Books – Books that I love

Steinbeck

East of Eden

by Neil.B.Ennis 18 September 2026 Shortlink

Title: East of Eden
Author: John Steinbeck
Written: 1952
Pages: 640 pages
Structure: 55 chapters, split into four parts

Are we condemned to the life that fate allots us through our parents, our upbringing and the circumstances into which we are born, or do we have a choice over who we become?

East of Eden is a vast family saga that explores this question over several generations. It’s a huge book, but I didn’t want it to end. I turned the final page feeling a mixture of hope and despair about human nature, and about our capacity both to damage one another and to choose something better.

Kafka

The Trial

by Neil.B.Ennis 11 September 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Trial
Author: Franz Kafka
Published: 1925 (Posthumously)
Pages: 233
Structure: 10 chapters

Although I hated reading this book, I think it is great. It reminds me that it is not always the job of literature to entertain us, but also to challenge and confront us. I finished it shaking my head, asking myself “what have I just read?” and feeling angry about the abuse of power. So, on that metric, this is a powerful novel that is worthy of our attention.

Brontë

Jane Eyre

by Neil.B.Ennis 4 September 2026 Shortlink

Title: Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Brontë
Published: 1847
Pages: 624 (Penguin Classic Edition)
Structure: 38 chapters, originally published in three volumes

“Jane Eyre” is how I think the story of “Cinderella” should have been told. Through her own inner strength, an orphaned girl overcomes an abusive childhood and a tempestuous young adulthood, eventually finding peace, but on her own terms. She’s not rescued by a “hero”. She is the hero.

Le Guin

Lavinia

by Neil.B.Ennis 28 August 2026 Shortlink

Title: Lavinia
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Published: 2008
Pages: 288

Imagine discovering that you were a character in a story, and that you could converse with the poet who “wrote” you. How would that change you?

“Lavinia” by Ursula Le Guin is a delightful retelling of the latter half of Virgil’s Aeneid from the perspective of the Latin princess over whose marriage a war is fought, but with the added twist that Lavinia knows that she’s in a story.

Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale

by Neil.B.Ennis 21 August 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Published: 1985
Pages: 311
Structure: 46 chapters in 15 sections, plus “Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale”

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel about a woman’s experience in what was once the north-eastern United States after a coup has imposed a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. I found it both frightening and compelling, and could not put it down.

Proust

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1. Swann’s Way

by Neil.B.Ennis 14 August 2026 Shortlink

Title: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1: Swann’s Way
Author: Marcel Proust
Published: 1913
Pages: 379
Structure: 3 parts

Swann’s Way is the most challenging book that I have read, and the most descriptive. It is, however, merely the first of seven volumes in a work recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest novel. There is very little plot, sections of it are incredibly dense, with complex sentences that continue for more than a page, and it took me two attempts in six months to finish just the first volume. So why read it?

Tampke

How to Love the World

by Neil.B.Ennis 7 August 2026 Shortlink

Title: How to Love the World
Author: Ilka Tampke
Published: 2026
Pages: 336
Structure: 45 chapters in two parts

A large branch falls on a woman walking alone in the Australian bush and pins her to the ground. Seriously injured, in pain and unsure whether she will survive, she lies there over the course of a day while her life passes before her. She is forced to confront the question: “Why should you live?”

Dickens

Great Expectations

by Neil.B.Ennis 31 July 2026 Shortlink

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Charles Dickens
First published in book form: 1861
Pages: 672 pages (Barnes & Noble edition)
Structure: 59 chapters in three stages

How do our hopes affect the course of our lives? Can our “Expectations” change who we become? What happens when those hopes are dashed?

Great Expectations answers these questions through Pip, who tells us his life story, from his earliest memories as an orphan living with his sister and her blacksmith husband, Joe, on the North Kent marshes near the mouth of the Thames in nineteenth-century England.

Woolf

To The Lighthouse

by Neil.B.Ennis 24 July 2026 Shortlink

Title: To the Lighthouse
Author: Virginia Woolf
Published: 1927
Pages: 209 pages (Harcourt edition)
Structure: 42 chapters in three parts

On the surface, this novel describes a simple event: a trip to a lighthouse which is postponed, and then finally undertaken ten years later. But it is a rich experience which allows us to inhabit the thoughts and feelings of several different people over that period. I was surprised by how immersive that experience was.

Joyce

Ulysses

by Neil.B.Ennis 17 July 2026 Shortlink

Title: Ulysses
Author: James Joyce
Published: 1922
Pages: 1,040 pages (Penguin Classics Hardback)
Structure: Eighteen Episodes in three parts

What a strangely wonderful book!

I have never read anything like Ulysses by James Joyce before. I have no idea how to describe it in one sentence. Vast, intimidating, funny, life-affirming – it is all of these things, but crafted in such an ingenious way.

Conrad

Heart of Darkness

by Neil.B.Ennis 3 July 2026 Shortlink

Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: Joseph Conrad
Written: 1899
Pages: 188 pages
Structure: Three Chapters.

Heart of Darkness is a chilling story set in the Nineteenth Century about corruption and colonialism on the Congo River, told by Charles Marlow, the captain of a river steamboat. By the end of it, I wondered whether the darkness that Conrad spoke about throughout the novella was in our own hearts rather than in the dark jungles of the Congo.

Woolf

Mrs Dalloway

by Neil.B.Ennis 26 June 2026 Shortlink

Title: Mrs Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf
Written: 1925
Pages: 224
Structure: No chapters.

What does it feel it like to be a middle-aged woman in 1920’s London? Or a traumatised war veteran battling insanity? Or dissatisfied playboy who never really got over being rejected by the love of his life? Mrs Dalloway answers these questions in an intimate way, allowing us to dwell in the minds of different people for one day in June 1922, flitting from mind to mind like a telepathic butterfly.

It’s one of the most unusual novels I have read, and one of the most rewarding.

Eliot

Middlemarch

by Neil.B.Ennis 19 June 2026 Shortlink

Title: Middlemarch. A Study of Provincial Life
Author: George Eliot
Written: 1872
Pages: 912
Structure: Prelude, 86 Chapters, Finale, in eight “Books”.

Middlemarch surprised me. It’s brilliantly clever: intimate, and vast at the same time. On the surface it is about life in a small provincial town in the English Midlands around 1830, but under the surface it explores the hopes, motivations and frustrations of people just like us. We can understand what drives each of the characters, even though we may disagree with them. The result feels more than a story, it is almost a detailed philosophy our own minds.

Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

by Neil.B.Ennis 12 June 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Author: Thornton Wilder
Written: 1927
Pages: 255
Structure: Five Parts

In this beautiful novel, an Inca rope bridge collapses in Peru in 1714, killing five people. This leads the priest who witnessed the disaster to ask questions about the lives of the victims as he tries to come to terms with why God allowed these people to die.

Austen

Northanger Abbey

by Neil.B.Ennis 5 June 2026 Shortlink

Title: Northanger Abbey
Author: Jane Austen
Written: 1799
Published: 1818 (Posthumously)
Pages: 251
Structure: 31 Chapters in two volumes

Northanger Abbey is a delightful coming-of-age story about a young woman exploring the world of eighteenth-century England. Although it is both comical and satirical, I was surprised at how engaged I became with the heroine.

Saint-Exupéry

The Little Prince

by Neil.B.Ennis 29 May 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Written: 1943
Pages: 160
Structure: A novella with 27 Chapters

Is this a children’s book, or is it a masterfully written work of philosophy which challenges the way we observe the world? Either way you approach it, “The Little Prince” is a magical creation which has much to teach those who are either young, or young at heart.

Vonnegut

Cat’s Cradle

by Neil.B.Ennis 22 May 2026 Shortlink

Title: Cat’s Cradle
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Written: 1963
Pages: 306
Structure: A novel with 127 Chapters

Cat’s Cradle is a fascinating story about the end of the world, told with Kurt Vonnegut’s classic dry wit and gentle sarcasm.

Picoult

The Book of Two Ways

by Neil.B.Ennis 15 May 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Book of Two Ways
Author: Jodi Picoult
Written: 2020
Pages: 417
Structure: A novel in 15 Chapters plus notes and bibliography

What does it mean to live a good life? What is a good death? Is there only one true path for us to follow, or are there a variety of good decisions that we can make? “The Book of Two Ways” explores these ideas in the context of Egyptology, Quantum Mechanics, and tangled relationships.

Leggett

In Dreams

by Neil.B.Ennis 8 May 2026 Shortlink

Title: In Dreams and other stories
Author: Andrew Leggett
Written: 2026
Pages: 211
Structure: A novel in 24 chapters, plus seven short stories

Set in inner-city Brisbane, In Dreams is both beautiful and deeply unsettling. It combines lyrical poetry with scenes of shocking violence, all wrapped in an atmosphere of gathering dread.

Dostoyevsky

The Idiot

by Neil.B.Ennis 1 May 2026 Shortlink

Title: The Idiot (Идиот)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Written: 1869
Translator: David McDuff (2004)
Pages: 732 Pages
Structure: 4 “Parts”, each consisting of up to sixteen chapters

Is it possible to live a perfectly good and innocent life in a hostile society? If you did, what sort of effect would you have on the world? How would it affect you?

In “The Idiot”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky asks these painful questions by placing a simple but good man in the midst of the worldly selfishness of nineteenth century Russia, and then examining the consequences of the ensuing conflict.