After nominations from the lovely Jamie Field and Immy Collier Im going to post the ten works of literature that have influenced me most. I feel like Ive missed really important ones but its too late for them now. 1. Helen Dunmores Ingo series. These are great YA novels and I got really obsessed with living in the fictional AU. 2. There But For The by Ali Smith. Probably the most fun book I read this year. I recommended it to friends and talked about it a lot in seminars and enjoyed its self-aware cleverness a whole lot. 3. The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy, one of the first poems I ever memorised, around the time I started genuinely enjoying poetry. I remember decidedly approving of Hardy for knowing when to be simple. 4. The Other Hand by Chris Cleave. Bewilderingly my favourite book for a long time (rereads horribly). 5. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I read it too young out of arrogance and it taught me I wasnt that clever. 6. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a medieval story I read in the original last year. It took a long time to comfortably read medieval English and it was super rewarding and fun. 7. Staircase by Andrea Gibson. Its not my favourite of her poems but it picks up this really compelling momentum despite ranging so quickly in story and I think I probably learnt a lot from it. 8. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald because its excellent, and wont crumble beneath over-analysis (which my three resits of AS lit probably subjected it to). 9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read this very slowly and it was so worth it. 10. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. This play haunts my life. I feel deep resentment and respect. If people fancy sharing, I nominate Alice Palace Rodgers, Pippa Hamey and Joanna Kuunal.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:38:14 +0000