Here is a list of the best Joan Didion books, some I have read myself, some that I did research on, and all have great reviews!
- The Year of Magical Thinking (2007)
- The White Album: Essays (FSG Classics) (2009)
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics) (2008)
- Play It As It Lays: A Novel (FSG Classics) (2005)
- Blue Nights (2012)
- South and West: From a Notebook (Vintage International) (2018)
- Best American Essays of the Century (2000)
- Where I Was From (2004)
- Political Fictions (2002)
- After Henry (1993)
- A Book of Common Prayer (1995)
- Run River (1994)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2007)
From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
The White Album: Essays (FSG Classics) (2009)
First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era―including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall―through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics) (2008)
The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America―particularly California―in the sixties.
Play It As It Lays: A Novel (FSG Classics) (2005)
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.
Blue Nights (2012)
From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter.Richly textured with memories from her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion is an intensely personal and moving account of her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness and growing old.As she reflects on her daugh…
South and West: From a Notebook (Vintage International) (2018)
Joan Didion has always kept notebooks—of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles. South and West gives us two extended excerpts from notebooks she kept in the 1970s; read together, they form a piercing view of the American political and cultural landscape. “Notes on the South” traces a road trip that she and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, took through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Best American Essays of the Century (2000)
Best American Essays of Century by Joyce Carol Ed. Oates and Robert Ed. Atwan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,2000
Where I Was From (2004)
In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours.
Political Fictions (2002)
In these coolly observant essays, Joan Didion looks at the American political process and at “that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.” Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals the mechanics of American politics.
After Henry (1993)
In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer’s gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York’s criminal courts.
A Book of Common Prayer (1995)
Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil. is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country’s wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little.
Run River (1994)
Joan Didion’s electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.
Best Joan Didion Books You Must Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some joan didion books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Joan Didion: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
Author(s): MELVILLE HOUSE
ID: 3413232, Publisher: Melville House, Year: 2022, Size: 2 Mb, Format: epub
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Author(s): Joan Didion
ID: 2900903, Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Year: 2021, Size: 372 Kb, Format: epub
Joan Didion: Substance and Style
Author(s): Kathleen M. Vandenberg
ID: 3082237, Publisher: SUNY Press, Year: 2021, Size: 1 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not definite. Some books are absolutely record-breakers according to Chicago Tribune, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.