There certainly hasn't been a lack of reading material, I think I counted 31 texts read back to back (!) Not all of it has been entirely pleasant (sorry Malory) but my eyes have definitely been opened to some great writers and reminded me why I love Literature so much...
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway
Quite a daunting and challenging read, however is totally worth it. Woolf's 'stream of consciousness' style is intoxicating and intellectually stimulating and enabled me to get one step closer to understanding what modernism is all about... While we only get a single day, Woolf draws individual lives and memories together with the portrayal of a whole city and is definitely worth a read.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Perhaps it's easy to fall under the impression that all literature is English with a capital E, however Achebe's story of a Nigerian tribe under the pressure of colonial power swiftly became one of my favourite reads ever as it is refreshingly different without being inaccessible.
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and J.M Coetzee's Foe
I group these together as the latter is a rewriting of the former. If you can get through Robinson Crusoe I salute you (whatever happened to chapters eh?) But having read Defoe's classic in conjunction with Coetzee's rework was a really good way of unpicking the classical themes we might overlook in Crusoe.
Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own
One of the few things I enjoyably read as part of my revision of feminist theory. Enough said.
Indra Sinha's Animal's People
Based on the Bhopal Disaster of 1984, this novel is not only a great read, it also does the important job of informing people of the absolute atrocity that occurred in Bhopal and still haunts many victims today. It is funny and very human; Sinha does not hold back in terms of language!
Now it's time to start the reading for next year, hello Chaucer :(
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