August 29, 2018

Top 5 Wednesday| Your Required Reading List

Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly blog group that comes together to discuss that week's topic. The idea was first curated by the wonderful Lainey at GingerReadLainey and is now run by Samantha over on ThoughtsonTomes. 

If you wish to participate, either on your Blog or Booktube channel then, please, join the group on Goodreads for all the relevant topics.

*Panics at only have 17 days until I have to move back to University*

For this week's post, I could totally cheat and just name five books I've been required to read for my Creative Writing degree, or for a certain module, or to look at a certain aspect of writing. 

Which is what I'm going to do. 

Welcome to Transformative Writing. Here we will be looking at how we can "write back" to pieces of literature in a connection of themes, ideas and transform them to offer a new perspective. 


1. Animal Farm
George Orwell

One of two books on this list that writes back to real historical events - Soviet Russia and the Cold War - Animal Farm looks at the Marxist values and the inequalities of life in this fast paced allegorical fable.

2. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Angela Carter


Feminist, dark, and explicit fairy tales. Need I say anymore? I've studied this collection of stories more times over the past four years than any other literature text and I'm not complaining. 

3. Spare and Found Parts
Sarah Maria Griffin

This could have very quickly and very easily become a straight-up Frankenstein retelling, but its not? It definitely feeds from Frankenstein as inspiration, as well as exploring themes that come along with the notion of humans playing with and creating life. 

4. The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller

I toyed with putting this one on here, or Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad and decided with The Song of Achilles as my most recently read. Both texts bring characters of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, bringing them to a contemporary audience and finding them their voice.

5. Blonde Roots
Bernadine Everisto

The second of two books, basing themselves in historical events. Blonde Roots finds it anchorage in the horrific events of the slave trade, but reverses race. A thoughtful and thought provoking novel, I think this is one that gets heavily overlooked.

(Also, Bernadine is one of the first author's I ever spoke to about my own writing after spending a week in a residential writing retreat. She's fab! My lecturer never found out I actually knew Bernadine.)

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