Last week saw the 30th Hay Festival – a vibrant tented gathering of writers, thinkers and readers of all ages in the beautiful Welsh countryside and ‘Book Town’ of Hay-on-Wye. This year in addition to the fascinating talks and bookshop, the festival was promoting #Hay30Books:
To celebrate our 30th Hay Festival in Wales, we asked our audiences to recommend 30 books from the last 30 years that deserve more attention.
These #HAY30BOOKS will be discussed and celebrated at our festivals around the world – in Mexico, Peru, Spain, Colombia and Denmark – and on our digital channels throughout the year.
It was a chance to re-evaluate, rediscover, and honour the essential reads from the last 30 years across fiction and non-fiction.
The list is diverse and thought-provoking and would make an interesting source of reading for our students over the summer. All the books will be available in the Library shortly and a number of them are available as e-books.
Come and browse the display in the Library! What would you read first?
Full list here:
- A Gentle Plea for Chaos by Mirabel Osler (1989)
- Wise Children by Angela Carter (1991)
- Kid by Simon Armitage (1992)
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (1993)
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (1995)
- Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997)
- Any Human Heart by William Boyd (2002)
- Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson (2002)
- The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad (2002)
- Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series by Michelle Paver (2004)
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
- How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (2004)
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
- A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (2007)
- Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine (2007)
- God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens (2007)
- The Road Home by Rose Tremain (2007)
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007)
- Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman (2009)
- Oblivion: A Memoir by Héctor Abad (2010)
- There but for the… by Ali Smith (2011)
- How To Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell (2010)
- The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane (2012)
- Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (2012)
- Pink Mist by Owen Sheers (2013)
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
- Brooklyn by Colm Toíbín (2015)
- Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy (2015)
- One by Sarah Crossan (2015)
- East West Street by Philippe Sands (2016)