“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