In the advent of my journey to uni (and the onslaught of final year!) this Sunday, I've been trying to cram a bit of last minute reading. I do try and read quite a lot anyway: magazines are usually my literature of choice, followed very closely by novels I can lose myself in and bringing up the rear is poetry by unpublished poets. Sometimes I read proper poets too. The best writers are supposedly those who read as much as they write so I've been trying to read (and write) as much as I can. I've managed to read a couple of books this summer, some to do with my dissertation, some to do with my aspirations to improve my creative writing and some purely for fun. It's interesting to see how often all these can overlap!

1. Hunger Games trilogy - Suzanne Collins

I love the plot of these books as do many others and I got a bit too excited about the upcoming Catching Fire trailer being released earlier this year. I'm also basing some choreography loosely around the Hunger Games (more on that aspect of my life later!) so I wanted to refresh my memory by reading the books again. On the whole I'm not usually a massive fan of first-person writing but the plot is good enough to keep me hooked through all three books.


2. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson.

I first came across Kate Atkinson during my A Level English lessons; her book Behind the Scenes at the Museum was one of our core texts. I don't think I realised back then quite how genius Atkinson is though but reading Started Early has firmly reinforced her brilliance. It was suggested to me that I read more Atkinson by way of improving my creative writing but it actually holds a lot of benefit for my dissertation too - definitely one of my top summer reads.

4. The Nightmare - Lars Kepler

My Mum and I have both read a number of Jo Nesbo books over the last two or so years and from the blurb of Nightmare, it seemed that this book was of a similar standing. I can say I was well and truly gripped by this and I really like the style in which it was written. This book was bought and read purely for fun - no academic attraction at all, except for me lamenting how hard it will be to get a book published (especially when I find it so hard to stick to one idea!) I researched the author and found out that it's actually a couple who wrote the book together - I couldn't even tell, the writing was seamless and sucked me right in.


5. Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

I starting reading this last summer, forgot about it and started it up again this year mostly out of boredom. It was a good read and ended up being pretty useful for my diss research. I love it when a plan comes together!

Anyone else had any good reads this summer?

Jade :)