Readers on the books they love, and why.
On To Kill a Mockingbird · by anika.sultana · 7 Oct 2026
What I hadn't realised before reading it is how funny it is. Scout is a hilarious narrator. For a long time the book is just summer and neighbours and a scary house down the road, and that's what make…
Read the full postOn Crime and Punishment · by zubair_ahmed · 5 Oct 2026
I put this off for years because it looked like homework. Then I started it on a sick day and I couldn't stop. You know who did the murder from the start, because you're inside his head while he does…
Read the full postOn The Great Gatsby · by anika.sultana · 4 Oct 2026
The films are all parties and champagne, so that's what I expected. The book is under 200 pages, and most of what stays with you is Nick being tired and disgusted by rich people, and a man staring at…
Read the full postOn Man's Search for Meaning · by mebmrauf · 3 Oct 2026
The first part is about Frankl's years in the Nazi camps, and it's written without any self-pity, which makes it harder to read. He's watching what happens to people, including himself, almost like a…
Read the full postOn Educated · by emily.carter · 2 Oct 2026
A girl in rural Idaho, who never went to school, ends up with a PhD from Cambridge. It sounds inspiring, and it is, but mostly it's upsetting. The injuries alone, from the scrapyard and the car crashe…
Read the full postOn The Selfish Gene · by arif_chowdhury · 30 Sep 2026
The title has misled people for decades, and Dawkins has said himself that he might have picked a different one. It isn't saying we should be selfish. It says that looking at evolution from the gene's…
Read the full postOn The Catcher in the Rye · by zubair_ahmed · 29 Sep 2026
I read it at fifteen and thought Holden was the only honest person alive. I read it again at thirty and wanted to get him some help and a sandwich. Both readings are correct, I think. Not a lot happen…
Read the full postOn Pride and Prejudice · by farhana.akter · 28 Sep 2026
The first time I read this I was sixteen and I thought it was a love story. At twenty-five it was a book about money. Now I mostly read it for Mr Bennet, who I used to find hilarious and now find a bi…
Read the full postOn Brave New World · by rakib_mahmud · 27 Sep 2026
Orwell's future scares you with a boot. Huxley's is much more comfortable. Everyone's happy, everyone's busy, and there's a pill for the rest. I read it after a weekend when I'd watched about thirty h…
Read the full postOn Gitanjali · by priya.das · 25 Sep 2026
I don't read much poetry. I usually feel like I'm being tested. But I keep this one by my bed and read one poem when I can't sleep, and I don't try to work it out. I grew up with the Bangla in songs,…
Read the full postOn The Hound of the Baskervilles · by imran_sarker · 24 Sep 2026
A cursed family, a huge dog and the moor in the fog. Holmes is barely in it for a big stretch, which sounds like a flaw, but it lets Watson get properly scared on his own, and that's why it works. I r…
Read the full postOn Guns, Germs, and Steel · by arif_chowdhury · 22 Sep 2026
Why did some parts of the world end up conquering others? It's a huge question and Diamond's answer is mostly geography: which plants and animals could be farmed, and which way the continents run. It…
Read the full postOn Dune · by tanvir_hossain · 21 Sep 2026
I always tell people the first hundred pages are hard. There are made-up words everywhere, and there's a glossary at the back you will keep flipping to. Then somewhere around the dinner scene it click…
Read the full postOn Pather Panchali · by priya.das · 20 Sep 2026
Not much happens in the usual sense. A poor family in a Bengal village, a boy and his sister, an old aunt, the seasons going round. And then you realise you've been holding your breath for ten pages b…
Read the full postOn Thinking, Fast and Slow · by arif_chowdhury · 19 Sep 2026
This isn't a beach read. I did a chapter or two at a time, usually with coffee. Some of the priming research in the early chapters hasn't held up well, and Kahneman himself later admitted he leaned on…
Read the full postOn The Book Thief · by anika.sultana · 17 Sep 2026
I was ready for that to be a gimmick. Instead he turns out to be the gentlest voice in the book, tired and a bit fond of the people he has to collect. He also tells you early on who's going to die, an…
Read the full postOn Little Women · by emily.carter · 16 Sep 2026
As a kid I wanted to be Jo. Everyone wants to be Jo. Reading it again this year, I kept noticing Marmee, who admits at one point that she's angry nearly every day of her life and has spent forty years…
Read the full postOn The Mythical Man-Month · by mebmrauf · 15 Sep 2026
The hardware in it is ancient, and that almost makes it better. You read about a huge IBM project from the 1960s and then recognise the same mistakes in projects today. Everyone knows the famous line…
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