Twenty-one failsafe recommendations to get you out of a reading slump

If I had one of His Majesty’s finest British pounds for every time someone has told me they wish they were a reader—that they don’t have the time to read, that their attention span is shot to shit, that the thought of reading a book in its entirety is, well, completely overwhelming—I’d be flying business class from London to Sydney a lot more often. The last (and, sadly, only) time I did, I didn’t even get to turn left when I boarded the plane. I’d met the air steward at a party the previous summer and, soon after I boarded, he took me into business—before another air steward almost immediately tried to kick me out. It was mortifying; and maybe a story for next week’s Substack.

The thing about reading is that, like most things in life, it takes practice, dedication, determination and time—much like building up a tolerance for Prosecco (something I’ve mastered), or the ability to spend an entire sixty-minute yoga class without thinking about what you’re going to have for supper, or replaying that passive-aggressive comment from a former friend that happened twelve years ago but still lives rent-free in your head (something I haven’t).

And the thing with recommending books—particularly for me, who does it for a living—is that they’re such personal things. It’s a skill that requires the sort of precision that, if you make a dud recommendation, you could put someone off reading for life—quelle horreur. There are lots of books that I love to the very marrow of their bones—A Little Life, Gone with the Wind, East of Eden, The Color Purple, Crime and Punishment, to name but a few—but that I’d only recommend to a certain sort of reader. A Little Life, for example—boy, do I love it, I mean, I got a tattoo of it—but do I think it’s suitable for absolutely everyone? Absolutely bloody not.

So, now, onto the books that I would recommend to almost anyone. There is absolutely zero logic or scientific reasoning behind why I’ve chosen the books below—simply that I think they’re that good.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris