Shelf Improvement: ME!

As a birthday present to myself here is my literary canon, alphabetical by author surname, one book for each year I have been living laughing & loving. That's correct, thirty books. Buckle up!!!

I am thirty today! Here are thirty books I love. NYT 100 best books who!

Hollywood’s Eve by Lili Anolik. Absolutely blew my mind when I read it. The subject of this memoir/literary investigation is writer Eve Babitz, who you don’t need to be familiar with already - I know plenty of readers who started here and went on to read Babitz afterwards as a result. One of the books that made me go I didn’t know you could write books like this!!!

A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel. This short story collection contains one of my favourite stories of all time, The Ages, and is probably the collection I reference most. The stories are charming, funny and strange. One for Kelly Link fans.

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin. Another short story collection, and one I read at university. There were a couple of books I was introduced to at university that I felt were worth the £[redacted] student loan debt alone, and this is one of them.

Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss. This is the essay collection that made me understand the point of essay collections and the beauty of essay writing.

The Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. This account of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and the ensuing legal battle to protect them later on is one of the most interesting pieces of non-fiction, and I think is an ideal one for gift giving - you don’t need to have any prior interest or knowledge, and the story is so well told anyone will find it compelling. A real crowd-pleasing piece of brilliant writing.

You Can’t Catch Death by Ianthe Brautigan. This short memoir is a masterpiece, and one of my desert island books. You don’t need to be familiar with the author’s father, writer Richard Brautigan, to be moved by it. If you have ever enjoyed any literary memoir, you should read this book.

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha. The excitement of discovering Cha and her brilliant amateur detective Juniper Song was one of those once-in-a-decade reading experiences for me. There are only three books featuring Song, so ration yourself if you can - but given I read all three back to back over as many days, that is likely to be quite a challenge.

Outline by Rachel Cusk. This novel, structured around a series of conversations with the main character, blew my mind when I read it for the first time, and is a piece of fiction I’ve gone back to over and over again. I find new things in it with every read.

Queen B by Juno Dawson. I read this in a single afternoon, and finished it walking along the street my lamplight and into a car, where I then hid under a jacket and finished the last pages with my phone’s torch so the light wouldn’t affect anyone’s driving. Completely compulsive and intoxicating, technically a prequel, but it works beautifully as a standalone snippet of historical fantasy OR as a much needed HMRC-dose while we wait for the third and final instalment, Human Rites.

Hide by Matthew Griffin. Another of my most-referenced books. A beautiful love story of two men who retreated to a ranch to live their lives in private as a young couple, but are forced out of their comfort zone decades later, requiring more support & healthcare than they can give each other as they age.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman. Like with the essay collection from Eula Biss, reading this book felt like really discovering the secret magic that excellent non-fiction is capable of. Blew apart and rebuilt my understanding of how we tells stories of the past, what we archive, and the physical object of a book.

Open Throat by Henry Hoke. Another lightning bolt oh you can do this with a story!! read. Remarkable and unforgettable. this novel narrated by a mountain lion living in the Hollywood Hills is probably the book I have reread most often, despite only being recently published. I never get tired of the journey it takes me on.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The other book I was introduced to at university that I think was worth all that debt, and my introduction to this fascinating writer and her body of work. Often published with a brilliant introduction by Zadie Smith that is FULL of spoilers - beware if your copy starts with that and make sure to read it AFTER you’ve read the book itself.

Dryland by Sara Jaffe. The best book written about being a teenager, I think, and one of my most recommended novels.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. I think this is the most recent publication on this list, and has become a major touchstone for me, both as an example of excellent writing and as a reference point for understanding the world as we find it today.

Oranges by John McPhee. The first book I read by McPhee, who has gone on to be one of my all-time favourite writers, and I think the first book I read that was published by Daunt Books, who went on to be my place of work. Jackpot!! Literally just about oranges. I love McPhee’s nonfiction writing so much - he can make anything interesting.

Recitatif by Toni Morrison. This is technically a short story, but was recently published as its own volume, so I am counting it as a whole book. Again, I read this at university - on photocopied sheets, because you could only get it in one hugely expensive out of print anthology - and felt like I had discovered Toni Morrison all over again from scratch. Incredible, and thrillingly now available in print again.

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor. I discovered this thanks to Fox Finch & Tepper, the publishing arm of Mr B’s bookshop in Bath, and I am so, so grateful for it. This novel follows the inhabitants of a tenement building in an unnamed US city, and I finished reading it for the first time on a train, in floods and floods of tears. I found myself on that same train a little while later, in tears again but this time after a breakup, and I distinctly remember thinking on that journey: at least I’m crying less than when I finished The Women of Brewster Place.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog by Kent Nerburn. The only book I have ever recommended to a customer who later came back to hug me as a result of reading it. Another touchstone of nonfiction for me.

Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi. And this one is a touchstone of fiction. Discovering Mr Fox felt like finally finding a book I had been waiting for forever, and reading it, it fully delivered on that high expectation and then some. Oyeyemi is a genius.

Blacklist by Sara Paretsky. Sara Paretsky is the author I have loved most for longest - her series of detective novels starring VI Warshawski are more important to me than maybe any other books. I spent a long time deciding which to include in this list, but Blacklist is always the first one I think of when people ask me where to start. A masterclass in thoughtful, vital crime writing from, I think, the greatest crime writer of all time.

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker. From one great to another - the greatest short story writer, I think, this time - Parker’s brilliant writing is always funny, which she is remembered for, and nearly always political, which seems to be less remembered. Her story Mr Durant is absolutely one of the best, maybe the best. The Portable also includes plenty of her criticism and poetry, all of which is worth reading.

Spellfall by Katherine Roberts. I couldn’t not include this book, now out of print, which as a child I read over and over again so often the cover fell off. I wanted to include a childhood favourite, and this won a heated struggle over The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine and Triss by Brian Jacques, although I suppose I am cheating by mentioning them here anyway.

Black Milk by Elif Shafak. This memoir of writing & mental health has impacted my life more than any other, I think. Therapy in book form, as well as being a very very good read.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart. This novel told in prose form, about an unhappy affair, is a heartbreaking firework of a book.

Northline by Willy Vlautin. This is another author who had several entries vying for inclusion on this list, but Northline has always been my personal favourite, for its tender portrayal of a young woman trying to build a life for herself - and the dream-sequence-esque moments where she has conversations with her imagined fairy godfather, Paul Newman.

The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead. A series of vignettes on the city, containing some of my favourite writing of all time. A beautiful portrait of a place and of people, and a must-read for anyone who likes writing about cities.

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas. Now sadly and, I think, shockingly, out of print in the UK. Joan has great success in her youth as a short story writer but, just as she begins work on her novel, family life and other priorities jostle for her attention. Years later, a shocking betrayal upends it all, and writing can take priority again. A beautiful novel, and one that I hope will continue to find readers. Don’t judge it by the cover!!

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. A book I love, and think of often. Worth your time, out of all the various books you ‘should have read’, and short.

Thanks for reading.

Elizabeth (she/her)

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