You see what we review in the books pages each week, but what do the literary team read on their time off? Here is a glimpse of what we’ve been enjoying on the train, on the sofa, in the bath … everything from books that aren’t out yet to books we probably should have read years ago. We will update it regularly and hope that it will be a useful list of recommendations — with the odd unexpected choice.
Join in the conversation and let us know what you’re reading in the comments below — and if you haven’t already, make sure you’re signed up to our weekly books newsletter, which features news, reviews, literary gossip and even more recommendations.
Laura Hackett, deputy literary editor
Robbie recently scolded me for not having read enough 20th-century British women — and he had a point. So for the past few weeks I’ve taken on the not very arduous task of expanding my repertoire — and it’s been terrific.
First up was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (yes, I can hear your tutting from over here — why hadn’t I read it already?). It follows the young students of the eccentric Scottish teacher Miss Brodie as they absorb her very particular pedagogical style (“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life”). We know that something has ended Miss Brodie’s career and scattered the girls — but what is it? Hilarious but beautifully melancholic too.
• ‘Am I a woman or an intellectual monster?’ Muriel Spark’s peculiar genius
Another book heavy on the melancholy is Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, about an ageing lady who checks into a hotel where she intends to live out the remainder of her days. It is both mercilessly observant and also quite tender about the ravages of old age, seen at varying stages in Mrs Palfrey’s fellow residents. One is still on the lookout for love, another is battling incontinence. When Mrs Palfrey is helped after a fall by a young man, they embark on a great deception together. I was initially worried this novel would be too bleak to be truly enjoyable, but it has moments of real light and joy.
And perhaps the most purely enjoyable — the Cazalet Chronicles. I love Elizabeth Jane Howard’s mid-century English family saga so much that I’ve been rationing out the books, allowing myself only one each year. On holiday a few weeks ago I finally indulged in book four, Casting Off. It’s set in the aftermath of the Second World War, as our characters variously come to terms with civilian life, reach adulthood, make decisions they’ve been postponing for years and fall in love. Each of them is as lifelike as the last, and I finished it itching to move straight on to the next.
Ceci Browning, assistant literary editor
It seems I’m having a low-key love affair with translated literature this summer. Since reading Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection in January, a slim but delightful millennial satire, I’ve munched my way through Simone de Beauvoir’s novel The Image of Her, Cecile Tlili’s sharp French tale Just A Little Dinner, and the Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero’s curious account of Truman Capote’s spell in the small Spanish town of Palamos, titled The Difficult Ghost. My most recent dose of European prose, though, came from Barbara Isn’t Dying, an expertly crafted novel by Russian-German author Alina Bronsky, which follows an old man who must learn how to fend for himself after his ever-loyal wife refuses to get out of bed one morning. The characters, for the most part, are richly human, and as a portrait of stubborn resistance to change it rings true. I’d recommend it to anyone, but especially those whose elderly parents are stuck in their ways.
It’s always difficult to know which book to take on holiday with you when suitcase space is limited, so I felt pretty relieved last week when I realised that the novel I’d packed — Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee (published Jul 24) — turned out to be a really enjoyable read, and not only that, but maybe even the best divorce novel of the past few years. It tells the tale of a Chinese-American woman whose settled existence begins to come apart at the seams. First her husband takes her to an all-you-can-eat buffet at an Indian restaurant where he tells her that he’s been having an affair. Then she gets diagnosed with breast cancer. She decides to name the tumour after the other woman: Maggie. Both Maggies threaten to ruin her life. The premise might be miserable but the narrator is wonderfully witty and highly intelligent, making it a joy to read. A stellar debut novel.
Johanna Thomas-Corr, chief literary critic
Lately, I’ve been doing such an extensive tour of fiction’s more eccentric fringes that I’m no longer sure there’s even a literary centre ground for me to return to. There was Michael Clune’s surreal coming-of-age debut, Pan (published Jul 24), about a boy who believes the eponymous Greek god is trapped inside his body, then Ferdinand Mount’s dark comedy of manners about hedge funders, The Pentecost Papers, followed by Irvine Welsh’s cartoonish Trainspotting sequel (yes, another one), Men in Love (also Jul 24).
• Irvine Welsh: why I’ve turned Trainspotting into a disco album
But nothing has taken me as far out of my comfort zone as RF Kuang’s 560-page fantasy novel, Katabasis (published Aug 26), an epic adventure novel set in Hell. The Chinese-American author of the bestsellers Babel, a historical fantasy about empire, and Yellowface, a publishing satire, has written a story about two Cambridge University PhD students studying Analytic Magick who journey to the underworld to rescue their tyrannical professor after his gruesome death. Set in the mid-1980s, it’s essentially the trippiest campus novel you’ve ever read, like Dante does David Lodge, with strong hints of Lewis Caroll and Susanna Clarke. Kuang, who has studied at the universities of Georgetown, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale, is well placed to write her own highly cerebral take on dark academia. I’m still reeling.
I plan to use my forthcoming holiday to rediscover my literary comfort zone and succumb to pure pleasure (basically, Virago novels from the mid-20th century). This is partly because I’m keen to encourage my sons (11 and almost 5) to find the fun in reading. I suspect they have been somewhat put off over the years by the spectacle of me rolling my eyes and groaning at books I’ve had to force my way through for work. I’m weighing up a lot of works by women whose names — coincidentally — begin with E: Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Jane Howard and the more contemporary Elizabeth Day. I’m also always on the hunt for that elusive literary romance with a sweeping backdrop of social change. Think The English Patient meets Howards End. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
Robbie Millen, literary editor
I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction at the moment. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos. He’s a New Yorker writer so he’s got a good eye for detail, as he pokes around the lives of the billionaire class (there are 800 of them in the US alone). The strongest chapter, The Floating World, is about the popularity of super-yachts. There was a pandemic boom as the ultra-rich sought to sail away to safety from the coughing masses — a record 887 superyachts were sold worldwide in 2021. A superyacht, by the way, is 98ft or more. Of course, not all the rich are the same. Some can afford megayachts (230ft+), but only a few can aspire to a gigayacht (295ft+): there are about 100 bobbing across the planet. Although I’ve been enjoying it, as the pages flew by, I found myself ranting like Bernie Sanders…
I’ve also been immersing myself in King of Kings by Scott Anderson (published Aug 5). It’s an authoritative, well-reported and elegantly written account of the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. If you want to understand the turmoil in Gaza, Syria and beyond, then the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is a good place to start.
• I tracked a young wolf across Europe on a journey to find a mate
On a slightly lighter note, it’s been a pleasure to follow in the footsteps of Adam Weymouth, who follows in the pawsteps of a wolf called Slavc who wandered across roads and railway tracks and valleys and rivers, from Slovenia to Italy. Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe is a lovely, untwee piece of nature writing, full of incident, colour and nuggety facts.
What books are you reading right now? Let us know in the comments below
