Recommended Reads #1 – Reading Matters

Welcome to the first edition of Recommended Reads, a weekly feature highlighting three books I think deserve a place on your reading list. Each is a book I’ve previously read and reviewed, so every recommendation comes with my personal endorsement.

I’m hoping this will be a fun and useful way to discover your next great read — or simply add another tempting title to your TBR pile. I’ll be publishing Recommended Reads every Wednesday, giving you plenty of time to track down a copy before the weekend’s reading begins.

Every week, I’ll recommend:

• New Release: a book published within the past two years, one that’s usually still available on bookshop shelves.

• Backlist: an older title that’s stood the test of time and is well worth rediscovering.

• Wildcard: anything goes! It might be a forgotten classic, a remarkable memoir, a gripping non-fiction story or simply a book I can’t stop thinking about.

For each book, I’ll share a brief introduction and point you towards the original review if you’d like to read more.

Let’s begin:

‘Woo Woo’ by Ella Baxter (Allen & Unwin, 2024) is darkly funny, surreal and bonkers. It follows Sabine, a highly strung conceptual artist, who is preparing for a solo exhibition. As pressure mounts, she teeters on the edge while juggling logistics, self-promotion, a stalker and the ghost of a visual experimental artist offering advice. Weird but sharp, it skewers conceptual art with knowing satire. It was my favourite read of last year.

Perfect for readers who love… literary fiction with a dark dollop of satire, unconventional narrators and stories about art.

**Backlist**

The Gardener by Salley Vickers (Penguin, 2021) is a beautifully observed novel about a bereaved woman who uses her inheritance to buy a rundown Jacobean house in a small English village. As she begins restoring the overgrown garden with the help of an Albanian migrant, she finds the work becomes a form of therapy which helps her come to terms with her own troubled past.

Perfect for readers who love… thoughtful character-driven fiction, gentle storytelling and tales about resilience.

**Wildcard**

Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000) is an unforgettable account of Levi’s political exile in southern Italy in 1935. Part memoir, part social history, it offers a compassionate portrait of an impoverished community at a time of great change. Written with extraordinary powers of observation, it highlights how fascism abandoned some of Italy’s poorest people and forced opponents into cruel exile.

Perfect for readers who love... memoir, history, travel writing and stories about dignity and endurance.

Have you read any of these? I’d love to hear what you thought — or what you’d recommend for someone else’s reading list.

Published by kimbofo

I am a book obsessive who has been charting my reading life online since the early 2000s.
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