Make it your best reading year ever! We have curated a winning selection of twenty (20!) of the finest books you’ve ever encountered—each one handpicked to inspire, challenge, and delight. But we’re not just reading; we are creating a community-driven literary journey.
The Lakeside Book Club is going all out in 2025 to make it your best reading year ever!
We have curated a winning selection of twenty (20!) of the finest books you’ve ever encountered—each one handpicked to inspire, challenge, and delight. But we’re not just reading; we are creating a community-driven literary journey.
Every month, you’ll have the chance to vote on four incredible books, and the winner will become our featured read. Together, we’ll dive into thought-provoking discussions, share the most memorable quotes, and celebrate the power of storytelling.
Whether you’re a seasoned bookworm or a casual reader, this is your year to connect, reflect, and discover. Let’s make 2024 unforgettable—one page at a time!
Here is our curated list:
Awakening your Ikigai - Ikigai is a Japanese phenomenon commonly understood as “your reason to get up in the morning.” Ikigai can be small moments: the morning air, a cup of coffee, a compliment. It can also be deep convictions: a fulfilling job, lasting friendships, and balanced health. Whether big or small, your ikigai is the path to success and happiness in your own life.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - This novel tells the intertwined stories of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, who endure hardship and oppression under the Taliban regime. The story explores themes of love, resilience, and the enduring power of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
The Habit Revolution - ‘If you’ve ever set a goal to start a new habit or break an old one and you fell off the wagon; if you’ve been in a cycle of yo-yo dieting, phone scrolling, or alarm snoozing; or if you intend to do one thing but end up doing another, then you’re in the right place.’
Linchpin: Are you indispensable - There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there's a third team: the linchpins. These people figure out what to do when there's no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art. They may not be famous but they're indispensable. And in today's world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.
Never eat alone - Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success? The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.
Moby-Dick - Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America.
Do androids dream of electric sheep - It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment--find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!
Things fall apart - A simple story of a "strong man" whose life is dominated by fear and anger, Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.
A man for all seasons - The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII.
Crime and punishment - Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.
Shoe Dog - In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
The hard thing about hard things - A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one. His book offers candid and practical advice for entrepreneurs and business leaders, covering topics such as hiring and firing, raising money, and dealing with crises. Horowitz shares his own experiences and hard-won lessons from building and managing successful companies.
The good earth - This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall.
White fang - White Fang is part dog and part wolf, and the lone survivor of his family. In his lonely world, he soon learns to follow the harsh law of the North--kill or be killed. But nothing in White Fang's life can prepare him for the cruel owner who turns him into a vicious killer. Will White Fang ever know the kindness of a gentle master?
Kidnapped; Robert Louis Stevenson - This adventure novel follows David Balfour, a young Scottish man who is kidnapped and taken to the Highlands of Scotland. He embarks on a perilous journey to reclaim his inheritance, facing danger and adventure along the way.
Let us now praise famous men - In the summer of 1936, Agee and Evans set out on assignment for "Fortune" magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when in 1941 "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" was first published to enormous critical acclaim. This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land, and of the rhythm of their lives today stands as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
A night to remember - First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains the definitive, classic tale of the sinking of the Titanic. Walter Lord interviewed more than sixty survivors before committing their searingly vivid recollections to his minute-by-minute account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the experiences of both passengers and crew under pressure of the unthinkable: the swift plummet into icy waters of the ship promised never to sink.
1776 - In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence - when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.
Dracula - When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterward, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.
The Long Loneliness - This inspiring and fascinating memoir, subtitled, “The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist,” The Long Loneliness is the late Dorothy Day’s compelling autobiographical testament to her life of social activism and her spiritual pilgrimage.
A song for Nagasaki - On August 9, 1945, an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing tens of thousands of people in the blink of an eye, while fatally injuring and poisoning thousands more. Among the survivors was Takashi Nagai, a pioneer in radiology research and a convert to the Catholic Faith. Living in the rubble of the ruined city and suffering from leukemia caused by over-exposure to radiation, Nagai lived out the remainder of his remarkable life by bringing physical and spiritual healing to his war-weary people.
Out of Africa - Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade." In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still.
Intellectuals - Paul Johnson examines whether intellectuals are morally fit to give advice to humanity. Do the private practices of intellectuals match the standard of their public principles? How great is their respect for truth? What is their attitude to money? How do they treat their spouses and children - legitimate and illegitimate? How loyal are they to their friends? Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, Kenneth Tynan and many others are put under the spotlight. With wit and brilliance, Paul Johnson exposes these intellectuals, and questions whether ideas should ever be valued more than individuals.
The overcoat - The Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions. This short story tells the tale of Akaky Akakievich, a lowly government clerk who spends years saving up for a new overcoat. When the coat is stolen, Akaky's life is thrown into despair, leading to a tragic and surreal turn of events.
If this is a man - This memoir recounts Primo Levi's experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Levi's vivid and unflinching account of the horrors of the Holocaust serves as a powerful testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
