There are inky fingerprints across my soul and lines of poetry tangled between my arteries. I firmly believe you can gaze into a person's soul by knowing the books they love, but there are books that should be required reading for everyone. In the same way we recommend our favourite restaurants to friends so they may taste something amazing, there are books we need our loved ones and the general population to consume. This shared consumption is so precious, to know that someone else understands those feelings when they read that book you love.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the amazing books out there, it's a very personal one crafted over time and rereading. Vitally, these are books I would recommend and excludes the books I could not impose on other people, the strangely serious or farcical short stories that are delightfully ridiculous. These are the ones that spoke to my soul in a way that is accessible.
These books aren't ranked by importance and I scrambled them up anyway to avoid my very obvious favoritism with books.
I'd love to have your Required Reading list sent to me, via Twitter (@SuvaniaS) or below in the comments.
Anyway, on with the show and happy reading!
1. Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal
This was a recent read and it swept me up and took me on a journey. An excellent narrative with characters that reached out of the pages to convey their lives, pain and their multitudes. Initially it seems to be comprised of isolated and tenuously linked stories but they all begin to weave together to a touching finale that left me smiling. It centers around food and chapters divided into dishes that hint at the tantalizing lives of the people within the novel. I appreciate books that allow you to figure out what ties connect people and let you see the formation through time and fate. It's in this list because I think it's the sort of book one needs on hand when your soul deserves a meal of well written fiction.
2. How To Be A Woman- Caitlin Moran
After I read this, I sent it to most of my friends. You don't have to be a feminist to read it but by the end you really find yourself embracing what it means to celebrate being a woman. Be warned there are some ribald anecdotes, but on the whole she addresses everyday matters from puberty to buying a bra to dealing with heartbreak in this refreshing acidic voice that draws you in, as if a friend was confiding in you. Ok I need to repeat the warning that it can get a little "explicit" in terms of the language used for more sensitive readers. This is my disclaimer because I don't want a text saying "There was a bad word.... Ok a lot of them in Chapter 3, Su, why didn't you warn me?".
Moran bases every chapter in a time in her life and it's painfully honest. It's not some soppy self help book or an actual guide to anything except the inevitable realisation that you are a fabulous creature who has the same hang ups that other women have. It's an inadvertent guide to everyday feminism. It's great. READ IT.
3. Why We Broke Up- Daniel Hardman
Plot twist- Daniel Hardman IS Lemony Snicket (look it up) so I hold this teen breakup novel above all others (Sorry, John Green).
I found myself increasingly disenchanted with a lot of young adult romances because I could see how things would pan out and to be fair, I felt that the premise of this book was poignant and exactly the intensity of emotion one feels when ones heart is broken.
The structure of the book was poignant. It's in the form of a box of things, Min ( the protagonist who represents the antithesis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl we are so often given in YA novels) is giving back this to her ex and she accompanies this box with a letter that explains why they broke up. The thing about Min is that she's the best kind of quirky: self conscious and not unbelievable in the least, as most recent female protagonists are in a way that troubles me. It was real because falling in and out of love happens to us all, and not a special snowflake with an overly elaborate backstory. I felt that the whole book captured that at the end of it, a relationship is just a box of things that narrate something so much more than it appears at first sight.
4. One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
There's nothing I can say that hasn't actually been said about this book. It's a saga about the Buendia family that weaves in masterful elements of magical realism. And Márquez (Who wrote Love in A Time Of Cholera), captures a rich tapestry of South American history through the eyes of his characters. A quick note would be that there are lots of the same names repeated/carried over/ used for different people. It's a mission to keep track of who is doing what if you aren't careful.
It illustrates allure of wanting to establish a perfect society and break from restrictive tradition and the painful curses that trickle through generations. It was recommended to me and now I will recommend it to you because of the hypnotic way you suddenly find yourself three chapters down and having no recollection of anything besides the page in front of you.
It's a feeling. Not a novel.
5. A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
I used to go to the library every Saturday and over the course of a few months (that is waiting for someone to bring books 11-12 in) I finished what remains an amazing set of books. It's written in a way that respects the reader (most likely a child). I loved that, I craved that kind of expectation from a book. It made me sit up. It still does.
It doesn't dwell on the premise that good things happen to good people. Because bad things happen to us all, and more so to those who do not deserve it. And it feels fruitless to hope for the Baudelaire children who tirelessly strive to escape the clutches of Count Olaf and the looming mystery of the VFD. Packed with wit, unforgiving observations about the nature of good/evil being a grey area and twists that don't come off as cliched, it remains high in my esteem as a set of books. It has layers and mysteries that aren't ever fully explained. Even past the last page of the last book.
6. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
I have two copies of this book. And an electronic version on every device I have. I cannot reveal how many times I've re-read it. If you peeled back my skin, you would find my favourite parts of this book embedded in my muscles and the ink swirling in my blood.
I've written at length about my ardent love for the epic and simultaneously simple tale of a girl falling in love, amidst a changing world and the ever tangled web of family interferences in matters of the heart. There is a delicacy in Seth's writing, an unassuming way of talking to the reader that acts as a soft fog. You forget the immense size of the book because each sentence is remarkably simple, it's a comfort. He encapsulates human emotion so well, and furthermore- reality. Nothing is sugar coated, not love and certainly not loss.
It's a sprawling novel but the actual events happen in a thin slice of time, the reader has stumbled into this brief moment of interconnected lives and the beauty of it leaves you wanting more- demanding explanations and pressing for further consequences.
Vikram Seth is my favourite author and I have been dying because the sequel has been threatening to be released for far too long. A Suitable Girl cannot come soon enough for me (VIKRAM SETH, PLEASE SOME OF US ARE WAITING ANXIOUSLY- PLEASE PUBLISH IT SOON)
Favourite line (I had to include this because I adore the snide humor of Amit Chatterji, one of the characters)
" 'You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.'
'What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.
'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came in second in an exam...It hardens you.' ”
7. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Little Prince is special beyond measure, it touches my soul in a new way every time. I sobbed through the film (which was very well adapted). I will probably always cry when I read it. I wear my sentimentality with pride.
It is the book I turn to when I am terrified of growing up and forgetting. It is a comfort and reminds me to see magic in the simplest things. The Little Prince has layers, a simple story for children and an extended metaphor for adults. Read it so you can remember things you did not realise you have lost.
Read it because sometimes it takes a children's book to teach you about being grown up.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"
8. The Hundred Foot Journey - Richard C Morais
A love letter to food, family and the essence of life itself (I obviously have a thing for the niche market that is Books About Food And Family). But my favourite books are the ones that pull you in, wasting no time with frills and exposition, and this delivers that short intense burst of characters and the brevity of life. The basic plot revolves around a family who, after a tragedy, find themselves adrift from their familiar home in India and cast into stark grey world where they are seen as so different. They are vermillion in an expanse of ashy grey and the beauty of this novel is that that colour seeps into every crack. It's a quick read but marvelous.
9. Tiny Beautiful Things- Cheryl Strayed
Where do I start? Wow, this is a collection of letters that Cheryl Strayed (who wrote Wild, which is just as searing and painful in its beauty) in her capacity as Sugar in Dear Sugar for The Rumpus. It's not an advice column, you can't reduce it to that. It's a collection of people who have desperate questions about life and their pain and reconciling that pain(explicit, angry, shattered pain) and she responds with raw emotion and a perspective that partly answers those questions but also includes very personal insights and experiences. It is a brutal and magnificent collection. It hurts to read at times but it is necessary pain. There were some letters I couldn't bring myself to finish because I did not have the capacity to process that level of emotion and hurt.
I found myself moved, again and again through each letter and suddenly I was not the same person I had been when I had started reading it- and if that isn't the point of everything then I don't know what is.
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams crafted the perfect mix of wit, adventure and an existential crisis waiting to happen in this book (and the absolutely wonderful sequels that follow after it). This is Required Reading because it's one of those books that has so much to offer. I suspect even people who don't enjoy science fiction would take away a lot from this. Arthur Dent is a reluctant protagonist who would rather be at home with a nice cup of tea but finds himself on a whirlwind adventure. It ultimately reminds us that bureaucracy forces us to stand in queues filling out forms to avoid your friend being executed as well as demolishing homes to make way for a byway and that the answer to Life And Everything is 42. Also always carry a towel and Don't Panic when you read this, dear ones.
Happy reading and once again, please send me your Required Reading lists!!
(All images contained belong to their respective owners and none belong to me.)
