A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading
William Styron
The Reading List 2026
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The Reading List 2026 *
The Dragon’s Promise
Your heart is your home. Until you understand that, you belong nowhere
Elizabeth Lim
The Crucible
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven
Arthur Miller
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction
Jules Vernes
Full Circle
Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen’
Michael Palin
Throne of Glass
Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons
Sarah J. Maas
Richard III
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend
William Shakespeare
Requiem For a Wren
Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over
Nevil Shute
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be
Walter Benjamin
The Fake Up
‘“Fame really is forever, isn’t it? They both looked at each other, the weight of that truth hanging over them for the first time, like a raincloud’
Justin Meyers
A Very Very Very Dark Matter
We co-write them. I just don't do any of the writing. I change the bits I don't like and then erase all the rest from history. I'm more like a German theatre director. Or, y'know, a German generally
Martin McDonagh
A Room of One’s Own
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction
Virginia Woolf
Republic
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing
Plato
King of Envy
Not everyone had the privilege of following their heart
Ana Huang
DNA
I threatened to gouge one of his eyes out.
Dennis Kelly
Ivanhoe
For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears
Sir Walter Scott
On Human Freedom
What makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well
Epicteus
Broken By Daylight
I cannot keep away from you any more than the tides can resist the pull of the moon
Elizabeth Helen
The Visit
The world made a whore of me, now I'll make a whorehouse of the world
Friedrich Dürrenmatt & Tony Kushner
The ABC Murders
It's like all those quiet people, when they do lose their tempers, they lose them with a vengeance
Agatha Christie
50 LGBTQ+ Who Changed The World
How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race?
Florent Manelli
Funny Story
You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to
Emily Henry
Kindertransport
Diane Samuels
To The Lighthouse
To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!
Virginia Woolf
The Conspiracy of Art
Personally, I find art increasingly pretentious. It wants to become life.
Jean Baudrillard
The Irresistible Urge To Fall For Your Enemy
“Your ethical bounds keep you so confined, it’s a wonder you can move.” “I don’t know how you move, given the weight of your sins.”
Bridgette Knightly
My Boy Jack
"Have you news of my boy Jack? "
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide
David Haig
Swept Away
I’m not somebody who should be left alone with their own thoughts.
Beth O’Leary
Stoner
You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do
John Williams
The Year of Magical Thinking
Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant
Joan Didion
The Pumpkin Spice Café
Fall was a strange time for reinvention. Fall was better for...snuggling and eating food covered in gravy
Laurie Gilmore
Snowflake
I realise I’m being such a fucking snowflake
Mike Bartlett
The Exquisite Torture of Loving Your Enemy
He had been right: neither of them was destined for an ordinary sort of love
Brigitte Knightley