The great books that readers recommended most – plus all the week’s reasons to be hopeful
Apart from music, spring, humour and love, books are surely the biggest Upside of all. When I see someone reading, I often think to myself: “Lovely. All that information going to a good home.”
It must be humanity’s greatest achievement: the ability to convey ideas, emotion, drama, thought, simply by putting some small markings down on a page. As Sacha Baron Cohen memorably said on Da Ali G Show: “People has been reading books for millions of years, but thanks to new technology now they is able to write them as well.”
Breath by James Nestor. Man travels world to investigate new/old ways of breathing.
The New Map by Daniel Yergin. Man travels world to investigate new/old ways of generating power.
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak. Beautiful Istanbul-set saga told from the perspective of a recently murdered heroine.
The year without summer by Guinevere Glasfurd. A climate change novel set 200 years ago.
Putin’s People by Catherine Belton. How the KGB took back Russia.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara. If you think you have problems …
The full story of Taiwan’s triumph over Covid. Three-minute read
The scientists turning the desert green. Five-minute read
Studying happiness might make you, er, happier. Two-minute study
The people who learned an instrument in lockdown. This one’s for my parents …
The 10-year-old waging war on plastic. Two-minute read
My best lockdown reading recommendation (so far) is anything by HG Wells. Although known mostly for a few “science fiction” books (and fine reads they are), I’ve discovered Mr Wells to be a tremendously versatile writer, and a surprisingly gifted humorist. I’m just now finishing a lovely old edition called A Quartet of Comedies, in fact, featuring Kipps, The History of Mr Polly, Bealby, and Love and Mr Lewisham. Each is a compassionate human study of the era and worth a read.
Anything at all by Cyril Hare, and The Warmth of Other Suns, which I have given to my children and gotten other people to read. If it’s not life-changing, it’s vision-changing.
The best book that I have read during Covid is Breath by James Nestor. It goes into the history and science of how we all came to be breathing incorrectly – and what we can do to breathe better. It’s fascinating, accessible and has a huge impact on our health.
During the past year I have particularly enjoyed: Humankind, by Rutger Bregman, which overturns the myths about humanity’s inherent nastiness and encourages new ways of approaching schooling, prisons and more; A Promised Land, by Barack Obama, giving an inside view of White House life and the way US politics works, with a very personal slant; and Covid-19, by Debora MacKenzie, an early account, up to the pause between first and second waves, of our current crisis with excellent background and a look to the future.
I thoroughly enjoy the Guardian’s book reviews and fairly often engage with your online book events – but I am really looking forward to the time when at least some of them will be live!
A friend recommended Jessica Pan’s book, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, which is about the author’s decision to embrace extroversion for a year. For each challenge, beginning with simply talking to strangers in London where she lives, she asks for help from “experts”, follows their advice and tries on new behaviour – and ultimately gains not only confidence but the connection to people she was missing as a shy introvert. She is hilariously funny, too.
Laugh-out-loud books are rare and even more valuable than normal to try and lighten the lockdown load a little – two recent gems are Patrick Freyne’s OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea, and Michael Leviton’s To Be Honest.
The best and funniest reads I have ever known are the books of Terry Pratchett. I am 73, and have read and reread them many times. Terry Pratchett’s books are incredibly well-written and clever fantasies. This sounds a little weak, but he is a real wordsmith. There is no bigotry, lewd language or other issues that would prevent people of all ages enjoying his books. I suggest that would-be readers start with his first book The Colour of Magic.
For the past 12 months, excluding only the 2020 summer-holiday
interlude, the local lending library has been my lifeline to sanity, as
I hole up in my private Alcatraz here in Milan. I’ve actually read
about 50 or 60 books (I lost count last year), but in all honesty
I would only recommend four of them (none of which have been
translated into English, though). This goes to show how picky I am about my reading, but also that you can’t really trust book reviews to choose a good book to read. It’s like Russian roulette.
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