Merve Emre's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Merve Emre recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Merve Emre's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

4.3

A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.

Recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Ev Williams, and 4 others.

Merve Emre

So much of reading that book is trying to figure out who Jay Gatsby or James Gatz is and, by extension, what it means to exist as a person in the world or a character in a work of fiction. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

When he got to high school, the president said, his tastes changed and he learned to enjoy classics like “Of Mice and Men” and “The Great Gatsby.” [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Melinda and I really like this book. When we were first dating, she had a green light that she would turn on when her office was empty and it made sense for me to come over. [source]

Psychological Types

C. G. Jung, H. G. Baynes

4.6

2016 Reprint of 1924 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In this classic work, originally published in 1921, Jung categorized people into primary types of psychological function. He proposed four main functions of consciousness: Two perceiving functions: Sensation and Intuition Two judging functions: Thinking and Feeling The functions

Recommended by Merve Emre.

Merve Emre

It’s a survey of many different systems of belief—Eastern and Western, theological and aesthetic—from the beginning of recorded human history, to see how they can all be placed into the schema that Jung has set up. [source]

Murder Yet to Come

Isabel Briggs Myers

4.2

Recommended by Merve Emre.

Merve Emre

Isabel Briggs Myers’s detectives function as a well-oiled machine; each of them has a different part to play, and only through cooperation can they solve the case. [source]

Cover unavailable

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Truman Capote, Michael C. Hall, et al

4.1

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shi

Recommended by Merve Emre.

Merve Emre

So much of that novella is about personality, and about the way one is liberated by personality or burdened by it. [source]

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Erving Goffman

4.3

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and control the impressions they form of him, and employs

Recommended by Merve Emre.

Merve Emre

It’s about trying to systematically understand the ways in which people behave in social situations—how they collaborate with others to make and maintain their sense of self by playing certain roles. [source]