Looking for new books to read in the new year? The Guardian UK newspaper has come up with a reading list of diverse writing in English. If you look at the reading lists on many University courses of English Literature, they are predominantly white, male writers. Have a look at the Guardian list for alternative, equally well written books in English by a worldwide range of cultural diversity. (To make this list, they interviewed well-respected writers of a wide range of ethnic cultures, themselves writing brilliant modern literature. Jackie Kay, the Scottish poet is particularly good at offering a list of authors).
Find the list here.
Authors/books recommended on this list include: E R Braithwaite “To Sir with Love”, V S Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Wagui Ghali “Beer in the Snooker Club” (1946), Michael Ondaatje “The English Patient”, Anita Desai “The fire on the mountain”, Audre Lord, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun”, “Red: Contemporary Black British poetry” ed Kwame Dawes, Patience Agabi “Telling Tales”, Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott “Selected poems”, Tsitsi Dangarembga “Nervous Conditions”, Buchi Emecheta.
I have to put my hand up and say that I haven’t read these books, and so I am trusting to these writers’ recommendations. I simply pass them onto you, to look through the list and try some new book which you haven’t heard of before – in the spirit of adventure. A quick way to find them is if you look up one of them on Amazon, you will find the other books popping up as “people who read this book also read these….” so it looks as if some people are already blazing a bookbuying trail through the Guardian’s list of books.
But of course you don’t have to purchase online, you can always try reading these books via a library so it doesn’t cost you anything – or purchasing them secondhand to keep costs low (and be able to buy far more of them on your budget!). Certainly, if you are looking for something new to buy a keen reader for a present, the list might offer some exciting new ideas.
Comma And 