My idea of me time always involves curling up with a good book and getting lost in another world. I spent my childhood being told I needed to read more because I was a "lazy speller", I wasn't as it happens instead I was diagnosed as dyslexic when I was about 12. So what of all the reading well it made me an efficient reader and a great love affair was born. These are 10 of the books that have influenced me or have a lasting place in my heart.
1. Anne of Green Gables
I cannot recall how old I was when my mother brought down from the attic her collection of Lucy Mongomery's Anne of Green Gable's books. In case you do not know Anne of Green Gables was the first in a series of books that charted Anne's life all the way to her youngest daughter Rilla. I loved those books and yearned to live in Canada in the eternal simplicity of Victorian Prince Edward Island. This was the beginning of my mother and I connecting in relation to books and I think it gave us something that we did not have until that point.
2. Katherine
When I went to secondary school I was devouring books at a ridiculous rate and resorted to reading the thickest books on the shelves. Katherine by Anya Seaton was a historical romance based upon the life of Katherine Swynford who went on to marry John of Gaunt. It is one of my ultimate guilty pleasures and the book I go back to for a comfort read when the world is not the place I want it to and speaks to the hopeless romantic that I normally denies existing.
3. Living Dolls the return of Sexism
I am embarrassed to admit that Natasha Walter's book was the first truly feminist book that I read cover to cover. Why that one as opposed to others? Partly because I was never brought up to believe I could not do anything just because I happened to be born female so feminist tomes seemed to me to belonged to another generation. Her book engaged me as she wrote about the world around me but in a way that made me examine what I intrinsically accepted and had failed to question.
4. Tess of the D'Urbivilles
As an eleven year old this book eluded me it was too confusing that Tess lay upon the ground and was later found with child. As a sixteen year old Tess was a victim of the societal pressure upon women to be a paragon of virtue whilst being punishing for the evils of men for an act that you were never sure was her choice. Each time that I read this book I gain a slightly different insight into Hardy's England and how shocking the book must have been at the time it was written. This was one of the first books written by a male author that I read by choice.
5. The Handmaids Tale
I genuinely dislike this book. It is not comfortable, it is not easy and I was forced to read it as part of my GCSE syllabus- this book taught me that you do not need to like a book to appreciate the message that the author is trying to convey. I once read an article by Margaret Atwood in which she discussed her motivations and inspirations behind writing this story and I do appreciate the statement that she was trying to make. Whilst it is a book I will never read again by choice you have to admire someone who manages to invoke such a reaction in you.
6. 1984
Orwell's 1984 has permeated our culture to such an extent that you can not imagine a time when big brother was not a day to day term. The book was visionary and still feels fresh even though it was written in the 50's about and set in the year I was born in. The power of the unseen and the effect of propaganda are as thought provoking now as they were in Orwell's post war era. It is the sort of book that makes you sit up and think which in a world of celebrity gossip and non stories is not a bad thing.
7. Rotters Club
Whilst at university I went through a spell of almost exclusively reading books that my father referred to as Blairite books. Jonathan Coe was one such author and I have read almost all of his books but the Rotter's club was the first and therefore sticks in my memory more than any of the others. There is something about his use of the English language that makes him accessible and worldly. At the time that I went through my labour literature phase I was desperately seeking modern books that had a distinct voice that did not fall into the realms of watered down chick lit and Jonathan Coe's book certainly filled that space.
8. Rules of Attraction
Brett Eason Ellis is still probably best known for American Psycho but Rules of Attraction is multiple voiced liberal art college based book with silvers of different parts of the story. It is a interesting look at a cracked mirror of human thought and perception of events. Mostly tellingly it looks at the different emphasis and importance that people place upon interactions. Brett Eason Ellis's books all interconnect as books within books as the characters spill from one world he creates into another taking his abstract style into other tomes and giving multiple lives to his characters.
9. Regeneration
When I first read this book I thought that the author Pat Barker was a man, turns out she is not. However this book focusing on First World War literary legends of Sassoon and Owen as traumatised soldiers under W.H.R Rivers care gets so into the male psyche that there really is no way to tell that the book was written by an author who had the time felt pigeon holed as a northern feminist writer. Beautifully written and haunting to the end Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy open a piece of history in a way that I would not have expected.
10. Room with a view
If a book was a big warm mug of hot chocolate on a winter day, this would be my coco brand of choice. Everything about this subtle book makes me happy from Lucy's impassioned playing of Brahms, the number of times the Baedeker is mentioned to fields of violets and swimming in the local pond. This is my happy place book and the perfect ending to this list.
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