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Bryony Gordon's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Bryony Gordon recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Bryony Gordon's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Heartburn

Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.

Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. The fact that the other woman has "a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you...
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Recommended by Bryony Gordon, Elizabeth Day, and 2 others.

Bryony GordonIt is important to find humour in the bleakest of moments, wherever possible (Source)

Elizabeth DayWhat I love about it is what I love about Nora Ephron’s screenplays. It’s the casually-worn yet acute insight she has into the human condition – particularly the female condition – and the comedy with which she explores serious issues. (Source)

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2

Your Voice in My Head

Emma Forrest, an English journalist, was twenty-two and living in America when she realised that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity.

Lonely, in a dangerous cycle of self-harm and damaging relationships, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist – a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the vibrant and dangerous tide of herself, and who would help her to recover when she tried to end her life.

Emma’s loving and supportive family circled around her in panic. She was on the brink of drowning. But she was...
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Recommended by Bryony Gordon, and 1 others.

Bryony GordonIt describes the beauty of therapy and the importance of it. (Source)

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3

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

'The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear'

Making its twenty-three-year-old author an overnight literary sensation, this story of isolated, lost lives intersecting in a small town in the American South is a masterpiece of humane sensitivity.

Ten new titles in the colourful, small-format, portable new Pocket Penguins series
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Recommended by Oprah Winfrey, Bryony Gordon, and 2 others.

Oprah WinfreyI love this book! I had heard about this book for years and then my dear friend Julia Roberts did an interview in O, The Oprah Magazine and she listed this as one of her favorite books of all times. The book I love so much—recommended to me by Julia—is The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It's a great, great read and not hard at all. (Source)

Bryony GordonShe wrote about what it was to be an outcast, a misfit, to be depressed, to be lonely. (Source)

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4

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is...
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Bryony GordonAs a teenage girl, you have to read The Bell Jar. It’s a rite of passage. (Source)

The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form)One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 (Source)

Tim KendallDespite its subject matter, The Bell Jar is often a very funny novel. Perhaps we miss it because the pall of Plath’s biography descends across the whole work and reputation. But The Bell Jar is viciously funny. There are people still alive today who won’t talk about it because they were so badly hurt by Plath’s portrayal of them. (Source)

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5

Reasons to Stay Alive

Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

"Destined to become a modern classic." —Entertainment Weekly


Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for...
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Recommended by Bryony Gordon, Ella Botting, and 2 others.

Bryony GordonYou know how they have the bible in all hotel room drawers? Well they should have Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive. (Source)

Ella BottingBooks have helped me with just about every decision I’ve ever made. One that sticks out to me was reading How to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. There’s a moment in the book where Matt talks about wanting to kill himself but not having the gusto to go through with it. And I’ve been there before, in pretty much the exact circumstances he describes. I thankfully got help and I’m all good now, but it felt... (Source)

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6

American Dirt

También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he...
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Recommended by Bryony Gordon, Jonny Geller, and 2 others.

Bryony GordonEveryone must read this book by @jeaninecummins. I cannot stop talking about it. I want to immediately start reading it all over again. Utterly magnificent. https://t.co/f3HHqddskD (Source)

Jonny GellerThink this the best (non Curtis Brown) book I read last year. https://t.co/NjKExF5dZ8 (Source)

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