Books to read to an adult

February 22, 2022 5:56 PM

My partner and I like to read to each other — sometimes on road trips, sometimes before bed. What are your favorite works of fiction to read to another grownup?

We have enjoyed things like:
- Einstein's Dreams and Sum: Tales from the Afterlives, where each chapter is a self-contained, separate idea
- Angela Carter's fairy tale books and collections, such as The Bloody Chamber and Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales

posted by svolix to Writing & Language (15 answers total)

If you're both into Angela Carter, I'd recommend anything by Jeanette Winterson and Catherynne M. Valente. Like Carter, they both take a feminist lens to the fantastical (with echoes of fairy tales), rendered in especially lush language. I'm not sure how well either reads aloud, but if The Bloody Chamber's the baseline, I think they'd go over well.
posted by xenization at 6:17 PM on February 22, 2022

I like to read plays because then each person can take a part or parts. Haven't tried it in a car though ;)
posted by falsedmitri at 6:36 PM on February 22, 2022

A few that my partner and I have read aloud together and both liked:

There There by Tommy Orange
The Searcher by Tana French
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
posted by kbuxton at 6:52 PM on February 22, 2022

The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck might be a good choice for a road trip. It is the story of guy and his brother to try to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon with a team of mules circa 2012 interspersed with information about the historic exodus along the Oregon Trail one hundred fifty or so years earlier. I read to someone who was in the hospital. Each chapter stood up pretty well by itself, so it is fine if you don't really remember the details of what came before. I also enjoyed the writing and found it easy to read out loud.
posted by metahawk at 6:54 PM on February 22, 2022

Once on holiday, I read David Sedaris' Naked out to my boyfriend, and it was tons of fun. Short stories are easy to follow, interesting characters that you can do voices for if you are so inclined, very funny. I'm sure any of his books would work for this.

Also seconding Jeanette Winterson, The Passion is lovely
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 6:55 PM on February 22, 2022

We really enjoyed Homer's Odyssey while travelling, still remember lying in a roadside ditch out of the wind reading those ancient lines aloud - E. V. Rieu's translation still my preferred. It works for trips as seems easier to put down anywhere and start again later.
posted by unearthed at 8:26 PM on February 22, 2022

I like this question. My partner and I read 12 books aloud during the pandemic so far. Here are my top reads from that list:

This Is How You Lose the Time War by by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone: An incandescent multiverse-traveling love story.

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez: Story featuring Black and Indigenous vampires who plant benevolent thoughts in their prey, from 1850s to 2040s.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence: It's 1928's most scandalous book—banned in the US for four decades. Really fun to read when the characters go off on their ridiculous tirades.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: Short, suspenseful psychological thriller that was a true delight to read with its main character's uniquely naive voice.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: The slowest burn revenge novel I've ever read. If you each read 10 pages every night before bed, starting in May, you'll be done by the end of September. Many great characters to give voices to!
posted by oxisos at 10:08 PM on February 22, 2022

In the oughts, I made a lot of lengthy road trips with someone whose taste in music didn’t much overlap with mine, so playing CDs in the car meant that one or the other of us would be enduring rather than enjoying. Reading to her turned out to be the solution.

Favourites included: Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris, David Foster Wallace.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:26 AM on February 23, 2022

Italo Calvino has been a big hit with Mrs. iNeas. Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities have just the right mix of whimsy, darkness, and metaphor.
posted by iNeas at 7:04 AM on February 23, 2022

Some housemates and I used to do this, and Edgar Allan Poe was the odds on favorite. The spookiness and cadence is perfectly suited.
posted by champers at 7:05 AM on February 23, 2022

Mr. rekrap has been reading to me at bedtime for over 30 years and we love this activity. We've noticed that the best read-alouds don't have to be masterpieces, but do need to be reasonably well written. A fair amount of dialogue is helpful (mr. rekrap enjoys subtly altering or accenting the various voices) as wading through long blocks of narrative can be tedious. Some humor is good. Strong plots and characters are necessary since reading aloud takes longer than just plowing through a book, so you need something that will propel and engage. It's nice to have short chapters or in-chapter breaks to find good stopping points. Nothing too dense or heavy (War and Peace was a total failure).

Some favorite authors have been Ray Bradbury, James Thurber, Fannie Flagg, Carl Hiaasen, Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Pullman, WP Kinsella, Francesca Lia Block. Some recent favorites have been LIke Water for Chocolate (can lead to frisky times!), Boys in the Boat (non-fiction but so good!), Children of Time and Children of Ruin (trigger warning giant sentient spiders!). Currently reading The Sparrow.
posted by rekrap at 11:06 AM on February 23, 2022

Leonora Carrington writes these really surreal kinda absurd short stories that do a very good job putting me in my imagination space and sending me off to sleep. She’s got short stories on booksvooks if you want to try b4 u buy, but I also liked her ‘the hearing trumpet’.
posted by sibboleth at 11:13 AM on February 23, 2022

Ursula le Guin is great to read aloud, a real joy, I would start with the Earthsea books.
posted by tomp at 12:49 PM on February 23, 2022

I think I've read all of John Fante's books to my wife - our favorite is a novella called My Dog Stupid, in a collection called West of Rome.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 1:14 PM on February 23, 2022

A partner and I read the Weetzie Bat books, aka Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels series, to each other at bedtime and really enjoyed them. They're YA novels on adult themes set in a magical-realist Los Angeles. Lovely if you like queerness and magic.
posted by ottereroticist at 9:02 AM on February 24, 2022