Tag Archives: Reading

The Irish Times ‘Must-Reads for Teenagers’

In today’s Irish Times (Saturday 26th November 2011), there is a supplement detailing books that are ‘must-reads’ for teenagers. They are not numbered or put into age categories but it is interesting to note that the first book they have mentioned is ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell – our College book for November.

Other books on the list include:

  • ‘The Magic Toyshop’ by Angela Carter (1967)
  • ‘The Hunger Games Trilogy’ by Suzanne Collins (2008 – 2010)
  • ‘Ghost World’ by Daniel Clowes (1997)
  • ‘The Regeneration Trilogy’ by Pat Barker (1991 – 1995)
  • ‘Sandman’ by Neil Gaiman (1989 – 1996)
  • ‘How to be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran (2011)
  • ‘Brother of the More Famous Jack’ by Barbara Trapido (1982)
  • ‘The Georgi Nicolson Series’ by Louise Rennison (1999 – 2009)
  • ‘The Morganville Vampires Series’ by Rachel Caine (2006 – )
  • ‘An Wrinkle in Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
  • ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole’ by Sue Townsend (1982)
  • ‘Emil and the Detectives’ by Erich Kastner (1929)
  • ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusack (2005)
  • ‘A Study in Scarlet’ by Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)
  • ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens (1860 – 1861)
  • ‘Annan Water’ by Kate Thompson (2003)
  • ‘Thin Ice’ by Mikael Engstrom (2007 – 2011)
  • ‘Little Women’ by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
  • ‘The Hobbit’ by JRR Tolkien (1937)
  • ‘The Twelfth Day of July’ by Joan Lingard (1970)
  • ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
  • ‘Flight of the Doves’ by Walter Macken (1968)
  • ‘Under the Eye of the Clock’ by Christopher Nolan (1987)
  • ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ by Mark Twain (1884)
  • ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by JD Salinger (1951)
  • ‘The Outsiders’ by SE Hinton (1967)
  • ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell (1945)
  • ‘Lost in Transition’ by students of Scoil Chaitríona, Glasnevin (2011)
  • ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams (1979)
  • ‘The Recruit’ by Robert Muchamore (2004)
  • ‘Skulduggery Pleasant’ by Derek Landy (2007)
  • ‘Maus’ by Art Spiegelman (1986)

 

The supplement also includes tips for aspiring writers. Try to get hold of it!

 

Costa Book Awards

 The Costa Book Awards is one of the UK’s most prestigious and popular literary prizes and recognises some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.

It’s unique for having five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book.

The winner in each category receives £5,000, and then one of the five winning books is selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year, receiving a further £30,000, and making a total prize fund of £55,000. The Costa is the only prize which places children’s books alongside adult books in this way.

The Costa Book Awards started life in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards. From 1985 they were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006, when Costa Coffee took over ownership from Whitbread.

Since 1971, the awards have rewarded a wide range of excellent books and authors across all genres.

 

The shortlist for each category is as follows:

Novel Award

  • The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  • The Summer of Drowning by John Burnside
  • Pure by Andrew Miller
  • My Dear I Wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young

 

First Novel Award

  • City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
  • The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness
  • Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson
  • Pao by Kerry Young

 

Biography Award

  • Thin Paths: Journeys In and Around an Italian Mountain Village by Julia Blackburn
  • Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia – A Father and Son’s Story by Patrick and Henry Cockburn
  • All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas by Matthew Hollis
  • Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin

 

Poetry Award

  • The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy
  • Night by David Harsent
  • Fiere by Jackie Kay
  • November by Sean O’Brien

 

Children’s Book Award

  • Flip by Martyn Bedford
  • The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce
  • Small Change for Stuart by Lissa Evans
  • Blood Red road by Moira Young

 

The winners will be announced on Wednesday 4th January 2012.

www.costabookawards.com

 

Gormanston: one college, one book – November

The next book that we will be reading for one college, one book is ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell.

It was first published in 1949 and is Orwell’s prediction of a dystopian future. It is set in Oceania, a society of perpetual war, constant government surveillance and incessant public mind control. It is repsonsible for giving us the terms ‘big brother is watching you’ and ‘room 101’.

A lot of students who read ‘Dracula’ in October found the language a little difficult and the story a little long. I hope that this one will be more appealling!!

A Halloween Reading List

The following list was compiled by Darragh McManus of The Guardian newspaper specially for this time of the year. These are novels that are ‘eerie, horrifying or disturbing in unusual and different ways’.

‘Manual’ by Daren King

Fetishism, psychic dislocation, unhealthy obsession – ‘Manual’ isn’t an easy book to warm to, but it will linger in the mind afterwards. Sometimes gruelling, but worth it if only for the wholly original style: terse, often unrelated sentences, tiny explosions of descriptive power . . . like reading a series of connected haikus.

‘The Return of the Player’ by Michael Tolkin

Sequel to the novel that inspired the Robert Altman movie, but this is much darker and creepier, in tone and theme, than that relatively playful novel. Fundamentally about death, it’s a feaful lament for the end of things,

‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene

Because Pinkie is one of the most terrifyingly believable sociopaths ever created . . . and the horror that awaits Rosie after the final pages is indescribable.

‘Shirker’ by Chad Taylor

Set in New Zealand, this tale of one man cheating death is one of the best crime novels ever. Beautiful artful prose, a great, twisting noir story, and a seriously spooky atmosphere. You’ll feel all sorts of chills running along your spine.

‘Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino

A tone of strange, spooky reverie permeates this fantasy from the incomparable Calvino. A group of wayfarers meet in the forest and, struck dumb, tell their stories through tarot cards.

‘High-Rise’ by JG Ballard

It opens with a man roasting an alsation over a burning phonebook, and doesn’t relent from there on in. Most of Ballard’s incredible body of work is disturbing enough, but ‘High-Rise’ was the one of the scariest.

‘The Body Artist’ by Don DeLillo

It’s a sort of ghost story – or is it? Reality, delusion and memory blur into one another in DeLillo’s short novel about the titular body artist dealing with bereavement.

‘Oryx and Crake’ by Margaret Atwood

Any one of a number of dystopian novels could have made the cut but Atwood’s ‘speculative’ novel is so unsettling because everything that happens is a possible, and often probable, consequence of what we’re doing now.

‘The Vanished Man’ by Jeffery Deaver

Deaver might not be a literary artist, but he’s a very skilled craftsman. ‘The Vanished Man’ has a deliriously serpentine plot – and a cameleonic villain who gets right under your skin because he can get right under anyone’s skin.

‘The Shining’ by Stephen King

Ghosts, the supernatural, psychic abilities – this novel has all the elements of a gripping gothic novel. A film based on the book was released in 1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson.

‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis

This is a psychological thriller and satirical novel set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s. The story is told in the first person narrative by the protagonist, serial killer and business man, Patrick Bateman.

 

 

Novels set in boarding schools

If you’re looking for something to read, you may want to find a novel that you can relate to. Here are a number of novels set (or partially set) in boarding schools. Do they relate to your experience? Which of these have you read?

  1. Lord Dismiss Us – Michael Campbell (1967)
  2. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger (1951)
  3. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor (1983)
  4. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
  5. The Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
  6. A Good School – Richard Yates (1978)
  7. Friendly Fire – Patrick Gale (2005)
  8. The Night Music – Christopher Campbell Howes (2006)
  9. Skippy Dies – Paul Murray (2010)
  10. Spud – Howard de Ruit (2005)
  11. Prep – Curtis Sittenfeld (2005)
  12. A Great and Terrible Beauty – Libba Bray (2005)
  13. Cracks – Sheila Kohler (2000)
  14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce (1916)
  15. The Land of Spice – Kate O’Brien (1941)
  16. Old School – Tobias Wolff (2003)
  17. Testimony – Anita Shreve (2008)
  18. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh (1928)
  19. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (1847)
  20. The Chocolate War – Robert Carmier (1974)
  21. A Separate Peace – John Knowles (1959)
  22. The Headmaster’s Papers – Richard A. Hawley (1983)

 

What do you look for in a book?

Write a note about what you look for when you are choosing a book to read. Do you prefer novels, biographies, history books, sports books? Is character important to you or are you drawn to books with plenty of action? Have you ever been disappointed by a book that did not live up to expectations?

Refer to books you have read in the past or whatever you are reading now. Don’t forget to give the name of the author.

Re-read the Responsible Blogging page before you start and don’t forget to re-read your comment before you publish.

I’m looking forward to reading your posts!

Mrs. Meighan

Gormanston: One College, One Book

The pick for the month of October is ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker.

The cover of the Penguin Classics edition reads:

‘Count Dracula’s castle is a hellish world where night is day, pleasure is pain and the blood of the innocent prized above all. Young Jonathan Harker approaches the gloomy gates with no idea what he is about to face. And back in England eerie incidents are unfolding as strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck. But can Harker’s fiancee be saved? And where is the evil Dracula?’

I’m sure you will all enjoy sinking your teeth into the original vampire story!!

Let us know how you are getting along with it.