What to read: specific recommendations

For beginners

Example page from a simplified book (Bad Love, Cambridge University Press)

• Simplified books (graded readers, easy readers). These books are written in simple English for English learners. They use only the most basic English words and grammar. They are available in different levels of difficulty — the simplest ones are written only with a few hundred most common English words (e.g. make, when, hear, look).

  Simplified books are perfect for people who are just starting to read in English. However, I do not recommend the lower levels (below 500 basic words) because they sound very artificial and can teach you some very unnatural English, for example water in eyes instead of tear (tear is not one of the 500 most common English words). If you can read this article, you should definitely start with intermediate or advanced books (over 1,000 words).

  Publishers of simplified books:

  • Cambridge Readers: The Cambridge Reader website is the best around. You can look inside each book (example), you can order e-book and audiobook versions (for some titles) and you can quickly place an order online. The catalog has a lot of detective stories, which are my favorite type of simplified book.
  • Macmillan Readers, also available as e-books (online previews, online store).
  • Black Cat (online previews, online store)
  • Penguin Readers
  • Oxford Bookworms
  • Egmont Easy Readers

  How can you choose a simplified book that you will like? The best way is to go to a real (not online) bookstore which sells simplified books and look at the first pages. The first page of a book usually tells you if the book will hold your attention. You can also visit the website of the Extensive Reading Foundation, which gives annual awards to the best simplified books.

• Simple English Wikipedia. This is a real treat for every English learner who likes to learn about the world! The Simple English Wikipedia contains over 10,000 encyclopedia articles written in simple English. The language is simple, but not too simple — generally, articles use something like 1,500 most common English words, but they also use other words when it makes sense.

  Example articles from the Simple English Wikipedia: Roman Empire, Islam, Evolution, The Beatles, Apple Inc., Electricity

Higher levels

• Websites. Many websites, especially forums and blogs, are a unique source of written informal language. Unlike other written sources, such as books or newspapers, they are quite close to the way native speakers talk. For this reason, they are an excellent source of useful phrases. (Note: When browsing the Internet, don’t spend too much time reading things written by other English learners. Stick to content written by native speakers.)

  If you’re looking for interesting websites to read, here are some ideas:

  • Technology/Internet news: Tom’s Hardware, Wired News, Engadget, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, Anandtech, Eurogamer, How Stuff Works, TechCrunch ...
  • Sites for computer geeks: Hacker News, XKCD, Lifehacker, Joel on Software, Coding Horror ...
  • Humor sites: The Onion, Dilbert, Something Awful ...
  • Science sites: PhysOrg, The Frontal Cortex, New Scientist, ScienceNews, Popular Science ...
  • News/Politics: BBC, The Independent, Andrew Sullivan ...
  • Encyclopedias: English Wikipedia
  • Movie sites: Roger Ebert’s reviews, IMDB ...
  • Movie scripts: IMSDB (check out the script to The Godfather, one of the best movies ever made) ...
  • Entertainment: Vulture, Gawker ...
  • Photography sites: The Big Picture (news photos), The Online Photographer, Strobist, Ken Rockwell ...
  • Business/Economy: Seth Godin, Unusual Business Ideas That Work, Economist ...
  • Social sites: Reddit, Ask Antimoon ...
• Literature. Here are some books and authors that my friends and I have enjoyed. I am posting links to Amazon pages, so you can look inside each book and find something that you will like:
  • Harry Potter (series), The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, The Graduate, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, current bestsellers, books of the month ...
• How-tos and self-help books. These four books provide extremely valuable knowledge that you can use all your life in everyday situations. (Note: If you use SuperMemo or a similar program, it is worth adding some of this advice to your collection!)
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People (I know the title sounds silly, but this is a true classic, written in 1936; see this Wikipedia article for more)
  • You Can Negotiate Anything (very nice small book with the principles of negotiation explained by a former FBI negotiator)
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (How to defend yourself against people trying to manipulate you. This book will open your eyes.)
  • Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Classic guide to understanding the opposite sex. Read it and then give it to your partner. I’ve recommended this book to a lot of my friends, most of them refused to read it, thinking it is too silly. It’s their loss.)
• Science and philosophy books:
  • Why We Get Sick (fundamental explanation of disease from an evolutionary point of view; every patient and doctor should read this)
  • The Selfish Gene (this book will make you look differently at humankind’s place on Earth)
  • The End of Faith (this book argues that religion is dangerous and has no place in a world based on reason)
  • The Language Instinct (how do children acquire language? does language have a big influence on thought? is language a human invention?)
• Textbooks. If you’re studying at a university and you use textbooks written by English-speaking authors, you can get the original English versions. If you are learning a new computer language, you can use a book in English. You will learn your subject and English at the same time. And you won’t have to deal with poor translations.