October 2016 Books!

I've read a lot this month, but most of it was for lit theory! However, I did manage to do a bit of reading for pleasure as well.

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
23rd September - 6th October

I don't normally like the classics, but I make an exception for Charles Dickens. I find that his writing still stands the test of time. It did however take me what felt like three years to read!

Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
7th October - 12th October

I quite enjoyed the book and definitely enjoyed it more than the film version. I found it interesting with the psychology theme. It was really easy to read and didn't take me too long to finish.

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
13th October - 18th October

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought and again it did not take too long to read. I definitely think I will use it for one of my assignments. It was quite close to the film adaptation I watched a few years ago.


Adaptation and Appropriation - Julie Saunders
13th October - 13th October

A Theory of Adaptation - Linda Hutcheon
17th October - 17th October

Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text - Deborah Cartmell
17th October - 17th October

I used a bit of these three book for one of my assignments. I found them quite interesting, but didn't use a lot of quotes from them.

Holding Up The Universe - Jennifer Niven
18th October - 20th October

I was really looking forward to reading this and I definitely wasn't disappointed. It has an incredibly similar structure to All the Bright Places and also deals with some very interesting issues. The male protagonist has a condition called prosopagnosia. This is something that I learnt about in A-level Psychology and it was interesting to read about it in the medium of fiction.

Don't Look Now - Dauphne Du Maurier
21st October - 21st October

This is a short story and was only about 50 pages. Therefore it did not take me too long to read. I quite enjoyed it even though I did find it slightly odd! The film version was also quite interesting and the fake blood was something else!

How Not to Disappear - Clare Furniss
22nd October - 27th October

I didn't quite know what to expect with this, but I was quite pleasantly surprised. I quite enjoyed the mirroring between the character and was pleased with the ending.

Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader - Nigel Wood & David Lodge
Throughout the Month

• An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative - Roland Barthes
• The Object of Study - Ferdinand de Saussure 
• The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception - Theodore Adorno & Max Horkheimer
• The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - Walter Benjamin
• Lecture 6 - Sigmund Freud
• Lecture 7 - Sigmund Freud
• The Insistence of the Letter of the Unconscious - Jacques Lacan
• 'Fantasy as a Political Category' - Slavej Zizek
• 'What is an Author?' - Michel Foucault
• Writing and Difference - Jacques Derrida
• The Ethics of Linguistics - Julia Kristeva

I've read enough lit theory to last a lifetime this month! Some bits I quite enjoyed and understood, other bits I didn't enjoy and understood next to nothing of. I quite enjoyed the reading on Marxism and Freud was quite interesting. However I didn't really like or understand structuralism or post-structuralism.

Thanks For Stopping By! :)