Five reads for a rainy day

On a rainy day you do not want to leave the house, let alone your bed. You do not want to drag yourself down to uni, arriving soaked and cold.

For those days when you just want to stay in bed all day, we have put together a list of books we think you would enjoy sharing your sheets with.

Short stories by Truman Capote

On a miserable day, what is better than an emotional, touching memory from somebody’s childhood to bring back some nostalgia? Cosying up in a blanket, having a cup of tea within reach and Truman Capote delighting us with three simple recollections from his past. In A Christmas Memory, One Christmas and The Thanksgiving Visitor, Capote recounts with magnificent simplicity the innocence of youth, which is only possible when life has not forced us to grow up quite yet.

Haruki Murami’s great success

Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is a great choice if you feel like relaxing all day. While the author introduces us to a bohemian Tokyo, we feel a slight sadness creeping through the book. In sixties Japan, the reader witnesses the confusing relations of Toru Watanabe with two very different women: Naoko and Midori. To add a little extra drama, a student protest against the government is going on in the background.

The best of British humor

But it is not all about nostalgia and gloominess on a rainy day. Tom Sharpe is considered one of the best satirical novelists in the United Kingdom and his novel Riotous Assembly is a wonder of intelligent comedy. The reader is invited to South Africa where the police investigate a bizarre case of murder. Hilarious.

The wisdom of a Nobel Prize winner

If nostalgia and humour do not satisfy your intellectual needs, we recommend the work of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago who died in 2010. His book Blindness is a beacon of contemporary literature, which you are going to read over and over again once you have tasted it. In this novel, a white blindness of unknown origin causes chaos in a city, revealing basic survival instincts of human beings. A stark, heart-breaking read that will leave its mark.

The sweet sadness of Benedetti

Our last recommendation is for the sensitive ones. We allow Mario Benedetti to conquer us with his poetic anthologies. His sweet sadness and his simple way of expressing tough things made him well-known and one of the greatest writers from South America.