5 Books From 1985 That Are Still Relevant Today

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If you think culture has an expiration date, we're here to prove you wrong. Just look at the box office numbers of 2026's "The Devil Wears Prada 2," which grossed more than $230 million globally in its opening weekend. Despite the first movie being two decades old, toxic power dynamics in the workplace and the endless strive for status are just as relatable for the younger generation now as they were back then.

And of course, the recirculation doesn't just stop at what's on our screens; it's also in what we read! Books from 30 or 40 years ago can be just as relevant today as they were when they were first released. In fact, literary works that were misunderstood then, perhaps even dismissed for being too far-fetched, can feel like blueprints for our lives in the modern world.

For the readers who have been yearning for more than a modern romance tale, you may want to turn the clock back to 1985. There are so many avid readers who call 1985 an amazing year for books, and it's not hard to see why. While there are the more famous books from that year like Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove," which is the perfect book for those who love Yellowstone, or Gabriel García Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," there are also some other titles from that year that deserve your attention for being so relevant to how we live today.

No matter the era, grief is one of the most human experiences you can go through; and Anne Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist" captures it with an honesty that hits home just as hard today as it did over 40 years ago. Tyler explores themes of the aftermath of tragedy and the lengths humans go to survive it. Rather than leaning into telling a grand story with sweeping drama, the author focuses on giving readers an in-depth look at a man doing what he can to live with a broken heart.

The emotional weight of the book lies in how familiar that numbness feels, because who hasn't had a season where we try our best to avoid the sting of reality? After losing his son in a tragic accident, Macon Leary doesn't spend his days mourning. Instead, he's busy creating life hacks to avoid the mess of living and grieving, but Macon may realize there's really no hack that can stop life from leaking in and unraveling.

Modern readers praise Tyler for being able to craft a literary reflection of many of our lives. "Tyler's imagination and observational skills are astounding," said a Goodreads reviewer in 2022. "This novel mirrors life lately for so many of us. The prevailing 'wait and see' mentality is a bit unsettling."

Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help" consists of short stories about women at various stages in life. Unlike your typical fictional works, Moore writes some of them in the second person, disguised as guides for the lonely and broken-hearted women out there. From creative titles for each story, like "How to Be an Other Woman" to "The Kid's Guide to Divorce," to writing in the form of manuals for life lessons that simply can't be taught, Moore takes a unique approach to storytelling.

This book highlights the human need to search for logic in the middle of an emotional breakdown, showcasing how we try so hard to control a situation that isn't always controllable. Moore's work may help you realize you can follow all of the instructions to a tee and still find yourself standing in the middle of a mess — and that is simply life. These short stories are perfect for individuals that constantly look for a solution to things that are often unfixable.

An Amazon review from 2007 captures this perfectly. "[Moore's] subject matter is timeless — love and death and relationships with mothers — and her subjects, the characters of her stories, remain witty and edgy and current." A similar sentiment was echoed in a 2022 Goodreads review that said, "The scenes Moore describes, the internal and external struggles her characters face, are just as relevant now as they were nearly 40 years ago." It's clear Moore tapped into something that continually resurfaces, no matter how many years have gone by.

If you've ever asked yourself, "What would happen if extreme religion and totalitarian control conquered?" then Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is another iconic 1985 work that needs to be added to your TBR. After the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade and the reality of women today, navigating a fragmented landscape and having to keep up with where abortion bans currently stand across the United States, this book's relevancy is undeniable in 2026.

Macon Leary may create systems to avoid grief and Lorrie Moore's characters follow guides to navigate loneliness and heartbreak, but Atwood's Offred lives under rule in which there is no bodily autonomy or even the most basic fundamental human rights when you're born a woman. Atwood explores what it would be like to live in a system built for women, but not by them. And while we may not be living in this exact dystopian society, the main protagonist's determination to be more than what she's forced to be resonates deeply in our current landscape.

"For a book that was written over 30 years ago, it is frighteningly relevant to our current societal issues and political climate," said an Amazon reviewer in 2017. This reader felt the cliffhanger ending — in which "many questions were left unanswered" — made the book lose a star; but that element may be the most honest thing about the story. Sometimes the most terrifying tales don't end with a clean resolution.

In 2025, Americans spent an average of seven hours each day looking at a screen. In a world where 20-step skincare routines and a whole new wardrobe for every season are normalized, it's not an exaggeration to say we are truly living in a state of overconsumption. For those that have given this subject some serious thought, you may want to give Don DeLillo's "White Noise" a read. Another dystopian novel from 1985 to make the list, "White Noise" explores the way humans have learned to use consumerism as a shield against existential dread.

The plot of this book will feel eerily familiar to anyone who is obsessed with chasing information just to stay informed, only to end up feeling more anxious than before. DeLillo tells the story of people who have become more consumed with the noise and static of the information age. Even when a catastrophe strikes, they find themselves more invested and interested in the media coverage than the actual disaster itself, no matter how life-threatening it may be.

"There is nothing dated about this work from 1985; the underlying themes feel relevant in our modern world, overrun by technology," said a Goodreads reviewer in 2017. "Yes, this book is nihilistic. It's over the top and fantastical, yet somehow completely realistic." DeLillo's prose will leave you with an uncomfortable realization that we've become so obsessed with documenting and consuming our lives that we've forgotten how to just live it.

Curiosity is what motivates mankind to continue to investigate the unknown. In 1985, that drive led neurologist Oliver Sacks to document the most mysterious cases of the human brain that he encountered. The result is the non-fiction "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," which is Sacks' retelling of the tragically unthinkable, yet beautiful ways the mind can fail.

Although readers may find the language a bit dated, reading about the cases and different ways the brain functions is fascinating. Our writer, who read the book for a psychology course in college, said to remind yourself that the book is from the '80s. While some of the medical terminology has evolved, the core humanity of Sacks' observations are still relevant to modern times.

Other readers reinforced our writer's perspective. While some docked the book's overall score for being outdated, they also felt that, despite all of the time that has passed, the cases were still very much relevant to the era we live in today. "The most impactful part of this book is seeing how adaptable people are when given the opportunity to create a life that is uniquely suited to them," said a Goodreads reviewer in 2018. "It makes you think about how [rigid] our society is in defining what it means to be a functioning human citizen."

We saw just how much our readers loved going back in time and being introduced to the highest rated books from 20 years ago to put on your TBR, so we were encouraged by that enthusiasm to dive even deeper into the archives of the literary world. This list allowed us to venture all the way back to 1985; and there were many titles we wanted to introduce our readers to from that year, so much so that it made putting this list together quite difficult.

But of course, we had to narrow our list down to the best five. To do this, we relied on the keyword in the headline: relevant. Rather than base our picks on literary merit, we looked for books that were continuously shaping the modern reader's perspective. We scoured reviews on platforms like Goodreads and Amazon, searching for those written in the last decade in order to find feedback that indicated readers felt like the title was still speaking to their current reality.

At the end of the day, 1985 was full of original stories that pushed the boundaries of their time. It's a year worth looking back at, and we're happy give you somewhere to begin.