Please! Read These Books!
Mali Delargy
I will try to convince you to read my top ten favourite books in the shortest time possible. Buckle up!
1. Berg by Ann Quin (1964, 168 pages)
Quin is the subject of my dissertation, and Berg is the focus of my first chapter. The book begins — “A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father…” What follows is nothing short of madness.
2. The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (1964, 174 pages)
Again, madness. A woman finds a cockroach in her apartment and goes MAD. Read it and then read it again.
3. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (1989, 307 pages)
It is easy to lose yourself in Allende’s intricate narrative tapestry of life. Each person has their quirks; details that feel like their proof of existence, their deepest shames, their greatest aspirations. It is a fierce novel about curiosity and hope.
4. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862, 1376 pages)
I read this way too young, and it was a formative experience for me. Devastation and beauty on every page. There is a reason it has stood the test of time.
5. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794, 654 pages)
Romantic Gothic in its prime. Heroine Emily St Aubert is held hostage by her uncle in the Castle of Udolpho, dreaming of the day she will be reunited with heartthrob Valancourt. Ripe with terror and the Sublime!
6. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (2019, 1022 pages)
A scary undertaking. 1022 pages, one sentence. A stay-at-home mum’s interior monologue and anxieties in current-day suburban America. A heavy, but staggering and poignant read.
7. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (2021, 288 pages)
Autofiction? A reflective novel? A collection of thoughts and experiences of a young writer in her formative years. Beautiful glimpses into her life, terrible turns and hilarious creative interludes.
8. The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (2014, 965 pages)
Tokarczuk’s longest work, starting in the 18th century and ending in the 1940s. It tells the story of real-life religious leader Jacob Frank. Read for cults, religion, heresy and conversion. Read for crude and true descriptions of people and life.
9. Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë (1847, 359 pages)
Don’t read this because you watched the film. Read this because it’s a horrifying story of grief, desperation and loss. It isn’t a study on good and evil, but of the human bits in between.
10. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927, 209 pages)
In my opinion, this is Woolf’s greatest masterpiece. Words somehow capture the specifics of a person’s interior. It is in this novel that Woolf’s ability to paint relationships, the nuance and range of emotions under a single roof, is at its most refined.
Any one of these books will change how you read. Don’t let them pass you by!
