Thursday 5^th March is World Book Day – a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and most importantly: reading. Thousands of schools across the country will be taking part in World Book Day activities such as dressing up as book characters to get more young people engaged in reading books.

In the GCF office we love to read; the books we’re reading are often a topic of conversation and we’ve even started a book swap so we can share our favourite stories with each other. To celebrate World Book Day, we decided to ask around our Creative Associate Artists to find out their recommendations for books to read this year…

Selina McGonagle, Director of the Geraldine Connor Foundation recommends…

Girl, Woman, Other – Bernadine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other follows the life of 12 characters, mostly black women, as they navigate the world. Each character has their own chapter but their lives overlap and intertwine in various ways. Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019 for this novel, which Selina describes as having ‘beautifully clear characters’.

Emily Zobel Marshall, GCF Creative Associate recommends…

  The Mermaid of Black Conch – Monique Roffey

“Aycayia’s turbulent tale speaks of the secrets of the sea, of enduring love, eternal resentment, passionate sexing, persistent racial tension and the long legacies of the cruel colonial history of the Caribbean. It asks if magic can survive in the face of the innate human desire to possess, conquer, dominate or destroy all that is perceived as other or unknown.” – Emily Zobel Marshall

Ella Mesma, GCF Creative Associate recommends…

  Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie was one of the most anticipated books of 2019 and has been described as ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary meets Americanah’. It follows Queenie Jenkins, a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London and explores what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world. Ella says that this is one of those books that will keep you up at night with the need to continue reading, and described it as ‘a great book’.

Elizabeth Wells, Communications Officer for GCF recommends…

The Opposite of Loneliness – Marina Keegan

The Opposite of Loneliness is a compilation of short stories and essays written by Marina Keegan, a graduate of Yale University, that was published posthumously after she was tragically killed in a car accident five days after graduation. Keegan manages to capture what it feels like to be a young person on the brink of adulthood but also succeeds in writing about unfamiliar people and places with the same insightful prose. For a taste of her writing, read her final essay for the Yale Daily News here.  

Tim Smith, GCF Creative Associate Artist recommends…

 Small Island – Andrea Levy

Small Island won the Orange prize for Fiction in 2004 and has been adapted into a BBC drama (2009) and a stage play that was performed in the National Theatre in 2019. It is told from the points of view of two ordinary couples in 1948 London and Tim describes it as a ‘wonderfully written story of post-war migration from the Caribbean to Britain’.

 

Khadijah Ibrahiim, GCF Creative Associate Artist recommends…

The Source of Self-Regard – Toni Morrison

This book is a collection of Morrison’s most important essays and speeches spanning forty years. It examines culture and freedom, female empowerment, money, human rights and the Afro-American presence in the American literature. Khadijah has enjoyed many books by Morrison, including Song of Solomon and Beloved.  

 Khadijah’s own collection of poetry, Another Crossing (2014), can be found here.

Abigail Smy, an MA student from the University of Leeds, currently doing a placement with GCF recommends...

Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman

The myths of the Norse gods are spread throughout modern fiction from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to The Avengers franchise. Gaiman brings these gods alive on the page in a vivid retelling of the original stories from the theft of Thor’s hammer to the binding of Fenrir.

 

Dermot Daly, GCF Creative Associate Artist recommends…

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a classic example of political and dystopian fiction. Published in 1949, the story takes place in an imagined future of totalitarianism, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda. This is Dermot’s ‘favourite book of all time’, and it remains as fresh and resonant as it was when it was first published seventy-one years ago.

 

Kathy Dean, GCF Creative Associate Artist recommends…

Letters to the Earth: Writing to a Planet in Crisis

We are facing a global climate and ecological emergency. The letters included in this book are from a campaign called Culture Declares Emergency that calls on culture to play its part in telling the truth about climate change. They are letters to a planet in crisis from parents and children, poets, politicians, actors and scientists.

Let us know in the comments if you've read any of these books, or whether you have a book you would like to recommend!

Banner image © Tim Smith