Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter
Slide Nr 1Winter is coming, and the onset of unfriendly weather means you’ll likely be spending a lot more time at home. At least, “it’s too cold to go out” is the excuse you’ll be telling your friends, so that you can bunker down with a cup of tea and any one of these worthy new reads by contemporary authors.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 2Origin by Dan Brown. For: Eager thriller-readers and anyone who was fascinated by The DaVinci Code. Over a decade ago, Dan Brown became a household name when he published his highly controversial thriller novel, The DaVinci Code. His books have been bestsellers ever since, but his latest novel is the one you’re going to want to pick up. Brown’s main character, Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon, is back to take on another riddle-filled adventure. This time, the plot revolves around a futurist’s new theory that threatens to inflame the battle between creationism and science. The book isn’t a literary masterpiece by any means, nor does it attempt to pose as one, but boy does it make for a fun page-turner.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 3The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. For: Anyone interested in American history, fantasy fiction and historical fiction. Whitehead’s National Book Award-winning novel is more than worthy of all the hype it’s received over the last year. It begins in the pre-Civil War Southern United States, where the barbaric system of slavery is still in place. What makes this novel so groundbreaking, though, is the way the historical backdrop is twisted into a brilliant story that blends fantasy with painful reality. The Underground Railroad becomes a literal system of trains, tunnels and conductors that takes the heroine, a runaway slave called Cora, on a Gulliver’s Travels-like trip through the country.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 4Things We Lost In The Fire by Mariana Enríquez. For: Fans of masterful short fiction. Now translated into English, this short story collection from Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez has deservedly attracted both critical and popular acclaim. Enríquez infuses the everyday with a thrillingly electric quality, and her stories are by turn beguiling, vivid, startling and darkly funny. Some would also add “shocking” and “disturbing” to that list. The collection of 12 stories will make you laugh, make you think and, above all, make you marvel at the richness of her vision.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 5Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. For: Readers who like a quirky outsider heroine and oddball humour. Is Eleanor really fine? That’s the question running constantly through the one’s mind while reading this delightfully weird tale. Something awful happened to Eleanor earlier in life that has scarred her permanently, though for most of the book we don’t find out what that is. We get to see the world through her outsider’s eyes, where social interactions are confusing and pop culture nonsensical. It is Eleanor’s unique perspective on things that make us laugh – and think – while she attempts to convince us that she really is fine (but maybe not great).
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 6The Power by Naomi Alderman. For: Readers interested in gender politics; futuristic science fiction fans. Imagine a world where women – rather than men – rule the world. How is that possible, you ask? Simple: women in this world have the power to shoot electricity out of their fingertips. The idea of a gender role reversal has been tackled in literature many times before, but never quite like this. Author Naomi Alderman takes her readers deep, and challenges us to question the nature of power, gender and humanity itself. You’ll finish this book with more questions than answers – and that’s a good thing.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 7Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death And Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard. For: Eddie Izzard fans (of course); autobiography enthusiasts and fans of inspirational humour. There really is no need to explain who the legendary Eddie Izzard is, but if you’ve ever been curious about where the British comedic genius came from and what jazz chickens are, here you go. (Spoiler: there are no jazz chickens in this book). Izzard explains how losing his mother at age 6 pushed him to find success in show business, grappling with his gender identity, coming out as transgender and becoming a super marathon runner. You can’t accuse him of having a dull life.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 8Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami. For: Reflecting on loss and the human condition. Many expected 2017 to be the year when the miraculous Murakami would be crowned as Nobel laureate. Instead, it was Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro that claimed the ultimate prize. Murakami, however, is hardly short of recognition, earning critical praise around the world and loyal readers that identify with his enduring themes of melancholy and alienation – albeit with a wry and weary vein of humour. Men Without Women is a collection of 7 luminous stories that note the role that women exert on their male protagonists. Strong on atmosphere and typical of his style, this is an ideal starting point for anyone who hasn’t yet discovered Murakami.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 9South And West: From A Notebook by Joan Didion. For: Essay enthusiasts; Americana culture and history. Joan Didion is one of the best essayists in American history, so there’s been a lot of excitement about this collection of musings that came out of one of her notebooks from the 1970s. It records her experiences while on a road trip though some of America’s most strange and mysterious places in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. The book has a dark, gothic tone, as Didion describes encounters with people of the Deep South that seem especially poignant in 2017 and give character to a piece of the country that many never see or understand. Didion scurries back to California with an ominous take on the division between the western and southern worlds of the US that are creepily familiar.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 10A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré. For: Thriller fans; lovers of mystery novels, spies and intrigue. If you’ve never read a le Carrè thriller, you’ve been missing out. The British intelligence officer turned writer has been churning out spy novels since 1961 and is something of a legend in the thriller genre. His newest book takes on the past of his celebrated hero, British spy George Smiley, and his escapades from early bestseller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold over 50 years later. Le Carré’s novels are basically the definition of “page-turner”; If you didn’t know it before, you will after finishing A Legacy of Spies.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 11Forest Dark by Nicole Kraus. For: Anyone interested in the human experience (a.k.a. literature). Nicole Kraus fans know from her previous novels that she loves to weave different narratives together to find ways that different people connect and relate to one another. Forest Dark continues that theme with the tale of two different people, a 78-year-old lawyer and a middle-aged writer, who’ve each hit a rough patch in their otherwise successful lives. Kraus focuses on little moments in her two characters’ lives that seem ordinary, but also strange and unsettling at the same time, giving her readers a jolt when they’re least expecting it. If you enjoy a well-written narrative filled with deeper meanings, this is the one you’ll want to curl up with under a blanket.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 12The Accordionist by Fred Vargas. For: Discovering a great of contemporary French literature. Still something of a secret to many outside her native France, there’s good reason why Vargas is one of France’s bestselling authors. Her highly literate mystery novels have a charm all of their own without their innate humour ever seeming forced or overdone. Vargas is arguably best-known for her series of police procedurals featuring the eternally conflicted Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. However, her novels featuring ‘The Three Evangelists’ – archaeologists Marc, Lucien and Matthias – are just as prized among Vargas aficionados. The books are endlessly absorbing and engagingly idiosyncratic, and The Accordionist – her latest book and the third in a trilogy featuring the amateur investigators – is no exception. Read, enjoy and remember where you first heard about her.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 13Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris. For: Clever, random, humorous reading. Being allowed to read someone else’s diary is usually like getting a peek inside their personal lives and feelings – but then again, Sedaris never really seems to play by the normal rules. Instead of an intimate look at the comedic writer’s life, these diary entries are a peek into the real world through his clever eyes. Sedaris gives us random lists of odd things, snippets of conversations he has overheard, descriptions of people he observes at IHOP (an American pancake restaurant chain) and other such ramblings. There isn’t really a rhyme or reason to the delicious chaos in this book, which is part of why it’s so entertaining.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 14Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult by Bruce Handy. For: Literature theory enthusiasts; fans of children’s books. It seems almost cruel to take on children’s books as a literary scholar, but Bruce Handy’s writing style is so warm and inviting that you won’t even mind. His book is part analytical, part sentimental, reminding us of why the books we loved as children are so important – and how much of an impact they have on our lives as adults. Handy makes the case that the childhood memories stowed away between the pages of Charlotte’s Web or Goodnight Moon make them feel like a part of us, internal and sacred. After reading this, you’ll more than likely find yourself cracking open an old picture book that you knew by heart as a child…
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 15When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List Of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen. For: Poetry fans and young adults. You may have guessed this already after reading the title, but Chen Chen has an incredibly unique and unexpectedly funny voice that makes his debut work entertaining. He explores the meaning of identity, self-doubt, his relationship with his mother and his experiences as an Asian-American immigrant with a wit and charm that cannot be faked or learned. He effortlessly plays with words in a way that makes you want to cry at one line and laugh at the next.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
Slide Nr 16The Arrangement by Sarah Dunn. For: Rom-com fans. Ever wondered what it’d be like to be in an open marriage? This romantic comedy will have you laughing and cringing at the experiences of a New York couple trying it out for 6 months. Sarah Dunn, creator and producer of the popular sitcom American Housewives, brings her sharp writing skills to a novel that serves as an entertaining distraction from the real world. If you’d rather laugh than think about the latest depressing news, The Arrangement should be at the top of your reading list.
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Culture
15 Books To Curl Up With This Winter.
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