100 Must-Read Essay Collections

100 Must-Read Essay Collections Theres something about a shiny new collection of essays that makes my heart beat a little faster. If you feel the same way, can we be friends? If not, might I suggest that perhaps you just havent found the right collection yet? I dont expect everyone to love the thought of sitting down with a nice, juicy personal essay, but I also think the genre gets a bad rap because people associate it with the kind of thing they had to write in school. Well, essays dont have to be like the kind of thing you wrote in school. Essays can be anything, really. They can be personal, confessional, argumentative, informative, funny, sad, shocking, sexy, and all of the above. The best essayists can make any subject interesting. If I love an essayist, Ill read whatever they write. Ill follow their minds anywhere. Because thats really what I want out of an essay the sense that Im spending time with an interesting mind. I want a companionable, challenging, smart, surprising voice in my head. So below is my list, not of essay collections I think everybody must read, even if thats what my title says, but collections I hope you will consider checking out if you want to. 1. Against Interpretation Susan Sontag 2. Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere André Aciman 3. American Romances Rebecca Brown 4. Art and Ardor Cynthia Ozick 5. The Art of the Personal Essay anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate 6. Bad Feminist Roxane Gay 7. The Best American Essays of the Century anthology, edited by Joyce Carol Oates 8. The Best American Essays series published every year, series edited by Robert Atwan 9. Book of Days Emily Fox Gordon 10. The Boys of My Youth Jo Ann Beard 11. The Braindead Megaphone George Saunders 12. Broken Republic: Three Essays Arundhati Roy 13. Changing My Mind Zadie Smith 14. A Collection of Essays George Orwell 15. The Common Reader Virginia Woolf 16. Consider the Lobster David Foster Wallace 17. The Crack-up F. Scott Fitzgerald 18. Discontent and its Civilizations Mohsin Hamid 19. Dont Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine 20. Dreaming of Hitler Daphne Merkin 21. Self-Reliance and Other Essays Ralph Waldo Emerson 22. The Empathy Exams Leslie Jameson 23. Essays After Eighty Donald Hall 24. Essays in Idleness Yoshida Kenko 25. The Essays of Elia Charles Lamb 26. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader Anne Fadiman 27. A Field Guide to Getting Lost Rebecca Solnit 28. Findings Kathleen Jamie 29. The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 30. The Folded Clock Heidi Julavits 31. Forty-One False Starts Janet Malcolm 32. How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America Kiese Laymon 33. I Feel Bad About My Neck Nora Ephron 34. I Just Lately Started Buying Wings Kim Dana Kupperman 35. In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction anthology, edited by Lee Gutkind 36. In Praise of Shadows Junichiro Tanizaki 37. In Search of Our Mothers Gardens Alice Walker 38. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling 39. I Was Told Thered Be Cake Sloane Crosley 40. Karaoke Culture Dubravka Ugresic 41. Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 42. Living, Thinking, Looking Siri Hustvedt 43. Loitering Charles DAmbrosio 44. Lunch With a Bigot Amitava Kumar 45. Madness, Rack, and Honey Mary Ruefle 46. Magic Hours Tom Bissell 47. Meatless Days Sara Suleri 48. Meaty Samantha Irby 49. Meditations from a Movable Chair Andre Dubus 50. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood Mary McCarthy 51. Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris 52. Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal Wendy S. Walters 53. My 1980s and Other Essays Wayne Koestenbaum 54. The Next American Essay, The Lost Origins of the Essay, and The Making of the American Essay anthologies, edited by John DAgata 55. The Norton Book of Personal Essays anthology, edited by Joseph Epstein 56. Notes from No Mans Land Eula Biss 57. Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin 58. Not That Kind of Girl Lena Dunham 59. On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry 60. Once I Was Cool Megan Stielstra 61. 100 Essays I Dont Have Time to Write Sarah Ruhl 62. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored Adam Phillips 63. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence Adrienne Rich 64. The Opposite of Loneliness Marina Keegan 65. Otherwise Known as the Human Condition Geoff Dyer 66. Paris to the Moon Adam Gopnik 67. Passions of the Mind A.S. Byatt 68. The Pillow Book Sei Shonagon 69. A Place to Live Natalia Ginzburg 70. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Toni Morrison 71. Pulphead John Jeremiah Sullivan 72. Selected Essays Michel de Montaigne 73. Shadow and Act Ralph Ellison 74. Sidewalks Valeria Luiselli 75. Sister Outsider Audre Lorde 76. The Size of Thoughts Nicholson Baker 77. Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion 78. The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 79. The Story About the Story anthology, edited by J.C. Hallman 80. A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do Again David Foster Wallace 81. Ten Years in the Tub Nick Hornby 82. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man Henry Louis Gates 83. This Is Running for Your Life Michelle Orange 84. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage Ann Patchett 85. Tiny Beautiful Things Cheryl Strayed 86. Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture Gerald Early 87. Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints Joan Acocella 88. The Unspeakable Meghan Daum 89. Vermeer in Bosnia Lawrence Weschler 90. The Wave in the Mind Ursula K. Le Guin 91. We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think Shirley Hazzard 92. We Should All Be Feminists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi 93. What Are People For? Wendell Berry 94. When I Was a Child I Read Books Marilynne Robinson 95. The White Album Joan Didion 96. White Girls Hilton Als 97. The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kinston 98. The Writing Life Annie Dillard 99. Writing With Intent Margaret Atwood 100. You Dont Have to Like Me Alida Nugent If you have a favorite essay collection Ive missed here, let me know in the comments!