Summer Reading for aspiring A Level / IB students

Pens down, books away - you’ve done the exams, you’re just waiting for the results.  Nothing more to be done.  IT’S THE SUMMER!

The long summer holidays mean only one thing - no school work.  I mean it - don’t work.  You need a break.  But do you need nearly 2 months of a break?  What if you forget all you learnt last year?  What if you don’t have the skills needed for September?  What if you can’t remember how to structure an argument or write an essay?  

Just do a quick internet search and you will see how crucial it is to take a mental break over the summer.  

Reading, however, is what you can do and what you should do to keep your brain gently ticking over.  A love of reading is what will see you through - for A Level and IB it is the single most important thing you can do to gain a wider range of ideas and concepts and ways of thinking.  It is also jolly good fun to get lost in a crackingly good story - remember, not all books are for the betterment of your mind.  That said, here is a list of some classic books that will do just that - some are my recommendations (SW) and some are from my good teacher friend (OR).  Happy reading!

• Dubliners, James Joyce. Biassed cos it's my fav ever, but it's perfect for A-level: it's a series of epiphanic short stories, so you get a sort of abstract element of bildungsroman because the changing protagonists are all increasingly older, and it's also a masterclass in short-story writing. It was also (and still is, I believe) a set text for A-level Lit/Lan.  (OR)

• The Time-traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger. It's a good little sci-fi yarn about a man who develops a relationship with a woman by dropping into her life through time travel, but at random intervals, such that when they first meet, she's known him since childhood but he has no idea who she is. It's a beautiful story - a simple romance on the surface - but it's clever how the non-linear stuff works.  (OR)

• French Exit, Patrick deWitt. Just couldn’t put this down!  It is a fabulously dark comic novel about an acerbic and very wealthy widow and her adult son who leave New York for Paris so she can die in style.  And there is a cat  (who talks) and a suspicious death.  This is a perfect example of when characterisation drives a novel.  (SW)

• A Theatre for Dreamers, Polly Sampson is a novel about creatives.  The good, the bad and the poets, painters and musicians who crowd the island of Hydra in 1960.  Utopia.  Or not.  It really depends on who’s asking.  A novel of historical fiction - with a cast that will send you to your parents’ record collection and book shelves.  If you aren’t going to Greece this year, this really will be the next best thing.  (SW)

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