Team Picks: Christine Donoughe

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

HarperCollins Publishers

This book is my childhood number one. I read it again and again. It inspired everything in me about what is beautiful about the imagination. And, how its magic makes the world beautiful no matter how little you have.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Penguin UK

I still don’t know exactly what it was that drew me to this book. I read it five times before I was twelve. I believe it had something to do with Jane’s self-determination as a woman in a world that found her valueless at every turn.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Random UK

There is nothing that Toni Morrison wrote that wasn’t delicious to me. Every line can be savored. The characters in the world of Beloved are so full, so rich, their pain and emotion so vivid that is soaks the page and drips into your lap.

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Headline

This book I only picked up recently. I was really interested in the beginnings of speculative fiction by Black writers. Butler’s work is just incredibly strong. The world is alive with African religion, language and mythology. I’m visiting Ms Butler’s work again and again—a lesson in mastery.

Alchemist by Pauelo Coelo

Harper Collins

This book you either love or hate. It is nothing but a simple fable that carries the basic wisdom of life. There’s a reason why people buy piles of this book and pass it to those who need direction and guidance finding their way.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Penguin UK

This is a quick read that is complex and simple all at once. Based on the life journey of Buddha, it illustrates the journey of self-discovery of everyman and the road that leads back to himself.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Penguin UK

This story is tragic. A dissection of humanity, greed and the magnetic pull of destruction, Tolstoy just observes people and their relationships and writes them down. The construction of many of his complex worlds just fascinates me. Another one that I have read multiple times.

Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Penguin UK

Another tragic story of romantic love and devotion. Female characters that live with abandon, defying the norms.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Penguin UK

Steinbeck is another writer like Toni Morrison, where every line does so much, you just lean back and wonder how they did it. Set around the time of the Dustbowl Disaster during the Great Depression in the USA. This is the story of the regular people, losing their jobs and their land, families being forced to move to the coast in search of something better. A case of a novel exposing a truth in a way more forceful than what a history book can relay.

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Random House UK

This book just sees women and speaks to their fire within. No need to read it front to back just pick a page and read it.