My love affair with Pride and Prejudice

My Love Affair with Pride and Prejudice

If I were to have one book in the whole world to read, it would be the battered old copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This worn out book lives forever on my bedside locker, as it did my mother’s before she gave it to me. This novel never fails to excite me. Although the tale is well known to me now, each time I read this book I get engrossed in the characters so effortlessly portrayed by Austen. However, these are but part of the appeal to this book. To me nothing can beat her use of irony and wit providing an endless stream of humour that can never fail to bring a smile to your face. To be without this book would be like being without a closest friend. With the opening of this novel, a day can turn from lousy to exciting.

     The other thing that is truly remarkable about this novel is its characters, as mentioned above. I can never fail to fall in love with Austen’s use of dialogue to give amazing depth to her characters. This allows us to feel for her characters and creates the perfect atmosphere with which to tell her tale.

      As highlighted above I am thoroughly in love with this book. I would give it a rating of10/10, which might seem fanciful but I truly hard set to find any faults with it. I would highly recommend giving it a read!

The book that made me love reading

If I could take any book I wanted to a desert island It would have to be ‘Lord of the Flies'.

I have to say this is my favourite book of all time. When I first read this book my emotions flowed out of my like water bursting from an ancient dam that has cracked under the pressure of every tear shed while reading.

  An example of this was at the end of this book I walked into my dad’s room. He asked me if I was alright, then I shot he a look as if he had just killed my favourite character!

  Every character in this novel has a special element to them that makes me love this book. Some are the only voice on the island, others show how fast we turn to savagery.

 I love this book with all my soul, and recommend it to everyone. This is the book that made be love reading

My favourite Book - a teen review

My favourite book is a Dr. Seus book that I got when I was four years old. It was called “bedtime story” but it was always my favourite. Like all Dr. Seus books, the book was one big poem filled with stange and wonderful creatures. This particular book was about one bug who yawned. This yawn was then passed throughout the world as everyone fell asleep. It told the tale of how all of the different creatures fell asleep.

          When I was younger I always requested this as my bedtime story, so much to the point that my parents could not stand it anymore. I especially liked it if I couldn`t go to sleep. It was as if the yawn that was spread though Dr. Seus` land reached me in my bed.

          Even before I could read I would spend hours looking at this book. The pictures were so funny and colourful. I used to laugh at some of the funny beds that those strange creatures fell asleep in.

          I love all of Dr. Seus` books but this one is by far the best. Sadly I am still yet to find another person who has read this book. They don’t know what they have been missing out on!! 

Books to grow up with

 If I was going to a desert island and was allowed to bring only one book with me, I would bring my illustrated copy of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, by Lewis Carroll.

 I chose this book for a number of reasons, because of its’ sentimental values to me, because of the incredible, exciting story and because of the stunning illustrations, to name a few reasons. I have enjoyed this book for so long, I feel I am obligated to bring this book along with me, as a way of saying thank you to the book.

 My God mother and Aunt, Jane, gave this book to me when I was age four. Sadly, the book was too complicated for me at that age, and I left the book gather dust on my shelf for another year. It was then, however, that my ballet class decided to turn Alice in Wonderland into a dance. After I was cast as the Queen of Hearts, I diligently began the first chapter of my Auntie’s present to me.

 I found the book very hard to read, and ended up getting my mum to read it to me and explain all of the harder words and phrases. But I didn’t care, the book instantly became my favourite. I would watch the film over and over again for days, I wanted to name my little sister Alice after the loveable main character and I could almost recite the book word for word.

Another great thing about this book is that it has grown up with me. When I first read it, Alice in wonderland was a funny story about a girl in a magical world, but as I grew older, it was a mysterious book about a delusional little girl. The reader is left to decide weather of not the story was true, and each time I read it, I change my mind. This is why I would bring this book with me on a desert island, because the story is different depending on the reader, even on my mood!

How to choose a favourite book

Today my English teacher asked the question: ‘If there was one book you could take with you on a desert island which would it be?’

Now for some, this is a very easy question to answer, but I found I had a very hard time making a decision. I mean, just one book? How can I choose just one?! I would have to bring at least five, and even then I wouldn’t be able to decide which to take. Do I take a book I’ve read before? If I do that, how do I know that I won’t get bored reading it again? Or I could take a book I’ve never read, but this could be dodgy. How do I know I will enjoy it? I could end up burying it in the sand, never to be seen again, and then where would I be? Alone on a desert island with nothing to do. However, after much thought I have finally come to a decision. I would, without a doubt, have to take ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ by Stephen Chbosky.

The first time I encountered this book was while browsing my local bookshop. Now, while this shop isn’t even half the size of an Eason or Hughes and Hughes, and doesn’t have nearly a quarter of the selection that’s in either of these, I find the books I have enjoyed the most have always come from this little shop.  This time was no different. I was drawn to the book. The cover was very eye catching. The black writing on top of the cream page filled with orange writing really stood out. Upon sighting it I immediately walked towards it, desperate to see if the story behind the cover would be nearly as fantastic as the cover. To be honest, when I read the blurb, I wasn’t so sure.

On a desert island with The Hunger Games

I like to think that I was one of the leaders  of the “The Hunger Games” book revolution, a bold statement, I know.  I first heard of the Hunger Games  in late 2010, at this time I didn’t realise the genius  I’d stumbled upon. In my first year of secondary school at the time, I was on a bus to a hockey match. I had happened to be sitting beside a shy girl I knew nothing about. I made efforts to make conversation, but she was deeply absorbed in a book and gave only one word answers. Rude, or so I thought.

              A few weeks later,  I was on our family’s tradition of a day out in town,  Christmas shopping . Every year my parents leave my brother and I in my favourite bookshop “ Hodghes Figgis” and it was here I saw the book that had caused the shy girl to ignore me. So I bought it. I was sure that a book couldn’t have been so good as to ignore me.

            So on Christmas Day I turned the first page of “The Hunger Games”. And ,of course, I agreed that I had been worth ignoring. To this day “The Hunger Games” would be the one book I would bring on a desert island.

In Love with Keats

Any time I’m asked a question involving one book, I instantly feel that cloying indecisiveness that is my love for a seemingly endless list of books. So being asked to write a blog post about the one book I would bring to a desert island is torment! After much deliberation between The Golden Treasury left to me recently by my grandmother, and a tatty volume of Keats, I’ve decided to go with Keats, as I’ve fallen totally in love with its decrepit charm.

The book came to me last year. Imagine the bustling streets of the town of Gorey, in Wexford, where I sometimes go to shop with my family. There’s a small café there, called “The Book Café”, if I’m remembering that right, with the kind of atmosphere that makes me want to play chess (though I’m awful) and drink hot chocolate. Go through to the back of the café and you’ll find shelves and shelves of second hand books. In short, a reader’s heaven! It was here that I found a bookcase devoted to poetry, and hiding unassumingly between some larger, sterner looking volumes was my Keats volume, and I say ‘my’ with great pride and satisfaction.

By then, the book had seen its fair share of wear and tear, the pages are browned and the denim-y cover is a little stringy along the spine, but, to me, that’s all part of the charm. It cost five euro, which I’m mentioning because it adds to my happiness around having snatched it up. I must now have read “Ode To A Nightingale” a thousand times, so I’ll close by quoting my favourite lines:

“O, for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth.

That I might drink and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.”