rings when Sam says, “Well, I’m back.” (EW)

The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

Fiction:

Graphic Novels:

Nonfiction:

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

by Charles Darwin Changing Ones by Will Roscoe An examination of how gender has been constructed in Native American societies. Responsibly researched, very well written, generous in spirit, never oversimplifying a complex subject, this is a wonderfully enlightening book. (Blog)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings together scientific and medical research (and hypocrisy), the biography of an almost invisibly elusive black woman, the exposure of an act of exploitation, racism and social injustice, and the writer’s own deeply respectful involvement with the people from whom she won this absorbing, troubling, wonderfully told story. (Source)



Poetry:

Science Fiction:

These were sourced partly from an Entertainment Weekly interview, a New York Times interview, her authors bookshelf at The Strand, a guest post at The Week, her reviews in The Guardian, her blog post “Some Books I’ve Liked”, and the best Googling I could muster. (If anyone has a good way to find the books an author has blurbed, though, I’d love to hear it!)

Book Deals Newsletter Sign up for our Book Deals newsletter and get up to 80% off books you actually want to read. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use

There are some surprises here. For one thing, there are a lot fewer SFF titles than I would have expected. Classics and poetry seem to be her go-to for recommendations. I also have to admit that I’m a little disappointed by how overwhelmingly white this list is. There is not quite a handful of authors of color listed.

This isn’t a complete list! I wasn’t able to find a good way to locate all of the books she’s blurbed, and I didn’t go into her Guardian reviews much, because they were often unclear about whether she would actively recommend the title. Let me know if there are others I should add to the list!

*Denotes books added after article’s original publication