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If you think about entertainment from the 1970s, you might well think about the cinema of the decade first, since it was a great time for movies, especially in the U.S., with the whole New Hollywood movement being underway. There’s also the music of the decade, which was often fairly rock-focused, yet not exclusively so, with a good variety of iconic albums coming out (many of them holding up immensely well to this day).
As for books? Well, the following are all particularly good. It’s a bit harder to define the books of the 1970s in as straightforward a way as you sort of can for the movies and music of the decade, but that sense of variety might well be a good thing. These are some of the best books of the 1970s, with a few different genres picked from to keep everything a little more interesting and varied.
10
‘The Silmarillion’ (1977)
J.R.R. Tolkien did a lot with Middle-earth, to say the least, as a writer. The Hobbit is the perfect introduction to the world, and a fairly gentle read overall, while The Lord of the Rings is pretty much as perfect, essential, and groundbreaking as everyone says it is. It’s also legendary for inspiring the great movie trilogy of the same name, from the early 2000s, but The Silmarillion – another work set in Middle-earth – is famously the kind of thing that would be harder to translate to the screen.
The Silmarillion was published after Tolkien’s death, with his son, Christopher, and Guy Gavriel Kay compiling and editing the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien into what became The Silmarillion. Its collection of stories take place across the span of Middle-earth’s history, including quite a lot of pre-The Lord of the Rings stuff, but it’s a dense and sometimes heavy-going work of literature that makes it sensible to tackle after you’ve already read through both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
9
‘The Forever War’ (1974)
If you’ve already read Starship Troopers and want something that scratches a similar itch, The Forever War is a must-read. And, to be fair, it’s not like it’s a copy of Starship Troopers or anything. It’s more just that both books are works of military science fiction, with humans engaged in a conflict against aliens that are able to be dehumanized on account of them not being human and all.
And that’s a way to tackle real-life issues related to war, of course, and then The Forever War does find interesting things to do with its sci-fi concepts, and the exploration of a war that really seems to go on pretty much forever. It’s bleak and effective as an anti-war novel, with it spanning a great deal of time and being a truly unique deep dive into the psychological effects of war, both of the ordinary and (possibly) futuristic kinds.
8
‘Midnight Express’ (1977)
Since it’s a work of non-fiction, it might feel a little unusual including Midnight Express alongside novels that are either entirely fiction or historical fiction, but it is particularly special, as a non-fiction book. It being here is a little like including a documentary on a ranking of the greatest movies of a particular year, or some kind of other period of time. Documentaries and feature films are all movies, just as works of non-fiction and fiction are both books, if you’re talking about literature.
It’s worth highlighting Midnight Express because it is much better – and more balanced – as a book, compared to its rather controversial movie adaptation. The entire thing’s a gritty and continually compelling story about life in a Turkish prison for an American man who was arrested for drug smuggling, then considered escaping after receiving a harsh prison sentence. It was co-written by the man who went through it all, Billy Hayes, which surely helped it feel so personal and emotionally intense.
7
‘The Shining’ (1977)
Stephen King had two books published before The Shining, with both being great (Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot), but it was arguably The Shining that stood as his first masterpiece overall. It’s got a confined setting and a small number of characters, with it being about a struggling writer serving as the caretaker of a mysterious hotel during its off-season, taking his wife and son along with him.
They’re all stuck in a hotel that seems to make already tense dynamics between the three worse, with the writer unraveling psychologically, and eventually proving dangerous to his family and himself. And then there are all the supernatural elements that go along with the psychological horror, and a great deal of unease that comes from the interplay between these two types of horror (which is something you also get from the somewhat notorious movie adaptation, albeit with a fair few changes made to the source material).
6
‘Shōgun’ (1975)
Shōgun is an undeniably huge book, with the length ultimately being the first thing you kind of have to notice, since reading it does involve picking the massive thing up and all. It’s set in the early 1600s, and is an epic about conflict that occurred around the beginning of Japan’s Edo period, with a focus here on how European influences ended up re-shaping Japan at this time.
It’s a pivotal part of history, and Shōgun explores it all in a digestible and surprisingly readable way, so long as you’re okay with the length of it all (there are whole trilogies of books that end up being shorter than this single novel). Shōgun is also one of the all-time great samurai-related stories, and maybe even the best one that was written/created by a non-Japanese author, since James Clavell was a British/American writer.
5
‘The Princess Bride’ (1973)
The creativity of The Princess Bride really can’t be denied, since it tells a fairy tale sort of story in an interesting and often comedic way. The whole novel is set up as an abridged version of a work by an author named S. Morgenstern, but it’s really just William Goldman who wrote the whole thing, and he’s technically also part of the narrative, as someone who’s “doing” the editing and abridgment of Morgenstern’s “work.”
And there were creative things done to make the famed movie adaptation more than just another fairy tale story, too, even if it couldn’t quite be done on the big screen the way it was done here, on the page. Still, both versions of The Princess Bride are fantastic and exceptionally clever in their own ways (it probably helped, to be honest, that Goldman also wrote the adapted screenplay for the movie).
4
‘The Exorcist’ (1971)
You might not even read or watch a lot of horror, but you’ve still likely heard of The Exorcist, in any event. It’s one of those all-timers within the horror genre, particularly demonic possession and religious horror, and there is also one way you can compare it to The Princess Bride, of all books: William Peter Blatty both wrote the original novel and was behind the adapted screenplay for the movie version.
With The Exorcist, it’s about a young girl who behaves in increasingly strange ways, leading to her mother, in desperation, considering the possibility that she might be possessed, which then leads to the eventual exorcism. The build-up’s scary, the exorcism-related stuff’s scary, and then the whole story lingers as something scary once it’s all over, just owing to how grounded it is as a drama, and how real the horror is made to feel, as a result. It’s exceptionally well-written, and easily one of the most iconic works of horror fiction of its time.
3
‘The Stand’ (1978)
Among all the Stephen King books, The Stand is the longest (unless you want to count The Dark Tower as one huge work). Admittedly, it’s the uncut version that came out in 1990 that makes it the longest, but even the version of The Stand originally published in 1978 is a huge piece of post-apocalyptic fiction, and its 800-ish pages make it rank right up there as one of King’s longest novels.
If a real brick of a book doesn’t turn you off, The Stand is there for you and will almost certainly impress.
The version published in the 1970s still has so much to offer, and succeeds enough in its shortened state to still feel like one of the best books of its decade, even if the definitive/superior version might arguably count as a 1990s book instead. If you’re new to King, maybe it’s better to read something a little shorter first. Though if a real brick of a book doesn’t turn you off, The Stand is there for you and will almost certainly impress, regardless of which version of the book you choose to devote all those hours to.
2
‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (1979)
While it’s not as serious or weighty as many of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy might well be worth considering among the best of the best regardless, since it’s effortlessly funny and very much engaging when it comes to exploring the sci-fi concepts that it does. Maybe it’s even more worthy of praise, since being genuinely funny is particularly hard, when you’re writing a book… perhaps even more so than with screenwriting.
There aren’t too many outright comedic books that most people agree are actually funny. You’re welcome to not find The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy funny, and maybe some people don’t, but there is an incredibly strong chance you’ll find at least some of the humor here to your liking. And, if not, at least this is on the slimmer side of things, as far as sci-fi books go. It’s an easy read, and an exceptionally likable one overall, too.
1
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ (1973)
Gravity’s Rainbow is a lot of things all at once, yet trying to unpack and describe all the genres it dips into only goes so far in explaining what it’s all about, and what it achieves. It’s incredibly postmodern, to put it bluntly, and that’s a big reason why it’s the most well-known of Thomas Pynchon’s novels, even if it could well be his densest and most challenging overall.
He’s a reclusive author who’s continued publishing novels beyond Gravity’s Rainbow (including one as recent as 2025), but still, Gravity’s Rainbow is Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s heavy on paranoia, (generally) takes place around World War II, and has some science fiction-like concepts it introduces and plays around with, without warning, all throughout. The whole thing is a bit of a nightmare, but it’s an impressively written and undeniably unique nightmare, being the sort of book you can’t really forget, even if you might find yourself wanting to forget at least some of the words you’ve read.
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Jeremy Urquhart
Almontather Rassoul
