“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go'“

— Dr Seuss

The Reading List 2024

The Man Who Was Thursday

I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.

G. K Chesterton

Conversations On Love

‘Nobody is right for anyone. Actually, what makes somebody right is commitment. Then when you’re committed to each other and you have true dialogue, that means you allow the other to impact upon you and they allow you to impact on them. You’re not rigid and unchanging; you are moved by each other’

Natasha Lunn

Scarred

I’m saying you could drive a man insane. Make him raze the world just to see you smile

Emily McIntire

Troilus and Cressida

They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able

William Shakespeare

A Bookshop in Algiers

Never once did he say a word to suggest that our talent represented anything less than the future of Algerian and French and indeed of world literature

Kaouther Adimi

One Life

The True Story of Sir Nicholas Winton

Save one life, save the world

Barbara Winton

King of Wrath

Love wasn’t always about the big moments. More often, it was tucked in the small moments connecting the major ones

Ana Huang

The Importance of Being Earnest

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

Oscar Wilde

If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler

And so you see this novel so tightly interwoven with sensations suddenly riven by bottomless chasms, as if the claim to portray vital fullness revealed the void beneath

Italio Calvino

The Treasure of the City of Ladies

If she wants to win, she must adopt a man’s heart (in other words, constant strong and wise) to consider and to pursue the best course of action

Christine De Pizan

Beach Read

Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take

Emily Henry

Waiting for Godot

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh

Samuel Beckett

Passenger to Frankfurt

The creative young write poems, write books, probably compose music, paint pictures just as they always have done. They’ll be all right–But once people learn to love destruction for its own sake, evil leadership gets its chance

Agatha Christie

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured

Susan Cain

Woven By Gold (Beasts of the Briar II)

You are my mate,” I say. “Submit to me. Let me claim you as mine. And in return, I will show you our love has always been inevitable

Elizabeth Helen

The History Boys

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket

Alan Bennett

Sense and Sensibility

I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way

Jane Austen

Unwell Women

To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou: when a woman tells you she is in pain, believe her the first time

Elinor Cleghorn

King of Pride

In that moment, I wanted to hunt down every person who’d ever made her feel like she was a failure, a disappointment, or anything less than fucking perfect

Ana Huang

Hamlet

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

William Shakespeare

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it

Gabriel García Márquez

A Life on Our Planet:

The Holocene was our Garden of Eden

Sir David Attenborough

The Switch

That’s the way with old friends. You understand each other, even when there’s not enough words out there for everything that should be said

Beth O’Leary

Wretched

Grief is a weird thing. It’s the only emotion in the world people claim to understand yet treat as an inconvenience. “Time heals all wounds, Evie.” Spare me. Time heals nothing. Just gives things more space to grow and fester and rot

Emily McIntire

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?

Tennessee Williams

Chasing Love

I don’t know if I need a prince, maybe just someone who will love me

Kat T. Masen

My Brilliant Friend

“Not for you,” Lila replies ardently, “you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls”

Elena Ferrante

Chasing Us

Even in the darkest times, there is always that one person who will make you see the light, make you laugh again when you think it’s impossible

Kat T. Masen

The Body Keeps The Score

Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives

Bessel Van Der Kolk

Skin of a Sinner

Don’t worry. If you break, I’ll put you back together. If you run, I’m running right behind you. If you burn, I’ll burn with you

Avina St. Graves

An Ideal Husband

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike

Oscar Wilde

Gone Girl

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold

Gillian Flynn

What Maisie Knew

Everything had something behind it: life was like a long corridor with rows of closed doors

Henry James

Sensitive

Sensitive people, it seems, are the varsity athletes of empathy

Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

King of Greed

To knowing your worth and never settling for less than you deserve

Ana Huang

The Mousetrap

Oh, I like a murder!

Agatha Christe

All The Light We Cannot See

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

Anthony Doer

On Forgiveness

Human beings do terrible things to each other and the tragic thing about it all is the way the remembrance of past hurt can rob us of our future and become the narrative of our lives

Richard Holloway

Six Crimson Cranes

No matter where life takes you, you will be like those stars - connected by the light you shine together

Elizabeth Lim

Oedipus

“Where are your eyes, Majesty?

You did what should not have been done”

Sophocles

Four Seasons in Japan

It seemed sad to have such beautiful blossoms only for a fleeting moment, and then have them taken away instantly

Nick Bradley

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Don't you remember that love, like medicine, is only the art of encouraging nature?

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Happy Place

“No," he says quietly. "In every universe, it's you for me. Even if it's not me for you”

Emily Henry