Readers of this blog often ask me for book recommendations.
Here’s are some of my favourites – not my whole life favourites, mind you, but my favourites since I’ve been blogging . . .
FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen
A wonderful big book about contemporary American life
I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith
A lovely coming of age novel set in the early twentieth century in the English countryside.
THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It’s almost embarrassing to ‘recommend’ this book, as if it is an ordinary text that one can like or not like. It’s a awesome piece of non-fiction about Stalin’s death camps.
THE HAIRDRESSER OF HARARE by Tendai Huchu
A sweetly hilarious little comic novel about gay life in Zimbabwe.
MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
A tale of a pioneer childhood that manages to make Nebraska romantic.
NERVOUS CONDITIONS by Tsitsi Dangarembga
A classic Zimbabwean novel about childhood.
PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
A novel that will make you reconsider men and masturbation
THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF NATHANIEL P by Adelle Wadman
A fantastic account of the inside of the modern male mind
STONER by John Williams
The story of a university’s professor life, from his arrival at school to his death
GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn
Unusually for this blog, this is a thriller. Great page turner with some interesting ideas about gender.
MIDDLEMARCH by George Elliot
A classic which I hope needs no introduction. I re-read it and was struck by how much either it or I had changed since I read it in high school.
PERSUASION by Jane Austen
Always my favourite Austen.
A MAN IN LOVE by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Volume 3 of a 6 volumes of autobiography entitled MY STRUGGLE. Proustian account of an ordinary Norwegian life.
GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson
Extraordinarily beautiful diary of a dying elderly man in Kansas.
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE by Nancy Mitford
Hilarious 1930s novel I re-read often.
MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, THE STORY OF A NEW NAME, THOSE WHO LEAVE AND THOSE WHO STAY, and THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD by Elena Ferrente
Fantastic quartet of novels about a lifelong friendship in twentieth century Naples
A NOTABLE WOMAN by Jean Lucey Pratt
700 pages of real life diaries covering fifty years in the life of an ordinary woman that are quite extraordinary
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME by Andre Aciman
A novel that reminds you how truly painful teenage crushes can be
CAPTAIN SCOT’S LAST EXPEDITION by Robert Falcon Scot
Get ready to ugly cry.
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS by Sally Rooney
Who knew millennials’ love lives could be so interesting?
EARLY WORK by Andrew Martin
And again, who knew millenials’ love lives could be so interesting?
LESS by Andrew Sean Greer
A coming-of-age novel, except that age is middle age.
MY FIRST THIRTY YEARS by Gertrude Beasley, a mild-alteringly angry and inspirational memoir about overcoming poverty and the patriachy (before they catch up with you and throw you in an insane asylum)
MY PHANTOMS by Gwendoline Riley, which is a lacerating examination of a woman’s relationship with her mother. Small talk has never been so excruciating. Deservedly on many best-of lists this year
MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT by Elizabeth Taylor, a wonderfully funny and sad novel about the steely optimism needed to face old age
MICHEL THE GIANT: AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND by Tete-Michel Kpomassie, a book about how you can live the life of your wildest and most eccentric dreams. Written by someone who should be considered an African ICON.
WILFUL DISREGARD by Lena Andersson, which shows how love can be madness, and not in a cute fun way. Shows how easy it is to slip into mania, be it a about the second coming, hand washing, or, as in this case, about a boy
AS MEAT LOVES SALT by Maria McCann, a wonderful, bloody love story set in the English Civil War, that made me feel weirdly proprietary about centuries-old battles (I’m looking at you siege of Basing House!)
IN MEMORIAM by Alice Winn, which I see in all the bookshop windows and deservedly so: it’s a heart-breaker. Big props to this author for having the guts to think there was something new to say about WW1
HEART THE LOVER by Lily King, a lovely and very sad love story
I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN by Jacqueline Harpman, an unexpectedly wonderful and uplifting novel about life after the apocalypse
VIOLET CLAY by Gail Goodwin, a novel about the kind of brutal courage it takes to fail as an artist
A WOMAN IN BERLIN by Anonymous, the real diaries of a woman who survived rounds of gang rape when that city fell in WWII, and found the dignity and even the comedy in it
THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG by Peter Carey, a book about Australian outlaws that is a triumph of narrative voice
SEVENTEEN by Joe Gibson, a really sad memoir about a teacher grooming a male student, and the loss of his twenties to her narcissism
PRAIRIE FIRES by Caroline Fraser, an unexpectedly wonderful biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder (a writer I don’t even care about)