Unconventional Lists of Books for Graduates

I am often surprised by how many requests I get at the service desk for recommendations on books people need to buy as a gift. [I do push the idea that the library is where you will find your community’s book experts in many of my trainings, so I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised.]

Graduation is one of those most popular times, second only to Christmas, where I am asked to help people find a unique book option for purchase.  Often, these patrons are bored by the obvious Oh the Places You’ll Go type graduate books.  What they want is the recommendation of a “good read” for the graduate in their life.  A book to reintroduce them to the joys of leisure reading, now that school is over.

So here are a few lists and ideas I have been passing on to these patrons.  Feel free to add more lists or any of your own suggestions in the comments.

• Try my lists of “Best Books I Read This Year” for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
• Bustle’s list of 11 Books to Read After College Graduation 
• In 2013, the Daily Beast asked a group of authors and academics which one book they think everyone should read before graduating college. 
• And because the last 8 years have probably been a blur of high school and college required reading for the graduate, why not give him or her a great contemporary, leisure reading option that he or she may have missed:
• Booklists’s Best Crime Novels of the Past Decade
• The Millions: Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)