I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I hit 25 the art of reminiscing and looking back on the past became a huge deal. I’ve started reading some of the books that I loved during my childhood again, and seeking out some others. So, with that in mind, this tag I borrowed from The Quirky Book Nerd is right up my street.
When I sat my Leaving Cert, English was one of my favourite subjects. Not only did I love the creative writing side (which I don’t feel we did enough of, by the way) I really loved our comparative study. For this, you studied the themes and worlds of three separate pieces of media (for us, we did a film, a book and a play, but you can do whatever you wished.)
The full list of texts you can possibly study for the Leaving Certificate English exam is pretty long, but there are some books I think deserve to be at least considered. Quite a few of them will be YA-focused books, but you can make such compelling arguments from them. Team it up with a movie you love that has roughly the same theme, and you’ve got the basis of your answer.
Challenge criteria: A book from a genre/subgenre you’ve never heard of.
Blurb:
Another laugh-out-loud dual narrative, Freshers is a YA novel following two protagonists through that tumultuous first year of university. Starring new characters – but featuring some familiar faces from Lobsters – Freshers is a contemporary, authentic story packed full of love, sex and friendship.
September always means one thing in my house – back to school. When both of your parents teach for their money, it’s quite hard to think of anything else in that time. Almost the whole month of August was filled with stationery (which is probably where my lifelong love of stationery stems from) and school book lists.
With Harry Potter’s son Albus starting school today (yes, it’s been 19 years since the Battle of Hogwarts), I had a think about some fictional schools K wish I was attending. If I had been to one of these schools, I think I would have liked going back to school a whole lot more than I actually did.
Today marks the beginning of the Leaving Cert, the final school exams in Ireland before you head off to college. It’s the sixth anniversary of when I sat my own exams, meaning I’ve been out of secondary school now for as long as I was in it. Kids starting their Leaving Cert weren’t even in secondary school when I sat my own exams. And that, readers, is how you feel old.
In honour of this great moment, I took a look at the texts and tomes I studied for my own Mental Torture™. The greatest feat will be if I can actually remember them. In this, I’ve included my studied prose – this would enter into thesis levels if I rattled off all the poetry and poets I focused on.
