know sometimes when you finish a book and you're just like i am now jealous of anyone i recommend this book to because they get to read it for the first time they get to experience this masterpiece in the way that i just have if i could wipe my brain clean and read that book again without knowing what's gonna happen i absolutely would because i get that a lot and i'm really hoping it's not just me i'm even getting it with the book that i'm currently reading this is a lecture by jennifer saints a
nd i'm really savoring every page of it because i already know this will be on this list eventually but i have compiled a list of 11 books that i have this feeling towards because although i can't read these again for the first time you maybe can so this is my offering this is my gift to you keep the receipt in case you want to return it but before we dive into this video i'm very excited to let you know that it's kindly brought to you by skillshare now skillshare is a platform for curious and c
reative people with literally hundreds of fascinating courses that you can take they are designed and curated by experts in their field literally sharing their skills yes you see you get it now with the books that i'm going to be talking about today the authors have nailed creating a captivating plot and there's a course for doing that too for example the author gail forman has this great course on different exercises you can do to discover and write your fictional story i really enjoyed taking
this course and it's taught me a lot as a writer as well but you can also learn things like photography graphic design looking after house plants literally everything is there and all in one place so now is the perfect time to start investing in yourself and your personal growth and if that sounds like something you'd be interested in then you're in luck because of the first 1 000 people to click the link in my description box we'll get a one month free trial of skillshare premium you can go and
join a huge learning community with lessons that you can do completely at your own pace and in your own time so thank you so much skillshare and enjoy now for some books that i would sell my soul to read again for the first time starting with book number one death of a salesman by arthur miller more like death of my goal not to cry today this is so sad it is heart-wrenching it's actually a play but it's also so great to read because every line is just crafted immaculately the sentences are writ
ten so beautifully so symbolically literally right from the opening line arthur miller had me in the palm of his hand miller actually wrote this as a tragedy of the common man because tragedies up until this point had often focused on kings or gods or battle heroes think shakespeare or greek tragedies but in this book we're just focusing on a very ordinary man just doing his best for his family he's devoted his life to his career as a salesman but slowly begins to realize that he's actually expe
ndable he's a completely disposable member of staff and it's also about the moment that his children realize that he is flawed that he's a real person he's not a god amongst men he is just mortal and a huge theme in this book is perception and self perception another huge theme is denial and full senses of grandeur and each character is just so intricately and intimately created they are perfect and there are scenes in this play that i will just never ever forget especially the ending they don't
just tug at the heartstrings they literally yank them and in my reading every day i choose suffering so i loved this book next up we have piranesi by susanna clarke so enchanting and mesmerizing and unlike anything i have ever read before the main character pironisi gets his name from an italian painter who is known for his observation skills and his perceptiveness and our character is living in this huge expansive house it's all a bit mysterious at first it's like this huge labyrinth of halls
and statues and day by day piranesi is walking around taking notes of all of his surroundings he makes really careful records of everything that goes on and everything that he sees i know this doesn't sound good but trust me the payoff is huge and we slowly start to learn that this world that is all he knows maybe isn't quite what it seems i actively don't want to say too much because you just have to read this for yourself and fall into it and going in not knowing too much actually makes the wh
ole experience better so i don't want to say too much really this book is a study in solitude and the moment literally the second i put this book down i was jealous of anyone else who would get to read this for the first time i will say that the beginning is deliberately very confusing it's like one of those moments where you're like i am reading the words and i have no idea what is happening in them but trust me please please please stick with it once the fog starts to lift and things become cl
earer it is spellbinding and if you want to take my word for it this book actually won the women's prize last year so she's critically acclaimed and also i love it i love her never let me go is another one of those books where you slowly start to realize that everything is not what it seems it's a quote wizards of waverly placed this is by kazuo ishiguro who won the nobel prize for literature and rightly so this book is a kind of dystopian sci-fi but like the sci-fi is very very light set in an
alternative 1990s england it's about social alienation betrayal how vulnerable people in society are treated and handled by their carers and we follow these people who are at a boarding school and they're being taught about art and literature and their bodies but not a lot about the outside world and that's what i'm going to say um this is kind of like edging you a little bit literary edging home fire by kamila shamsie is a book that just blew me away the first time i read it it's actually a ret
elling of the play antigone but instead centering british muslims so on one hand we have a conservative politician who has essentially made a career for himself as a home secretary by rejecting and denouncing his own muslim heritage and essentially scaremongering the public to stay in power and his son actually gets into a relationship with a muslim girl now this girl immigrated to the uk after her father became radicalized as a jihadi in their homeland so he also followed this family who were j
ust horrified by their father's actions but her twin brother then also gets caught up in the wrong crowd and so the book covers these two families who intertwine and it's all about intergenerational tension especially that between children and their fathers because we have these two very different fathers who traumatize their kids in very different ways there's also a kind of romeo and juliet forbidden love story it's about hostile environments created by the uk government it's about family and
identity it's about radicalization and there's a huge huge climax it is so well written so moving on and next we have the beast itself a little life now i actually made a whole reading vlog about my experience of reading this book on my second channel which i'll give you a little highlights real love now did i finish this book or did this book finish me the happy years guys the years were not happy tanya yanagihara is making me care about these people and then she's going to destroy them it's an
emotional rollercoaster something just happened which has devastated me i'm a mess i feel like numb i don't think i'll ever recover [Music] so as you can see this book hit me like mohammed ali there's definitely a strong correlation between books that make me want to sob and books that have ended up on this list anyway this is a story about a group of friends a group of men who live in new york and we follow them over the whole course of their lives and even though it's a big book hanya yanagih
ara really gives them the space to develop in a really meaningful way we follow their relationships their trauma and you know when a sentence just hits you in the pit of your stomach yeah that happens in here on like every other page so just be prepared for that they feel tangibly real not a word is wasted but just a warning that if you do have triggers when reading books i would highly recommend reading the trigger warning list for this book because it's probably gonna be in there not gonna lie
speaking of which earthlings holy hell earthlings this book by sayaka morata is so shocking but like in a good way not shockingly bad shockingly absurd i experienced a really visceral and physical response to it like it was making my whole body tense and cringed by how wild it is and also quite disgusting at times but i think that that's a sign of amazing writing to have that response and evoke something like that in you with just words on a page again it's a book where the whole point is the t
wists and turns and surprises so i can't spoil too much take a shot for every time i say that and you will be hammered but on absolute surface value it's about these cousins who believe that they don't belong in society to such an extent that they actually start to think of themselves as aliens from another planet whether that's true or not and as these aliens from society they begin to sort of prove this to themselves by doing horrifying things that go against traditional codes and conventions
and things that are morally accepted by the general mainstream of people they want to prove that they are different from the earthlings and so do things that will shock you to your very core i hope that tells you all that you need to know i'm telling you without telling you this is translated from japanese and i absolutely adore sayaka morata's writing i think she's one of the brightest literary talents that we have writing books right now and earthlings is out of this world okay so that's very
contemporary now let's do some classics the picture of dorian gray is one of my absolute favorites oscar wilde did what needed to be done he put in a shift with this one ironically actually this book is about selling your soul so very fitting for this video it's about fading beauty about morality about sinning about hedonism it is literally a book about painting of a guy called dorian gray but there's so much more it's a little bit gothic a little bit philosophical a little bit camp and such a r
eadable classic i'm a big fan of this one next we have the good soldier this is set just before the first world war and we basically followed two couples fun fact it was actually originally titled the saddest story but then given the context of the war the title was changed so the title is actually kind of ironic the original title the saddest story probably gives you a better insight into what goes down but aside from that this is essentially the ultimate unreliable narrator story because the n
arrative is told to us in a non-chronological non-linear way through a series of flashbacks and it's intentionally very misleading and also intentionally very convoluted and confusing and our narrator is kind of depicting himself as a passive voyeur an observer someone who doesn't have any guilt in the situation but you start to realize that he might just be manipulating you as the reader he is the original gaslighter and there's also a little bit of adultery which is always fun the talented mr
ripley is such an unforgettable novel it's all about performance and deception and also envy and it centers around quite an elaborate crime it simultaneously keeps you on your toes and knocks you off your feet because you never know if the character that we're following is going to be caught for the crime that he has committed and you know what i kind of just really enjoyed reading a book from the perspective of the villain i think it makes a nice change this is my joker and to give you a kind o
f top line description we essentially follow a man who becomes obsessed with an affluent man in italy and it's a really twisted story all about manipulation and performativity patricia hi smith i bow down to you this is genius now speaking of obsessive let's talk about misery by stephen king this is a book about a famous writer who is kidnapped by his number one fan and we follow him as he's held hostage in her house and she forces him to write the next installment of his book series purely for
her own enjoyment and she's just a psychopath and it's just one of those books where you are desperate to find out what is gonna happen because the villain of this story just seems capable of just about anything and you can really feel the fear of our narrator so it really does stretch your imagination to the extreme keeps you right on the edge of your c and i think this is stephen king at his absolute best his name speaks for himself a king indeed and finally on this list we have one of my most
recent reads and that is the bread the devil need you might have noticed that i have not shut up about this book since finishing it i'm single-handedly running a campaign for this book to win the women's prize this year because i love it it has this really clever wit an unforgettable main character and it's written in creole dialect which does take a little while to get used to but once it once you do it really really elevates the story and for me the last 100 pages of this book were just so ex
cellent completely just knocked the wind out of me and i read it so voraciously and it's about a woman from trinidad who is just in her life surrounded by violence and you just really really root for her you just really want the best for this character and i loved the way that she was written she's so irreverent and bold and so strong yeah it's such a vibrant book i would really really recommend it and so that was my list thank you for watching watch mojo consider my soul signed over the dotted
line unfortunately i won't ever get to read these books again for the very first time but you can so i really hope this inspired you to go and pick up one of those books you're in for a treat my friend also i will say my honorable mentions for this book would be the seven husbands of evelyn hugo song of achilles and normal people which are all books i really really love they were so close but let me know in the comments section down below which book you would absolutely sell your soul to read ag
ain for the very first time because i want to read them you know i scratch your back you scratch mine we're all in this together actually if you're new here please do subscribe i'd appreciate it and if you're not new here and you still haven't subscribed i'm upset my feelings are hurt what can i say don't forget you can use my skillshare discount code or use the link in the description box down below i'll be back soon with another video and until next time all the best stay in touch have a wonde
rful day and bye bye
Comments