Do you ever get the urge to read a really long book? To haul “Anna Karenina” to the coffee shop or lug “Gone With the Wind” in your purse for weeks? Occasionally, I do.

I have since read enough to dispute that (Joyce’s Ulysses gets my vote); but literature is not a competition. I quickly realised that Middlemarch is wasted on the young. One has to have lived to ...

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt ...