The Closest Book to You Right Now: What 400 Readers Had Within Reach

On October 26 we asked a simple question on X: what's the closest book to you right now, no getting up. More than 400 replies came in over the next two days, from nightstands, laps, desks, car seats and, in one case, the middle of a bookstore.

Almost nothing repeated. Out of hundreds of answers, only a handful of titles came up twice. That's the best part of the thread. It isn't a bestseller list, it's a look at what people actually keep within arm's reach. Below are the answers we've reviewed, grouped by the kind of book they turned out to be, and then the answers that weren't quite books at all.

The ones that never leave the nightstand

Rereads and classics made up a big share of the thread. People named these the way you'd name a lamp: it's just always there.

• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. The riddle contest in the dark starts like a parlor game and tightens into something clammy and dangerous. Our review.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, one of the few books named twice. The real horror isn't the creature's face, it's watching his own maker refuse to love him. Our review.
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Dantès doesn't simply punish his enemies, he arranges for their own greed and vanity to do the work. Our review.
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. One reader admitted they were struggling with it, which is the most honest review the book has ever had. Ours is here.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Scout's child logic and an adult's understanding run underneath it at once. Our review.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The Earth gets demolished for a galactic freeway on page one, and the jokes about bureaucrats only get better from there. Our review.
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, paired in one answer with Aristotle. A Roman emperor's private notebook, never meant to be read, that still works as a manual for keeping your head straight. Our review.

What people are reading this month

The newer books in the thread skewed toward big fall releases, and two of them were named twice.

• Hollywood, Ending by John Green. Two young actors cast in a Warhol biopic get famous fast, each carrying a painful past into every interview. Our review.
• The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, called "fantastic so far" by one of the two readers who had it nearby. An orphan, a loudmouth and a woman out of luck plot their way to freedom in Depression-era Mississippi. Our review.
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. A tradwife influencer wakes up in the real 1855 she's been faking, and the satire turns crueler and smarter from there. Our review.
• Etna by Paul Yoon. A war novel narrated by a bomb-sniffing dog walking home, and it never once reaches for easy sentiment. Our review.
• All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. A boy stops a predator and vanishes into the cost of it, and the girl who loved him spends decades refusing to close the case. Our review.
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. An artificial friend watches a sick girl's family make plans she can't quite parse. Our review.

Series in progress

A lot of answers came from the middle of something long. One reader had the second Red Rising book on their phone and asked whether that disqualified them. It doesn't.

• Red Rising and Golden Son by Pierce Brown. A Martian miner gets surgically rebuilt to infiltrate the ruling class, and the sequel spends its worldbuilding on real stakes. Our reviews of Red Rising and Golden Son.
• The Terminal List by Jack Carr. A Navy SEAL with his team dead works through the men responsible like a deployment. Our review.
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, on one reader's phone, a close second to a D&D rulebook. The joy is watching a scientist reason his way out of trouble in real time. Our review.

Books people finally got to

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, "literally sitting on my lap." A runner, a plane crash and 47 days adrift, with the long road home treated as the hardest fight. Our review.
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. A former student returns every Tuesday to a dying professor, and what they say about love and regret is hard to wave off. Our review.
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Two Afghan women bound to the same brutal man forge a saving bond as their country burns. Our review.
• True Grit by Charles Portis, named alongside a Shirley Jackson. A lean, funny revenge western with fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross narrating. Our review.
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, the other half of that same answer and the right book for the last week of October. Our review.

The answers that weren't quite books

These were our favorite part of the thread.

• The single most common answer was a Bible. Eight people had one within reach, from the King James to the Douay-Rheims, plus a psalter, a Book of Common Prayer and a church hymn book.
• Several people had a Kindle or an iPad next to them, which technically puts a few hundred books within arm's reach. One counted about 400.
• Cookbooks came up several times, including one from someone standing in the kitchen watching a pot.
• One person was rereading their own dissertation. Another had a 1930s Oxford dictionary inherited from their grandmother.
• One parent's closest book was their son's collection of Flash comics, delivered with a sigh.
• And one reader was standing in a bookstore, which felt like cheating and also like the correct answer.

If you want to play along, the thread is still open on our X account, and we ask a new question most days.