Top five books to read in 2016

I was going to make a list of excuses for my lack of blogging, but that'd really just be a waste of our time. I have a lot to talk to you about, it's exciting as well. Brilliant and exciting.

I am going to break the last few months of my life down into the books I've read- that is my purpose here after all. Genuinely every book I've read lately has been so, so good in a variety of ways; from making me laugh, to making me cry, and even changing how I want/need to live my entire life.

This is a top five of sorts, although in X Factor style they are in no particular order.

Matt Haig – Reasons to stay alive

This is a life changer; a life saver in all honesty. Matt lives with depression now, but aged 24 it completely overwhelmed him, there seemed to be no way out. Except there was. The book (kind of) tells the story of the way out.

The novel is split into five parts; Falling, Landing, Rising, Living and Existing, and it's the most important book of the year. If you ever struggle with any feelings of depression, anxiety or generally just feeling low, I urge you to read this book, it will help you.

Sebastian Faulks – Where my heart used to beat

Faulks is one of the best writers of this generation, and this is quite possibly his best work. This sentence alone should really be enough to sell any book. But this is a look back over the events of the last century through the eyes of a psychiatrist ex-soldier – Doctor Robert Hendricks. It is at times quite bleak, and poses some real questions about the direction humanity has taken, but it is wholly beautiful, exquisitely written and heartbreakingly honest.

Matt Haig – Humans

Usually you're pretty happy with a book if it just stirs some emotion in you – a laugh or smile, or some shared pain explored with a favourite character. This book made me smile, laugh, cry, and contemplate my own existence throughout, but there is one particular section which made me do all of the above on one page.

Humans really is sensational writing from Matt Haig, and is the fictional story of a doctor who has solved the Riemann hypothesis. Which has incidentally recently been solved (that man better watch out, that's all I'm saying.)

Humans will make you re-evaluate what it is to be alive, to be a human, and what it is that makes us so extraordinary.

Harper Lee – Go Set A Watchman

How do you follow up one of the most important novels of all time? If you're Harper Lee you tell a sharp, subtle and quite unsettling tale of growing up in Southern America.

Scout Finch is home in Maycomb County, but nothing is as it should be, she has no place there anymore. She is on the cusp of adult life with some harsh lessons to learn; sometimes things aren't what they seem to be, people aren't who they seem to be, and sometimes we must push against our guardians, even our heroes, to become the person we are meant to be. Scout has to learn these lessons in the face of racism, mistrust, growing uncertainty, and a large uprising of hate. All of which is controlled and told perfectly by Lee; there is one scene in particular between Scout and Calpurnia which absolutely broke my heart.

J.D. Sallinger – Catcher in the rye

I think I half-heartedly read this at school, but probably got distracted. However, I am so glad I went back to it.

Holden Caulfield is a real literary icon, and the way Sallinger creates and weaves this story through such a constant, recognisable voice is truly brilliant. Catcher in the rye is really a study in how to write character and voice. Fitzgerald said 'character is plot, plot is character' and that is never truer than here. It really is a truly classic piece of literature.

So that's where I've been in the last few months; across the last century, across galaxies, in the deep south with old friends, learning how to live with depression, and stumbling through youth in America.

Even outside of these novels, it's been a quite wonderful few months in literary terms. In a world that is at times so horrifying, it is so good to escape in a book.