Book reviews and recommendations
These are books I enthused about, found interesting, want to recommend. I read a lot more books than are here, but I don’t write about ones I don’t like or find dull (this isn’t a professional reviewing site). Individual short story section at the end.
A
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi: Notes on Grief [personal memoir].
Agbabi, Patience: Telling Tales [poetry - update of The Canterbury Tales].
Allen-Paisant, Jason: Self-Portrait as Othello [poetry].
Ashman, Greg: Cognitive Load Theory: a little guide for teachers.
Atherton, Carol: Reading Lessons: the books we read at school, the conversations they spark and why they matter.
Atkins, Ros: The Art of Explanation: how to communicate with clarity and confidence.
B
Bate, Jonathan: Bright Star, Green Light: the beautiful works and damned lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Baume, Sara: handiwork [non-fiction].
Bell, Julia: Radical Attention [essay].
Bennett, Tom: Running the Room: the teacher’s guide to behaviour.
Bianchi, Martha Dickinson: Emily Dickinson Face to Face [memoir].
Boland, Eavan: The Historians [poems].
Boyle, Elizabeth: Fierce Appetites [memoir and literature].
Bradshaw, Graham: The Connell Guide to Shakespeare’s Othello.
C
Cahill, Kevin and Dennehy, Niamh: Perspectives on the Teaching of English in Post-Primary Education.
Carr, J.L.: A Month in the Country [novel].
Children’s Books Ireland: Free To Be Me: the diversity, inclusion and representation reading guide.
Children’s Books Ireland: Pride Reading Guide.
Christodoulou, Daisy: Teachers vs Tech? the case for an ed tech revolution.
Christofides, R.M.: Othello’s Secret: the Cyprus Problem [critical analysis, and personal history].
Cox Gurdon, Meghan: The Enchanted Hour: the Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction.
Cumming, Laura: Thunderclap: a memoir of art and life & sudden death.
Curran, Kevin: Youth [novel].
D
DeBhairduin, Oein: Why the moon travels [stories from Traveller folklore].
Didau, David: Making Meaning in English: exploring the role of knowledge in the English curriculum.
Dillon, Brian: Suppose a Sentence [essays].
Doyle, Martin: Dirty Linen: The Troubles in my Home Place.
Duncan, Sophie: Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine
E
Enser, Zoe: Bringing Forth the Bard: a guide to teaching Shakespeare in the English classroom.
Ernaux, Annie: The Years [memoir]. And brief comments on Simple Passion.
Evaristo, Bernardine: Girl, Woman, Other [novel].
Evaristo, Bernardine: Manifesto: on never giving up [autobiography].
Evaristo, Bernardine: Mr Loverman [novel].
F
Foster, R.F.: On Seamus Heaney [criticism, biography].
Freyne, Patrick: OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea [personal essays].
G
Gornick, Vivian: Unfinished Business: notes of a chronic re-reader [chapter on A Month in the Country].
Greenblatt, Stephen: Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak: Afterlives [novel].
H
Harpur, James: The Examined Life [poetry collection].
Headley, Maria Dahvana: Beowulf: a new translation.
Hickson-Lovence, Ashley: Your Show [novel].
J
Jones, Kate (editor): The researchED Guide to Cognitive Science.
Joseph, Anthony: Sonnets for Albert [poetry collection].
Josipovici, Gabriel: Hamlet: Fold on Fold [literary criticism].
Josipovici, Gabriel: 100 Days [memoir, essays].
K
Kara, Bennie: Diversity in Schools: a little guide for teachers.
Karim-Cooper, Farah: The Great White Bard: Shakespeare, race and the future.
Keegan, Claire: Small Things Like These [short novel]. Also in comparison to Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves. And a piece on the cover, selected from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Winter’. Plus a series of teaching notes.
L
Lemov, Doug, et al: Teaching in the Online Classroom: surviving and thriving in the new normal.
Leon, Donna: Wandering Through Life: a memoir.
Levy, Deborah: August Blue [novel].
Levy, Deborah: Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, Real Estate [memoirs].
Lock, Stuart (editor): The researchED Guide to Leadership: an evidence-informed guide for teachers.
Lovell, Oliver: Tools for Teachers: how to teach, lead and learn like the world’s best educators.
Lynskey, Dorian: The Ministry of Truth: a biography of George Orwell’s 1984.
M
MacLaverty, Bernard: Blank Pages and other stories.
Maguire, Laurie: Othello - Language and Writing.
Maroo, Chetna: Western Lane [novel].
Mccrea, Peps: Motivated Teaching.
Morrison, Toni: Desdemona [play].
Mukasonga, Scholastique: Our Lady of the Nile [novel].
N
Needham, Tom: Explicit English Teaching.
Nelson, Caleb Azumah: Open Water [novel].
Newkirk, Thomas: Minds Made for Stories: how we really read and write informational and persuasive texts.
Newstok, Scott: How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education.
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann: A Ghost in the Throat [prose].
O
O’Callaghan, Billy: The Paper Man [novel].
O’Connor, Joseph: My Father’s House [novel].
O’Farrell, Maggie: Hamnet [novel].
Okwonga, Musa: In The End, It Was All About Love [novel?]
Okwonga, Musa: One of Them: an Eton College memoir.
O’Toole, Fintan: We Don’t Know Ourselves: a personal history of Ireland since 1958 [in comparison to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These].
P
Post, Jonathan F.S.: Elizabeth Bishop - a very short introduction.
Pryke, Stuart and Staniforth, Amy: 100 for 100 Macbeth. 100 Days. 100 Revision Activities.
Q
Quigley, Alex: Closing the Reading Gap.
Quigley, Alex: Closing the Writing Gap.
R
Robinson, Roger: A Portable Paradise [poetry].
Royle, Nicholas: White Spines: confessions of a book collector.
Rubenhold, Hallie: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper [history, biography].
Rundell, Katherine: Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.
Rutherford, Adam: How to Argue with a Racist: history, science, race and reality.
Ryan, Kiernan: Shakespearean Tragedy [essay on Othello].
S
Saunders, George: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (in which four Russians give a master class on writing, reading and life) [short story analysis].
Schindler, Meriel: The Lost Café Schindler: one family, two wars and the search for truth [memoir, history].
Sentance, Neil: Ridge & Furrow: voices from the winter fields [personal history].
Sentance, Neil: Water and Sky: voices from the riverside [personal history].
Shapiro, James: 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear [criticism, history].
Shapiro, James: Shakespeare in a Divided America [criticism, history].
Shakespeare: The RSC Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen.
Shepherd, Nan: The Living Mountain [memoir, nature].
Sherriff, R.C.: The Fortnight in September [novel].
Sherrington, Tom and Caviglioli, Oliver: Teaching Walkthrus: Five-Step Guides for Instructional Coaching.
Smith, Ali: Spring [novel].
Smith, Emma: This is Shakespeare [chapter on Othello, chapter on Macbeth, chapter on Hamlet, chapter on King Lear].
Smith, Jonathan: Being Betjeman(n) [biography, poetry].
Smith, Zadie: Intimations: six essays.
Smith, Zadie: The Wife of Willesden [dramatisation of Chaucer].
T
Thompson, Sonia: Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence in Action [teaching].
Turner, Marion: The Wife of Bath: a biography.
Twomey, Molly: Raised Among Vultures [poetry].
U
Y
Youles, Christopher: Sentence models for creative writing.
W
Wall, William: Empty Bed Blues [novel].
Wall, William: Smugglers in the Underground Hug Trade: a journal in the plague year [poetry].
Webb, Jennifer and Giovanelli, Marcello: Essential Grammar: the resource book every English teacher will need.
Whitehead, Colson: The Nickel Boys [novel].
Winn, Alice: In Memoriam [fiction].
Winton, Tim: The Boy Behind the Curtain: notes from an Australian life [essays].
Wolf, Marianne: Reader, Come Home: the Reading Brain in a Digital World [neuroscience].
Individual Short Stories
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi: ‘Zikora’.
Berlin, Lucia: ‘A Manual for Cleaning Women’.
Keegan, Claire: ‘So Late in the Day.’
Mansfield, Katherine: ‘Daughters of the Late Colonel’.
Morrison, Toni: ‘Recitatif’ (with an introductory essay by Zadie Smith).
Trevor, William: ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’.