Thank you for your book suggestions!

We were thrilled with the way you engaged on World Book Day. Many of you are clearly well read and you made such interesting recommendations for things others should read. I’ve summarised the list of suggestions below so you can see what everyone else is recommending that you read! It’s certainly a varied and interesting list. What’s even better is that we have quite a few of these in the Library already that you can either read online or borrow in print. I’ve linked to the ebooks and the catalogue records for these print books below.

Don’t forget the public library

If you haven’t yet joined the public library in Portsmouth, they have some of the best fiction collections around and you can join and borrow from them absolutely for free!

The books you recommended

Fiction

• Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Read it through your library now!)
• The alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• Warrior cats (series)
• Watership Down (pulls no punches) (Borrow it from your library now!)
• Brick Lane – Monica Ali (Borrow it from your library now!)
• Flat Stanley
• The children of Hurin – JRR Tolkien
• Souls unfractured – Tillie Cole (“very dark and traumatic but also beautiful”)
• The glass castle – Jeannette Walls
• Going postal – Terry Pratchett (We have the stageplay version!)
• My Brilliant Friend series – Elena Ferrante (Borrow it from your library now!)
• The bell jar – Sylvia Plath (Borrow it from your library now!)
• When Nietschze wept – Irvin Yallom
• Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson
• 48 laws of power – Robert Greene (Read it through your library now!)
• The Nevernight Chronicles – Jay Kristoff
• A little life – Hanya Yanagihara  (“PS – you might sob like a baby after reading it”)

Science and business

• Case in point 
• How to run a limited company (Borrow it from your library now!)
• Introduction to VHDL programming

Art

• Geronimo stilton [illustrated children’s books] (Borrow “The temple of the ruby of fire” from your library now!)
• Flat Stanley  [illustrated children’s books]
• Archie comics 
• Manga (We’ve manga and books about manga in stock – check out 1000 years of manga!)
• Why art matters (“Good advice, good life lessons, overall good read”)

Social sciences

• Homo sapiens: a very brief history of humankind – Yuval Noah Harari (“If you love to read history, it’s a must read”)
• Rethinking socialism – what is socialist transition – Deng-Yuan Hsu & Pao-Yu Ching
• The will to change – Bell Hooks – “Will change your life”

Life skills

• The forty rules of love – Elif Shafak (“Do not go with the flow, be the flow”)
• Atomic habits – James Clear
• Jojo –  Johannes Radebe