YC Reading

Recently The Guardian ran an article discussing Prue Leith’s comments on contemporary cookbooks. ( “Cookbooks’ key ingredient now design not recipes, says food writer.” CarolineDavies and Nicola Slawson, Guardian website, Tuesday 18th August2015.) In this article, the authors discuss Leith’s comments regarding modern cookbooks being primarily aesthetically pleasing, rather than designed for practical use and, well, actual cooking. This got me thinking. Which cookery books do I actually use? And which ones do I enjoy? Are the two necessarily different?  Currently, cooking shows and competitions such as Masterchef and the Great British Bake Off are highly popular. The resurgence of baking has led to a massive boom in all things cupcake. Food festivals, gourmet fast food and local produce have all become more mainstream affairs rather than specialist pursuits. This would suggest a nation which is growing more passionate about food, and therefore cooking. Cookbooks themselve...

This academic year, Yeovil College Learning Resource Centre encouraged our students and staff to take part in the Six Book Challenge (now renamed Reading Ahead ).  A dynamic reading and literacy initiative created by the Reading Agency, this challenged participants to read six things - from whole books to short stories and poems, magazines and journal articles, and even website articles and digital games. Our challengers read widely, filling in details and thoughts about their reading in a reading diary, which encouraged analysis and evaluation of texts and proved a popular way for even seasoned readers to find new ways to expand their horizons and challenge themselves to try new genres and books. We asked some of our Challengers to report back on what they enjoyed about the challenge and why, and in the coming weeks, we'll be sharing what they told us, in a bid to demonstrate exactly why it's such a great idea. Today, our Academic Resource Centre Co-Ordinator, C...

Reader’s block is something all of us might recognise. Like writer’s block, where you sit looking at a blank page and despair because your mind is likewise empty of ideas, with reader’s block you’re looking at pages filled with words and you just simply can’t get into reading them. It’s like lacking the key to enter a magical world. Narnia is before you...but the wardrobe door’s stuck. So here’s how it started. Some good intentions. A healthy stack of prize winning literary efforts intermingled with a couple of bestsellers and charity shop finds. A whole summer’s worth of lazy hours to linger over the pages, in a variety of sunshine soaked places.  A reader’s dream come true. So what went wrong? A few weeks later and I’ve barely read anything. True, I’ve grazed a couple of chapters here and there. I read a beautifully composed and insightful first chapter of “H is For Hawk” by Helen McDonald, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2014. Mainly, however, I’ve read a coup...