WBD Survey 11

The latest recommendations from our World Book Day 2011 survey, which you can contribute to here. We'll be studying the first book with our V formers next term.

Tweeter of Wit: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
As a tale of love and dreams set against a backdrop of recession and corruption, this is a timeless novel which resonates today as it did in 1920s America. Gatsby is a tragic hero for the twentieth century, and in Nick Carraway we have the template of the involved narrator. Some of the imagery is sufficiently beautiful to be moving, and the lyrical ending is a stunning resolution, following a denouement which has revealed the moral bankruptcy of many of the characters.
Caragh Little,  Head of English, Loreto College Coleraine

Teresa: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
There's something for everyone in this book-- action, adventure, psychology, friendship, manipulation, surprise... I've read it and reread it tens of times and every time I like it more!

Jennifer: Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
This book never fails to send shivers down my spine. It's beautifully written and poetic, full of both hope and despair. I never get tired of rereading it and I take something different away from it every time.

Christopher North Jr: Njal's Saga
I love the literature of Iceland. They have the oldest standing sort of democratically elected parliament, the Althing, which dates back to the ninth century. Their sagas contain bits of history; they are exciting stories and very novelistic, and Tolkien stole much of the Lord of the Rings from these stories. I could go on to recommend Egil's Saga, The Volsunga Saga, The Prose Edda (or The Deluding of Gylfi, that does for Germanic myth what Ovid does for Greek and Roman myth in The Metamorphoses). We learn stuff about the Vikings from these stories we might never have known.

English Companion Ning Member: Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse
It is first among equals, since you are only allowed one [recommendation].