L. C. Atencio’s Recommended Books
“For a long time, there has been an unspoken rule among published writers: When asked to name our favorite books, we should hesitate. We should deflect. We should claim that choosing would be impossible — out of courtesy to writerly friends, out of humility, or out of fear that enthusiasm might be mistaken for ego. I understand that instruction, its importance, and the executive/administrative/marketing effort behind it. I understand the pressure of pleasing networks, departments, and the people in charge.
And yet, I also believe that honesty matters to me more.
Like some contemporary writers, I’m willing to say plainly and unashamedly that I do have books I love above others — books that shaped me, unsettled me, comforted me, and, at times, quietly changed the way I move through the world. I share them not to elevate my taste, but because I believe, deeply, that books help us survive ourselves.
Books give us distance from our own lives — just enough space to see clearly. They recalibrate our judgment. They soften certainty. They allow us to step outside our anxieties and inhabit other minds, other histories, other moral landscapes. In doing so, they return us to ourselves, more grounded, more lucid, and often more compassionate and empathetic.
Without books, it’s easy to become trapped inside the noise of daily life — locked into a single point of view, overwhelmed by sensation, urgency, and habit. Books interrupt that noise. They slow us down. They remind us that our private struggles are rarely unique and that meaning often reveals itself only when we pause long enough to listen.
To choose a book is to choose a companion for the soul. Books are lifelines. They steady us when the world tilts. They widen the narrow corridors of our thinking.
To read is to find the road again when you are lost in the woods.
I love life, and I respect the vast range of human perspectives. Because of that, I have hundreds of favorite books. Still, curation can be a possible act of care. With millions of titles available to us, choice itself can feel paralyzing. So I offer these selections as guideposts — not prescriptions, but rather as invitations.
These are the books that moved me. The ones that made me feel less alone. The ones that stirred wonder, dread, sympathy, laughter, and awe. The ones that reminded me of our shared humanity.
It is my hope that these books will give you as much joy as I myself received. Thank you for your time and consideration.”
— Leandro
Special Mentions & Recommended Reads:
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Green Mile by Stephen King, Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, The Holy Bible, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Stuart Little by E. B. White, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, 1984 by George Orwell, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling), Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Eragon by Christopher Paolini, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Along Came a Spider by James Patterson, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter, Bits and Pieces by Whoopi Goldberg, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Bambi: A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, The Poems of Lewis Carroll, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, That Kind of Planet by Emma Weakley, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, The Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, Night of the Living Dummy by R. L. Stine, Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Watership Down by Richard Adams, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of Conan: The Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard, Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, Grimm’s Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, and The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.
