Here Are the Best Books to Read on Your Kindle While You’re Stuck Indoors

In an effort to combat cabin fever, we've already covered the best video games to play while you're stuck indoors. Now it's time to give some love to the bibliophiles in our midst.

Many bookstores are closed during the novel coronavirus pandemic, and it can take a frustratingly long amount of time for a book ordered on Amazon to be delivered (granted, this is so that essential items can be delivered to people who need them).

As a result, this has been an era of reading on electronic devices. If you don't have a Kindle or dedicated ebook reader, you can download any number of ebook-reading apps to your tablet or smartphone. From there, you can purchase ebooks, find them for free online, or borrow them from your local library.

For years, consumers have been polarized on the subject of reading books electronically. Many of us still prefer to hold a physical book in our hands, turn the physical pages, and store it on a physical bookshelf among other physical books. But, like many other things, ebooks seem to have reached market penetration with the shelter-in-place restrictions across the world.

Without further ado, here are some of the books you should totally be reading while you're stuck indoors.

Love in the Time of Cholera

This is the obvious choice, right? People have already been saying, "Love in the time of coronavirus" and "love in the time of COVID-19." So why not revisit the source of this meme? Love in the Time of Cholera was written by Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is also known for such powerful novels as 100 Years of Solitude and the shorter read (but with a longer title): The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother.

There's also a fairly recent movie adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera starring a few heartthrobs: Javier Bardeem, Benjamin Bratt, Liev Schreiber, John Leguizamo, and others.

Crime and Punishment

While we're reading the classics, why not knock out some Dostoevsky? Come on, everybody's doing it! Well, if they're not, they should be. Crime and Punishment is a story about alienation, moral dilemmas, and mental anguish. Is it going to cheer you up while you're stuck at home? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on your worldview.

Here's what Charles Bukowski said about Dostoevsky: "As a young man I know that he got me through the factories ... lifted me high through the night and put me down in a better place."

Double Indemnity

James M. Cain, like his contemporary Raymond Chandler, was one of those literary geniuses who used the constraints of the hardboiled story and turned it into literature. Double Indemnity was turned into a black-and-white movie (and Raymond Chandler actually had a hand in the screenplay) starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and that Hollywood tough guy Edward G. Robinson.

The move, over time, is probably more famous than the book, but if you're looking for a fast, gritty read, see if you can borrow this from your library or buy the ebook. It's told from the point of view of one of the criminals, and like most of Cain's work, it deals with the horror of what happens when someone suddenly gets everything they ever wanted.

The Big Sleep

While you're reading hardboiled fiction, you might as well visit one of the other masters: Raymond Chandler. While James M. Cain wrote a sparse line, Raymond Chandler was a colorful writer. His writing was fast-paced, too, but he is often called the King of the Simile.

The Big Sleep was turned into a famous movie, as well, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.