Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

A collection of essays covering subjects from loving and leaving, to self respect, and injections of random optimism brough to you by keeping a notebook. This is the kind of book that I always pick back up, and refer to passages like: "To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect."

It is analytical yet poetic, and even though a lot of the events that Joan Didion writes about refer back to a time before mine, I often find myself wondering how she so perfectly brings thoughts or feelings that I regularly and privately have, to life.

"See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some monring when the world seems drained of wonder, someday when I am only going through th emotions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write - on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there."

A Kick in the Belly by Stella Dadzie

"A Kick in the Belly by Stella Dadzie gives agency back to the people it belongs to. Putting women first, Dadzie teaches us how the enslavement of African people was met with resistance at many pivotal points, and how women, many times, were leading these initiatives.

I would say this book is an important piece of the bigger project of accurately rewriting and auditing what we have learned in our history textbooks at school.

Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull

Raucous, real, funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously. This autobiography is brilliant for so many reasons.

Marianne Faithfull’s no nonsense approach to recounting her story is as wonderful and as it is heartbreaking.

From her glamorous rise to fame, to living on the streets - there seems to be a different Marianne ready and waiting at each corner of her life to take on the next obstacle.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” I replied (there’s a little bit of truth in all kidding). “Don’t be so silly, darling. God, I thought I’d really lost you this time.” “Wild horses,” I said, “wouldn’t drag me away.” My mother was there, too. I think she’d been by my side the entire six days. Mick had been drumming back and forth from the movie location. Nothing stops Mick when he’s working, not even an attempted suicide! I wouldn’t expect different.”

Beat Writers at Work by The Paris Review

"Collection of essays on different Beat writers. Some interviews, a lot of the brubbiness and not so shiney but always fascinating personalities.

Like many, I have found myself, at one time or another, obsessing over these writer's lives. I enjoyed this book, but it was definitely missing interviews with these writer's female counterparts.

"A semester with Allen Ginsbery" was memorable and funny, a front row experience of taking Ginsberg's poetry class at NYU where Dylan and Kerouac made up most of the recommended reading.

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Short and powerful compilation of Maya Angelou's poems. A one sitting kind of read that has the power to replace your blues with warmer yellows. "Just like moons and like suns/With the certainty of tides/Just like hopes springing high/Still I'll rise."

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The first book that was given to me just two months after my Dad died. Me and sixteen other friends were visiting some close friends of ours in Amsterdam. My friend and host took me aside, midway through one of those classic dinner parties that end with everyone belting out Beatles ballots in the living room and where your hair gets caught on fire by a candle in the kitchen - and handed me this book. She explained to me that it was written by a famous American author who had lost her husband and who would tragically go on to lose her daughter. I had never heard of Joan Didion or this book, and felt slightly unsure about the whole thing but decided to give it a go.

I swallowed it up whole that weekend, from the very start when I found out Joan Didion’s husband, Gregory Dunne, died the same day as my Dad did to the end where it felt like the author had jumped into my diary and described such specific and strange feelings I had thought only I experienced.

“The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. He never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that.”

This book has helped me so much and has been a constant for my personal ebbs and flows of grief-related emotions that I now recommend it to any friend who is navigating their way through grief.

It was also the start of my complete fascination with the author, Joan Didion’s work, making me forever grateful and indebted to my friend.

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

I just finished rereading Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger. This book is written in a way that makes reader feel like they are watching a play but where the subjects and stories are real. There are very few scenes, but each is extensive and artistically informative with amusing and sharp dialogue that slices deep - mainly between just three characters.

Salinger invites us to take a deeper look into the Glass family - their accomplishments, their tragedies and to also question where we look for God.

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy

Ate this one up in a few gloomy, London commutes (remember those?). Beautiful book about Deborah Levy, finding a place to write and live, and essentially start over. Funny and heartbreaking, but mostly relatable. There was a wonderful account of a bicycle, an annoying neighbour and a turkey - but since I can't remember it, I guess you'll have to read it.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

I would be lying if I failed to mention how hard I sometimes find it to follow Zadie Smith's essays. But I always seem to want to come back for more. Feel Free is no exception, the essay that always sticks out to me is one about her parents and how they left behind a creative part of themselves to raise their children. And use an extra bathroom in their childhood home to engage with some of these lost loves. It's called "The bathroom" and is pretty great.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Apologies for the lack of creativity, but this is simply a beautiful book. I read it on a boat last summer, floating around and imagining the old man personifying the sea as a woman:

"They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought."