50 books I love (part I)
Featuring my all-time favourite book, and 49 others I’ve loved along the way—plus my top pick of the year so far...
Books, glorious books—a great stack of them, in fact, as over the next two weeks, I’m bringing you fifty books I’ve read—and loved (part deux is here). Of course, there are many more that might have made the list—and, as a caveat, it's in no particular order—but these were the ones that came to mind when I first sat down to pen this post. There’s my all-time favourite (which I’ve written about before), some captivating classics (not an oxymoron, I promise—more on those here), a few lesser-known gems I wish everyone would read, and the best book I’ve read so far this year. And yes, I know we’re not even out of January yet—but this one is truly remarkable and will take some beating.
Let me know in the comments—any favourites from the list? Any you loathed? Been meaning to give one of them a go? Consider this your sign to do so!
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
I don’t remember much about this book, other than its front cover, the squeaky voice of the main character—Owen Meany—and that, after finishing it, I cried and I cried, and a day later I cried some more over pizza in a restaurant with my mum and my sister on Battersea Rise.
wrote a gorgeous ode to Owen Meany in The Times recently (you can read it here), and can we also all take a moment to drool over John Irving? Not only did he write one of the best first lines of literature, he is also an absolute dish.
Testimony by Anita Shreve
I read this on a flight from the Philippines to Hawaii, en route to a friend’s wedding, and tore through it. It’s about a sex scandal (tick), set in a New England boarding school (even bigger tick), and while it’s rarely included in lists of the best campus novels, it absolutely deserves a place among them.
The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood
There is nothing I don’t love about this book. It’s a side-splittingly funny (the Hare Krishna monk scene lives rent free in my head), debaucherous, and also very moving memoir about how Sophie accidentally became pregnant while working as a celebrity journalist in LA. For more of Sophie’s writing, do check out her excellent Substack,
.The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker
While Walker is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning epistolary novel, The Colour Purple, The Third Life of Grange Copeland is also well worth a read. A brutal book about violence within the Black community in the deep south—it stayed with me for many years after reading it almost two decades ago.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison truly is heaven-sent, and the GOAT when it comes to magical realism and spine-tingling prose. Beloved is one of her finest.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
I was a reluctant latecomer to Dickens, genuinely thinking he’d be way too Victorian for my tastes, but boy, was I wrong. Can’t say I remember much about Great Expectations, other than I have five different editions in my apartment—and I absolutely loved it.
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff