May 27, 2019, by Sunita Tailor

Must Read (non-academic) Books This Summer

This blog post was written by final year English student, Hannah Smart. 

Whilst most students on most other courses will give a collective sigh of relief at the thought of not having to read anything particularly exhaustive until next semester, here in the School of English, we cannot wait to get our heads into another book. Even so, as English students, we know all too well the feeling of guilt when we spend precious reading time on a book that is not on our reading list, firmly established in the English literary canon, or was at least shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. When we begin to think of reading as a chore and not the reason why we came to University in the first place, we know it’s time to give ourselves a break. With that in mind, here are a few tried and tested, non-English-degree-related books that I recommend you pick up at the airport this year:

Ali Smith’s Spring – The third book in Smith’s seasonal series Spring is a relevant story following lost souls in a divided Britain. Turning its attention to the migrant crisis and rising nationalism, Spring is bleaker than Autumn and Winter, but idiosyncratically witty.

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer – Braithwaite’s debut novel opens with Korede, who instantly reveals that her sister has just killed her boyfriend; something she has done twice before. My Sister the Serial Killer is less a crime thriller and more an exploration of sisterhood, morbid and funny in equal measure.

Sally Rooney’s Normal People – longlisted for the Man Booker prize, Normal People is set at Trinity College in Dublin and is, in short, about being young and in love. Critics have gone as far as to call it ‘a future classic’!

Happy Reading!

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