the bookworm has turned

Austen with a twist

I used to read a lot. As a child my book cupboard was overflowing with story books. I loved disappearing into another world and living through the character. I had (and still have) a habit of reading series of books. Enid Blyton became Roald Dahl became Nancy Drew became Virginia Andrews became Marian Keyes became Sebastian Faulks 🙂 And i used to LOVE Usborne Puzzle Adventure books – simple stories where your choices gave a multitude of different endings. I used to buy a new one every week, until i had the entire series, of course!

I studied English Literature and Language for both GCSE and A-Level. They were always my strongest subjects. I grew a fondness for poetry and today my book shelves groan under the weight of the different titles i own. I remember being introduced to Carol Ann Duffy when i was studying for my A-Levels so it put a smile on my face to hear she’d been named Poet Laureate a few weeks back. The World’s Wife is an excellent poetry collection that twists a number of classic stories and re-tells them from the perspective of the female characters who were overlooked in the originals. It’s definitely worth reading.

So it was recently, after hearing about Duffy being awarded Poet Laureate, i was thinking back to my A-Levels – i was taking them ten years ago his summer. How time has flown, it really doesn’t seem like that long ago. Back then i played at being a grown-up and now I’m supposed to be one! I studied a number of classic novels when i was taking my Literature A-Level but i didn’t read any Jane Austen. Shocking, really. I can’t remember where i saw it, but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was an Austen novel i could NOT ignore. It’s the original with some new, gory, additions from Seth Grahame-Smith. I haven’t started it yet but I’m very much looking forward to reading how Mr Darcy and Elizabeth will deal with a plague of infected zombies who are desperate for brains. It should make a for a fun novel and will perhaps inspire me to not only delve into a few more classics but re-ignite my love affair with story books.