Best English books to read to improve English

If you want to become more fluent in English, you need to keep pushing yourself. Reading original English books is a great way to do this! Even if you are an intermediate English speaker, you can still use simple novels and books to make good progress. But when it came to finding books that were both educational in terms of the language level AND interesting in their own right, I realized I needed to go beyond the obvious choices and decided to draw up my own list.

Best English books to read to improve English

Below, we reveal five best English books to read to help improve your English…

1. Deal Breaker (by Harlan Coben)

The truth can get you killed… A stunning thriller from the SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author of SIX YEARS.

“Acceptance of the inevitable, a sign of a wise man.”

This is my favorite crime fiction series. Myron Bolitar, a retired pro-basketball player, solves crimes together with his eccentric best friend, Windsor “Win” Horne Lockwood III. This book is heavy on mysteries – being a crime novel and all – and sports jargon. Warning: if you’re one of those people who can’t put a book down once they’ve started, steer clear of this one.

2.Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

It is a fact universally acknowledged that every list of great books must include Pride and Prejudice. Don’t be fooled by the bonnets and balls: beneath the sugary surface is a tart exposé of the marriage market in Georgian England. For every lucky Elizabeth, who tames the haughty, handsome Mr Darcy and learns to know herself in the process, there’s a Charlotte, resigned to life with a drivelling buffoon for want of a pretty face.

This amusing story of love and life in the class-conscious England of the late 18th century, is sure to bring you moments of cheer, love and laughter.

3. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an old Cuban fisherman chasing the biggest catch of his life. All alone, and miles out to sea, he battles with the fish for several days. The book looks at many themes, like ‘man vs. nature’ and the idea of ‘masculinity’ (or being a ‘man’). It is the way this book deals with these themes that makes it one of the most famous and successful book written in English.

The present book is an in-depth critical study of the modern American classic, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and the Nobel Prize in 1954. This study, while keeping the novel under the critical lens, examines it against the backdrop of Hemingway’s aesthetic convictions and overall literary achievement. It throws light on the various dimensions of not only the novel but Hemingway’s craftsmanship like his use of suggestion and symbolism, his inimitable style, his manipulation of narrative perspective, and the way he projects his philosophical theme of the ephemeral versus the everlasting, which is dramatized in The Old Man and the Sea. The present book will definitely prove useful to students, researchers as well as teachers of English Literature interested in the study of Hemingway and his works.

4. A Thousand Splendid Suns (by Khaled Khosseini)

“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”

This book offers up a story line like no other. Become immersed in the daily lives and hardships of Miriam and Laila as they struggle to find a future in Kabul. The English is simple enough for most learners, but still beautiful and challenging. And the book features characters you’ll never forget.

5. Slaughterhouse Five

Read Kurt Vonnegut’s powerful masterpiece, which is as timely now as when it was first published.

‘An extraordinary success. A book to read and reread. He is a true artist’ New York Times Book Review

Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber’s assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out?

Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency.

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” The most famous line from Vonnegut’s ultimate work succinctly wraps up the mood and theme of the novel. A tragic examination of the life of a soldier in World War II, Slaughterhouse Five challenges readers to deeply examine their preconceptions of war and life. Using words such as unmitigated, grotesque, and magnanimity, the vocabulary of Slaughterhouse Five is of a more modern in origin.