At EMC we were recently reading an article from The Conversation about how reading changes your brain. The article had a lot of very technical stuff about lobes and folds and Heschl’s gyrus, but the essential message was that reading has a positive effect on our ability to understand the minds of others and make sense of the world around us. The article concludes 'In other words, that cosy moment with a book in your armchair isn’t just personal – it’s a service to humanity.' What better excuse to draw up a Christmas reading list?
As usual, this is a round up of books people on the EMC team have recently read and enjoyed, with a short personal recommendation from the person who suggested it. This has the advantage of creating a list for a variety of tastes and interests including fiction, non-fiction and YA. We hope you'll find something that appeals to you, to your students, or to someone on your present list. What would you add? Let us know in the comments.
Fiction for adults
Choice by Neel Mukherjee
A devastating novel that seeks to make the reader feel unsettled, asking questions about race, cultural appropriation, economics and climate change, and urges the reader to consider how their individual actions and choices impact on others. I fell in love with Ayush – the main character in the first part of this ‘triptych’ novel. He’s disillusioned with his job in publishing – especially in how the industry deals with writers of colour – and is enraged by his economist husband’s pragmatic world view. We see the world through his eyes and we hear his thoughts but that doesn’t make some of the unforgiveable things that he does any less shocking. Mukherjee’s a brilliant novelist and this is his best yet. Available here.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This is such a beautiful book, a worthy winner of the Booker Prize. Six astronauts hurtle through space, orbiting the Earth 16 times a day in a classic piece of eco-lit that acts as a love letter to the planet. Available here
An Absence of Cousins by Lore Segal
The novel is made up of interlinked stories, many of which were originally published in the New Yorker over a number of years, about Ilka Weisz, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, as she settles into life as an academic at a liberal arts college. A wry and engaging look at identity, belonging and privilege of different sorts. Available here
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan
I was drawn in by the beautiful cover but this is beautifully written too. A harrowing but utterly compelling account of the civil war in Sri Lanka at both the macro (political) level and the micro (family) level. Available here.
Julia by Sandra Newman
Fabulous retelling of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover, Julia. Not only does the novel give full voice to a character who can at times read like a plot device in the original, it also acts as a gripping read in its own right. The book offers a contemporary perspective while complementing understanding and enjoyment of the original. Available here.
Norwegian by Night by Derek B Miller
The New York Times is quoted saying of this novel ‘It has the brains of a literary novel and the body of a thriller.’ I couldn’t put it better. I would also add though that it’s very funny at times, has a wonderfully quirky main character in his eighties, Sheldon Horowitz, and is full of interesting ideas about international relations and war, stretching from the Holocaust to Korea, Vietnam and Kosovo. My favourite read this year! Available here.
Playground by Richard Powers
A multi-layered, multi-charactered novel in which Powers attempts to do for the ocean what he did for trees in The Overstory. It’s not as strong as his arboreal-based classic, but there’s still plenty for the reader to get their teeth into, with passages of heartbreaking beauty along the way. Available here.
Behind You is the Sea by Susan Darraj
Set in the Palestinian community in Baltimore this book explores the intertwined stories of three families and their very different experiences of immigrant life in America. One of those books which makes you feel as if you have met all the characters in real life. Available here.
Going Home by Tom Lamont
Téo Erskine has a nice flat in Aldgate, a job in the city… the life he always imagined. But a weekend at home, catching up with his aging dad and his friends from school, Lia and Ben changes his life dramatically when he finds himself left to care for Lia’s son Joel. It’s a book about family, masculinity and the crushing weight of responsibility on a young man suddenly expected to be a father. Available here.
I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson
Like Watson’s Little Scratch, I Will Crash makes use of techniques more usually seen in poetry – layout, line-breaks – to capture the narrator’s response to her brother’s death and her troubled relationship with him. Despite being told in a stream of consciousness narrative voice, Watson skilfully allows gaps to open in the telling, to show the other stories which always exist alongside our own. Available here.
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
After the pretentiously titled Beautiful World, Where Are You? I thought I was done with Sally Rooney. But Intermezzo, I think, is her most interesting novel yet. Less lofty than previous works (though still with a few pages of classical and literary references), it centres around two brothers, Ivan and Peter, struggling to understand each other in the aftermath of their father’s death. Ivan, the youngest, a chess prodigy who is falling in love with a much older married woman (in rural Ireland!), is a particularly interesting and sympathetic character. Rooney has admitted it took her ages to work out how to end the novel and I think it shows – I loved the first half and raced through it. There’s a sweet dog (whippet) character introduced in the second half – that was enough to keep me going to the end. Available here.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvei Balle
First in a fantastic series reflecting on the notion of time, mortality and human relations. Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize (Scandinavia’s most important literary award) for being 'a masterpiece of its time'. Available here.
The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas
I loved this story of a young ex-pat couple in an unnamed town in an unnamed country. As they attempt to find an apartment (having decided it is now time to stop just trying on adulthood and actually become adults), we share the mini dramas of their friendships, work, relationship with their faraway families, their efforts to find somewhere where they can be their proper selves. It’s in the very ordinariness of their lives and the light telling of it that we see both what is special about each individual – and all the things that are shared. Available here.
Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers
A pacy piece of feel-good escapism, featuring redemption and opioid addiction, from the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize winner. This book might lack the experimentation of Cuddy, but there’s plenty of entertainment to be had in the story of a forgotten soul singer from the US invited to perform his Northern Soul classic at a Scarborough (Yorkshire) weekender nearly 50 years after its release. Available here.
The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden
Really unnerving. This begins as a story of a young woman’s narrow and isolated life in the house she and her family were brought to live in during the war, until it’s complete turning upside down by the arrival of her brother’s girlfriend reveals a darker history. Available here.
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Martin Aitken (translator)
Knausgaard’s books are just such an amazing reading experience – you feel slightly uncomfortable, a bit disgusted or angry, but still not able to stop reading. Available here.
James by Percival Everett
I love literary adaptations, especially when they make you re-think the original in challenging ways, shifting the perspective and bringing marginalised characters’ viewpoints into the foreground. This novel doesn’t disappoint. It’s inventive, clever, entertaining and full of narrative interest. Available here.
I am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
A dying brother, a road-trip with a very determined and chatty ex – and dead – lover, and a feisty landlady in the civil war. All woven into a poignant, strange and funny novel which captures something important about the power of love and grief. Available here.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Kushner is a writer with the pared back cool of a latter-day Joan Didion. This gritty thriller links together neolithic humans, an aging guru living in a cave, radical French eco-terrorists and American spy-for-hire Sadie Smith. Standard genre fiction it ain’t! Available here.
Poetry
Young girls! by Karenjit Sandhu
I initially read this collection of poems as celebration of girlhood in its best and worst moments, full of humour and life, expressed through an interesting range of poetic forms. However a note in the back of the book explains that it’s inspired by the life of avant-garde painter Amrita Sher-Gil, re-imagining her as a young girl in 1990s West London, which set me off in a new direction entirely! (Sandhu is a lecturer in Art at Reading University). Available here.
Non-fiction for adults
Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton
We have always had the highest respect for Carol’s work as a teacher, Head of English and writer about education, so it comes as no surprise that this book is such a thoughtful, erudite, and interesting set of reflections on what literary texts can do for readers in English classrooms. But what is extra special is how enjoyable and entertaining it is, taking the reader into the heart of her own feelings about texts we all know, and those generated for her students. A fabulous book for English teachers. Available here.
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
Laing, herself an accomplished gardener and herbalist, introduces the reader to a series of significant gardens and gardeners, making a powerful case for their cultural and social significance. Ranging widely from chapters about the garden of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost to Derek Jarman’s garden on the shingle of Dungeness beach, and from gardens that sprung up in the ruins of war-torn London to lavish country house gardens funded by the profits of the transatlantic slave trade, this is a book to enjoy even if your fingers are anything but green. Available here.
Disability Visibility: First Person Stories of the 21st Century edited by Alice Wong
A hugely diverse range of contributions makes this book a real education. It’s very much an American perspective as it was released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but that is not to detract from it. Available here.
V13: Chronicle of a Trial by Emmanuel Carrere
From September 2021 to June 2022 the novelist Emmanuel Carrere attended the trial of those who helped the perpetrators of the Friday 13th Paris Attacks in 2015, chronicling the process for the weekly newspaper Le nouvel obs. This is the account of the whole process – gripping and moving, it is also a fascinating insight into the process of the trial itself. I listened to it and would recommend the audio book. Available here.
Beyond the Secret Garden by Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O'Connor
We're biased where this one's concerned, because it's published by EMC! Available to buy just in time for Christmas, it it's a collection of writing by two leading experts in Black British children's literature. Drawing and expanding on their long-running column for Books for Keeps, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O'Connor trace how Black and racially minoritised characters have been represented in 'the secret garden' of British children's literature from its earliest stages to current times. As Michael Rosen says in the endorsements, it's 'an essential read for anyone involved and interested in what children's literature has been, continues to be and could be.' Available here.
Pageboy – a memoir by Elliot Page
There is so much noise about transgender people. This cuts through it all with a moving personal account, showing how damaging it is to be forced to live a secret life. Available here.
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger & Ryan Mac
I did worry that the excellent title would be the high point of this book but it doesn't disappoint. Character Limit tells the story of Twitter in the run-up to Musk's purchase of it, the deal itself and its subsequent descent into a misinformation & nazi-infested hellscape. Coming out as it did in September of 2024, it feels like several sequels already need to be written about its protagonist and his over-sized and pernicious influence on the world. Available here.
My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss
I’ve often recommended Sarah Moss’s novels (both contemporary and historical). This memoir explores her childhood, her writing, the pandemic, and the modern gurus of healthy eating through the lens of anorexia, from which she suffered as a young teenager and which came back with a vengeance during lockdown, almost killing her. Available here.
Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder
Fascinating biography of George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, that explores how and why she has largely been written out of accounts of Orwell’s own life (and was almost entirely ignored by Orwell in his own work too) despite being a woman whose own literary brilliance shaped her husband’s work. The book moves towards her tragic death, one that seems impossible to separate from her ‘invisibility’. Available here.
The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke
A heart-warming and heart-breaking account of how a nine-year-old girl’s heart came to be transplanted into the body of a nine-year-old boy. As well as going into the background of the children and family’s involved, with her usual warmth and sensitivity, palliative care doctor, Clarke, offers an accessible, fascinating history of the heart and transplantation. Available here.
Children and YA
One Year at Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks
A book in the ever-popular genre of boarding school adventures. However, this graphic novel is no Mallory Towers – atmospheric black and white illustrations, rumours of a mythical beast in the grounds and plenty of twists and turns. Available here.
Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It? by Sarah Ziman
Although this book of poetry is said to be for ages 7 and up, I’m sure that there’ll be many Year 7s and 8s for whom lots of the poems would offer enjoyment, interest and food for thought, as well as being a great spark for their own writing. The poems are full of clever word-play, dealing with a range of topics, including school transition, family, food, clothes and poetry itself. Definitely one for a book box, and for teachers to dip into and share with classes. Available here.
If My Words Had Wings by Danielle Jawando
The protagonist is a young offender, coming to terms with the events that put him behind bars and trying to survive in the prison system. Jawondo pulls off the perfect balance of compassion for his struggles without excusing him responsibility for his actions. Along the way she shines a light on systemic racism and the difficulties for someone trying to make a new start on release. A thought-provoking book for adults as well as teens. Available here.
I Am Wolf by Alastair Chisholm
Thrilling dystopian future in which the earth is populated by giant constructs, mechanical creatures driven by the combined willpower of their human crew. First in a sequence. Available here.
King of Nothing by Nathanael Lessore
More hilarity from the author of Carnegie nominated Steady for This. Anton, school troublemaker, is forced to join the Happy Campers activity group by his mum to try and keep him on the straight and narrow. There he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Matthew, ‘the biggest loser in school’. Available here.
Apolcalypse Cow by Or Sorrel
It’s a comedy, an LGBTQ+ romance and a climate apocalypse tragedy. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Completely inappropriate and absolutely hilarious. Yr9+. Available here.
Rebel Skies by Ann Sei Linn
First in an excellent trilogy. Fantasy adventure interwoven with elements of Japanese culture. Reminiscent of a Studio Ghibli film. Available here.
Hope Ablaze by Sarah Mughal Rana
Told through alternating sections of prose and poetry this is a book full of warmth which does not shy away from difficult issues such as Islamophobia. Available here.
Girls by Annet Schaap
Brilliantly dark retellings of classic fairy tales that read like a YA Angela Carter. Available here.
