If that's your position, surely you should be advocating for any money for new gas/oil extraction to be invested in renewable infrastructure & grants/cheap loans for domestic upgrades. It's 1912 & the UK is investing in stables.

It's so funny when people get caught red handed & try to deny it. The selfie video detail is 👨‍🍳😘

28/28 My Friends by Fredrik Backman Still getting over this one. Second only to the Island of Missing Trees for constant emotional punch. So much love for this book. /THE END If you made it this far, please recommend me a book - I love suggestions!

27/ Drive Your Bones by Olga Tokarczuk A remote Polish reckoning, written so evocatively. Never mess with old ladies.

26/ Winter by Ali Smith Ali Smith's books are so unconventional, odd & never boring. I'm convinced her books will one day be used to define the era the UK is moving through. Winter is a my favourite of hers so far. Art, family, ghosts, lies & the mess of Britain running through it all.

25/ Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. A authentic exploration of normal humans in a normal place, warts & all. The writing takes something so ordinary & transcends it to another place.

24/ Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi A really ambitious story of race, privilege, slavery & colonialism told over generations. There's a real human connection throughout & it never shies away from the complexities of history.

23/ On Beauty by Zadie Smith Zadie writes characters so amazingly well. This book has a huge amount to say & does it so naturally without feeling forceful. Family, race, academia, class. A joy to read.

22/ Outline By Rachel Cusk A simple novel about relationships explored entirely through conversations. No plot. Fascinating & compelling.

21/ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte The book that made me realise that classic literature isn't anything like the boring period dramas on the TV. Bronte is such a great writer & Jane is a fascinating feminist icon navigating the constraints (& appalling men) of her time.

20/ Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi A Iranian coming of age graphic novel. Genuinely beautiful. If everyone read books like this, I'm sure the world would be a better place.

19/ Educated by Tara Westover A memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional prepper Morman family & a few hundred pages of pure WTF?! Also a moving story about not accepting what chance gives you & following your heart & head.

18/ Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A deep & very thoughtful story of race & belonging. Told across Nigeria, USA & UK. A very unconventional love story. Incredible.

17/ My Brilliant Friend / The Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante A brutally honest saga of female friendship, weaving in a community of characters, politics, Italian history & the changing face of Naples. Utterly tremendous. The ending is perfect & the writing extraordinary.

16/ Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick The history of life in North Korea told through ordinary people who escaped. Amazing to read such an intimate account of such an opaque country. Sad, moving & an important document on totalitarianism.

15/ Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Not at all what I was expecting. Morality, consequences & soooo many monologues. Would love to read a different translation one day.

14/ The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante A visceral coming of age story told brutally honestly as Ferrante does best. A complex story that doesn't go where you expect. It felt like Giovanna was a real person I knew by the end.

13/ The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak I don't think I can ever read this again. I spent most of the last third sobbing. Incredible, lovable characters & an emotional marathon centred around the Cyprus partition taring apart communities, friendships & first love 🫠

12/ The Colour Purple by Alice Walker Deeply moving, covering an incredible amount of ground. The emotional whiplash this book gives you by the end is extraordinary. Celie: greatest literary heroine?

11/ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Mind blown. Incredible characters, perspective shifting narrative & a huge heart. Lots of useful lessons for life too. Atticus Finch: greatest literary hero?

10/ Trust Exercise by Susan Choi It's a very long set-up, but rewarding. One person's story rewriting another's rewriting of someone else's. A visceral take on exploitation, trauma, consent & power dynamics. It's amazing that Choi made this work so well.

9/ English Pastoral by @herdyshepherd.bsky.social Such a profound book on ecology & our connection with nature from the unique perspective of modern farming. Clarkson's Farm this is not. The writing is sublime. I recommend this to everyone I know working & volunteering in ecology.

8/ Orbital by Samantha Harvey It's felt so odd to read a space book from such a poetically human perspective. I want to read it again, but somewhere quiet & isolated so I can soak it all in.

7/ The Trees by Percival Everett. His writing is so Vonnegut, but also something new. I loved Erasure, Sudo & James, but this was absolutely the best. So utterly dark, yet so funny. I'll read anything & everything he writes.

6/ Ashes to Admin by @christinamartin.bsky.social A wholesome uplifting authentic human book that genuinely made me smile & cry. I've passed it around. My sister made it her book club choice & it was adored. Of all the books in this list, I'd recommend this to everyone.

5/ The Outsider by Albert Camus What is normal & what happens when you take off the mask? I felt my perception permanently shifting while reading this. Extraordinary.

4/ Lanny by Max Porter Modern folklore in parochial England. Feels like a post-Brexit fairy tale - contemporary, menacing, but playful. We need more Max Porter - he is so incredibly creative.

3/ Weather by Jenny Offill A fragmented unravelling through modern worry, politics, climate, dread. Felt like being inside a burnout, yet cahartic.

2/ The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov A wild ride with a lot to say. Felt like climbing up a mountain, then running down the other side. I'll never think of the devil the same way again.

Just finished reading My Friends by Fredrik Backman. Sometimes the right book at the right time can broadside you emotionally. Some of the characters are clichéd, but that doesn't matter when the narrative & emotional foundations are so extraordinarily observed & written. #booksky 1/