A saying I find myself using often is: “the days are long, but the years are short”. A lot of us get so bogged down in the daily grind and administrative nonsense of the modern world that we forget how quickly life is passing us by. These twenty books remind you that life is short, and you should probably the most of it (seeing as it’s the only one you get).
One Day by David Nicholls
Blurb: “When One Day begins, it’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. They face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Dex and Em must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself. As the years go by, the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed.” Read my full review of One Day here.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Blurb: “Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.” Read my full review of When Breath Becomes Air here.
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Blurb: “Welcome to sunny suburban 1960s Southern California. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. He is determined to persist in the routines of his former life. A Single Man follows him over the course of an ordinary twenty-four hours. Behind his British reserve, tides of grief, rage, and loneliness surge―but what is revealed is a man who loves being alive despite all the everyday injustices.” Read my full review of A Single Man here.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Blurb: “A pilot crashes in the Sahara Desert and encounters a strange young boy who calls himself the Little Prince. The Little Prince has traveled there from his home on a lonely, distant asteroid with a single rose. The story that follows is a beautiful and at times heartbreaking meditation on human nature and the wisdom of the heart. The Little Prince is one of the best-selling and most translated books of all time, a classic fable universally cherished by children and adults alike.” Read my full review of The Little Prince here.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Blurb: “The protagonist of A Man Called Ove is a curmudgeon. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.” Read my full review of A Man Called Ove here.
Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
Blurb: “In Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend.” Read my full review of Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead here.
Frog by Sally Gould
Blurb: “Behind the sirens and the life-or-death scenes, and the absurdity of non-urgent callouts, a paramedic’s career is very different to how most people imagine it. Based on years of meticulously kept journals, Frog is an intimate look at the human cost of the job and the cumulative effect of trauma. Sally shares a personal story that is searingly honest and truly inspiring, one which offers a heartfelt tribute to the resilience, courage and camaraderie that define the high-stakes world of emergency medicine.” Read my full review of Frog here.
Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
Blurb: “Life is full of twists and turns you never see coming. But what if you did? A woman traveling alone stands. She walks down the aisle of the plane making predictions about how and when passengers will die. Some dismiss her, they don’t believe in psychics. Some are delighted with her prophecies! Their lives will supposedly be long. Others are appalled. Then: a few months later, the first prediction comes true. Intricately plotted, with the wonderful wit Liane Moriarty has become famous for, Here One Moment brilliantly looks at friends, lovers, and family and how we manage to hold onto them in our harried modern lives.” Read my full review of Here One Moment here.
The Love That Remains by Susan Francis
Blurb: “After twenty years spent searching for her biological parents, 52 year old Susan Hull unexpectedly meets the great love of her life – a gold miner named Wayne Francis. He is a gentle giant of a man, who promises Susan the world. Two years later they throw in their jobs, marry and sell everything they own, embarking on an incredible adventure, to start a new life in the romantic city of Granada. In love, and enthralled by the splendour of a European springtime, the pair treasure every moment together. Until a shocking series of events alters everything. The Love That Remains is riveting and remarkably honest.” Read my full review of The Love That Remains here.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Blurb: “No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection. A woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: “Something has gone wrong,” and “How soon can you get here?”. As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.” Read my full review of No One Is Talking About This here.
The Vitals by Tracy Sorensen
Blurb: “Deep inside Tracy’s body live the organs of the peritoneal cavity. Ute, a wandering womb. Rage, an existential spleen. Gaster, a gleeful gorger. Liv, a workaholic liver. But there is also Baby, an ever-growing tumour, and Baby’s child Bunny, whose cells are multiplying alarmingly. The Vitals is Tracy Sorensen’s cancer memoir transformed by imagination into something far richer and stranger. Narrated by her internal organs, it will make you infinitely more aware of the peculiar world inside your body, and illuminate all the hidden parts that make you human.” Read my full review of The Vitals here.
Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales
Blurb: “As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories – and a terrifying brush with her own mortality – sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next? In Any Ordinary Day, Leigh talks intimately with people who’ve faced the unimaginable.” Read my full review of Any Ordinary Day here.
The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham
Blurb: “In The Dressmaker, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar. Through her fashion business, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. But as her dresses begin to arouse competition and envy in town, causing old resentments to surface, it becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is set on a darker design: exacting revenge on those who wronged her, in the most spectacular fashion.” Read my full review of The Dressmaker here.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Blurb: “Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.” Read my full review of Everything I Never Told You here.
Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry
Blurb: “In an extraordinary story that only he could tell―and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it―Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening.” Read my full review of Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing here.
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell
Blurb: “The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life’s myriad dangers. In I Am, I Am, I Am, O’Farrell stitches together these discrete encounters to tell the story of her entire life.” Read my full review of I Am, I Am, I Am here.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Blurb: “Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind.” Read my full review of Still Alice here.
Julie And Julia by Julie Powell
Blurb: “Nearing 30 and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell reclaims her life by cooking every single recipe in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of one year. The best-selling memoir Julie and Julia depicts this hysterical, inconceivable redemptive journey – a life rediscovered through aspics, calves’ brains and créme brûlée.” Read my full review of Julie and Julia here.
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Blurb: “Henry DeTamble is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time time-traveling abilities. Clare Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. The Time Traveler’s Wife is the celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Clare’s passionate affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.” Read my full review of The Time Traveler’s Wife here.
Year Of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
Blurb: “In 2015, Shonda Rhimes, the trailblazing creative force behind some of television’s most beloved series including Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton, took on a challenge that would change her life forever. She decided to say yes to everything for a year, and the results were exhilarating. Year Of Yes quickly became a New York Times bestseller, captivating readers everywhere and inspiring them to undertake their own YES journeys.” Read my full review of Year Of Yes here.
Leave a Reply