Amber Ahmed
As we all know, university can involve a lot of (boring) reading, but I feel that as someone undertaking an English degree, it’s my job to show you a brighter side to reading, with books that you won’t want to put down and will be thinking about for days after you finish. Here are my top 5 reads of this year!
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of those books that will break your heart but simultaneously leave you feeling hopeful. It follows the life of Mariam and Laila in Afghanistan, who seem like complete opposites, but build a powerful bond when life pushes them together. What I love about this book is how real the characters feel. Hosseini doesn’t shy away from the raw, difficult parts of life: loss, love, and survival but he balances it with moments of such tenderness that you’ll find yourself crying (in a good way). If you’re looking for a book that stays with you, this is it. It’ll have you wondering about friendship, resilience, and how love can thrive even in the hardest circumstances, with many parallels to the university experience. It’s an absolute must read!
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
You may have heard of The Bell Jar, as it is widely considered a classic, and for good reason! It’s a very unique book, since it’s a retelling of Plath’s own life through a fictional character, a semi-autobiography if you will. It explores Esther Greenwood, a young woman navigating the pressures of success, identity, and mental health in 1950s America, and we follow her through her journey of finding a place in society. What makes this book so powerful is how raw and honest it feels. Plath doesn’t sugarcoat anything, showing us her spirals and breakdowns in full force, which makes Esther’s journey both heartbreaking and relatable in its own way. The Bell Jar feels especially relevant to us uni students. The book captures that overwhelming pressure that we’ve all felt to succeed whilst also trying to discover yourself as an individual. It’s beautifully written, painfully honest, and impossible to forget.
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone - Mahmoud Darwish
This book is a collection of poems, translated from Arabic by a Palestinian man detailing his lived experiences. It’s full of nostalgia, as if we are directly stepping into Darwish’s memories. He has an incredibly rich writing style and tenderly explores themes including the passage of time, heritage, and identity, vividly painting images in the readers head and evoking raw emotion. Even if you don’t consider yourself a huge poetry person, this book is a great place to start and truly showcases poetry as an art form.
Atonement - Ian McEwan
I first read this book 3 years ago whilst studying for A-level but constantly find myself revisiting it because it’s just so good. Without spoiling too much, Atonement takes place in the years leading up to and during WW2, and follows the life of Briony, a young girl who makes a mistake that has long lasting repercussions that will always haunt her. McEwan plays around with the concepts of perspective and memory, particularly by switching the character narrative constantly- whatever it is you think you know, you don’t. If you were to only choose one book from this list, let it be this one, as it really has something for everyone. It’s one of those books that once you finish it, you immediately want to go back and read again, and the second reading experience is completely different. I can confidently say that Atonement is a modern classic, and I truly cannot recommend it enough.
Intermezzo - Sally Rooney
Last but definitely not least, we have Intermezzo, without a doubt my top read of 2024! Sally Rooney is my favourite author, so I knew I was going to love this one before I even opened the cover. It’s a powerful story of love and loss that navigates complex familial relationships and grief. Sally Rooney is known for her lack of a ‘plot’ and instead focuses on defining character relationships in tantalising detail, and this is exactly the case in Intermezzo. The story is quiet yet profound, focusing on the quiet moments that often carry the most weight in our connections with others. Rooney’s writing style is definitely an acquired taste, but her books really do stand out from others, there really is nothing like them.
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