Wendy Barker’s Desert Island Books
Name: Wendy Barker
Job role: Associate Director of Learning & OD
About: I manage education and training teams within the People Directorate. Avid reader with very eclectic tastes. Prefer paper to digital as very old school
Book 1: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
I read this years ago and reread it recently and then watched the film as I loved it so much. The suspense and creepiness make this is an all round great read but not too taxing, great plot / storyline. Even better second time around, so much so I reread a few others by Du Maurier.
Book 2: The Idiot by Dostoevsky
Not one for the faint-hearted this one. I first read it as a teenager and had read nothing like it before and it blew my mind. The names are very difficult to navigate even after rereading it 4 times since and watching it as a play twice! The central character is labelled an idiot due to an illness yet is the most ‘honest’ character and is the mouthpiece for exposing hypocrisy, social exclusion and hierarchy in Russian aristocratic circles. The love triangle at the heart of the story leads to destruction and chaos that unravels as the story unfolds. Bit heavy but worth persevering if like a challenging read.
Book 3: The Method by Juli Zeh
This was a recent gift and another blow your mind read. I could not put this down and highly recommend it if you like books that are a bit out there. I can’t explain the book better than The Times which says -‘This is a brilliant, disturbing and wildly imaginative picture of the nanny state run mad’. Felt like a modern version of Orwell’s 1984 which I read at school and is also one I would like to reread.
Book 4: The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
It was hard to choose between this and Tess of the D’Urbervilles but have read The Return of the Native more times so plumped for that. The cruelty, inflexibility of human nature leads to tragic consequences, played out against a gorgeous backdrop of countryside and village life in times when people moved from village to village via paths across heathland and navigated by moonlight and stars. I clearly like a good tragedy!
Book 5: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
I read this a couple of years ago and it was another one that I couldn’t put down. The story is beautifully told and is about an aristocratic Count who is confined to a posh hotel in Moscow for political reasons I think in the 1920s! It describes the world that he creates in his confinement and people he befriends. A sympathetically told story but with some shocks and twists. One that I want to reread again and again.
Book 6: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
I had not read anything by David Mitchell before this but am a fan now for sure. This is set in the 18th century and is the story of an honest Dutch clerk who works in a corrupt trading post on an island just off Japan that was purpose made to keep foreigners out of Japan. I loved the historical elements of this story and there is also a central story around clash of cultures, corruption and social mores. Quite a dense novel but brilliantly written.
Luxury item
A big comfy arm chair to curl up in and read my books.