Finding a Good Read: May 2026

This month the column comes from Damian Le Bas, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, who shares some favourite books with Inside Time readers

Unreal! – by Paul Jennings

This is the first book I remember reading all the way through just because I wanted to, without a grown-up getting me to read it. It’s a set of weird short stories and every one of them has got a twist in it. It amazed me that someone could make up stories like this, and it still does. There are a lot of books in this series and most of them are called ‘Un’ something: ‘Unbelievable’, ‘Uncanny’, and so on. There was a TV series based on them, but the books are even better.

Danny the Champion of the World – by Roald Dahl

This is classed as a children’s book so it’s quite easy to read, but I read it when I was 20 years of age. It’s about a boy called Danny and his dad. I don’t know if they’re meant to be Travellers or Gypsy people but they still reminded me of us. They live in a wagon and the dad fixes old motors and does a bit of poaching on the side, but Danny and his dad are the good ones. The local lord has got it in for them and he is the villain. It makes me want to read it again just thinking about it.

Persepolis – by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is a graphic novel about the Iranian Revolution. It tells it from the view of a young girl living through these times, and how she has to move to Austria because of it. Really, it’s as much about her growing up and learning to understand the world as it is about politics. This book really opened my mind about what it’s like being a woman in some places. It also made me want to think twice before I started shouting about something I hadn’t experienced myself. There’s a lot of funny moments in it as well. It reminds you that deep down, people are the same everywhere.

The Son – by Philipp Meyer

This is a long book but I swear I’ve never read a book so fast. The main character, Eli, gets taken away by the Comanches when he’s little. They give him a Comanche name and teach him how to be a warrior. The details are unbelievable: everything from how the Comanches butchered a bison and used every part of it, to the way they could break horses faster than white people and survive off the land. It’s also got a lot about the history of Texas and people fighting over oil fields. It makes sense of how America became like it is.

War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

I didn’t know what to expect when I started this book. It’s one of the longest and most famous books ever written. People say ‘War and Peace’ to take the mickey out of something that goes on forever. The funny thing is, it doesn’t feel like a long book. The chapters are quite short and there are so many characters and things happening that it goes by fast. It takes a while to get going, then it’s like the best film you’ve ever seen except you’re reading it. It’s not just the massive battle scenes: it’s the way you feel like you know the main characters so well you are almost living as them.

Prison Reading Groups (PRG) was created in 1999 to set up, support and fund informal reading groups in prisons. We have set up more than 75 groups in over 50 prisons nationwide. PRG is part of Give a Book.