A Thousand and One Books

The Fortress of Solitude is a novel whose central theme is the ability of the imagination to set you free, to open up paths to an unknown elsewhere. It particularly appeals to me as it speaks truth about my own journey, and how art and escape were inseparable for me as a child, and as a teenager. My wife bought me this book, knowing what it would mean to me. We decorated, we moved, we stacked a bookshelf, and I read it ten years later. Her judgement, as always, was perfect.

This is a heart rendering book about a young Scottish woman setting off on an adventure in the early 20th Century to a world completely alien to her Presbyterian background. It is a wonderful story of the growth of a woman’s inner courage and strength in a period in which woman have little or no power. Set in a turbulent period in the history of China and Japan the writer manages to bring humanity and compassion to life in the form of the diary of a very special woman.

it is a beautiful story. Touching, delicate, passionate, heartbreaking, intense. Like love.

This is my desert island book! With the people in these pages for company, you will never feel alone. This semi-autobiographical novel about a poverty-stricken childhood in Edwardian London overflows with loving kindness. Its theme, which starts hesitantly but steadily gathers strength and rises to a triumphant crescendo at the end, is music and its power to educate us – to lead us out into life and to make us truly human.

It’s a beautiful, moving and eye-opening book. It’s hard to put into words the effect this book had, helping me to view the world with a different perspective.

I can’t wait to see where this book travels to and hope you enjoy it too!

it’s a quick, quirky read that prompts you to question how you think about everything. Part science, part social commentary, this century-old book gets right to the heart of ignorance, prejudice and blinkered thinking.

Because this book is emphatically bonded to a special person and because it went along with me when I went to L’Habana (Cuba) for a long trip. Without any internet connection I could read it during my long relaxing night time, with great pleasure for my soul.

It is an incredible account of the indomitability of the human spirit and simultaneously of man’s humanity and inhumanity to his fellow man. The author even manages to see the person behind his captors, and is just as relevant today as when it was published in 1992.
I started reading it at 9pm one evening and couldn’t stop reading until I finished it at 4am the following morning.

This book delves into the contrasts between the frame of mind that centers on acquiring things and being an empathetic person more deeply engaged in the world. It looks at this contrast through personal psychology, world history, and economics, and points out that empathy will be essential to the future survival of humanity and the planet.

This is a story of human endeavour, demonstrating the consequence of making assumptions as we follow the characters subsequent journeys to break down barriers of mistrust to find love and tearing down walls of deceit to find truth.

Although written over 200 years ago, the awkwardness of family relationships, the complications in friendships and the rush to form those important first impressions, all have something important to teach us today.

It is a book that inspires me constantly.

I hope you will enjoy this bittersweet experience of loving and letting go as much as I did : a childless couple in 1920’s America discovering a special little girl, all of their own.
Best wishes x

I imagined this would be an important, but hard book to read as well as being a long one. It is very important as the author captures the tussle of the big questions we all try an ask of our own life. But and this is a big BUT it is not hard at all. This is an easy and wonderful read and so did not seem long at all. I think this book justly deserves its place as one of the greatest books ever written

This little question-filled book is big in ideas, innovative, and immense fun. A Thunk is a question (for children of all ages) that stops you in your tracks and gets you thinking eg Is silence a sound? Where does the sky start? Is black a colour? Is a wooden table still a tree? Get the idea? Then go thunking.

This is an adventure book which is my favourite genre. My whole class read it in primary school and we were all really in to it. It’s about Greek gods and demigods and a mix between those characters and humans which is really interesting. It is so exciting that it just makes you want to carry on reading and stay in their world.

it is a meeting point of three art forms: prose, poetry and drawing. The narrative takes place in Europe sandwiched between the two great wars. A vagabond wanders through the countryside and sees all of life’s wonders and contradictions equally beautiful and bewildering reflected back in the people and places he passes. A musing celebration of the complexity of human life.

I loved reading this with my youngest son at the age of 9. It epitomises empathy in the best way – by telling the same story from the different character’s perspectives. The parent’s love and pain was palpable. The main character August so lovely, and his sister and friend’s feelings so appropriately told. Gives heart to parents with kids who don’t fit the mould straight out of the box. It just takes a little human kindness, (and there is lots of it in the world) and they will be fine.

I like it because it is funny and magical. There’s a boy called Zack, and his Grandpa still thinks he is still in World War 2. He ends up flying a Spitfire out of the Imperial War Museum!

This was a favourite book as a child, and I’m delighting now sharing it with our granddaughter. Fantasy has been a great tool for me in my life, in good times and bad, and a great means of inspiration. May many more children retain their natural ability to trance into mystery worlds and magic solutions.

This was my first (for what I can remember) book, suggested by my fantastic teacher.
It’s a children’s book, but I still love it now that I’m definitively grown up. It makes me cry each time I reread it, even if by now I know each sentence by heart!
It’s a real/imaginary story about two intertwined lives.
It’s a whispered suggestion to silently listen to others’ lives and to learn to watch the world with their eyes, because that can change for the better your own world!

This book, more than any other, helped me make sense of my life. It reminds me of what “makes sense” every time I read it.

By showing how the system we live in is broken, but that not all humans are broken, this book tended to my broken heart and showed me that I wasn’t alone or crazy – that my grief was healthy and appropriate.

It’s exquisite writing executed with perfect restraint. A bizarre and haunting quasi-horror fairy-tale vividly narrated by eighteen-year-old Merricat. Her superstitions and rituals add to the agoraphobic feel of the household she and her family live in. A slow-burn, a spell-binding wander through the frailties of the human mind.