World Book Day
For World Book Day, I thought I’d share some of my favourite books, books that I’ve read multiple times or anticipate doing so, books that I can’t imagine ever not having them on my bookshelf.
There are a few that hover just outside this selection (including by the likes of the late, great Iain Banks, Ian McEwan, Karl Ove Knausgaard, HE Bates, A M Homes and John Green), and others that would have once appered in this list but which have fallen out of favour on second or third read (Martin Amis’ The Rachel Papers and Graham Swift’s Waterland are the first to spring to mind) as well as a few that I’ve forgotten but probably would also merit a place in either of these lists.
The most recent addition to the list is Lucy Ellmann’s Duck’s Newburyport which I read last year. Although a brick of a book with barely any punctuation it was a book like none I’d ever read before and one that needs to be more widely read. It is tale of modern American life, full of humour, that reads as one long train of thought (hence the lack of punctuation and the way it jumps between completely random subjects). Highly enjoyable.
I often see people posting about reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and every time I tell them to persevere because, even though it’s not a comfortable or easy read, it is an incredible powerful story. I did nearly give up at around the 100 page mark but I’m so pleased I carried on. It taught me so much and I probably should give it a second read soon.
I fell in love with Alan Garner’s books aged nine when a teacher read us The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and it was actually a toss-up between that and Red Shift as to which I should include here. In the end I chose Red Shift. The book shifts between three different eras in time, set in the same location, but it is the most recent story, set in the 60s or 70s, the story of love and obsession, that is the most gripping and brilliantly written.
Coming Up For Air may not be the book most people pick as their favourite by George Orwell but it is a book that I have read every three or fours years for the last three decades and I still thoroughly enjoy it every time and still marvel at the writing and observations. Set in war time England I think the thing I most love about it, is that it’s not really like any other of Orwell’s novels but more like something HE Bates may have written. Wonderful.
I was blown away by John Fowles’ The Magus the first time I read it. I had never read anything like it before (or since) and it completely surprised me in it’s surrealism and surprise. I have to say, when I went back to read it again, a few years later, it wasn’t quite the same. After praising it for so long, it didn’t quite live up to my own expectations but maybe I was putting too much weight on it when it is best read for the first time, when you don’t know what to expect from it’s pages. Another I must read again soon though.
And finally, Betty Blue by Philippe Djian, originally published in France as 37,2° Le Matin. This is perhaps my favourite of those selected here and another that I have read time and again since I was about 17. The book became the cult, classic film Betty Blue starring Beatrice Dalle as Betty, an icon who adorned many a student’s wall in the late 1980s and early 90s. The book is a love story written beautifully and, like the film, is both funny and utterly tragic. I last read it two years ago and it won’t be long before I read it again and again. Every time I read it, I find something new, I understand the emotions better, and I marvel at the quality of the words. A beautiful book I will never get bored of reading. Honestly inspirational.
