writers I should read

I haven’t had an appetite for reading in a while, because writing our book took up all my headspace and I was actually just deathly scared of accidentally plagiarising someone else’s work. But I’m getting on well with audiobooks lately, especially because I can just drink them while I knit. In 2023, I think I read 3 books? In January 2024 alone, I audiobooked 5. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, and Poor Things by Alasdair Gray. Now, with the manuscript submitted, I am ready to direct that appetite towards things that are going to help my own writing. After writing this story about an artist eating maggots and this story about Liverpool City Centre, I want to find stuff that is going help the writing I make get richer and weirder and more critical in all the right ways. So, based on reading last week’s review, The Largest McDonald’s in Europe, this is what our readers thought I should consume – (this is good reference for me but also a few people asked to see the list so here u go) –>

1. Concrete Island by JG Ballard
2. Territory of Light by Yukio Tsushima
3. Thinks by David Lodge
4. Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai
5. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
6. Arkady by Patrick Langley
7. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
8. The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate
9. Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Cesaire
10. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
11. All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt
12. Pearl by Siân Hughes
13. The Stranger by Albert Camus
14. Moving Mountains by Louise Kenward
15. Double Lives in Art and Pop Music by Jörg Heiser
16. Elena Ferrante
17. Vegetarian by Han Kang ✅
18. Do Not Disturb by Michela Wrong
19. Funny Weather by Olivia Laing
20. Paradais by Fernanda Melchor
21. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ✅
22. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
23. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeannette Winterson
24. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
25. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
26. David Sedaris
27. Where I End by Sophie White
28. Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri
29. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
30. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
31. Second Place by Rachel Cusk
32. Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

GREAT

Brb while I get on with a reading list perfectly tailored to me (i love our readers so much thank you kiss kiss)

Cheaper than going back to university which i am starting to want to do more and more, please stop me