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Books

Thoughts on the Man Booker Shortlist 2018

We are officially 10 days away from the announcement of the Man Booker Prize Winner 2018! At the end of September, the shortlist of six books for the prize was announced. And while the longlist saw potentially for the prize to expand its sights on to less conventional novels in the history of the prize, including the first ever graphic novel to be longlisted and the possibility for the first crime novel to be the prize winner, the shortlist seems to demonstrate the temporality of that diversity. The prize has long been considered one of the most reputable recognitions a…

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Books

September 2018 Reads

September marks exactly a year since I ended my Masters programme. To say it’s been a busy year would be an understatement. But interestingly enough, it’s also been my most personally productive. And by that I mean that while being in university forced me to be academically on the ball, being away from it has made me realise how much of my personal ambitions I had put to the side to focus on school. This blog, for example, has been a desire of mine and Z’s for years, but it only came to fruition after ending school, and having the…

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5 Best Series

5 Best Books to Take on Vacation

While it’s coming to the end of summer and most people are probably headed back to work or school now, I am getting my first (and last) proper vacation for this summer and gearing off for a road trip to the South of France tomorrow and you best believe that I am so excited to be getting some much deserved R&R. And while that will definitely include my favourite road trip tunes, part of that for me definitely includes time to delve into a good book. The art of choosing a book for vacation is just a important and special…

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Books

Book Review: “Warlight” by Michael Ondaatje

The Trauma of the Post-War Generation In the second review from the Man Booker longlist, Warlight by Michael Ondaatje proved a much more intense read than the crime-thriller Snap by Linda Bauer. A Canadian writer born in Sri Lanka, Ondaatje is an author of high regard, having won the Man Booker prize once before for his internationally acclaimed novel, The English Patient, and similarly winning the Golden Man Booker Prize in 2018 (the prize conceived to celebrate 50 years of the Man Booker which awards one book per decade a prize) for the same novel. To all those who know…

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Academic

Understanding Tragic Romance

There have been many times where I hear a person – or an institution – say that tragic plays like Romeo and Juliet or novels like Wuthering Heights are ‘romantic’. I’ve always had somewhat of a problem with this ideology – and that’s not to say that I think those people are wrong. Because the fact of the matter is, works like these are set up and have long been advertised as romances. Not only that, but they have been set up to epitomize romance. However, there are so many more layers as to what kind of romance is portrayed…

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Books

Snap by Belinda Bauer – Book Review

Snap by Belinda Bauer (Penguin Random House, Bantam Press) “On a stifling summer’s day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack’s in charge, she’d said. I won’t be long. But she doesn’t come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed forever.” While a very popular genre, crime novels have never been at the top of my reading lists. Not for lack of interest! I went through a phase in high school when I bought and burnt through every Kathy…

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