PEOPLE Picks the Best Books From the 1980s

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

from their website:

In celebration of our 50th year, we're looking back at some of our favorite reads over the decades.

No matter how old you are, we've all got those books that have made a lasting impression on us. Whether it's the book your mom read to you at night when you were a kid, one a beloved English teacher introduced you to or one that opened your mind and heart at an important point, some books really stand the test of time.

In celebration of 50 years of PEOPLE, we polled our staff about the books from decades past that made a difference in their lives or the culture at large. Here are our picks from the 1980s.

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table

Rank	Book	Authors	Year	Country	Language
99	The Unbearable Lightness of Being	Milan Kundera	1984	Czech	Czech
738	The Joy Luck Club	Amy Tan	1989	American	English
364	White Noise	Don DeLillo	1985	American	English
4629	Heartburn	Nora Ephron	1983	American	English
1104	Maus	Art Spiegelman	1980	American	English
132	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985	Canadian	English
310	Bonfire of the Vanities	Tom Wolfe	1987	American	English
157	The Color Purple	Alice Walker	1982	American	English
49	Beloved	Toni Morrison	1987	American	English
623	Lonesome Dove	Larry McMurtry	1985	American	English
578	The Silence of the Lambs	Thomas Harris	1988	American	English
1346	Matilda	Roald Dahl	1988	British	English
204	The Remains of the Day	Kazuo Ishiguro	1989	British	English
166	Love in the Time of Cholera	Gabriel García Márquez	1985	Colombian	Spanish
4994	Kristy’s Great Idea	Ann M. Martin	1986	American	English