University isn’t just about lectures and deadlines, it’s also about the stories that stay with us. In this article, four Badger writers share the books they discovered during their time at Sussex and how those pages quietly shaped the people they’ve become.
Everything I Know About Love
By Hannah Allen
Everything I Know About Love By Dolly Alderton is a witty, relatable and heartfelt memoir exploring Alderton’s tumultuous teenage years through to her chaotic twenties as she grapples with love in all its multitudes. Filled with humorous anecdotes about bad dates, friendship fallouts and moments of self discovery, Alderton captures both the highs and lows of early adulthood. The memoir stands out for its emotional authenticity as Alderton writes with openness and vulnerability, unafraid to share both her best and worst moments. While romantic relationships are featured heavily, the heart of the memoir lies in a celebration of platonic love and female friendship, as she poignantly concludes ‘nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.’ A perfect read for those who are feeling lost in their twenties, Everything I Know About Love acts as a reassuring reminder that confusion, heartbreak and loneliness are all part of the growing up process.
Monk & Robot Series
By Keira Grant
Becky Chambers’ two-part novella series Monk & Robot, which includes A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, is a series which can only be described as a positively existential solarpunk commentary on human connection, the importance of kindness, and the potential for friendship in unlikely places.
Written in lyrical yet simplistic prose, the Monk & Robot books are a sort of narrative meditation designed to uplift, warm, and comfort its readers. It follows Dex, a tea monk who travels from village to village selling custom-blended tea and listening patiently to the woes and worries of their customers. They meet Mosscap, an inquisitive robot representative of a community of robots who left the constraints of human society upon mutual agreement to form their own community centuries ago after they gained self-awareness. Together, Dex and Mosscap travel the plains of Panga, attempting to answer the only question Mosscap has been sent to ask: what do people need?
This series is a warm mug of tea, a soft blanket, the embrace of a loved one, bringing hope, healing and insight to the science fiction genre which is so often rooted in violence and despair. The story marries nature and technology in a nonthreatening communion, and represents themes of gender, wisdom and identity through a lens of hope and aspiration for the future.
Photo: Pinterest
Warts & All:
By Georgia Groom
It would be easy for me to write about the hard grit of McCarthy’s The Road, or why Cujo is my favourite King book, but in spite of all the monumentally influential literature I have consumed module after module, there’s one novel I always come back to.
Toad Rage by Morris Gleitzman has likely never before and will never again be recommended in a university newspaper. For starters, it’s for 8-year-olds, and is also heavily contextual to the experiences of Australians. Unfortunately, I am neither of these things, but I do have bad skin and a wistful soul, which is how Gleitzman describes his plucky protagonist, Limpy, a young cane toad with a bad leg.
An incredibly invasive species, cane toads have a largely unfavourable reputation with the public. This creature – warty, sticky, and unwanted might seem a hard sell in the vast realm of loveable protagonists, but there’s nothing more aww-inducing than an earnest cane toad attempting to make himself look like a butterfly by putting colourful underpants on his head. He’s hopeful, naive, and desperate to make peace with a world that doesn’t want him, adventuring across Australia with his short-tempered cousin Goliath to become the mascots of the Sydney Olympics and save his family.
While it may not carry the literary significance of Kafka or Plath, Toad Rage has held a quiet power over me ever since my mum first read it at bedtime thirteen years ago, and I’m certain you’ll also see a part of yourself in Limpy, warts and all.
Chosen by God: Donald Trump, the Christian Right, and American Capitalism
By Isabella Poderico
Although I am not a Christian, it is pretty clear to me that Donald Trump holds absolutely no Christian values. After all, Jesus was a socialist, so how has it come to be that the American Christian Right have propelled Trump into his second presidency, all whilst spouting hatred, racism, and fascism? In this book by John Newsinger, he maps out how Christianity and American capitalist values have catapulted America into fully fledged fascism, beginning in the Cold War, before taking the book into the present day in order to understand how conservative values have shaped American culture.
As an avid anti-capitalist and a hater of Donald Trump, this book is absolutely a bit of me. It details how Christians in America have come to support a man who has committed many sins, rape, adultery, misogyny, along with his 88 criminal charges, 34 of which are federal felonies. Trump is a man so evil, in my eyes he is practically the devil incarnate. His compulsive lies and racist gibberish are detailed within the book, and will one day feature in a history textbook next to Hitler. I definitely recommend giving this book a read, as after all, the only way to avoid repeating history is to learn from it.
Another article you may enjoy: https://thebadgeronline.com/2025/05/in-conversation-with-emma-jane-unsworth/
