Bibliophile

Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you

A tale of wrongful imprisonment, escape, and elaborate revenge. Edmond Dantès is betrayed by his friends and sentenced to life in the Château d’If.

After escaping, he discovers a treasure on the Isle of Monte Cristo, which he uses to exact revenge on those who wronged him.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

A dystopian novel that introduces Big Brother and the totalitarian state of Oceania, where the government exercises extreme control over its citizens’ lives, including their thoughts. It explores themes of surveillance, individuality, and rebellion.

George Orwell

1984

I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.

Set in London during and just after World War II, the novel explores the story of Maurice Bendrix, a burgeoning writer, and his affair with Sarah Miles.

The narrative covers themes of love, obsession, faith, and the complexities of human emotion and relationships.

Graham Green

The End of the Affair

A critique of the American Dream, set in the opulent world of the East Coast during the Roaring Twenties.

The story follows the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, exploring themes of wealth, class, idealism, and the decay of social and moral values.

Scott F Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

Set during the Spanish Civil War, it tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American dynamiter attached to a Republican guerrilla unit. J

ordan is tasked with blowing up a bridge to prevent the Nationalists from responding to an upcoming attack. Throughout the novel, Jordan grapples with the brutality of war, the complexities of love, and the fleeting nature of life.

Ernest Hemmingway

For Whom the Bells Toll

A children’s fantasy novel that follows the adventures of Kay Harker, a boy who is entrusted with the magical Box of Delights by an old Punch and Judy man named Cole Hawlings.

The box has the power to make one “go small” or “go swift,” and to travel into the past. Kay must protect the box from the villainous Abner Brown and his gang, who wish to use it to disrupt Christmas.

John Masefield

The Box of Delights:

I refuse to apologize for my ability — I refuse to apologize for my success — I refuse to apologize for my money.

Set in a dystopian United States, the novel explores what happens when the world’s movers and shakers, the “men of the mind,” go on strike against the societal system that exploits their talents but offers them nothing in return.

It sets out Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, emphasizing reason, individualism, and capitalism.

Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged:

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

A political and moral exploration set in Vietnam during the French Indochina War, examining innocence and idealism.

Graham Green

The Quiet American

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there.

A dark comedy and spy novel set in Cuba before the revolution. It follows Jim Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent, who starts fabricating intelligence reports to earn extra money.

The book satirizes intelligence services and their use of misinformation.

Graham Green

Our Man in Havana

A story of a young man’s struggle to recover his honor after a moment of cowardice at sea.

Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim

A tale of the post-World War I “Lost Generation,” focusing on the disillusionment and existential struggles of its characters.

Ernest Hemmingway

The Sun Also Rises

Wilde’s only novel tells the story of Dorian Gray, a young man whose portrait ages and shows the effects of his sins, while he himself remains young and beautiful.

Seduced into a lifestyle of decadence and moral corruption under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian’s actions become increasingly cruel and hedonistic, yet his appearance remains untouched by the ravages of his lifestyle.

The novel explores themes of vanity, moral duplicity, and the pursuit of beauty.

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray:

A novel about teenage rebellion and alienation, following the experiences of Holden Caulfield in New York City.

J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye:

‘The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward. This is not a philosophical or political argument – any oculist can tell you it is true.’

Certainly it was true of him. He was no mere fogy.

A multi-volume biography of Winston Churchill, covering his entire life from his early years to his leadership during World War II. It’s a detailed account of Churchill’s political career, personal life, and the impact he had on Britain and the world

William Manchester

The Last Lion

The Great Game, as this shadowy struggle for supremacy in Central Asia came to be known, was to last for most of the nineteenth century, and only ended with the Russian Revolution in 1917. It was a secret war, fought largely by brave and resourceful individuals, and its battlefields were the passes, deserts and glaciers of the Himalayas, the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush.

On the 19th-century clandestine rivalry between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia as they vied for supremacy in Central Asia.

Full of daring explorers, spies, soldiers, and adventurers, it reads like a real-life thriller while explaining the origins of today’s “Great Game” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Central Asian republics.

Peter Hopkirk

The Great Game

A multi-ethnic global society is forming over and above the individual states. Entrepreneurs, engineers, bankers and scholars throughout the world speak the same language and share similar views and interests.

A narrative history of humanity, from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa to the present. Harari explores how humans have shaped the world through cognitive, agricultural, and scientific revolutions, raising questions about where we might be headed.

Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens

Cheap booze is false economy: it’s like being stingy with lubricant during anal sex; you’ll end up paying much more in the long run.

Hitch-22: A Memoir is Christopher Hitchens’ unflinching autobiography.

Part intellectual coming-of-age story, part rogue’s gallery of the 20th century’s most famous (and infamous) figures, it chronicles his journey from Trotskyist firebrand at Oxford to the contrarian, whisky-soaked polemicist who became one of the English-speaking world’s sharpest and most fearless voices.

Christopher Hitchens

Hitch 22