Reading Like Joe Goldberg From Netflix's 'You'

Lately I’ve been obsessively looking for book challenges to get me out of my seemingly everlasting reading slump, and what caught my interest the most were challenges inspired by fictional characters. The most ambitious of them is the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge , featuring more than 300 books that she recommended or read throughout all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls.

The challenge is extremely intriguing with the diverse titles it includes, but it is also a very daunting one to take on, and perhaps not the best way to deal with a reading slump. So I came up with a much shorter and manageable challenge inspired by another character, and not one who is as endearing as Rory Gilmore.

‘You’, Netflix

Dear humans and other entities, let me present you with the ‘’Joe Goldberg Reading Challenge’’ inspired by the iconic character from the Netflix series ‘You’. Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know about this series where the protagonist Joe Goldberg is a narcissistic stalker/serial killer/bona fide bookworm. You may be veritably disgusted by his character, but you can’t deny that he’s got great taste when it comes to literature (and is quite pretentious about it too). During the two disturbing yet highly engrossing seasons of the series, Joe recommended around 20 books which make for a great compact reading challenge.

‘You’, Netflix

1. Desperate Characters — Paula Fox

Desperate Characters revolves around Otto and Sophie, a middle-aged childless couple living their perfectly curated life. But the delicate balance of their relationship is disrupted unexpectedly by something as mundane as a bite Sophie receives while feeding a stray cat. Their seemingly perfect marriage starts slowly crumbling, and the fractures within their home parallel the fractures outside, the fractures in our society at large, raising questions about social order and justice, race and religion, freedom, and obligation.

At just 192 pages, it’s a really short but fantastic read. So even if you don’t usually read literary fiction, give this one a chance.

2. Don Quixote — Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote is the story of a man who, after reading a bunch of chivalric romances, decides he must become a knight-errant himself, because why not! Accompanied by his ever-faithful squire, Sancho Panza, he sets out to have the time of his life.

Much of the hilarity of the book generates from the contrasting characters of these two endearing buffons. Quixote, in his fancy and in his totally unfounded courage, Sancho in his cunning and his worldly-wise-ness has been delighting readers for centuries. I hope you will become one of those bunch too.

3. The Three Musketeers — Alexandre Dumas

1620s France. Kings and Queens, masquerades and conspiracies, unrequited loves and secret affairs, too much talk of chivalry and honour, murders and espionage, and four till-death-do-us-part friends. Why is it called ‘Three Musketeers’ then? That’s because there were 3 of them, then the fourth one kind of just moonwalked into the group.

At 600+ pages and with 3 books in the series, it might seem daunting to even pick this book up, and rightly so. But there’s also an addictive quality about the d’Artagnan Romances. Once you pick them up, you can’t stop reading.

The first time I read this book, I was in 3rd grade, probably too young for it. But I read the Bengali translation (my vernacular) of the book, which perhaps made it much easier for me to comprehend it and I’ve been in love with it ever since. 

Netflix

4. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

Frankenstein is a genre-melding book with thrill, romance, suspense, tragedy, fantasy everything thrown in, but somehow it all works together to create a book that has fascinated generations of readers.

It tells the story of tremendously passionate scientist, Victor Frankenstein. In his quest to find the origin of life, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but, upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature’s hideousness. Rejected and abandoned by not only his ‘father’ but also society at large, Frankenstein’s tormented Monster begins a murderous rampage.

Shelley wrote this masterpiece when she was only 18, and this little fact torments me on my birthday every year because I’m already older than she was and it took me 3 weeks to finish this damn article. (*deep sigh)

5. Ozma of Oz — L. Frank Baum

Ozma of Oz is the sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Dorothy finds herself on another unexpected adventure, but this time to the fairy realm of Ev to save its queen.

It’s a very comforting read, but I have only one question. What did Dorothy ever do to storms? Why are they always blowing her up to weird places?

Netlix

6. The Alienist — Caleb Carr

This thriller follows Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and his friend, Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore in the 1890s New York as they try to unravel the mystery behind the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. 

This sends them on the journey that would upend the world of contemporary criminology — the journey of creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. As they work their way through, they slowly start to uncover a twisted mind shaped by a traumatic past, a mind that will not hesitate to kill again.

Joe never directly recommended the book in ‘You’, but he says that this is one of the books he turned to when he needed help in getting rid of a dead body because you can’t very well google this kind of stuff. *Oof!* I never read the book myself, but I saw the mini-series based on it and I was quite impressed.

7. The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexander Dumas

Revenge is a dish best served cold and this book embodies that. Edmund Dantes is a youth of 19 with his whole life ahead of him when he is betrayed, first by men jealous of his success, then again by a man who sees an opportunity to benefit himself by sending Dantes to his jail cell. After 14 long years in a dungeon, Dantes finally has a chance to escape and seek revenge on those who wronged him, whilst also rewarding those who stuck by him and fought to prove his innocence.

At over 1000 pages, this is a hefty book that demands quite an amount of dedication from the reader, but take it from someone who read it almost12 years ago, if you just keep on reading, this book will reward you as much as Dantes rewarded those who stuck by him.

8. Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte

This is a novel that needs no introduction, but if you still haven’t read it, please go and rectify that right now. I’m not nearly articulate enough to properly explain how beautiful and disturbing this book is, but I promise you — YOU. WON’T. REGRET. IT. And if I still haven’t convinced you to read it, go watch the BBC adaption at least. (then come back and hit me up; we can discuss how toxic and stupid these beautiful dumbasses were)

9. Black Swan Green — David Mitchell

Black Swan Green is about a 13 year old, Jason Taylor, growing up in a sleepy English countryside. Like most seemingly ‘sleepy countrysides’ in fiction, this one also seems to have a lot going on. People sleeping with people, secret societies of teenagers, high school bullies and a school bus driver called Norman Bates who tries to get kids to commit knife attacks. Among all this, Jason has to deal with his insecurities about his stammer, agonies of teenage crushes and his secret life as a poet for the parish magazine.

Netflix

When I first heard of the book, it reminded me somewhat of Boyhood (2014). I have since lost most of my motivation to read this book, except for the fact that it was shortlisted for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award and damn if that doesn’t make me want to read the novel just for those scenes!

10. Crime & Punishment — Dostoyevsky

If you haven’t read this novel yet, it is definitely a crime. 

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. It features an immensely engaging blend of intrigue; philosophy; political, social, moral, and religious commentary, that all thread together to create a masterpiece of literature that captures the deep, raw core of the human condition when it is at its most gruesome and vulnerable.

11. The Power — Naomi Alderman

TW: rape

The Power is a feminist scifi novel (no, not like The Handmaid’s Tale) set in a world very much like our own. It starts with women in different parts of the world, living their already-complicated lives, until suddenly, they develop a terribly beautiful power — that of producing electricity from their body. With this, their bodies, objectified for so long, turn into weapons that can wreak havoc so casually. And a world built on patriarchy slowly starts to crumble.

The book looks at the ‘rape culture’ prevalent in our society through the lens of the superhero trope and reverses the existing status quo. It asks, ‘what if….instead of women…..it was men who were always afraid of being hurt and killed inside and out their homes by women?’ In a world where we still have to fight Instagram trolls about why women are always afraid for their lives, it feels extremely relevant.

12. Gold Fame Citrus — Claire Vaye Watkins

Goodreads describes this book as ‘Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original…’. Set in a dystopian California, the title alludes to the allures that brought people to the place once. Yet now, a waterless wasteland, it is home to only a handful of people who don’t have anywhere else to go to. We meet Luz, former model and ex-poster child for the environmental movement; Ray, her boyfriend and Ig, a neglected baby they kind of just kidnapped and nobody batted an eye. 

The locations in the novel, abandoned malls and mansions, theatres in the ruins and dry deserted wastelands, all have a haunting beauty that Watkins’ prose brings forth amazningly. But for me, the highlight of this novel were the characters. They are not heroes. They are damaged, nuanced, and terrifyingly real. They sabotage themselves and those they love and yet they fight — for survival, for love and for a better future.

13. Sum — David Eagleman

At 110 pages, Sum is a really quick read. True to its name, it indeed is a sum of brief windows into unexpected afterlives. As the blurb promises — “ In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been.”

Netflix

14. Nostromo — Joseph Conrad

Considered one of Conrad’s best works, it talks of political corruption, greed and poverty, the exploits of capitalists in a fictional South American Republic, and a budding revolution. 

Be warned though, this is an unrelentingly bleak (& mind-numbingly tedious) novel and if you are unfamiliar with Conrad’s writing, I’d suggest dipping your toes first by reading some of his short stories rather than diving headfirst into this.

15. Master & Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you do not ask a bookworm to pick one book as her favourite, but I can tell you that this is one of my absolute favourite books. I think I already knew that I would love this book so much even before I actually started reading it.

Inspired by Faust & Pontius Pilate, Bulgakov writes about a suave Devil (yes *the* Devil) who arrives in Moscow with a motley crew of intriguing characters. His companions are Margarita, a beautiful witch and a cat with a penchant for chess and vodka. Margarita falls irrevocably in love Master, a deeply unhappy writer pilloried for writing seditious books, so much so that she is willing to go literally to hell for him. their whirlwind affair and the shenanigans of other characters all make for an oddly delightful novel.

16. On the Road — Jack Kerouac

On the Road is a quasi-memoir, a fictionalised account of his tours across America with Neal Cassidy on tow. This novel is the spirit of the Beat generation in a nutshell.

Apparently, Kerouac was so possessed by whatever creative muse while writing On the Road, that he didn’t come out of his room for weeks, even going to the length of (pun intended) taping typewriter papers together to make a 140 ft long roll so that he wouldn’t have to stop writing to change paper. My source for this is word-of-mouth and sketchy ’10 facts about…’ sites, so please don’t trust this factoid at all, but it does sound hilariously beatnik.

17. Gravity’s Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon

I have heard this book described both as a ‘postmodern epic’ and as a tedious exercise in pretentiousness. With over 700 pages in it, it does make me lean more against the latter even though I have not read it, nor do I plan to. 

The novel looks at the German V-2 rockets developed during World War II and the impact of technology on post-World War society. A good many people have compared the breadth and range of this novel with Joyce’s Ulysses for some reason. If it truly is anything like Ulysses, I do not wish to touch it even with a ten-foot pole and it does seem like something that would entice Joe ‘Mr. Pretentious’ Goldberg.

18. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men — David Foster Wallace

Published over 20 years ago, this book is a collection of metafictional stories that are steeped in dark humour and irony. The titular stories (yes, multiple of them) are written as transcripts of interviews with aggressively misogynistic men, except the interviewer’s questions are omitted, leaving only the answers and our reaction to them. 

In 2018, after Mary Karr spoke up about Wallace’s abusive behaviour, the book came under the spotlight again (not that it was ever gone so to say). I find this dichotomy really fascinating that a book that questions male entitlement was written by a man who was abusive to his intimate partner. Can we separate the art from the artist? And if not, then how much of Wallace can we unearth from these narratives?

Netflix

19. Red Badge of Courage — Stephen Crane

The book begins with Henry Fleming, an 18-year old fascinated with ideas of war and valour. But when he is actually dropped in the middle of a raging war, he balks and deserts his comrades. His shame sends him on a search for a ‘red badge of courage’ aka a wound that would allow him to prove his courage and redeem himself.

While the novel is concerned primarily with portraying the reality of wars (in fact, it was banned for graphic depiction of war), I think it’s also a very timely coming-of-age tale.

20. Underworld — Don DeLillo

We have finally arrived at the last book of this already-too-long list. I wish I could tell you what this book is about, but I haven’t read it and I honestly couldn’t figure out a single thing from the blurb. 

The book is a Pulitzer Prize shortlister and has been hailed as one of the best works of American fiction in the last 25 years, but to my not-so-sophisticated self, this seems like a gratuitously pretentious book that would require you to take aspirin if you actually tried reading it.

But it could be a it’s-not-you-it’s-me situation, so read the blurb and decide for yourself. 

↞↞↞↠↠↠

I would include a proper little conclusion here, but let’s be honest, no one actually reads the prose that go with recipe blogs and recommendation lists. I could probably confess to a murder here and nobody would bat an eye. So this is where I stop.

Happy Reading.