Reading Lust List

 

Having recently rediscovered a childhood love of reading, I feel like the list of books that I want to read is literally growing to the point where I feel like I'm going insane. I work, I blog, I have other things to do yet all I seem to do is find another book that I'm desperate to read. I will never say that reading is a bad thing, as I learnt so much from reading. I watched a video the other day that directly confronted whether young girls actively gain confidence from reading and I would say that reading definitely gave me confidence growing up. Even at aged 6, I was way above the average in terms of my reading skills but this video stated that not enough books were about girls. More importantly, girls who weren't princesses or the like. They were focussing on females as the protagonists of a story. Females who wrote their own tales and trod through their own paths. In all honesty, my favourite books as a child were; The Harry Potter series, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Ballet Shoes. All of these books contained very strong female characters although I never really thought about this at the time. I came from a female dominated household and family to the extent that I was always told that I could be whatever and whoever I wanted to be, regardless of gender, age, etc. I don't think young girls reading about princesses is a negative things; I think the more important lesson here is that we, as a society encourage ANY child to read about whatever they're passionate about. As adults, we forget that we are constantly reading.

Whether that is reading signs, blogs, text messages, etc. We literally read constantly. I don't think it matters what people of any age (but particularly young children) read is what is important; the important thing is the keep teaching them a skill that will ultimately stay with them for life. At the moment my reading list is super full, yes. But I'm actually enjoying reading and getting my mind lost within a story. I have to be honest and say that my favourite books do tend to be those with a strong female lead, or in fact those with a strong lead, male or female. It should abou the content within a book, not about what gender a character is. As a reader, it's possible to learn from either gender in a positive way and a lack of female roles won't stop me reading, or from encouraging someone of any age to read. At one point I would only read Fantasy based fiction, due to my infinite love of the Harry Potter series. All that happened is that I ran out of stories to enjoy because I wasn't being open to anything and so it's important to simply encourage any kind of reading, not only one kind. Rant over!

Reasons To Stay Alive - Matt Haig

The Essex Serpent - Sarah Perry

The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton

The Muse - Jessie Burton

A Year of Marvellous Ways - Sarah Winman