The Importance of Reading:
There are numerous quotes on the importance of reading. We read for enjoyment and pleasure, knowledge and inspiration, connectedness and companionship, nurture and solace.
Here is a selection:
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book. When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. W. Somerset Maugham – Books and You
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours. Alan Bennett – The History Boys
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. James Baldwin
A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. Abraham Lincoln
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. Ray Bradbury
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. Mortimer J. Adler
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. Annie Dillard
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you are not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong. F. Scott Fitzgerald
My List of Books for 2025:
Colm Toibin – Brooklyn
David Baldacci – To Die For
Elias Chacour – Blood Brothers
Tim Winton – Juice
Flora Thompson – Lark Rise to Candleford
Satoshi Yagisawa – Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
Chris Hammer – The Valley
Christine Pedley – Facing the Unfathomable
Iris Murdoch – The Sea, The Sea
Clancy Martin – Portrait of a Suicidal Mind
Percival Everett – James
Jonas Jonasson – The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
Jonas Jonasson – The Prophet and the Idiot
Peter Heller – Burn
Richard E. Grant – A Pocketful of Happiness
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – Matters of the Heart
Kate Kennedy – Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound
John Banville – The Sea
Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie
Wendy Holden – The Teacher of Auschwitz
Geraldine Brooks – Memorial Days
Alan Bennett – Killing Time
Evelyn Waugh – Scoop
David Baldacci – Strangers in Time
Laurie Lee – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Leif Enger – Virgil Wander
Haruki Murakami – The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Ryan Holiday – Right Thing, Right Now
Anthony Trollope – Harry Heathcote of Gangoil
Alexander McCall Smith – Tears of the Giraffe
Andrey Kurkov – Diary of an Invasion
Jonas Jonasson – The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man
Alexander McCall Smith – The No.1. Ladies’ Detective Agency
Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood
Evie Woods – The Lost Bookshop
Jean Giono – The Man Who Planted Trees
Alan Jacobs – How to Think: A Guide for the Perplexed
Alexander McCall Smith – Morality for Beautiful Girls
Jack Deere – Even in Our Darkness
Alexander McCall Smith – The Kalahari Typing School for Men
Eowyn Ivey – The Snow Child
Chris Whitaker – All the Colours of the Dark
Alexander McCall Smith – In the Time of Five Pumpkins
Tony Park – Die By the Sword
Timothy Keller – The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness
Zoulfa Katouh – As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow
William McInnes – It’s a Scorcher
Alexander McCall Smith – Blue Shoes and Happiness
Satashi Yagisawa – Days at the Torunka Café
Armando Lucas Correa – The Daughter’s Tale
Tracey Roland (compiled by) – Remembering George Cardinal Pell
Brene Brown – Strong Ground
Alexander McCall Smith – The Full Cupboard of Life
Alexander McCall Smith – In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
Total books read: 55
Five of the Best:
Percival Everett was born in 1956. He is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
James is a novel, a retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the point of view of Jim, the runaway slave who joins Huck on his journey down the Mississippi river.
‘At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.’ Percival Everett
Kate Kennedy is one of the foremost critics of twentieth-century music of her generation. She is an Associate of the English Faculty at Oxford, where she lectures on twentieth-century literature and biography.
In Cello, Kate Kennedy weaves together the lives of four remarkable cellists – Jewish cellist Pál Hermann, Lise Cristiani, thought to be the first female professional cello soloist, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz, and Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste piano trio – who suffered various forms of persecution, injury and misfortune.
‘Any cello with a history hums with audible ghosts; but a new cello is a ‘tabula rasa,’ with no history to hold, no memories in its sound, no repetitious practice inscribed on its body. It can take years before a new instrument has grown fully into its wooden skin.’ Kate Kennedy
‘A cello has no language, yet it possesses a vocabulary wide enough to tell, bear witness, and make connections across time and continents.’ Kate Kennedy
Peter Heller is an award winning fiction writer who lives with his wife in Colorado. He is a passionate outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker.
Burn is novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence.
‘Jess knew that Storey was crying for the dog and the girl and for his own daughters and wife, and for the odds of getting home to find them safe or getting home at all. Jess stepped back into the shade of a pine and let the grieve. They were in no hurry now. No hurry when the compass is spinning. When you are rooted to the earth. When living means taking a step but you have no idea toward what. You are alone under the wheeling season, and the best memories are drained by loss.’ Peter Heller
Jonas Jonasson is a Swedish journalist and writer, best known as the author of the best-seller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. He lives on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared begins as follows: ‘Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn’t want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be there. But, as it turns out, Allan will not . . . Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway.’
‘Allan cut across the churchyard to the south, until a stone wall appeared in his path. It wasn’t more than three feet high, but Allan was a centenarian, not a high jumper. On the other side was Malmköping’s bus station and the old man suddenly realized that his rickety legs were taking him towards a building that could be very useful. Once, many years earlier, Allan had crossed the Himalayas. That was no picnic. Allan thought about that experience now, as he stood before the last hurdle between himself and the station. He considered the matter so intently that the stone wall in front of his eyes seemed to shrink. And when it was at its very lowest, Allan crept over it, age and knees be damned.’ Jonas Jonasson
‘When life has gone into overtime it’s easy to take liberties.’ Jonas Jonasson
Zoulfa Katouh is a Canadian with Syrian roots based in Switzerland. She is currently pursuing her master’s in Drug Sciences. She is an author of young adult fiction. Her debut novel, As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow, was published in 2022.
As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow is an epic, emotional, breathtaking story of love and loss set in Homs in Syria during the civil war. This is a novel about hope, but also desperation – the desperation that forces people to flee from their homes, family, and country that they love so dearly.
‘No matter what happens you remember that this world is more than the agony it contains.’ Zoulfa Katouh
‘Grief isn’t constant. It wavers tugging and letting go like the waves on the sea.’ Zoulfa Katouh
‘Don’t focus on the darkness and sadness… If you do, you won’t see the light even if it is staring you in the face.’ Zoulfa Katouh
Hope For Tomorrow 
Hi Bruce,
Some books to add to the list, thank you. I really enjoyed Juice. I still think about it.
In 2025 I read a book that will probably remain a favourite for the rest of my life, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Perhaps you could add it to your list in 2026?
In terms of non-fiction; Nina Simone’s Gum and the book I’m still finishing, Soil – are both standouts.
Lots of love x
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