Some books you finish. Some books finish you. These are the ones I still think about at 2am, for no reason at all.
There are books I would recommend because they are beautifully written, deserving of a place on an AP English Literature syllabus. And then there are books with words that change something in you. It is strange what a string of letters, once meticulously arranged with intention, can do to a person.
There are not many books that render me speechless. I am a quick reader; I can finish a 200-page novel in a day if the story holds me. But every so often I land on a phrase and have to stop. Not because the syntax is wrong or the meaning unclear, but because the sentence is so well made that it does not deserve to only exist on the page. I have to say it out loud, just so it can be heard in a human voice.
These are the books that still imprint on my mind.
The Great Gatsby
The golden age of jazz exists now only on history pages and black-and-white tape. This novel time-travels us back to an era where the champagne never runs out in the high society of Long Island. We meet the great Mr Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway, and as the story unfolds it begs a question: can you feel love between these pages?
Is what Gatsby feels really love, given all the devotion and sacrifice he makes for the golden girl, Daisy Buchanan? Or is it simply that she is the golden girl so many ambitious men chase after?
Carmilla
Obsession. Possession. Two words Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu understood better than most authors dared to in his era. This is a Gothic novella that predates Dracula, yet carries a tension far more suffocating, because the danger here does not arrive as a monster in the forest. It arrives as a beautiful girl who calls herself your friend. Carmilla is a study in how obsession and love can wear the same face, how a person can be drawn to the very thing slowly consuming them. The story wraps around you the way Carmilla wraps around Laura: slowly, tenderly, until you realise you have been held captive a little too long.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein
A contemporary romance between a man in his forties, high up in a marketing firm, and a 24-year-old artist named Cleo. What everyone assumes will undo them, the cultural differences, the age gap, turns out not to be the obstacle at all. The real trouble is quieter. It lives in the spaces between conversations, in the things left unsaid and the things said too late. This is a book that understands two people can love each other genuinely and still miss each other entirely. Miscommunication, it turns out, is its own kind of distance, and sometimes the longest one to cross.
Some sentences do not deserve to only exist on the page.
These are the stories we keep close, the way we keep the things we carry. If they live in your head rent free too, you are in good company.
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