Reading Recommendations

Heya! If you’re interested, I’d like to recommend some of the stories that have inspired me. I’ve written up lists of books that I related to as a child and an adult, but the truth is I continue to read a lot of the stories I identified with as a child, and now that I’m officially an adult, I still read and enjoy YA. I think it’s a shame to restrict yourself from reading decent narratives just because of the shelf they are placed on in a bookshop. Stories always help me to understand other mindsets – and if that means relating to characters who are not my age, that’s fine! After all, Scout is a child, but To Kill A Mockingbird is far from juvenile and carries some profound insights about racism and prejudice. Good fiction is rarely meant for one age group, and returning to books I used to love often helps me find something new to love about them. 🙂

Here are some of my favourite things (feel free to imagine Julie Andrews singing!):

Stories That Left A Lasting Impression on Me as a Child/Teenager:

  • Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
  • The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
  • Everything I could get my hands on by Enid Blyton.
  • Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series (Robert Arthur Jr.)
  • The Seventh Unicorn (Shirley Barber)
  • Dogger (Shirley Hughes)
  • Deltora Quest, Teen Power Inc., and the Rowan of Rin series (Emily Rodda)
  • The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
  • The Artemis Fowl series (Eoin Colfer)
  • The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
  • Holes (Louis Sachar)
  • The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
  • The Immortals quartet; Song of the Lioness quartet; Circle of Magic quartet; Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen (Tamora Pierce)
  • Looking for Alibrandi (Melina Marchetta)
  • To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
  • Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
  • The Tomorrow series (John Marsden)
  • Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)

 

Texts I Enjoyed/Savoured/Loved as an Adult:

  • The Sun is Also a Star (Nicola Yoon)
  • I’ll Give You the Sun (Jandy Nelson)
  • Ammonite (Nicola Griffith)
  • A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki – What a read! Just a heads-up —  I found this one particularly confronting.)
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
  • The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
  • Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
  • Fahrenheit 451 and The Pedestrian (Ray Bradbury)
  • Leap (Myfanwy Jones)
  • The Twilight series (Stephanie Meyer)
  • Saving Francesca (Melina Marchetta)
  • All the Bright Places (Jennifer Niven)
  • Worlds of Wonder (David Gerrold)
  • Every day (David Levithan)
  • The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)
  • Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
  • The Shiver trilogy (Maggie Stiefvater)
  • Maus (Art Spiegelman)
  • The Diary of Anne Frank
  • The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak)
  • Persuasion (Jane Austen)
  • Bullet In The Brain (short story by Tobias Wolff)
  • Kaleidoscope (short story by Kurt Vonnegut)
  • Singing My Sister Down (short story by Margo Lanagan)
  • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (Ursula Le Guin)
  • To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
  • Singing My Sister Down (Margo Lanagan)
  • Wildlife (Fiona Wood)
  • Terminator 2 Judgment Day The Book of the Film: An Illustrated Screenplay (James Cameron & William Wisher)
  • The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex (Gabrielle Williams)
  • The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
  • Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
  • High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
  • The Alphabet Sisters (Monica McInnerney)
  • On Writing (Stephen King)
  • The Rosie Project (Graeme Simsion)
  • The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
  • Reasons To Stay Alive; The Humans (Matt Haig)
  • Things I Can’t Forget (Miranda Kenneally)
  • Pushing the Limits (Katie McGarry)
  • In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (Margaret Atwood)

 

As far as literary journals and magazines are concerned, I especially enjoy reading articles and flash fiction on Seizure. Seizure is an Australian online literary platform that supports emerging authors. The bite-sized stories under the ‘Flashers’ section are easy to devour between errands, but are thought-provoking and stay with you. I often read a couple of these shorts in-between working on uni projects or tinkering with my own stories. The editors will consider unsolicited flash fiction and longer pieces – which is great for writers like me. So, if you have a weird, wacky, or emotional story to tell, maybe think about giving Seizure a go. I think it’s a great virtual place to visit to read and submit stuff – and, yes, I am talking from experience. 🙂 You can find 2 of my flash fiction pieces on the Seizure website, or use the following links:

There’s also a lot of variety in the articles on the Seizure website. I found ‘What She Could Not Tell Him’, by Fiona Wright, particularly memorable. Here’s a link in case you’re interested: www.seizureonline.com/content/what-she-could-not-tell-him.

If you’d like to share some of the stories you enjoyed as a child, teen or adult, or discuss literary journals and magazines, that would be great! Please feel free to comment on my blog page. 🙂