The 7 Best Books on How to Make Friends

Friendships have a huge impact on your mental health and happiness. Good friends relieve stress, provide comfort and joy, and prevent loneliness and isolation. Developing close friendships can also have a powerful impact on your physical health.

But close friendships don’t just happen. Many of us struggle to meet people and develop quality connections. Whatever your age or circumstances, though, it’s never too late to make new friends or reconnect with old ones.

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is the story of a grown-up meeting his inner child, embodied by a Little Prince. Traveling from an asteroid, he left his rose there to discover the world. Before landing on Earth he visited many planets and their inhabitants where all grown-ups incarnate humankind’s most common vice. When a fox tells him that the eyes are blind and we are responsible forever for what we tame, the Little Prince goes back home to meet again with his Rose.

Three Comrades

by Erich Maria Remarque

This is a book about hope and love, about friendship and everyday courage, about the ability to withstand the blows of fate with dignity and move on. Erich Maria Remarque wrote "Three Comrades" about her generation.

Fully armed young storm troopers swagger in the streets. Restlessness, poverty, and violence are everywhere. For these three, friendship is the only refuge from the chaos around them. Then the youngest of them falls in love, and brings into the group a young woman who will become a comrade as well, as they are all tested in ways they have never imagined. . . 

The Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger

A sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield who is a son of wealthy parents runs away from school to his home in New York. Wandering the city alone, he is disillusioned by the superficiality of it and its citizens. However, it is through witnessing his young sister Phoebe going round and round on a merry-go-round after a trip to the zoo that he receives any sort of answer or joy, not from the advice of the school teachers, girlfriend and other acquaintances he meets along the way.

My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists. 

Cat’s Eye

by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s novel is an examination of toxic friendship. When visiting her childhood home of Toronto for a retrospective show of her art, Elaine is overwhelmed by her past. She’s forced to confront the memories of her once best friend-turned-tormentor, Cordelia, who’s impacted her life for forty years.

Conversations with Friends 

by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney creates such tension and emotion from simple stories, and this is one of the best-observed portraits of modern friendship. Conversations flow seamlessly between email, face-to-face meetings and instant messenger. They don’t end, instead they form one ongoing exchange as the characters discuss relationships and socialism and jealousy with equal importance, just like real life.

Conclusion

These books may help you build a strong friendship or at least know the things that may ruin your friendship and avoid them, remember if you enter a relationship in order to get something it will never work. The only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.