Bright Book

Now I and many others can vouch for this. Learning Shakespeare quotes is the hardest thing in the world when you’re not sure which quotes you actually want to use. As fabulous as it is to know whole soliloquy’s and conversations but really they’re only good as party tricks amongst scholars. I know I’ve never made a friend over my knowledge of the beginning of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be”. So what are the most important things to think about when shakespeare revision time comes around. 

It’s important to know what quotes are linked to which theme, or themes. This way if you get a question such as religion, conflict, hypocrisy etc. you’ll have a whole list of quotations you can rifle through to really bulk out your essay. 

Keep your quotes short. There is nothing worse than trying to remember long quotations. For example if we relate back to the last Shakespeare and Me, where I wrote about some of my favourite quotes, rather than writing out “forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum”, you could simply say that Hamlet uses the hyperbole of “forty thousand brothers” to show how much more he loved Ophelia than her brother. Keeping quotes short is vital to markers as well as they don’t want to see how well you can remember quotes, although it feels like it. They want to see that you can use these quotes and show a real depth of understanding about how they relate to a theme or concept. 

Know your quotes in context. There’s no good using a fabulous quote if you don’t know where about in the play it comes from. This is because perhaps quotes may have a different meaning depending on how a character is feeling in a particular moment. Additionally this can often link to the theme as in one scene a quote may link to one theme whereas it could easily mean something else in another scene. This sounds far more complicated than it really should be. Essentially the key is to know where about in the play the quote is said and...

If you’re about to say that so and so said such a line when actually it was said by another can really lose you marks in a paper. It’s really important when looking a themes like conflict as it shows your knowledge of who is in a more powerful position. Additionally getting a quote wrong can put you in bad stead for the rest of the paper as you can continuously think that that character is in fact saying those lines when it is another character entirely. This is something that happens mostly with minor characters who don’t have large roles in multiple scenes, yet mostly they have a lot of important things to say and therefore should not be disregarded and their names should be learnt.

So there are a few tips on how to choose your quotations. Now how do you go about learning them? This was something I struggled with when I was in sixth form as I had to memorise two plays worth of quotes and poetry as well! And then my teacher told me that Hamlet was the longest of Shakespeare’s plays and I almost had a breakdown. But here are a few of my top tips. 

Indeed they are! Flash cards made my life so much easier when I was learning quotes. On one side I had my quotes, on the other side their meanings, split off into act and scene. Every day I would take a stack of these to school with me and flick through them when I had a spare few moments. 

Repeating your quotes may get boring, but it’s worth it. Even if you do it with friends, where one of you starts off a quote and the rest of you finish it. It can be made into a game but at the same time you are learning quotes. Maybe even if one of you said a quote and the other said where it was from and who said it. It’s all about repeating key quotations to get them stuck in your brain. 

When I say practise I mean practise writing essays. Every exam board has a load of past papers with questions for you to practise with. Some even have a corresponding mark scheme so you can have a look at how  you did. What this does is give you the opportunity of practising how to use your quotations in context with the linguistic analysis and historical context. 

These are my tips for picking and learning quotes for Shakespeare essays. I’m hoping to do a whole post soon about the historical context for Shakespeare and some more about the period in which he was writing. Maybe also when I get home to all my notes I can have a dig out of all of my old work and show you how I structured and wrote my old essays. If you have anything else you’d like to see in this series do let me know! 

It was hard to remain silent. I tried. I really did, but my breathing kept getting louder as I gasped for clean air. My body was trembling, adding noise to the silence. Mum pulled me closer to her, holding tight. Dad cuddled us both. Three spoons under one duvet. With the summer heat and us huddled together the smell wasn’t amusing. I shifted about. 

“Shhh,” Dad whispered. “Try not to make a sound."

Mum kissed the back of my neck. Her wheezing chest blew out little puffs of air on to my head. “It’s OK, Charlie, everything’s going to be alright,” she said. 

“Promise?” I said. 

“Promise.” Mum said. 

I had high hopes for this book, and for the most part I was happy with what I read from Conaghan. On the Bloomsbury website where there’s a whole host of information on this book, and on NetGalley where I got my copy from it stated that it would be perfect for readers who enjoyed Patrick Ness, John Boyne and Malorie Blackman. Now if you’ve been following this blog for the year that it’s been running you may have noticed that I am a huge fan of Patrick Ness’ work. I wanted this book to live up to those high standards that I have in place for young adult novels. 

“The Bombs That Brought Us Together” follows Charlie Law who lives in Little Town, which is on the border of Old Country. They are under a regime in Little Town where there’s a curfew and other such rules put in place for what is assumed to be their safety. Charlie then meets a boy around his age called Pavel (Pav) Duda who is a refugee from Old Country. His family have left the troubles there in order to live what they believe to be a better life in Little Town. However things slowly start to crumble around the two boys, which culminates in the dropping of bombs and the infiltration of Old Country soldiers. 

Now when I read the synopsis of this book before I requested it I was so excited. I love reading about societies that differ from my own and how they function, as well as having a really keen interest in cultural differences. When I saw this novel focusses on a refugee I was overwhelmingly excited to read it. What I discovered was that actually, Little Town is essentially England. In an interview that Conaghan did for Bloomsbury Publishing he said that he was inspired by what happened in Crimea and how refugees, mainly children and their mothers sought refuge in England. I felt that through the very British colloquialisms in the language that I was maybe too involved in the story. Usually I don’t have an issue with such but in the context of this story I felt that I needed to understand Little Town and Old Country as two very different places from where I was, so that then I could choose which pieces of the story I wanted to take away and say that I understood that that was something that England was currently experiencing. I think that this may not be a problem to most people, but I felt that the use of terms such as “scran” and “eejit” which are both British colloquialisms made it almost too specific rather than general as the two place names would suggest. 

However I felt that the characters were incredibly well written. The dialogue, if you disregard my previous concern about the colloquialisms, is very natural and therefore seemingly real. I can imagine many people reading the conversations through and realising that they themselves may have said them. The character of Pav is probably one of the characters I liked most and this was purely through Conaghan’s characterisation. His use of dialogue and the broken English gave me a great sense of his confusion around the world and I could imagine being in his shoes, moving to somewhere where you didn’t know the “lingo”. Yet for me, Charlie Law wasn’t the best character. He had some characterisation yet I didn’t really know what he stood for. I wouldn’t have wanted him on my side during an argument as he seemed a little too weak to really stand up for what he believed in, and all of the things he really wanted to say weren’t ever said. Also he relationship with Erin F is something that confused me entirely. I’m almost 90% sure I’m right in saying that Charlie is only meant to be 14/15 years old in this novel, so it confused me that he was so sexually aware. In places, particularly talking about the use of the shed, he makes comments about Erin F which he distracts himself from but I’m pretty sure this is suggesting a sexual relationship with her. I feel that in places Charlie was written as older than he actually is which could be a societal comment about how war makes you grow up incredibly quickly, yet for me it stood out as a strange step back from the character. 

Erin F however is a great character in this book. She stands for the stereotypical female role I believe. She’s the pretty girl who is the love interest which could be seen as a cliché yet she is strong enough to speak her mind, especially regarding the Old Country hospital where she has to take her mum. We’re never told what’s wrong with her mum specifically yet at the end of the novel there’s a reference to Erin F shaving her head to support her mum which makes me think that perhaps it is cancer, although this isn’t specified. What I love most about Erin F is how she’s so dedicated to looking after her mother and no regime or old country infiltrator is going to stand in her way of doing that. 

Marcy Lewis was also another female character that I enjoyed reading about and wished had been more of a part of the story. I feel that Mercy had a lot more to offer as a character than what was actually given to us as readers. She initially starts out as a love interest for Pav, showing his vulnerable side and showing that not everyone hates people from Old Country, which is fine. I didn’t mind this actually as I felt that she was a really sweet character and I wanted her and Pav to be together from the moment that I heard about her. Yet later in the book she begins to really develop and discuss the politics of the Old Country Vs Little Town battle and she makes an incredible case for the fact that before, under the Little Town regime, that they wouldn’t have been able to talk about how they really felt living there, but now they were able to do so freely. I think that I would’ve personally preferred more of Mercy Lewis throughout the novel, just to maybe give a little more background to the whole situation from a more political standpoint. 

There are three characters in this novel who I really dislike. Two come as a package. Max and Bones are meant to be disliked. They’re the bullies at Charlie and Pav’s school, who ultimately fear what they don’t know, that being Old Country and by association they hate Pav. These two are, whilst being horrible people, a great source of comic relief at least during a couple of scenes where Bones is really unable to make up an argument of his own so simply copies Max’s comments in a slightly more dumbed down manner. I think this a great exploration of how people copy what they’re told by others who are trying to scaremonger them. 

The Big Man is the other character I’m not truly a fan of. I don’t know if I just don’t see how he really fits into the whole story and therefore have missed out on the key reason for why he’s such a great character, but honestly I cannot pin point a single reason for really having him there. Honestly I feel that he could’ve been taken out and the whole story could’ve continued regardless, with a little more focus on the politics. He’s meant to be a leader within the regime, with eyes and ears all over the place and yet he doesn’t seem to have a grip on the infiltrators who are known for taking his guys in and torturing them until they spill his secrets. Additionally I feel that he may have been written in as purely a test for Charlie’s strength and assertiveness, yet in no part does Charlie stand up to The Big Man. I wish that Charlie had before the very end of the novel. 

I think this novel had a lot of potential to show the effects of a war on refugees and the people they befriend. I like the idea of the regime and the strict boundaries that are put up in order to protect and I enjoyed to see how those changed. What I struggled with though was how some of the characters fitted in and how the pacing of the novel allowed it all to play out. I felt that everything moved almost too quickly for my own liking towards the end as I feel like I missed out on certain pieces of information. The themes are really important to this piece and yet I feel like I missed out on a few of them towards the end. Charlie and Pav’s friendship despite country of origin is inspiring and something I enjoyed having a focus on, additionally I loved the focus on how the families are both treated and react between each other. Yet what we lost was the control of the parents which once again made Charlie and Pav appear older than they actually were. 

All in all towards the end I found myself caring more about Charlie’s mum and her inhaler than I did about his work for The Big Man. I wanted to have more about Pav and his life back home rather than him just complaining about where he is now. And I really just wanted more of an exploration of how society built itself back up after the devastation of the bombs. After all, this novel is called “The Bombs That Brought Us Together”. 

Total pages - 320

Total read time -  4.5 hours

Rating /10 - 5

Recommend - Maybe

Brian Conaghan interview for Bloomsbury Publishing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7x4hGGr8ks

Shakespeare is known for having some of the most frequently quoted work. Whether we were forced to learn quotes like I was for my A Level English Literature course, or we just say things that we don’t realise are quotes at all, we have adopted Shakespeare into our lives as a great author and poet. Yet I feel that we are taught to learn the same old quotes over and over; the “to be or not to be” and “Romeo Romeo where for art thou Romeo”’s. Shakespeare’s language is so rich and vibrant that there is almost a quote for every situation you may find yourself in. For this post I really want to shine a light onto some of the lesser known quotes, give them a little bit of context and maybe even dive into a little bit of the use of language. 

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting

Henry V - The Dauphin Act 2 Scene 4

This is set when the men of the King of France are heading off to battle with the English. The Dauphin, the kings son, is suggesting in this quote that the King should stand his ground and that he should not be timid when facing the oncoming battle with the English. In this context, self love could be seen as the act of winning this and reclaiming the lands that are supposedly his, whilst self neglecting would be to lose the lands he already has to King Henry. Additionally what Shakespeare is doing here is really characterising The Dauphin during this one simple line. He  is shown to be caring of his own self and that can be seen as being self indulgent which has been once or twice before called the root of all evil because humans become self idolatry. This goes against the ideas presented in the bible that “you shall have no other God before me” and “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” This would have been well known by the people attending Shakespeare’s play, which would simply highlight the fact that The Dauphin is the central instigator of the conflict throughout Henry V. 

Forty Thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum

Hamlet - Hamlet Act 5 Scene 1 

This is by far one of my favourite Shakespeare quotes of all time. Hamlet has come across Ophelia’s grave during her funeral where he fights with Laertes, declaring this line to him after they have been pulled apart. Up until this moment the audience are left confused as to their relationship as Hamlet draws her close and then pushes her aside as he dissolves into madness trying to discover if it was indeed his uncle who murdered his father. This outburst however is what really draws Claudius, his uncle, and Gertrude, his mother, who decide that he is in fact mad. What I love so much about this quotation is that is is using a hyperbole in such a way that if you read it out of context you can still determine the tone in which it would be said. It’s one of the ways in which Shakespeare really heightens the tension throughout this ending act as Ophelia’s death is what puts a definite break in Laertes and Hamlet’s relationship. They are never truly friendly throughout but this is where their conflict becomes more serious and eventually deadly. I think this quotation is beautiful and it’s one I remember so clearly for it’s pure sense of agony. 

I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick, Nobody marks you 

What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?

Much Ado About Nothing - Beatrice and Benedick Act 1 Scene 1 

There’s something marvellous about this being the first real meeting between Beatrice and Benedick that we see. Beatrice is essentially telling Benedick that he may as well stop talking because no one is listing to him and he replies simply by noting that she isn’t dead yet. It’s humorous as these two characters play off each other exceedingly well. They bicker and make jokes at the others expense but it is all to cover up their feelings for one another. It’s actually incredibly hard to pick out one line in particular from this play as every line is humorous or well written and I particularly enjoy the dialogue between Beatrice and Benedick purely for the undertones of love throughout the hate. Also by calling her Lady Disdain, Benedick is really saying that is feels he may not be worthy of her whilst knowing that she dislikes him greatly. It’s a harsh joke to make, that she is contemptible and therefore wholly unlovable, and yet we know that this is just the way in which they interact. 

If you were men, as men you are in show, you would not use a gentle lady so to vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts, where I am sure you hate me with your hearts. 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Helena Act 3 Scene 2

What I love about this quote is just how defiant Helena is. She’s really standing up for how Lysander and Demetrius are treating her in this scene. She knows that she is second to Hermia, particularly in Demetrius’ eyes, and yet he is complimenting her as if she is Hermia. What Helena is saying here is that they are taking advantage of her good nature to make promises and praise her beauty when she knows that they do not love her. What Hermia is saying here speaks for many women across all nations and I for one have felt this way before, particularly in regard to feeling that I am being duped because I know someone doesn’t quite love me. Not quite in the same sense as this, for Demetrius has been given the eye drops by Oberon. This quote can be used as a contemporary quote for all sorts of man based issues. 

Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. Look like th’innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.

Macbeth - Lady Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5

Lady Macbeth is instructing Macbeth on what he must do when he meets the king. What she is saying is that he should be kind and endearing yet under that pretence he should be aware of his end goal. I love this quote because of the imagery of the flower and the serpent. This is something that Shakespeare uses often in his plays. The serpent links to the biblical imagery of the serpent that leads Eve to sin. At the time of the original production, people would all be knowledgable of the bible and its teachings which makes this image even more vivid as the audience are aware of the eventual sinning of Macbeth. 

Shakespeare’s language has always been something that we’ve used regularly, meaningfully or not, and these are just a few of the lesser known quotes that I have found and really loved. Most of these can be used, if you really want to show off, in your every day life because who doesn’t want to tell someone that “nobody marks you”? or advocate “self-love” for it is “not so vile a sin as self-neglecting”?

For anyone who has known me for any length of time, it should come as no surprise that I am a huge lover of Shakespeare. His work tends to often send me to tears, particularly his tragedies but often his comedies too, and I find it absolutely fascinating to investigate how he uses language. I think what we don’t give Shakespeare enough credit for is actually how often we use the phrases that he himself coined, for we’ve come to use them as every day phrases without any concern for what their origins were. Ever heard someone use the word “swagger” in a sentence. Thank Shakespeare for he used it in two of his plays, Henry V and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other phrases such as to “kill with kindness” and “a sorry sight” can also be attributed to Shakespeare and their first written instances are found mostly through his work. 

I’ve always loved reading Shakespeare. I find it so rich and exciting, every world created is very different from the one before. I will admit that I have not read them all, for I fear that would take a whole lot of time and dedication to really understand them all in depth to their full potential, yet from what I have read I know that I really admire Shakespeare’s work. This blog post I really wanted to act as a sort of "Starter’s Guide to Shakespeare” so here are a list of the shakespeare plays that I find most engaging and the easiest to read. 

If you’ve not read Romeo and Juliet I urge you to do instantly. It’s a tragic love story with some of the most well known shakespeare lines, and it has three film adaptations, all retaining the original language of the play. The first was from 1968, black and white version with a Romeo who looks strangely like a young Zac Efron (but unfortunately isn’t), then we jump to 1996 for the most famous adaptation feature Leonardo DiCaprio playing the male lead before he was then taken over by Douglas Booth for the 2013 adaptation. The story follows Romeo and Juliet who are from two feuding families in Verona, Italy. They fall in love and a whole mess ensues when Juliet is told that she will marry a man called Paris despite being desperately in love with her Romeo. Tybalt discovers Romeo’s love and duel’s him on the street and is slain by Romeo who is then exiled. Juliet is devastated not only by the death of her beloved cousin but of the exile of her love. He sends her a letter through her nurse and asks her to meet him with the priest where they are married before she can marry Paris but she is forced to return to Verona without him for he is still in exile. She knows that on her return she must marry Paris so on the eve of her wedding she takes a draught like poison which slows down her heart beat just enough to keep her alive but appear dead. She is laid to rest in the crypt where Romeo finds her, assuming that she is in fact dead. He kills himself with poison just moments before Juliet awakes from her slumber to find him dead. She kisses him, hoping to receive some of the poison from his lips but there is none left. She ends her own life with a dagger and the two are together once more, this tragedy bringing together their two families. 

Another tragedy from Shakespeare but this time set in Demark. Young Hamlet’s father dies and his uncle, Claudius, marries his mother. Two guards and his most trusted friend find Hamlet to tell him of a ghost that resembles the very image of his father and Hamlet agrees to take watch with them that night. It is indeed the ghost of his father and he tells Hamlet of the horror that he was in fact murdered and he believes it to be Claudius, sending Hamlet to seek revenge for his untimely death. Hamlet takes this very heavily onto his shoulders and this drives him slowly into madness as he cannot decide if he should kill his uncle who has in fact usurped his father’s throne, or not. This puts strain on his relationship with the daughter of his uncle’s advisor, Ophelia, for whom Hamlet cares about a great deal. Essentially this story, much like Romeo and Juliet, dissolves very quickly into a mess of death and the final scene is one that should be read incredibly carefully, if only to make sure you’re aware of the order of the numerous deaths that occur. This play also has many film adaptations. My personal favourite is the 2009 RSC version starring David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius. It’s stuck incredibly closely to the play in that I’m not aware of too many lines that have been eradicated or changed in any way. Another version that you should consider watching once you’ve read the play is Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 version, yet this has moved a few scenes out of sequence, although is a very good film. And if you’re looking for a happy ending, why not just re-watch The Lion King, and see just how close the two are. 

I bet you were all thinking, blimey Kelly when are we going to get into the lighter hearted stuff of Shakespeare’s. Well the answer is now. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s other well known plays, often taught in schools much like the two above. This play follows the story of three couples, Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, and the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania, along with their troublesome stolen changeling Puck. The story starts with Hermia being told that she should marry Demetrius, become a nun or die within the month. They run into the forest where the fairy king and queen are arguing over whether or not they should keep Puck. Titania tells Oberon she will not give him up and Oberon therefore uses the spritely Puck to play a trick on her. There is a nearby traveling theatre group, one of whom is called Bottom. Puck turns his head into that of an ass and finds a flower that is capable of making the person affected fall in love with whomever they see first. This becomes a huge problem when he uses it on both of the boys in the other two couples in the hope that they will fall in love with the correct person.  This is obviously not what happens, people accuse others of killing the other, and there are plenty of duels had before the situation is all resolved as they tend to be in comedies. I’ve not yet found a film version of this that I enjoy quite as much as the other two but I’ll definitely keep an eye out. 

This is probably my favourite Shakespeare comedy and one I turn to on my bad days. Set in Messina this time, Shakespeare introduces us to the house of Leonato, which he shares with his daughter Hero and his niece Beatrice. They are alerted to Don Pedro’s glorious victory in battle and that they will be arriving at his home soon. On their arrival we meet Claudio and Benedick, friends to Don Pedro who fight alongside him. From the outset of the play Claudio is instantly in love with Leonato's daughter Hero, and he announces to Benedick, who promptly tells Don Pedro that he intends to court her and hopefully marry her. Benedick swears that he will never marry which makes it even more funny when Don Pedro’s men decide that to pass they time they shall play match maker with Benedick and Beatrice, who is known to outwardly despise him. The men make sure that Benedick overhears them discussing Beatrice’s love for him whilst Hero and her nurse discuss Benedick's love for her and this somehow works. Both Benedick and Beatrice believe they are the object of the other’s affections and seek to make amends in their friendship and relationship. Meanwhile Don John, Don Pedro’s brother, plots to ruin the wedding by staging a way in which to make Hero appear unfaithful. On seeing this Claudio states that he’ll embarrass her publicly, at the wedding that will be happening the next day. The second act of the play searches to resolve this issue and therefore end happily, which it does inevitably, with both the wedding of Claudio and Hero, and Benedick and Beatrice who realise that they are, in fact, in love. There are two really good adaptations of this play. The first is the 1993 film directed by and featuring Kenneth Branagh as Benedick and Emma Thompson as Beatrice which makes for really easy watching. But if you want a more modern version there is a 2012 film directed by Joss Wheedon. I’ve not actually seen this one myself but it has some pretty good reviews. My other favourite is actually a recording of a stage production that was produced of this play, from 2011, featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the two principal roles. This production has me in stitches every time. I absolutely adore it. 

I think this was the first Shakespeare play I read in full. It’s another comedy and involves one of Shakespeare’s most common tricks in this genre; a woman dressed as a man to cause confusion. Yet this is even more funny when you think that no women were allowed on stage during the time of the original production. Therefore it would be a man dressed as a woman dressed as a man. That’s not confusing at all! The story focusses on the twins Viola and Sebastian who are separated after their boat crashes. Viola dresses up as a man and makes her way to the palace where she begins to fall in love with the Duke Orsino, who is in turn in love with the Countess Olivia. She, however, is in love with Viola thinking that she is in fact a man and the whole situation gets incredibly confusing very quickly. There’s also a comic subplot wherein Countess Olivia’s steward Malvolio is lead to believe that she is in fact in love with him, which leads to him doing a whole host of embarrassing things which end up with him storming off and swearing revenge. I love this play because of how confusing yet simple it is. All of the characters are really easy to follow, for the most part, and the story is incredibly entertaining because of all of the confusion within the characters, yet there is enough that we know as an audience to really understand what’s going on. I’ve not yet seen any adaptations of Twelfth Night but I am aware that there is one from 1996 starring Helena Bonham Carter which I may have to search for.

If you know Shakespeare you know that there are so many more plays that he’s written which are equally as incredible as these five are. I just wanted to give you a very quick introduction to some of my favourites and to some of the easier ones that I’ve read over the years. I haven’t yet had a chance to delve too deep into his histories such as any of the Henry plays or Julius Caesar although I would like to. Perhaps over the summer I’ll give one or two of those a read. I’m hoping to eventually do a blog post of all of my favourite Shakespeare quotes, but that is taking a while to collate at the moment, with all their act and scene references, but hopefully that shouldn’t be too long. I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend, celebrating the bard’s 400th death day anniversary, and if there’s anything more you’d like to know about Shakespeare, any of the plays mentioned above, or anything else at all, feel free to leave a comment on this blog or find me on twitter.  

As some of you may know I’m currently studying Creative Writing and Media at university. I love it more than most things right now; bar books and family of course. But I found that this year was a lot of trial and error on how best to work with this course. I found that I don’t get a lot of contact hours and there’s A LOT expected of you right from the off. I thought maybe it might be a good time, coming to the end of my first year, to give some of you who might be thinking about it some tips on how to survive as a creative writing student. 

This is a key one for me. Making time to read is really important when you’re trying to be creative. You need to know what you like about books and what you don’t; what makes books appealing and what makes them interesting to read. I haven’t been the best as keeping up with reading novels in one go as I used to be, but I do find the time to read the odd chapter or two, be it on the bus to town to do my weekly shop or before bed at 3 am. I always try and find time because in the end this will help you become a better writer, not only for yourself but for your eventual readers. 

Never be afraid to carry around a pen and a notebook and whip that out when you sit down for coffee. Even if you’re just writing down character descriptions of people who walk by or are sitting across from you on the train, there’s always so much to write about. Keeping a writer’s journal is really interesting for you to look back on as you can often see the development of your own writing style as well as having a backlog of characters, plot ideas and random paragraphs that may be helpful to springboard you into writing after a creative slump. 

    

I mean this one. Take your laptop to class or have a very good ring binder. You never know what you’ll write in a workshop or a seminar, or what you’ll doodle on a random piece of paper that you want to keep and use at a later date. The things you write in class will often be things that you work on for future assignments and they’ll help you if you get into one of those slumps again. Also they’re really funny to look back on at a later date because hey, you and your classmates will write some really strange things together I’m sure and you’ll laugh when you get to read it back. My class for my writing stories module played the game where you write a line and pass it around the group when we were look at writing stories from the end and working back to the beginning. Yeah… someone ended up in love with their dog. Another person died. I had to read out some very odd things that day. 

I’ll say it again. You have to read as a writing student. I don’t really see any other way to get around it. Even if it’s just reading the work set by your tutor so you can discuss them in class, you still have to do that. Those are often the most important ones. But there is so much academic writing on how to write, and structuring stories and creating characters that you cannot ignore the academic side of a creative subject. It sounds like an oxymoron but really it’s incredibly important to read up on the background of what you’re doing because inevitably you’re going to have to write a reflective essay on what you’ve done. These in particular need your background research on the theory of writing and it’s so important to have this good solid understanding. Academic writing is often really interesting too. You can learn so much from reading journal articles or sections of ebooks on writing stories or poetry and in my case I’ve just finished an assignment on British Reality Television for my media theory module and I’ve learnt so much from reading up on a few books and articles. 

Lastly I really recommend editing your work. Even if you’re not sure you’ll ever publish it or you’ll never show anyone, sometimes it’s nice to sit down and edit a piece of work to make it better. This way when you find something months or maybe even years down the line you can find something you’ll read and be proud of. It might not even be your style anymore but it’ll still give you a sense of achievement. Also this can often springboard you back into writing and it’s something that I really love doing. Cup of tea, twinkly soundtrack music, maybe a couple of biscuits and editing work. There’s just something so relaxing about it all to me. However it can be the hardest thing to do, especially if you've written something you truly love and have to get rid of it.... kill your darlings as they say. 

So there are some tips that I have for budding creative writers. I’ve found this year to be a really experimental one full of learning about me and how I write and create characters, and finding that I actually do love poetry, quite a lot. I hope that you’re all well. Apologies for being missing in action a little recently, just been incredibly busy with assignments and such; but now I’m back to the reading for a while. New book reviews to come in the very near future. 

“Every year the saint came to the house. When Ursula was eight she and her brother Anton knelt on the window seat and looked out from the living-room window. The saint's white beard glinted in the torchlight; his tall bishop’s hat nearly touched the lintel and in his fat-fingered hands he clutched the curling golden staff and ancient book. His cheeks were dark like smoked ham, eyes half buried by pudgy lids - burnt currants peeping from an over-risen cake. Breath plumed from his purplish lips. Ursula looked for feet beneath his robes. Was he touching the ground or did he hover just above it?"

I met Holly Müller at a book signing at Waterstones in Cardiff, with no intention of buying a book at all. However, when I got talking to this fabulous lady I knew I had to buy this book. Not only is the cover beautiful, but the premise of the novel is stunning. It had me on the edge of my seat throughout, with a lot of moments where I had to just put it down to think. I'm still not sure I'm okay. 

Set during the course of the Second World War, in Nazi occupied Austria, we follow the Hildesheim family, in particular Ursula. Her brother, Anton, is a member of the Hitler Youth and is increasingly becoming more and more vindictive. Especially as Ursula befriends Schosi Hillier, a boy who is seen to be increasingly more odd than everyone else in the novel. The plot develops as Ursula starts to develop as a young woman, which just shows the strength that it takes to grow up during such a dark period in history. 

What I think Müller does incredibly well is show the Second World War in a new and interesting way. I had never seen a novel written from the other side, where there was a character who was was on the side of the Nazi regime. I had also never really read anything about Austria during the war, as much of the literature written by British historical fiction writers about World War II centres on the British involvement. Instead this focusses on Austria and running throughout the plot line is the involvement of the Russian forces. 

Additionally, I love that the plot of this novel doesn’t let up. It’s pacing could be seen as infuriating at times but this is reasonable in the build up of tension for later scenes. Particularly during part 2 there is a lot of waiting around on the part of Ursula and the farmer Herr Esterbauer, but I found this really important as we get to learn about Schosi's experiences. The two together really increase the tension throughout and there is something so intense about this part that wants you to keep reading and willing on characters.

Ursula is an interesting protagonist. She’s growing up throughout this novel and she can be seen as quite immature towards the start. She’s a known thief and she speaks out of turn, not really knowing or understanding anything that is going on. There is an understanding that something has happened between her and her brother, perhaps nothing sinister but there is a close relationship there, and this isn’t really discussed until the end of the novel when Ursula has grown up a little and knows better. Throughout we discover that Ursula is incredibly strong, and sometime this childish impulse helps her to gain a better understanding of herself and the situations she finds herself in. 

Schosi is also a character I love in this book. He’s, what I assume to be, autistic and is often hidden away by his mother. He’s got a piece of cloth that he winds around his finger when he’s nervous and a stutter and I think he is a beautifully written character. He doesn’t understand an awful lot, and gets scared incredibly easily, and I love that Ursula feels such a close connection to him. He’s incredibly childlike and innocent, thrust into the horror of a war torn state, forced to withstand torturous “treatments” and I think that Müller did an incredibly good job discussing the treatment of the disabled and those with mental illness during the war. 

I think my only qualm would be that the time frames all became a little fuzzy for me. I didn’t really know what time of the year it was, or if we’d even changed year. This made it a little more confusing towards the end as I didn’t know how old our protagonist was, or be able to work out from that the members of her family’s ages. This is often a confusion I have with novels that seem to span years, but there’s no real time specification. 

Overall this novel was a really tense exploration of the Second World War from a new perspective from a very strong and new narrative voice. I think that Holly Müller’s writing style lends itself to the darker side of literature, unafraid to tackle dark issues, whilst remaining an element of classical literature through her descriptions of settings and scenery. This book was a complete success that I would urge anyone with an interest in the genre, or not as the case may be, to give this book a go, despite how terrifyingly daunting its size looks. 

Total pages - 455

Total read time -  Untimed

Rating /10 - 7.5

Recommend - Yes

As part of my Poetry module I have to study a whole range of poetry styles and forms, but in our seminars we follow one rule; No Dead Poets. As I’m sure you’d imagine, we’ve wandered from this once or twice, and I definitely will for my list, but I think that this is something that needs to be discussed. Contemporary poetry isn’t really taught in GCSE literature classes which inevitably leads to young people feeling rather vehemently against poetry. Yet poetry can be so much more than the traditional sonnets or the dark imagery produced by Blake or Coleridge. What I’ve learnt since September is that poetry can genuinely be written about anything. We’ve had so much fun writing poetry within our group at university, coming up with some really beautiful imagery, from the extended metaphor of a bakery talking about marriage equality, and an exceptional rant about feminism to deep and meaningful poetry surrounding bereavements within families, to the absolutely absurd with a brain in a jar on the dining room table. Poetry has so much room for personal expression. Poetry doesn’t even need a form or a structure; half the time it doesn’t even need to make a whole lot of sense, and yet it might just spark someone’s interest. This is why I love poetry. 

Dead Poets - Lets get these out of the way first. These are poets that I love who I know are dead but who I really enjoy reading their work still

Alan Ginsberg - Howl

Jack Kerouac - Daydreams for Ginsberg

Shakespeare - To Be or Not To Be (Hamlet)

Thomas Hardy - Beeny Cliff

Alive Poets

Anis Mojgani

Shake the Dust

John Dorsey - The Bride of Frankenstein 

Rhian Edwards 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAv9qSk0khc

Kate Tempest - Brand New Ancients

Part 1

Part 2

Melissa Lozada-Olivia 

Like Totally Whatever

Bitches

How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse as an 82 Year Old Guatemalan Grandmother

Neil Hilborn

OCD

Kate Rokowski

How To Cure A Feminist

This list is not exclusive obviously! There are so many others that I love but this is a pretty good start for people who want to look into poetry. Many of these are performance poetry which is something that I really love. If there are any others that you think I’d enjoy feel free to leave comments below! Enjoy World Poetry Day!