“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
Ever picked up a book and felt your brain swell a little just by reading it? Some books have that rare power – they’re thought-provoking, clever, and just the right sort of challenging to make you feel smarter than you really are. Whether you’re a lifelong reader or just looking for a reading list that impresses, there’s something satisfying about diving into novels and non-fiction that make you think, question, and reflect. Today at What We Reading, we’re rounding up books that make you smarter, perfect for anyone who loves brainy books, thought-provoking reads, or simply wants a book list that challenges your mind. These aren’t just clever-sounding – they’re genuinely engaging, with ideas and plots that keep your neurons firing. So if you’re ready to explore books that make you feel intelligent and spark some serious mental stimulation, you’ve come to the right place.
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
First up on our list of books that make you smarter is Aldous Huxley’s iconic read, Brave New World. In this world, humans are genetically engineered, socially conditioned, and kept content with drugs, entertainment, and superficial happiness. Individuality, deep thought, and personal freedom are suppressed in the name of order.
The story follows Bernard Marx, an outsider dissatisfied with this engineered perfection, and John “the Savage,” who was raised outside society and challenges the very foundations of this supposedly utopian world. Through their eyes, readers grapple with profound questions about technology, conformity, and the cost of comfort. With its blend of social critique, philosophy, and moral dilemmas, Brave New World is one of those brainy books that makes you think long after the final page.
Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or biographical approach. However, world-renowned historian Dr Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mould with this innovative and acclaimed work that begins about seventy thousand years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of broader ideas.
Harari also compels us readers to look ahead, because over the past few decades, humans have begun to bend the laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not just the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this intelligence leading us, and what do we want to become?
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up “the Plan,” a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the Earth can be controlled – a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum.
But in a fateful turn, the joke soon becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the Earth. Orchestrating these and over diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a sensational, thrilling ride that is sure to make you feel smarter.
The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable than it really was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb promises to change how you look at the world in a work that covers everything from cognitive science, business and probability theory.
The Trial – Franz Kafka
Originally written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial charts the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested. He is forced to defend himself against a charge for which he can get no information.
Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with audiences on the back of its chilling truth, establishing itself as one of the best go-to fiction books that make you feel smarter.
Guns, Germs, And Steel – Jared Diamond
A Pulitzer Prize winner and national bestseller, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a global account of the rise of civilisation that also serves as a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race. In this thought-provoking novel, Jared Diamond argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had head starts in food production developed technologies more quickly, leading to adventures by sea and land that resulted in conquests and decimation of preliterate cultures.
A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.
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Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world’s best anti-war books. Centring on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, the novel blends historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. Much like the novel’s author, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Kurt Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.”
An instant bestseller following its release in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature. The political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, and the transgressive wit have inspired generations of readers not only to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.
Thinking, Fast And Slow – Daniel Kahneman
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman takes readers on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities – and also the faults and biases – of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behaviour.
Engaging us readers in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of thinking more slowly. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how decisions are made in both our professional and our personal lives – and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow promises to change the way you think about thinking.
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Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in modern fiction, Infinite Jest explores the essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American depiction of the passions that make us human – and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Cosmos – Carl Sagan
Told with Carl Sagan’s remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting, Cosmos is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilisation grew up together. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies, and the origins of matter, suns, and worlds.
In Cosmos, Sagan retraces the fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the Cosmos to wonder about itself. He looks at our planet from an extra-terrestrial vantage point and sees a blue jewel-like world, inhabited by a lifeform that is just beginning to discover its own unity and to venture into the vast ocean that is space.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
