Readers on the books they love, and why.
On To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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 postBy anika.sultana · 7 Oct 2026
On Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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 postBy zubair_ahmed · 6 Oct 2026
On The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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 postBy anika.sultana · 5 Oct 2026
On Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
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 postBy mebmrauf · 3 Oct 2026
On Educated by Tara Westover
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 postBy emily.carter · 2 Oct 2026
On The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
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 postBy arif_chowdhury · 1 Oct 2026
On The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
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 postBy zubair_ahmed · 29 Sep 2026
On Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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 postBy farhana.akter · 28 Sep 2026
On Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
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 postBy rakib_mahmud · 27 Sep 2026
On Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
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 postBy priya.das · 26 Sep 2026
On The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
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 postBy imran_sarker · 24 Sep 2026
On Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
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 postBy arif_chowdhury · 23 Sep 2026
On Dune by Frank Herbert
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 postBy tanvir_hossain · 22 Sep 2026
On Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
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 postBy priya.das · 20 Sep 2026
On Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
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 postBy arif_chowdhury · 19 Sep 2026
On The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
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 postBy anika.sultana · 18 Sep 2026
On Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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 postBy emily.carter · 16 Sep 2026
On The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks
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…
Read the full postBy mebmrauf · 15 Sep 2026