Which are some of the best books you have read?

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  1. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

    Where The Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens

    Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

    Kallocain – Karin Boye

    Let The Right One In – John Ajvide Lindqvist

  2. more happy than not

    the fault in our stars

    all the bright places

    ​

    all the tear-jerkers LOL

  3. Project Hail Mary

    Dune

    Shogun

    King Rat

    Old Man’s War

    Harry Potter series

    Dresden Files series

    Miles Vorkosigan series

  4. Kindred — Octavia Butler

    I know Why the Caged Bird Sings–Maya Angelou

    Frankenstein — Mary Shelley

    Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston

    Go Tell it on the Mountain — James Baldwin

    Song of Solomon — Toni Morrison

  5. The Witch’s Heart – Genevieve Gornichec. It’s about Angrboda, who was a wife a Loki. It’s so interesting and heart wrenching. Not based on the movie

    The Once And Future King – T. H. White. It’s a retelling of the Arthurian legend and one of the finest ever. Far more fun than it sounds.

    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love- Raymond Carver. This is a collection of short stories about different relationships, some very bad, and is just so… real and emotional.

    Mothers Tell Your Daughters – Bonnie Jo Campbell.
    This is a book every woman, not just mothers, needs to read.

  6. The Sparrow- Mary Doria Russell

    Children of God- Mary Doria Russell

    Alias Grace- Margaret Atwood

    Grass Soup- Zhang Xianliang

    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    The Land of Lost Content- Denise Robertson

    Purge- Sofi Oksanen

    The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices- Xinran

    We Need to Talk About Kevin- Lionel Shriver

    The Road- Cormac Mcarthy

    Legacy- Susan Kay

    The Forever War- Joe Haldeman

    The Wool Trilogy- Hugh Howey

    …I need to stop writing this list now

  7. I have the memory of a goldfish, but the winners I’ve read most recently (I’m a history nerd if you couldn’t guess) are:

    The Good Doctor of Warsaw

    The Slave Ship: A Human History

    Voices From Chernobyl

  8. *Breathers: A Zombie’ Lament* by S.G. Browne. I’m usually one to read a book and never again. I’ve read this countless times. It’s a love story between two zombies. And it is better written than most love stories about humans.

  9. 1984 – George Orwell

    Animal Farm – George Orwell

    Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

    Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

    I Am Legend – Richard Mathewson

    The Last Man – Mary Shelley

    The Passage – Justin Cronin

    Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

    The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

    Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Perez

  10. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
    I struggle with feeling genuine emotion when I read books but this one really did that for me, and I wish I could read it for the first time all over again

  11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

    Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

    Ariel by Sylvia Plath

    The White Album by Joan Didion

    The Secret History by Donna Tartt

    short stories by Alice Munro

    The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

  12. • Several books by Bernard Werber, my favourites being *Les Thanatonautes*, *Encyclopédie du savoir relatif et absolu*, *Le miroir de Cassandre* and the “Aventuriers de la science” series with *Le Père de nos pères*, *L’Ultime secret* and *Le Rire du cyclope*

    • Several books and short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, namely *The Rats in the Walls*, *The Colour out of Space*, *The Shadow over Innsmouth* and *Beyond the Walls of Sleep*

    • *The Mist* and *The Eyes of the Dragon* by Stephen King

    • *Making History* by Stephen Fry

    • *Mr. Monster* by Dan Wells

    • *Leviathan* by Scott Westerfeld

    • *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas* and *Journey to the Center of the Earth* by Jules Verne

    • *The Hounds of Tindalos* by Frank Belknap Long

    • *Les Fleurs du mal* by Charles Baudelaire (a lot of my favourite poems are by him)

    • *Wandering Earth* by Liu Cixin

    • *A God in the Shed* by J.-F. Dubeau

  13. The Haunting of Hill House/The Sundial – Shirley Jackson

    Beloved/Tar Baby – Toni Morrison

    The Magic Toyshop/The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter

    White is for Witching – Helen Oyeyemi

    In The Dream House – Carmen Maria Machado

    Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde

    Kindred – Octavia Butler

    Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury

    If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin

    Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut

    Virtuoso – Yelena Moskovich

    The Prettiest Star – Carter Sickels

    Mouthful of Birds – Samanta Schweblin

    Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh

    I could keep going lol

  14. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

    Why Women are Blamed for Everything – Jessica Taylor

    Staring at the Sun – Irvin Yalom

    Insomnia – Stephen King

  15. Rae Morris – Express Makeup

    This book really helped me with my career as a makeup artist and gave a lot of useful insight tips and tricks. I learnt soo much from this book. Would recommend for anyone into makeup.

    So Much I want to tell you – Anna Akana

  17. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Eddie Signwriter, The Alienist and Angel of Darkness

  18. Some of my life changing favourites are Memoires of a Geisha, The Crimson Petal and the White , by Michael Faber , Angela’s Ashes , Fall to her Knees by Ann Marie MacDonald , The Harry Potter Series , The Original Pamela Travers Mary Poppins… So many more , what a hard question.

  19. Some 5 star books from my Goodreads:

    Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

    Empire Falls by Richard Russo

    Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    The World According to Garp by John Irving

    Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

    Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

    11/22/63 by Stephen King

  20. *Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction* by David Sheff and *Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines* by Nic Sheff. I recommend reading them in that order and also checking out their other books on the subject.

  21. The Monk – Matthew Lewis. Its a story of a man who is a paragon of virtue, and how his sheltered life and innate capacity for evil enables his fall. The original gothic novel, arguably.

    The Outsider (l’Etranger) – Albert Camus. A philosophical novel. It’s quite short and explores Camus’ absurdist viewpoint through Miersault, a man who lives purely in the moment, not thinking about past or future.

    Ordinary Men – Christopher Browning. An exploration as to how normal people can become war criminals, in the context of police battalion 101 in Poland during the 1940s, with some notes on modern psychological experiments.

    Nichomachean Ethics – Aristotle. A seminal work which establishes virtue ethics, and how good is achieved through good actions.

    Frankenstein – Mary Shelley. Arguably the first Sci fi novel. It explores nature v nurture, parental responsibility, and the hubris of humanity in scientific progress.

    The Prince (il Principe) Niccolò Machiavelli. A short treatise on statecraft and how one ought to conduct themselves to achieve the respect and loyalty of others. Commonly accused of being heartless and evil, but actually is a secular scientific appraisal of politics. The penguin version is exceptionally well translated and reads like something written today.

    Meditations – Marcus Aurelius. A thought journal from one of Rome’s 5 ‘good emperors’, it provided me inspiration to start my own, and is full of universal wisdom.

    For Poetry

    Check out WW1 poems; Attack by Siegreied Sassoon always gets me, and Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen is a classic condemnation of those who glorify war.

    Rubaiyat – Omar Khayyam. A series of 4 line verses which give insights on life

    For plays

    The Bear/Boor – Anton Checkov. A comedy centred around a recent widow and a creditor trying to recover his funds. Very funny with a backdrop of sadness. Classic Checkov.

    Medea – Euripides. The tragedy of a woman scorned, her insanity and the evil she commits to avenge herself on her husband.

    Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare. A 16th century RomCom, set in Spain, it deals with a new love, an old love and the efforts of an evil man to disrupt both. Probably the best of his Comedies IMO.

    For some lighter reading

    Gotrek and Felix – William King. A fantasy series set in a fantastical renaissance, it details the journey of a poet who accompanies a dwarf who has sworn an oath to die in battle, so that he can compose his death-poem. Shenanigans ensue. Set in the Warhammer universe.

    At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft. A horror novella set in the antarctic. A scientific expedition goes to the South Pole, and discovers truths beyond their wildest expectations.

    Collected Ghost Stories – M.R. James. In a similar vein to Lovecraft, though less cosmic and more focused on interpersonal horror.

    The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler. A noir novel made into a film in the 50s, it concerns a detective following his thread. Very punchy prose.

    That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, I hope any of them seem interesting!

  22. Michael Marshall Smith – only Forward

    I had read it as a kid and reread it recently – loved it all over again.

  29. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
    Anything by Dame Agatha Christie
    Harry Potter- JK Rowling
    His Dark Materials- Phillip Pullman (I’ll argue about the ending any day though lol)
    Gilgamesh

  30. Hogfather and Soul Music by Sir Terry Pratchett. My kids really needed Miss Susan for a teacher!!!

    The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. That Was Then, This is Now also by S E Hinton.

  31. Half-Broke Horses Jeanette Walls, The Secret History Donna Tartt and Watership Down.

  32. The Lord of the Rings. Also, I’m almost finished with book four of the Stormlight Archive and that shit is amazing.

  33. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.

    Their Eyes were Watching God by Zore Neale Hurston.

    Beloved by Toni Morrison.

    The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan.

    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

    The Giver by Lois Lowry.

    The Graveyard Book and Coraline, both by Neil Gaiman.

    Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi.

    Holes by Louis Sachar.

    Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli.

    Island of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.

  34. All over the place but some recent highlights

    Normal People

    Ghosts

    The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

  35. EVERYTHING by Morgan Rice.

    No, I don’t mean a book called “EVERYTHING” I mean literally all her books🤩

  36. Recollections of Rifleman Harris. It’s a book about about the experiences of a man with the famous elite 95th Rifle Regiment during the Napoleonic Wars, specifically the Peninsular war. It describes horrors that we often don’t see displayed in the Napoleonic Wars, normally it’s the flashy colours, and the big volleys, but not anymore. It’s down to the war itself, tragedy, horror, a nightmare. It describes brutal scenes that made my friends queasy just describing them slightly. It’s really good.

  37. Only Love is Real by Dr. Brian Weis (if you’re into reincarnation/past life)

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