What Books Have You Begged Friends to Read?

Last month, I was on a long-awaited FaceTime catch-up with my friends Mary and Laura. We’re all writers and parents of small children, so we spend a lot of time gossiping about our kids and the books we’re reading. Mary was ready to discuss Lena Dunham’s, Famesick, but Laura and I hadn’t gotten to it yet. I tossed off a casual gripe about not being able to sit through another conversation about Strangers, which I also had not read.

At this point, my friends’ faces froze, and not because of the internet. “Wait. You haven’t read Strangers yet?” This, it seemed was a bridge too far. Apparently, no amount of work or children would excuse me from reading the mandatory memoir of 2026.

Inspired by them (and totally embarrassed), I started the book the next morning, and within 12 hours, I was peer-pressuring others to read it. For the record, I found it a breathtaking read, but that’s not the reason. Some books you need a buddy for. Sometimes you push a book into a friend’s hands because it’s got medicine you know they need. Some books you share because it says something you can’t. And some books you need someone else to read just so you can see the look on their face when they get to that part. I can’t be the only married woman who handed Strangers to their spouse and essentially stood there with her arms folded. “I’ll wait!”

It doesn’t always play out like you’d hoped. I once turned on a David Sedaris audiobook — one of those this-is-who-I-am books — while on a four-hour drive with my aunt. She shrugged. “Not my thing.” Other times, the assignment doesn’t stick. I chased my husband around with Homegoing for months, ignoring his pitiful cries of, “I’m just not that into fiction!” (“But it’s HISTORICAL fiction!”) My grandfather gave me the Ron Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton on three different Christmases, and I never learned a thing about the man until Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a musical.

But when it works, what a thrill. One summer, I assigned my friend Ellie my favorite Stephen King novel, and she read it in two days, texting me about the parts that kept her up until the wee hours — which were the same parts that had kept me up all night — and suddenly, there was a new layer to our friendship. Another friend read Mia Farrow’s memoir, What Falls Away, after I begged her to when we were in our early twenties. I don’t recall the details, but we somehow wound up in a full-on crying fight over it? All I know is we’re still best friends and we still don’t talk about that book; and in a bizarre, inexplicable way, it’s one of the tightest knots in our friendship.

This week, my group chat is reading Yesteryear — another zeitgeisty book that we each only picked up because we, as a group, declared it mandatory summer reading. There’s something very different about capitulating to peer pressure from your actual, beloved peers. It’s infinitely more fun than picking up a book because the rest of the world says you should. We haven’t talked about it yet — we’re waiting until everyone’s finished — but I know that when we do, it’ll be a good time. Or a really, really bad one. Either way, I can’t wait.

So, what books have you forced upon your loved ones? I would love to hear!

P.S. A darkly funny book we loved, and five things we noticed at a NYC bookstore.

(Photo by Michela Ravasio/Stocksy.)

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