Subreddit

Top books from r/suggestmeabook

A general recommendation subreddit where readers describe what they're in the mood for and other users suggest specific titles across every genre.

Updated September 2026 — rankings refresh with each new pull of comment data.

194

Books ranked

490,043

Published mentions

sum of exact per-book subreddit rows

3.4M

Members

Years tracked

About this ranking

The top request here is project-hail-mary (1457 mentions), just ahead of all-systems-red (1364) - accessible, plot-driven sci-fi that works on someone who read three books last year, not a genre veteran. Compare that to r/Fantasy, where the-way-of-kings pulls 3461 mentions and mistborn 2554; on r/suggestmeabook the same two titles land at only 955 and 1061, because nobody here is trying to convert you to an author's whole back catalog. Circe (1018) and the-song-of-achilles (907) - mythology retellings that don't crack any other subreddit's top list at all - sit comfortably next to classics like the-count-of-monte-cristo (974) and the-lord-of-the-rings (941). That spread is the tell: this sub isn't building a canon, it's answering a different question every thread, which is why literary fiction (east-of-eden, piranesi), space opera, and doorstop epic fantasy all show up in the same top ten.

Guides built from this community

Ranked best-of lists and editorial guides that draw on r/suggestmeabook's tracked mentions.

By year

2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019

Most-mentioned in r/suggestmeabook

Ordered by tracked mention count across all published years. Sentiment is shown as context and does not change the order. The Upvotes toggle re-sorts by comment-score weight — display only, the canonical order stays mention-count.

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

An eleven-year-old orphan gets a letter, a train platform that shouldn't exist, and a scar that makes him famous for something he can't remember.

11,412 in this sub positive

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

A dying astronaut wakes up alone on a spaceship with amnesia, two corpses for company, and Earth's one shot at survival riding on him.

10,234 in this sub positive

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries)

Martha Wells

A security android with no interest in gender, romance, or heroics just wants to watch its shows, and ends up saving its clients from a conspiracy anyway.

9,347 in this sub positive

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Brandon Sanderson

A street thief who can swallow metal and burn it for power gets recruited into a heist crew whose actual target is the immortal emperor who's ruled for a thousand years.

7,700 in this sub Not scored

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

A gardener and three friends carry a cursed ring across a continent at war, because the only way to destroy it is to walk it into the volcano that forged it.

7,404 in this sub positive

The House in the Cerulean Sea

TJ Klune

A caseworker is sent to inspect an orphanage of six dangerous magical children, one of them the literal Antichrist, and has to decide whether to file the report that shuts it down.

7,321 in this sub positive

Circe

Madeline Miller

Exiled to an empty island for turning a rival into a monster, a minor goddess spends immortality perfecting the one power the gods never bothered to master.

7,227 in this sub positive

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

A man alone in an endless house of statues and tides slowly realizes he used to have a different name.

7,223 in this sub positive

The Martian

Andy Weir

A botanist gets left for dead on Mars after a dust storm and has to grow his own food to survive until the next mission arrives, years later.

7,099 in this sub positive

#10

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

A teenage girl volunteers to fight to the death on live television in place of her younger sister, then spends three books resisting everyone who wants to make her a symbol.

7,059 in this sub positive

#11

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

A California farming family reenacts Cain and Abel across two generations, and Reddit keeps calling it the classic that isn't actually a slog.

6,992 in this sub positive

#12

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

A falsely imprisoned sailor spends fourteen years in a fortress, learns of a hidden fortune, and returns to make sure everyone who wronged him pays for it.

6,831 in this sub positive

#13

The Fifth Season

N. K. Jemisin

An orogene comes home to find her son beaten to death and her daughter gone, the same day a continent starts splitting apart.

6,642 in this sub positive

#14

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Earth gets demolished to build a hyperspace bypass, and the last man alive escapes only because an alien researching a galactic encyclopedia needed an assistant.

6,621 in this sub positive

#15

Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry

Two retired Texas Rangers drive a stolen cattle herd from the Rio Grande to Montana, and half of them don't make it back.

6,504 in this sub positive

#16

Red Rising

Pierce Brown

A low-caste miner surgically altered to pass as the ruling elite infiltrates the academy that killed his wife, planning to burn the system down from inside.

6,496 in this sub positive