A bit of holiday reading

Well, I have now read my way though my Oxenham collection, as explained in my previous post. I'm sure they're very much an aquired taste (a bit like Marmite perhaps... love 'em or loathe 'em) as they are definitely of their era. You have to be willing to suspend disbelief to put up with coincidental meetings, many life-threatening illnesses and accidents, not to mention ludicrously named children and far too many sets of twins, but I've thoroughly enjoyed my self indulgent read through!

I've just had a week off work and had brought a small pile of books home. My first one was My So-Called Life by Joanna Nadin, as recommended to me by a couple of girls at school. I made a start on it and to be honest haven't really got very far. That's not because the book is awful, but the subtitle is "the tragically normal diary of Rachel Riley" and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a diary, our heroine is 13 and the couple of sections that I've read are pretty funny. I can see why my Year 9s identify with it, but I do things that in comparison to other stuff I could be reading it's just a little derivative (think Adrian Mole, Georgia Nicholson etc).

On the other hand I've also been reading The Amethyst Child by Sarah Singleton and am loving it so far. I've always meant to read some books by this author and have somehow never quite got round to it. I'd recommend this already even on the strength of the first quarter of the book. Amber is lonely and bored during the summer holidays, feels out of things among her peers at school, and misunderstood by her parents. When she meets a mysterious girl with a lifestyle quite unlike her own she is quickly swept up into life with 'the Community'. I can foresee that this is some kind of cult, and that it is all going to go horribly wrong but quite how I'm not yet sure!

My Blog!

It's the National Year of Reading, and I've been trying to get various events and activities off the ground at school to at least make a bit of an effort. One thing I do need to do though is to read a bit more myself, and perhaps to do a bit more thinking about what I'm reading.

Most recently I've been indulging in one of my more bizarre reading habits. I have quite a large collection of what I would call 'old-fashioned' girls school stories. I own all 62 of the chalet school series, and I'm just finishing off reading my books by Elsie Jeanette Oxenham. I suppose I think of them as escapist reading, and although some of the plots seem ludicrous to modern readers I do enjoy a read through every so often! I don't own the whole series but am nearly done with reading the ones I have got. I've just had some new Young Adult books arrive at school so maybe one of those will be next on my list.