all of my five star reads, part i
2025 updated version: all 60 books i consider perfect, from someone who's read over a thousand
A new series where I’ll be posting my updated five star reads with reviews and quotes for each. I have 60ish books on my five star list, so I’ll be dividing the series into four parts and posting 15-16 books in each part. A new post will drop every Tuesday!
I recently did my annual Goodreads spring clean, which I always do the week of my birthday. This usually entails me going through everything I read in the last year and reevaluating the rating of each book. This year, I actually bumped a lot of 4.5 star books up to 5 stars and a few 5 star books down a rating, so I deemed it time to write a fresh post of all my updated five star reads.
This doesn’t mean that I hate literature—I just like having a way to truly distinguish what books I loved throughout my life. I only give five stars to books I think are absolutely perfect, which results in me being very stingy about giving perfect ratings.
Here is how I decide if a book is a true five star for me:
Has plot and writing I consider perfect.
At least two quotes that I write down in my quote glossary.
Stays in my mind for more than a week (as in, it needs to haunt me for a little bit).
Feels magical when I’m reading it. these five star books remind me of why I read and why I love reading.
Elicits strong emotions & makes me feel something.
I consider rereading the book before I pick up a new one.
I text my friends about the book immediately after finishing.
Feels timeless, like they’ll stand the test of time and age.
elle’s five star book list, part i
The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
“Time is a catastrophe, perpetual and irreversible.”
Calvino’s mind is a labyrinth of alternate realities and whimsical lines of poetry, and he manages to spin fables and folklore out of astronomy in this book. It’s absurd and funny and moving in the sense that I felt like I was made of stardust and my existence stretched across the cosmic expanse of the universe. Cosmicomics gives you the feeling of floating outside of your grounded body, among all of these primordial beings and particles that Calvino has imbued with emotion and humanity, perhaps more than we have as actual humans.
Affinities: On Art and Fascination by Brian Dillon
“A meditation on the power and pleasures of the image, from paintings to photographs to migraine auras, by one of Britain's finest literary minds.”
Why do we have an affinity to some things? Why do we lean towards certain tastes or styles? Dillon’s essay collection is a loose amalgamation of vignettes on images, photographs, and various small niches of art that have stayed with him. He puts his own affinities under a microscope, while also exploring what the word itself means. This isn’t a classic essay collection in the sense that each chapter is a cohesive and complete essay, but rather little fragments that feel like postcards pertaining to the image.
Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector
“I know that my phrases are crude, I write them with too much love, and that love makes up for their faults, but too much love is bad for the work.”
Reading Clarice Lispector’s works often feels transcendental, and this was no different. But this one especially felt like running through a waterfall or a cascade of words. Agua Viva is more melody than prose, more of a fragmented rumination on feelings than something conventionally comprehensive. The cadence and rhythm of Lispector’s writing in this felt oddly hypnotic, and I felt like I was watching her stretch and fold sentences, making literature malleable in her hands. It was kind of a spiritual experience in a way.
Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au
“Maybe it's good, I said, to stop sometimes and reflect upon the things that have happened, maybe thinking about sadness can actually end up making you happy.”
A mother and a daughter reunite after years apart in Japan and attempt to reconnect with each other and themselves. Communication between the two is oftentimes saw-edged and their relationship is nothing short of complicated. They view each other from a distance just like we do as readers, each moment fragile. A haunting, elegy about loneliness, memories, and family. I love any book about mothers and daughters, and this was no different. Short but dense, and packed with meditations and philosophies on the way we live.
“For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.”
I read this back in 2020 during the pandemic, when everything felt claustrophobic and trapped; in reading The Waves I found myself floating alongside the dreamy prose, like the ebb and flow of water—unanchored and boundless, which was such a kindness. What I found most profound and life-changing about the book is the somewhat reluctant cognizance that we are a part of a cycle, a chorus, a rhythm interconnected to those of nature around us. A brilliant portrait of growing up and getting older, of friendship and isolation, of sunrises and sunsets.