Reading List

READING- 

I have lost count of the amount of times I have told you guys that you need to be READING prolifically - whether that be newspapers, online blogs and articles, magazines, autobiographies or fiction...it really will do wonders for your cultural capital (knowledge of the worlds and places other than the ones with which we are familiar) AND help your vocabularies to get more amazing. In addition, it will help your accuracy which is all-important in the Language exams this summer and next.

I love to read - reading takes me to places I have never visited before and introduces me to new characters, philosophies and worlds. MY personal top ten list (not definitive as there are just so many fab books that I have read in my lifetime as well as many more that I have NOT read but have been meaning to...) is below. I have sorted it into my Top Ten books from my teenage years, my Top Ten books of ALL TIME and my Top Ten authors. Please feel free to ask me any questions and to swap with your own recommendations. If you would like to leave a comment with ideas and suggestions, please do!



MY TOP TEN AUTHORS

1) William Shakespeare (yeah yeah...)
2) Jane Austen
3) Stephen King
4) Charles Dickens
5) Agatha Christie
6) Roald Dahl
7) Margaret Atwood
8)  J.K. Rowling
9) Philip Pullman.
10) John Steinbeck

I am going to go through them at the rate of 3 a week so try and keep up!

1) THE MAN himself - William Shakespeare.
Yes, it's cliched, but how could I not have him at the top of my list? I'm an English teacher after all and he is the man who gave us such wonderful plays to teach and study like Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet. He gave us memorable characters like Falstaff (the fat, alcoholic, comic sidekick to Henry V); Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet (the famous 'Prince of Cats', so-named because of his amazing aptitude in sword fights; and Lady Macbeth (scheming wife who goads her husband into murdering his King so that they can gain power.)
He gave us countless memorable quotes (can you think of any?):
-"A Horse, A Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse!" and "Now is the Winter of our discontent." (Richard III)
-"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me Your Ears..." (Julius Caesar)
-"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."(Romeo and Juliet)
-"If music be the food of love, play on..." (Twelfth Night)
-"All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players"
-And this wonderful Hamlet monologue featured in my favourite film Withnail and I...

Shakespeare also invented a huge array of words and phrases that we use today, without really knowing that they came from him for the first time:
"All the glitters in not gold"
"Bare-faced liar"
"Break the ice"
"Wear your heart on your sleeve"

And even if the language puts you off a bit, it's worth persevering with because in Shakespeare's plays you get exciting, dramatic story lines and plot twists with gory battles, gender confusion, romance, death, racial tension, double-crossing and betraying, manipulation, comedy word play, humorous interludes, BFFs who look out for each other, accidental murders, intentional murders, madness, suicides, historical events, fantasy and magic and much, much more...

Really, what a guy!

2) Jane Austen
 Jane Austen
With biting satirical wit, Jane Austen was sort-of a feminist before her time. She wrote fictional stories, often containing romance, but was unafraid to hold a critical mirror up to the social practices of her class and fellow mankind. She has been criticised for ignoring events of historical significance (such as slavery) but her social commentary is more about PEOPLE and their fallibility and foibles (issues and negative traits.) Her work has been updated numerous times for a modern audience (Emma was turned into teen movie Clueless; Pride and Prejudice was modernised for Bridget Jones' Diary) which proves that her stories and characters are still universal. Even if a man with a large fortune is no longer necessarily 'in need of a wife', the love-hate relationship between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett is still fascinating and the insufferable character of pompous idiot Mr Collins can relate to many people in today's life and world too! I would highly recommend her beautifully written, comic and dramatic books. Plus there are only six of them so it's not impossible to read them all :)

Austen's famous love-hate couple Mr Darcy and Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice in two film adaptations (top- Kiera Knightey in a more recent but nowhere-near-as-good version and bottom- Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in the WONDERFUL BBC version from back when I was growing up. Don't let that put you off, or its length; it's a great film. Watch the clip where they first meet)

3)
Stephen King - THE MASTER OF HORROR



American horror author Stephen King used to be a high school English teacher before he became so famous that he didn't need to do it anymore! He still lectures about creative writing. He lives in Maine in the USA and bases many of his stories there. He has written so many successful books, series' and short stories that it would be impossible to talk about them all but my favourite book of all time has to be IT - the story of an ancient child-killing evil that takes on numerous forms to gobble the souls of terrified children, even as the adult inhabitants of the town of Derry attempt to look the other way and pretend that everything is hunky dory. The most well known incarnation of this old curse is Pennywise the clown and if you weren't already scared of clowns after the recent internet memes and stories that circulated, then you need to watch the TV film of this novel and you won't ever be able to visit the circus again! I would personally recommend only watching the first half of the DVD (it comes in two parts) as it gets considerable weaker by DVD 2 when the adults feature more than the kids and the original Writer/Director had been replaced. There is a new film of this due for release in Sep 2017 - it'll probably be an 18 certificate but I am extremely excited. No matter how good the film might be though, it'll never beat the book. It's a monster book in terms of length too, but don't let that put you off. I read it in my teenage years and have tackled it again about 5 more times, getting something new out of it at each reading.
If you like scary stories and prefer short, one-before-bed type tales, then Skeleton Crew is another personal favourite of mine and utilises a lot of urban myths. Other favourite Stephen King books include The Stand (zombies, another looooong one though), Carrie (a teenager who is bullied and gets her own back using her psychic powers) and Pet Cemetery (about killer vampire animals who come back from the dead).

(This is not the monkey from Toy Story 3 - although it is equally as scary!)

Stephen King is also good to follow on Twitter: he tweets as @StephenKing

More next week when I will tackle the next three authors on my list. Get a head start by reading something by Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie or Roald Dahl!

Miss Fowler x



ADDITIONAL READING LISTS-

Teenage Kicks - the best books for all young adults
The link above is a great list by The New Statesman that recommends the top books that people your age should all read at some points in their lives! Get some of them out for the Easter and summer holiday period. Dip in and out of them and try something new that you haven't tried before.

Also check out this ranking of the best authors and their literary works:
(You can vote to change the order)
BEST books Ranking