125 Books We Love in Accessible Formats

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The New York Public Library has just released our list of 125 Books We Love from the last 125 years. I've already found some new ones I love, and am looking forward to adding more to my "to-read next" stack. If you also love finding new books to try but you have some difficulty reading standard print books, there's another piece of good news!

Do you have trouble reading print because of declining vision? Or have Dyslexia or another reading disability? Or have trouble holding a book steady or turning pages due to Parkinsons, Arthritis, or other physical disabilities? Well, almost all of NYPL's 125 Books We Love are available from the Andrew Heiskell Library in talking books and/or braille and on our BARD Mobile app, provided for free by the National Library Service.
 
Here's a list of them with their DB (digital talking book—available in cartridge or download on the app) or BR (braille—physical or download or app) call numbers. You can call the Andrew Heiskell Library at 212-206-5400 to sign up and get these mailed to you, or learn how to download them from our website to play in the talkingbook machine we provide, or to listen to them on our free app for mobile devices.
 
If you're already one of our members, you can order these titles through the PAWS catalog

DB (digital talkingbook) / BR (braille)


1984 by George Orwell: DB 73474 BR 01614

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow: DB 058799

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue by W.H. Auden: not available

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: DB 058364

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque: DB 54896 / BR 11984

Along Came a Spider by James Patterson: not available

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon: DB 050950

American Gods by Neil Gaiman: DB 52917 BR 21682

American Primitive by Mary Oliver: DB 21493

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: DB 11077

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson: not available

Ariel by Sylvia Plath: DB 11077 BR 16537

Atonement by Ian McEwan: DB 62239 BR 16537

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson: not available

Beloved by Toni Morrison: DB 26026 BR 16707

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler: DB 26026 BR 16707

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe: DB 26040 BR 13688

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh: DB 78564 / 53981 BR 18644

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín: DB 69470 BR 18385

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: DB 48063 BR 11980

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: DB 047480 BR 022463

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine: DB 81184 BR 20748

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff: DB 72130

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: DB 64339 BR 20995

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes: DB 041265

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett: DB 60775

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: DB 018576 BR 007222

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley: DB 032935

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson: DB 055748

Dune by Frank Herbert: DB 44126

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje: DB 035558

An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole: DB 089362 BR 022107

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: DB 034963 BR 022322 BR 008799

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien: DB 010975 DB 047486 BR 009745

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin: DB 082240

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel: not available

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: DB 045742 BR 021103 (in Spanish DB 28311)

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin: DB 12503

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: DB 044608

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor: DB 033325 BR 019069

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace: DB 47282

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: DB 068308 BR 001621 BR 009954 BR022585

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: DB 016147 BR 011057

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: DB 024695 BR 011911

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling: DB 92229 BR 17774 (DB 50988 in Spanish)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: DB 021679

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers: DB 058532 BR 011395

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers: DB 049737

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: DB 018339 BR 014438

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle: DB 014165 BR 010565

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul: DB 020604

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: DB 035369 BR 009091

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson: DB 68564 BR 16132

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg: not available

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: DB 57200 BR 15665

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences by Truman Capote: DB 22726 BRC 01440

Indigo by Beverly Jenkins: DB 094126

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: DB 50087

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer: DB 44525

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: DB 009600 BR 008550

Julian by Gore Vidal: DB 008847 BR 000546

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: DB 57457 BR 15785 (DB 67986 in Spanish)

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: DB 043166 BR 012827

The Liars' Club by Mary Karr: DB 041154

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson: DB 76417

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith: not available

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: DB 67388 BR 13157

Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman: not available

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris: DB 50514 BR 20805

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story by John Berendt: DB 38077 BR 11463

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie: DB 16993 BR 18687

Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis: DB 22896

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis: DB 56245

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem: DB 49231

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: DB 21624 BR 11925

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante: DB 80509

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb: DB 059555

Native Son by Richard Wright: DB 25087

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: DB 67392 BR 21164

On the Road by Jack Kerouac: DB 31675 BR 18352

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez: DB 59490

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson: not available

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson: DB 074282

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson: DB 66733

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler: DB 39777 BR 21257

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi: not available

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard: DB 65463 BR 17537

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth: DB 67856

The Quiet American by Graham Greene: DB 036154

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: DB 48914 BR 12354

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: DB 30751 BR 20842

The Round House by Louise Erdrich: DB 075641

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles: DB 73689 BR 18750

Runaway by Alice Munro: DB 59521 BR 15771

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery: BR 03211

The Shining by Stephen King: DB 010563

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx: DB 037883 BR 009612

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson: DB 20184

Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh: not available

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion: not available

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg: not available

The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever: DB 65170

The Stranger by Albert Camus: DB 40902 BR 10394

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway: DB 34114 BR 16853

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith: DB 50315

Tenth of December by George Saunders: DB 076097 BR 019818

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: DB 35745 BR 16074

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: DB 47510 BR 22569

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu: DB 080931

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: DB 77672 BR 12850 (DB 72989 SPANISH)

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson: DB 76608 BR 19564

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: DB 18129 BR 06763

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: DB 21074 BR 08839

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: DB 85212 BR 21819

Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories by Joseph Mitchell: DB 35718

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: DB 096022 BR 009600

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: DB 071810 BR 021471

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: DB 071929

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: not available

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver: DB 21168 BR 05118

White Noise by Don DeLillo: DB 23512

White Teeth by Zadie Smith: DB 50261

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami: DB 046636

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: DB 50261

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston: DB 70074