Skip To Content
BuzzFeed Homepage
Sign In
Search BuzzFeed

    We hope you love our recommendations! Some may have been sent as samples, but all were independently selected by our editors. Just FYI, BuzzFeed collects a share of sales and/or other compensation from the links on this page.

    15 Books Harry Styles Has Read That Need To Be On Your To-Read List

    Essays, fiction, memoirs, and poetry - there is something for everyone.

    Shivani Agrawal
    by Shivani Agrawal

    BuzzFeed Staff

    1. My Policeman by Bethan Roberts

    amazon.in

    The book is set in 1950s Brighton and follows the lives of Marion, Tom and Patrick. Both Marion and Patrick are besotted with Tom but in a society so rampant with homophobia, it is safer for Tom to marry Marion. The lovers choose to share Tom until tragedy strikes and all three lives are destroyed.

    Harry Styles was spotted carrying the book out and about in London and now it is soon to be an Amazon original movie, starring Styles himself.

    Get the paperback here for ₹843.

    2. Notes on 'Camp' by Susan Sontag

    amazon.in

    Notes on 'Camp' by Susan Sontag was the inspiration for the camp-themed Met Gala 2019 that Harry Styles co-hosted alongside Lady Gaga and Serena Williams. In this essay, Sontag explored high and low art forms, giving them both equal validity and defined camp as not being a strict idea but a sensibility characterised by extravagance, irony, humour, exaggeration and theatricalisation.

    Get the paperback here for ₹214.

    3. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski

    amazon.in

    Harry loves Charles Bukowski. He has been spotted reading Bukowski on several occasions, and his song-writing is also deeply inspired by Bukowski.

    This collection of poetry is raw, unfiltered, filthy and full of gambling, drinking and romantic escapades.

    Get the paperback here for ₹875.

    4. Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski

    amazon.in

    This book is Bukowski's most infamous collection of poetry. It explores love and heartbreak through a raw and lyrical lens. Bukowski doesn't dabble in metaphors, instead chooses to write the world as one sees it.

    Get the paperback here for ₹699.

    5. You Get So Alone At Times It Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski

    amazon.in

    Also by Bukowski, this collection explores his cat and childhood, delving into how the realities of his youth have affected him.

    Get the paperback here for ₹679.

    6. Rumi: Selected Poems by Rumi

    amazon.in

    Rumi's poetry is rich in imagery and themes and transcends the time period it was written in. Rumi explores love, devotion and charity through exuberance and images of flowers, rivers and stars that still resonate with millions of people around the world.

    The book was 1 of 3 of Harry's most prized possessions that he talked of in a 2017 interview with Another Man Magazine.

    Get the paperback for ₹292.

    7. The Waste Land & Other Poems by T.S. Eliot

    amazon.in

    This book is a collection of Eliot's most pivotal works from the Modernist literary movement. The poems are disjointed with no clear allusion to time and space and reference hundreds of other works including Shakespeare, Greek Mythology and the Upanishads.

    Get the paperback here for ₹637.

    8. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

    amazon.in

    Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is also 1/3 of Harry's most prized books. It is the story of young Siddhartha and his journey to finding enlightenment. The book was written after Hesse stayed in India for some time in 1910.

    Get the paperback here for ₹102.

    9. The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

    amazon.in

    Harry spoke of this book in an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe for the release of Fine Line.

    The book starts right after the protagonists get married and navigates the nitty-gritty of modern love. It is unromantic in the way that two people who share their lives and beds and breakfast are unromantic. It is tender, hilarious, raw and explores everyday intimacies and small gestures.

    Get the paperback here for ₹447.

    10. Essays in Love by Alain de Botton

    amazon.in

    This book follows the story of a man and a woman who meet on a flight from Paris to London. It blooms into a love story - fight, kisses, joy and heartbreak - and offers a philosophical insight into feelings we all often experience but rarely understand.

    Get the paperback here for ₹301.

    11. In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

    amazon.in

    Harry confirmed in an interview with NPR that this book was present in the studio the day he wrote Watermelon Sugar.

    The book is a post-apocalyptic utopian fantasy centred around a commune and their central gathering place called iDEATH after the fall of civilisation. At iDEATH, everything is made of watermelon sugar and the sun is a different colour every day. In this surrealist story of rebellion, people live slow gentle lives away from the violence of the past.

    Get the paperback here for ₹399.

    12. Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

    amazon.in

    Rob Sheffield is an American music journalist and author. He is a long-time friend of Harry's and even interviewed him for Rolling Stone in 2019.

    This book is a memoir of Sheffield's love and loss. Through 15 of his favourite mixtapes, Sheffield writes about meeting the love of his life and eventually having to watch her die in his arms. This book will make you think about the soundtrack of your own love life.

    Get the paperback here for ₹699.

    13. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)

    amazon.in

    Upon hearing his favourite Beatles song, the protagonist of the book, Toru recalls his first love and is transported back in time almost twenty years ago to his student days in Tokyo. Floating through a world of meaningless friendships and casual sex, Toru finds a young woman named Midori and he has to choose between his future and the past.

    Get the paperback here for ₹431.

    14. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)

    amazon.in

    After the protagonist's cat disappears and his wife grows distant, the book follows him as his mundane suburban life, which he spends cooking, listening to jazz and drinking beer on the kitchen table, is turned over by a bizarre succession of characters, each with a story to tell.

    Get the paperback here for ₹370.

    15. The White Album by Joan Didion

    amazon.in

    The White Album is a collection of essays by Joan Didion previously published in magazines. An indelible text of American reportage, Didion takes on everything that rocked America in the 60s - from Charles Manson to the emergence of the shopping mall.

    Get the paperback here for ₹798.