As the summer holidays approach you may find yourself wondering how you will manage to fill up all of your free time now that exams, summatives and dissertations are all out of your hair. But don’t fret, here are some suggestions for if you feel like having a read of something which doesn’t come from Billy B.
Show me someone who doesn’t feel somewhat accomplished and smug for having read a book before the film was released, and I’ll show you a liar. Well… maybe, I’m sure there are many people who just don’t care, but here are some upcoming book-to-movie adaptations so you can get ahead during summer:
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness; Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, the film of which is being directed by Tim Burton, and so is sure to be a whimsical delight; and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, which may be a good call for any lovers of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.
To counteract the seriousness of degree-doing, perhaps a good summer read would be to revisit a childhood classic that you already know you love and can just get lost in. Some suggestions include The Harry Potter series; A Series of Unfortunate Events, perhaps as a recap before the Netflix series is aired; or maybe a revisit of the late Louise Rennison’s Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series for some light-hearted hilarity.
If you’re feeling particularly motivated during the summer, you might want to finally tackle those classics you’ve been meaning to read, or perhaps have said you’ve read but actually haven’t. Following the brilliant BBC miniseries how about conquering the beast that is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy? Or maybe Bram Stoker’s Dracula: there’s nothing like reading some dark gothic fiction in the summer sun. Or for a great holiday read why not try Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, you can really get yourself in the holiday mood by reading about the horrors of colonialism!
In a similar vein to the classics, why not catch up with some of the prize-winning fiction of the last year? Anna Smaill’s futuristic and music-based novel The Chimes was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and is endlessly intriguing. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is a brilliant, slow-burning sci-fi which is featured for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction this year.
Finally in the spirit of Her Campus, why not read some feminist literature. It comes in all shapes and sizes: from the hilarious Caitlin Moran in her book How To Be A Woman or her collection of articles Moranthology, to Roxanne Gay’s Bad Feminist and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All be Feminists, a transcript of her iconic Ted Talk.
Whichever book you fancy digging your teeth into this summer, whether it’s a comedy or a classic, a romance or a sci-fi, I hope it helps you get that relaxation time you certainly deserve!