Riot Recommendation

20 Of Your Favorite Books That Satirize Modern Life

S. Zainab Williams

Executive Director, Content

S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Disrupted by Dan Lyons.

After being laid off from his longtime career as a Newsweek journalist, Dan Lyons decided it was time he joined those people who he’d spent so long writing about striking it rich in start-up land. What could possibly go wrong? In a word, everything. In his instant New York Times bestseller, Disrupted—which the Los Angeles Times calls the “best book about Silicon Valley today”—Lyons details his ‘misadventure’ within the bright orange, candy-lined walls of marketing software start-up HubSpot and, in doing so, offers a long overdue reality check on the “maddening world of start-up excess, hubris and groupthink.” (Mashable)


From Twitter threads to beard salons to portraits of the modern family, there’s no dearth of fodder for contemporary satire. We asked you to share your favorite books that satirize modern life, and you responded. Here are 20 of your favorites!

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Break in Case of Emergency by Jessica Winter

The Nix by Nathan Hill

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagán

The Bette Davis Club by Jane Lotter

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Loving Day by Mat Johnson

American Housewife by Helen Ellis

The One-Eyed Man by Ron Currie

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