“I stared at the wall for a while after that one.”

Note: All submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

Additional thumbnail credits: Fox

A young boy is smiling while reading a book in a dimly lit room

Cover of the book "We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart. Blurb at the top praising the book, written by John Green, bestselling author of "The Fault in Our Stars"

Book cover of "A Man Called Ove" by Fredrik Backman, featuring a man with his back turned, wearing a coat and hat, standing next to a cat

Book cover of "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, featuring white, bold text and illustrations of a girl holding hands with a figure in a cloak

Book cover of "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving, featuring a child in sportswear on a field with bleachers. The text highlights it as an international bestseller

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Cover of "Shake Hands with the Devil" by Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire, featuring a black-and-white photo of Dallaire in military attire. Text: "The failure of humanity in Rwanda."

Cover of "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank, showing a black-and-white photo of Anne Frank and text mentioning editor Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler

Book cover of "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold with an introduction by Karen Thompson Walker. The cover features clouds and a small silhouette of a girl walking

Book cover of "The Someday Suitcase" by Corey Ann Haydu; features a snow globe with a purple suitcase inside on a pile of red books

Book cover for "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy, featuring a vibrant, abstract landscape with curved paths, trees, and buildings. Wordsworth Classics edition

Book cover of "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Matthiessen. Features a bison in a field. Text mentions it is a national bestseller and outlines the book's theme

Book cover of "Hans Christian Andersen's Complete Fairy Tales" featuring an illustration of a fairy sitting on a pink flower with a green stem, framed by floral vines

Book cover of "A Terrible Kindness" by Jo Browning Wroe with praise quotes from Rachel Joyce, Joanna Cannon, and Bonnie Garmus. It is a Sunday Times bestseller

Book cover of "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, showing two chairs and a table with a lamp and coffee cups, plus a cat between the chairs

Cover of the book "In Memoriam" by Alice Winn, featuring two soldiers walking on a red background with various praise quotes

The cover of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" by John Boyne, showing two boys sitting by a barbed-wire fence. It mentions the book is now a major motion picture

Cover of "Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes, 10th Anniversary Edition, features a woman holding a bird with text stating over 14 million copies sold worldwide

Cover of "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini showing a child flying a kite with scenic mountains and an array of kite cutouts at the top

Book cover of "Recursion" by Blake Crouch with accolades from Sara Pekkanen, Andy Weir, Karin Slaughter, and Gregg Hurwitz

Book cover of "Lily and the Octopus" by Steven Rowley, featuring a dachshund and the text: "Companions come in all shapes and sizes. Companionship lasts forever."

Cover of the book "Love is a Mix Tape: a memoir" by Rob Sheffield, featuring a large heart and a cassette tape illustration

The cover of "When Christ and His Saints Slept" by Sharon Kay Penman, featuring a medieval battle scene and intricate border designs

Cover image of the book "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong, featuring autumn leaves against a dark background

The cover of the book "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls features a silhouette of a boy running with two dogs in a scenic countryside under a night sky

Cover of the book "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, featuring a red skull with a human silhouette in its center

Cover of "Firefly Lane" by Kristin Hannah, featuring photos of two women, and text indicating it's a Netflix original series

Flowers for Algernon book cover featuring a white mouse beside electronic circuitry, written by Daniel Keyes, with "SF Masterworks" on the spine

Cover of the book "Lullabies for Little Criminals" by Heather O'Neill, featuring a girl in a floral dress sitting with a serious expression

Cover of the book "The Secret Keeper" by Kate Morton, featuring botanical illustrations against a light background. Text reads: "THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER."

Cover of "If He Had Been With Me" by Laura Nowlin, featuring two lollipops, one broken, on a dark background

Cover of "The Memory of Light" by Francisco X. Stork, featuring a glowing silhouette of a woman against a black background

The cover of the book "A Woman Is No Man" by Etaf Rum, with review quotes from The Washington Post, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Refinery29

Cover of the book "The Meaning of Birds" by Jaye Robin Brown. It features two women partially obscured by a painted blue banner, surrounded by blue birds

Cover of the book "A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness, featuring tree branches against a dark sky with a full moon. The book is a winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal

Cover of "Night" by Elie Wiesel, featuring a barbed wire fence, watchtower, and dark buildings. Oprah Winfrey's comment praises the book above the title